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Moumita Bakshi

New Delhi , May 6

IN the wake of an increasing number of companies in North America and Europe looking to Indian vendors for SAP implementation and maintenance support, a Forrester report has said that while Indian players have functional and technical SAP expertise to effectively carry out the later implementation phases and ongoing maintenance and support activities, most of them lack expertise in business process modelling or re-engineering to support the initial implementation phases.

"To cut costs and improve service levels, North American and European companies are looking to Indian vendors for SAP implementation and maintenance support... The implementation phases and the accompanying tasks must be assigned carefully. Most of the top-tier and many of the mid-tier Indian vendors have the functional and technical SAP expertise to effectively carry out the later implementation phases, the bulk of the work, and all ongoing maintenance and support. However, most of them lack expertise in business process modelling or re-engineering to support the initial implementation phases, especially the business blueprinting section," the report by Forrester said.

In order to be successful, the early phases of the implementation should be done onshore with a consulting organisation that possesses proven business modelling experience, the report said.

Forrester said that Indian vendors had distinguished themselves with their high-quality processes and deliverables and their service-level achievements.

The report said top-tier vendors — Infosys, Satyam, TCS and Wipro — have the ability to do end-to-end implementations, upgrades, and full support, while the vendors in the next tier are more appropriate for the technical work and the later implementation phases.

When contacted, Mr Satish Subramanian, who heads global SAP practice in Wipro, said, "We do not see business process modelling as an issue. In Wipro, we have done end-to-end implementations and roll outs right from building templates to rolling out to multiple countries. Not just pre-implementation part but also implementation, going live and supporting it, we have taken projects through the gamut of lifecycle."

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