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India is not only the biggest center for the US-head quartered Intelligroup, the market here is growing, too. ”More than 1,500 of our 2,000-plus people worldwide are in India,” says the business consulting, technology, and outsourcing services provider’s president and CEO, Vikram Gulati. “That’s three-fourths of the company.” India is no laggard as a market, too, with the growing acceptance of enterprise-wide resource planning (ERP). That’s something that augurs well for the $125.3- million company: “Our USP (unique selling proposition) is that 80 percent of our revenues are from ERP, where future infotech investments will happen,” he adds.
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| ERP is where future infotec invesments will happen, says Gulati |
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With its India headquarters in Hyderabad and a second center in Bangalore, Intelligroup’s basic business model is to “implement and exit” ; but it is increasingly building more long-term relationships with its clients. This is one reason for its work force of 400 in the US and 100 in its other areas of operation: Denmark, the UK and Japan. “The ‘local touch’ concept is predominant,” Gulati explains.
“Our dedicated offshore team in Hyderabad is becoming increasingly involved in more added-value elements of our service model,” says Paul Moroney, director of the information technology group at Hitachi Europe Ltd. “This is a strategic resourcing model and we are now heavily dependent on our close partnership with Intelligroup as a long-term relationship.” Under the strategic alliance since January 2005, Intelligroup is responsible for all aspects of its customer’s SAP applications and basis support and maintenance, supplementing a permanent Hitachi team in the UK. “We also have our people in Japan to support the parent company’s SAP client base in that country,” Gulati says.
Vital Applications
Adds’ A.J. Goldsmith, director in charge of enterprise application solutions at the US-based Varian Medical Systems: “They are very important to the ongoing support and stability of our vital business applications which affect manufacturing, finance and distribution.” Varian has a long-term dedicated application support agreement to have an Indian-based dedicated team for its SAP environment, along with onsite dedicated support team in California.
“We have integrated SAP to palm-tops, which increases revenues and brings down total cost of ownership,” says Alok Pant, vice president in charge of global marketing, alliances and strategic IT consulting. “We are also exploring all-in-one solutions for smaller businesses.” But the size of a single deal here is no longer limited to $ 100,000, Gulati points out. “There are million-dollar deals as well, with issues of scale and complexity the same as those for global companies.”
Raj Katari, IT head at Nagarjuna Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd(NFCL), is impressed with Intelligroup’s engagement support. “They stuck with us through almost an entire year, talking the language of the actual users at mid-management level, helping them and solving their problems,” he says. “They really walked the path, at no cost to us, before we finally selected them out of the half dozen companies we had short-listed to upgrade our SAP implementation.”
NFCL, which was suffering from recurring delays in receipt of fertilizer sub-sidies, achieved its target of 40 percent savings by the fourth year. “We are now well positioned to compete in the changing market conditions of our industry,” says Katari.
Intelligroup, which created the industry’s first offshore development and support centre dedicated to ERP in 1995, has been getting other recognitions, too: SAP’s ‘Global Pinnacle’, award, the highest the ERP major confers on its partners, in the ‘Technology Go To Market’ category, and Oracle Certified Advantage Partner status, membership of an elite group that has helped Oracle win the best customer references and license revenue. It is also the top knowledge contributor on www.sdn.sap.com.“This demonstrates our leadership – both technical and business - in the SAP ecosystem,” Pant says.
“Our differentiators, according to our clients, is that we are more flexible and responsible than the big companies. Companies are no longer looking at only cost reduction, but at relationships,” Pant says. Adds Gulati: “Our US clients are leveraging us for their Asia and India presence.”
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