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Follow UsPrasad Ramasubramanian
MUMBAI: With every organization going for streamlined processes and looking to cut through this cut-throat competition, there are many who don’t survive and are acquired. But there are some who hold on to their forte and develop into colossal corporations in the coming years.
When IDS SCHEER commenced on its journey, the first of its products came out on the basis of its framework --Y-model, which led to the outcome of the ARIS architecture. The ARIS platform brings an integrated portfolio of software offerings, which facilitate an enterprise to improve its business methodologies on a continuous basis. Today, after over two decades into this business, this company has an employee base of about 2800 and has its presence in more than 70 nations across the orb.
IDS SCHEER is looking to cement its place in the Indian markets. Prasad Ramasubramanian from CyberMedia News spoke to Daniel Sheahan -senior vice president, APJ IDS SCHEER, to know the challenges in this market and lots more. Excerpts from the interview:
While on one hand India offers a rich market - which every enterprise is ready to embrace, it also has issues pertaining to infrastructure and awareness of newer technology. How do you view this scenario?
India is unique but it’s not. We see the same challenges in terms of cultural differences, financial conditions etc. in so many different countries because we operate in Eastern and Western Europe. We operate in Russia, which has an economy growing at about 18 per cent of growth year-on-year and China. What we understand is that each time we enter a market then it’s that place which is given more importance. For example — if I as a company enter Australia, then we don’t chose as a basis to enter a county like India. All our entry points in a country are always based on local conditions.
BPM as an offering has been a boon for the players in the SME market and for the established players but there are many who are still not ready to shell money on the same. Your take on this.
You have to understand that every customer makes a decision based purely on a clearly defined ROI (Return on Investment) model. The nice thing about the way we sell BPM is that the ROI is clearly defined. We always ask the customer to give us a process and then we would analyze it and then say this particular process costs X and here are the inefficiencies and here is the solution.
Do you think that the Indian markets need more awareness to embrace newer versions of technology?
I think it is a challenge to get into the senior management. Our challenge is to educate them as everything trickle down from the top. One has to understand that BPM is about measuring the efficiency and making the change. It is the most important operation.
How do you typically judge the infrastructural facilities that an organization presents to you?
We don’t look at that. The reason being it does not have a lot of impact. We look more into a business need and question whether there is a way of growing that. Is there a pool of human resources that would support our business? The human resources are the most integral part to grow our business.
Moving forward, what would the chief drivers of BPM market in India?
There are two broad aspects to this. One is the economy. In India, most of the market is looking at a growth of 60 per cent year-on-year in the SMB (Small & Medium Business) segment and over 100 per cent in large companies. If you are a reasonable company, you can invest. And you have to understand that if you don’t support, you would fail.
So the first aspect is the pure growth plans for market India. Secondly, many of the companies are looking for international avenues for growing due to the advent of globalization. Now, globalization means looking around the world to grow. They also need to think in terms of infrastructure in countries outside India and globalization is also doing the reverse where companies are coming to India to take advantage and that’s what is fueling BPM in India.
State instances where your work helped your client to witness a noticeable difference in its handling an issue?
One example, which I often quote, is that of a large insurance company which shall remain nameless. This company typically took three to four weeks to process a plan, which was a lot. Through the business process analysis we looked at it and brought down this time to just three days. Again, initially the process was costing about $150 and we got it down to about $35. Now, what it did was that it brought down the turnaround time to just about 4 days, increased retention rates, the cost of new customer acquisition came down dramatically and led to significant increase of market revenue.
How strategic is India in IDS SCHEER’s radar?
I would say very strategic. In 2007, we have put a lot of focus on BRIC (Brazil, Russia, China, India) countries and India is strategic for two reasons. One — it is such a growing economy and going to be the fifth largest economy in the world soon and the market size is huge. Secondly, we want to build the center of excellence in India.