The Hindu Business Line : SSA Global to expand India operations, get into BPO

SSA Global has planned an enhanced role for its Indian subsidiary and its research and development centre at Hyderabad. It also plans to foray into business process outsourcing and grow by about 30 per cent this year.

The Chairman, President and CEO of SSA Global, Mr Mike Greenough, told Business Line that "as a company, we have grown both organically and inorganically over the last three years from just about $120 million company with 1,000 employees to about $700 million with over 4,000 employees."

The growth was through a combination of strategic acquisitions particularly Baan and Axe. "Having merged these entities and consolidated the operations, we expect the Indian arm to play a much larger role. The manpower, currently about 400 people, is expected to be ramped up by about 100 people by the year- end," he said.

Baan, after acquisition, has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SSA Global, which is a provider of extended enterprise resource planning solutions for manufacturing, services and public organisations.

"With Axe's acquisition, we are in the process of shifting some development work from Germany and Malaysia to India".

Apart from bringing in cost efficiencies, this will also help evolve a larger R&D role for the Indian operations covering the portfolio of Baan, Axe and SSA Global, he explained.