Could Responsible AI Spark Transformative Change at HCLTech?

In mid-August, TBR met with Heather Domin, HCLTech’s vice president and head of Office of Responsible AI and Governance, and Grace Davin, Responsible AI and Governance Thought Leadership and Enablement leader, to discuss HCLTech’s Responsible AI Advisory Services practice. The following reflects that conversation as well as TBR’s ongoing analysis of HCLTech, the IT services ecosystem, AI and disruptions across business models in the technology space.

 
HCLTech’s strengths lie in its engineering DNA; entrenched and well-managed client relationships; and extensive alliance partnerships, which include critical technology players and even HCLTech competitors. Playing to those strengths has been one element separating HCLTech from IT services peers in the last few years, especially with respect to profitability. With a suite of AI Advisory Services, the company continues to follow its proven strategy: focus on core values, deliver relentlessly, partner smartly, and expand within an existing client base.
 
Responsible AI, a critical subset of AI Advisory Services, could serve as a strategic enabler of HCLTech’s market leadership ambitions, elevating its market stature and strategic relevance with clients, peers and ecosystem partners.

Responsible AI: The basics

AI Advisory Services is aligned with HCLTech’s overall organization and strategy including partnerships across technology companies, industry organizations, nongovernmental organizations and governments. In Domin’s view, staying current with the fast-changing AI landscape requires partnering broadly as well as putting HCLTech through the rigors of leading AI, technology and organizational certifications. Domin noted HCLTech’s partnerships with Microsoft and IBM, as well as a growing collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 
HCLTech’s core client value proposition combines Responsible AI governance with large-scale engineering and transformation delivery. Unlike niche governance or AI red-teaming providers, HCLTech’s AI advisory capabilities span AI red teaming, AI governance, enterprise strategy, agentic engineering, and road-mapping from prototype through production. The company brings technical talent, local regulatory knowledge, customization by industry and geography, and the ability to embed governance into major AI programs rather than treating it as a stand-alone compliance exercise.
 
According to Domin, HCLTech has seen increasing demand for AI advisory services from clients, particularly in financial services, healthcare, and energy & manufacturing, all areas that face significant regulatory challenges. HCLTech has developed expertise in addressing governance, risk and compliance (GRC) issues for clients in part by hiring talent from legacy GRC firms and by recruiting professionals with backgrounds combining legal, compliance and AI experience. In TBR’s view, HCLTech’s decision to explicitly call out Regulatory Services as a component of AI Advisory Services provides a subtle but significant differentiator when contrasting HCLTech with its closest IT services peers.
 
HCLTech bakes Responsible AI into every element in the AI Advisory Services suite, as well as across the broader set of HCLTech’s AI offerings, such as AI Force (see TBR’s assessment from late 2024). Domin acknowledged that Responsible AI should be at the forefront of any engagement with an AI component and not, like change management traditionally, left to the end of the engagement process.

Responsible AI: The nuance

When discussing whether HCLTech’s Responsible AI services offering allowed the company to interact with decision makers beyond the usual CIO clients, Domin noted that organizations have different approaches to “placing the responsible AI responsibilities … sometimes they put it in the technology office, sometimes in the CIO, sometimes it’s in the chief risk officer’s office, and so [CIOs will] bring in the right people.”
 
These changing roles and responsibilities help expand HCLTech’s influence and footprint within a client. Domin added that some “big companies that we work with already have pretty well-established [AI and tech] broad capabilities. What they need is to understand how to deploy a specific AI deployment with the right guardrails integrated. So it just depends on the company. We might not even need to go to that other buyer, but in some cases we do.” In TBR’s view, expanding HCLTech’s role by providing Responsible AI services will undoubtedly bolster client retention and help prove the company’s overall value.
 
In multiple client use cases presented by Domin, HCLTech’s AI Advisory Services practice essentially solved complex problems driven by a lack of responsible AI practices or guardrails and emerging technology deployments. For example, one client’s use of GitHub Copilot had returned underwhelming results and created unwanted risks, providing an opening to use nearly the full suite of HCLTech’s AI services. In TBR’s view, these brownfield opportunities will likely remain plentiful as hype around AI’s promise coupled with fears of being left behind outpace responsible approaches to AI deployments.
 
TBR noted Domin and HCLTech’s emphasis on governance, risk, and compliance, as well as the operational aspects of AI and not the specific technology itself (discussion touched on broader aspects beyond the common technology aspects such as which large language model to choose, vibe coding, retrieval-augmented generation, or token consumption). Every IT services company does tech. Not every company understands and delivers on broader governance and risk management.

What Responsible AI really means for HCLTech

Domin discussed HCLTech’s customer-zero story and how the Responsible AI team participated in the firm’s ongoing internal AI deployment, including ISO 42001 certification and an AI ethics board. She added that, “some of our experience around our own tooling, it’s been useful. Like where clients are deploying similar tools or things, we’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, but our team is doing that internally. Go talk to them.’ And so yes, [customer zero] is very much a core integral part of what we do.”
 
In TBR’s view, HCLTech’s customer-zero story around Responsible AI could be part of a catalyst for change within the company. Not only will the customer-zero story resonate with clients and with HCLTech’s technology and ecosystem partners, but employees will also be able to see the company’s value to clients in a different way.
 
Domin’s presentation and the discussion with TBR included frequent mentions of “board-level narratives” and deliverables from HCLTech ready for “audit committee review,” all wrapped around the Responsible AI and AI Advisory Services offerings. TBR had not previously considered that HCLTech’s value proposition includes board-level contributions, except for highly specific, technology-centric issues, such as large-scale IT implementations or business-model-changing AI deployments at scale.
 
Domin subtly suggested the company’s Responsible AI professionals would consult consistently at the board and audit committee levels, bringing HCLTech’s brand repeatedly into that environment in a different way.
 
Notably, Domin commented on a “cultural transformation of our teams” as part of the positive effects of internal AI adoption at HCLTech. Continued adoption and cultural transformation could help the company position itself as a different kind of partner to boards and C-Suites than other IT services companies. That shift would likely strengthen HCLTech’s standing as a strategic advisor to clients and ecosystem partners, creating opportunities for additional services engagements beyond Responsible AI.