Local flavor a missing ingredient for Indian IT

PUNE, INDIA: It’s a gap worth addressing, be it for a CIO or for Indian vendors looking to compete or complement MNCs wooing Indian enterprises. Localization is an oft-quoted abyss and it seems that the gap continues to challenge MNC vendors.

Ask Tushar Mehendale, the IT decision maker at Engineering domain’s Electromech, and he agrees that localization is an issue to reckon with. “Engineering industry is a huge one and in Indian context, standards and engineering requirements are different.”

As he points out further, the sensitivity towards a country-specific user is still to come despite the intensified focus on emerging markets like Asia by MNC vendors. “An Indian user would definitely find it difficult to sync in with an IT system that has been made in a foreign country and has a different language like German still woven in various parts.”

Talking about the German major leading the ERP market, Amit Maheshwari, CEO and MD from Soft Link, highlights the missing pieces on Indian requirements of documentation and regulatory standards.

“Be it manufacturing or shipping, they do not match requirements of an Indian company and not aligned to systems of this country.” He cites areas like invoice format not aligned for customs acceptance and the need to cut and paste a document several times for fitting in the standard.

“Even companies that have deployed the systems from this MNC by expending in lakhs, still come to us for buying small system worth just thousands called Visual Export that helps them save time and energy in the repeat documentation work. The big ERPs are just not aligned for Indian operations and regulations adequately.”

He doesn’t foresee MNC SCM systems as a threat but in fact an opportunity in light of these localization gaps. “We can create a bridge between the logistics needs on It and these huge systems.”

Nonetheless the other side of the fence has started recognizing or at least realizing the gap on localization. India Localization for example, is a solution that Oracle claims to provide Clients in India the India specific tax requirements as specified by Central Excise, Customs, Sales Tax and VAT, and Income Tax, and statutory and management reporting.

SAP too has a development team consisting of more than 30 employees dedicated to India localization development and maintenance support.