Outsourcing is the buzzword today. But Alok Pant, VP of global marketing, alliances and strategic IT consulting, at Intelligroup, has seen it for quiet a long time. The $125-m company is an IT services outsourcing partner (Specifically in analytical services and ERP implementation) to the world’s largest companies, including Indian ones. Intelligroup, which had off shored pretty early in the day, houses 1,400 of its 2000 global staff strength in Hyderabad and Bangalore. Pant, talks about wide-ranging tech is-sues with Chiranjoy Sen
Globally, which Technology services do you see growing at a rapid scale?
Testing Services (and I am referring to testing related to ERP Solutions), Infrastructure management services and solutions based on service oriented architecture (SOA) are the fastest-growing techlines. Another area we see significant traction is in the domain of application management and support- especially linked to ERP implementation.
What are the drivers for these sectors?
There are different factors. For Example, in the US market, most Fortune 500 entities have already implemented ERP and hence new ERP implementations are not a whole lot. However, there is a push towards new upgrades and we see that more than half the cost involved in upgrades is in testing. This creates a huge business opportunity for testing services, which we think is the next big thing.
Then take the example of application management and support (AMS). Earlier, CEO’s and CIO’s were unwilling to outsource AMS services---Especially linked to ERP—since these were linked to organization’s core businesses. There was also the fear of job loss and more than that was the fear of losing control. But it is changing now.
Your Company took to the global delivery model pretty early (Intelligroup had set up its Hyderabad remote delivery centre in 1992, much before the outsourcing buzz stated).what were the triggers that made you guys do that?
Well, to begin with, cost-saving was the most the important factor for parceling off some work to India. Gradually, it evolved into providing increasing value to customers and today it results in faster time to market and we can tap into the whole expertise. However, we have onsite presence too since we want to be close to the customer as well-which is the US and European Market.
What are the changes taking place in the ERP market?
The ERP market has turned out to be a volume game. All the big players ---SAP, Oracle and even Microsoft, through its Navision buy- are targeting the mid –market in a big way. The mid –market comprises of companies in the US and North American markethaving turnover between $200 million and $1.5 billon. And several Indian Companies are in this turnover bracket.
With small and medium-range companies in the focus, SAP for one is especially packaging its ERP solutions for the Indian Market. They are creating all –in one solution that are more affordable to Indian companies.
Do you see Indian IT companies moving into the product domain?
Not exactly. See, it is very difficult to create and maintain world class products with all the support, distribution and language problems. What I anticipated- and some of them are doing it already –is that Indian IT firms will partner global product giants to push their solutions. Or Indian firms will build solutions on platform developed by the global giants.
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