Evolving Client–Vendor Relationship: As Manifested Through an Artificial Intelligence Research Unit of an Indian IT Organization

The Indian information technology (IT) sector is traditionally known for delivering IT and business process management (BPM) services to clients across the globe. To ensure the longevity of this client and service provider relationship, Indian IT organizations have made significant client-specific investments and actively engaged them in offshore development activities. One of the outcomes from such investments can be seen in terms of the very high maturity standards that Indian IT organizations currently exhibit in the context of IT–BPM service delivery. In recent times, these organizations are also undertaking offshore projects around emerging technologies. Such projects, especially those related to artificial intelligence (AI), are largely centred around the automation of client-focused BPM services. Given their relative nascency, such projects are primarily led by the AI research units that are rapidly diffusing across Indian IT organizations. In this study, we rely on a four-month-long ethnography to explore a client and vendor (or service-provider) relationship as manifested through one such AI research unit of an Indian IT organization situated in Bengaluru, India. Our objective from this study is to understand how these new offshore AI projects affect the longevity of the relationship between clients and the Indian IT service providers. Given the nature of emerging technology workflows, our findings indicate a tilt more towards meeting client-side expectations than that of vendors in these projects. We portend that this can potentially disrupt the longevity of the client–vendor relationship in the Indian IT services sector, and, therefore, both the clients and vendors must attend to the peculiarities of offshore emerging technology projects to mitigate such disruptions.