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Hindi SAP app to be rolled out by late 2012

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CIOL Bureau
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BANGALORE, INDIA: A nondescript hamlet in a backward region of Rajasthan, Soda, made news last year for becoming the first IT-enabled village in India.

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An Internet and intranet portal envisioned by its young management graduate sarpanch, Chavvi Rajawat, who helped the local residents gain access to details of the funds sanctioned for their welfare, powered the revolution.

Enterprise software solutions provider SAP Labs has powered the project, which also boasts of a technology education lab, besides citizen services such as birth and death certificates as well as posting land records online.

Out-of-the-box thinking by the sarpanch and localization of its tools resulted in this pathbreaking solution, said Alok Goyal, chief operating officer of SAP India here on Thursday.

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Delivering a keynote address at the SAP Localization Forum India 2012, Goyal added that the company had made one of its largest investments on the localization front, which includes a comprehensive Hindi suite that was announced last year. "It's time we had a suite in, at least, one Indian language."

As for the suite, Navaneet Mishra, vice-president, Global Services, SAP India, said that the ERP tool would be made available as the 38th language in their solutions portfolio by the second half of this year. "We have made an investment of 1.6 million euros."

Meanwhile, Goyal also spoke about a 'unique' need that arose at the Integral Coach Factory. "It had a off-cycle and on-cycle model for its employees, which started from a specific date in a month and ended a day before the starting date the next month," explained Goyal, "Our localization team stepped in and found out that the requirement was not so unique as we thought."

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How to create unique advantage to one's business was as important as taxation and government regulations, he added.

Both Goyal and Mishra insisted that they were not just an application company, but were also into analytics, cloud, database and mobility. "And, we are not talking about taking a global model and localizing it for India, but about a clear, exclusive policy to execution... with a partner engagement concept," said Mishra.

BRIC countries, according to him, had accumulated about 40 per cent of the world's foreign exchange reserves and hence, remained their key focus regions.

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One of SAP India's clients, Indian Tobacco Company (ITC), has been using SAP tools for more than a decade. In its case, "We need to create multiple need products, as we have presence across sectors. According to an estimate, between 2010 and 2020, the consumer industry is poised to grow at 3.6 times," said Sanjoy Sen, divisional chief information officer of ITC India.

India's growth, he pointed out, was at an inflection point and had already started to happen. "Today, businesses need real-time data and near real-time analysis. In Indian context, what works for mature markets might not work for us. So, SAP has to provide solutions, keeping these points in mind."

Sen also stressed upon maintaining cost competitiveness through these tools.

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