The Hindu Business Line : Talking with SAP

SAP is a German IT firm known for its Enterprise Resource Planning software. ERP streamlines procedures in your organisation, enables flow of information, sets rules and increases the efficiency of your employees.

It was difficult to talk about anything other than this mega-topic, which has brought the company to its $11-billion turnover today (actually, that's for 2005). But we did. Read on for the tangential topics discussed in an interview that eWorld had with Rajagopal Balakrishnan, Regional Director, South India and Sri Lanka, SAP India.

What do you think of Software as a Service? (A new method of selling software in which a vendor or service provider hosts the applications and makes them available to customers as a service, rather than as a product. It also goes by the alias of hosted services, ASP services, utility computing or software on-demand).

Saas is here to exist. We will have to look at what sort of usage will work on it. Some requirements will be amenable to SaaS — the standard templates. Modules such as management accounting, horizontal and vertical revenue (statistics used for a CSO), logistics will not be on SaaS. The amount of service required will make the whole proposition unviable. Templates that don't change constantly, such as payroll, for example, can be implemented using SaaS. The small market segment would use SaaS significantly. In India, we see a lot of growth happening. There will be alternate routes to satisfy basic requirements of being easy to use and deploy.

What work are you doing on the language front?

ERP software is, on a worldwide basis, in the single business language of English. We are planning to localise language for the Indian Government — it is in the pipeline. For now, we offer basic changes to the user interface (such as simplified screen for manufacturing plant workers) and help document. We are doing this in strategic cases. We have also partnered with companies that are working hard on bringing SAP in local languages (localising it for Indian requirements). Our APAC team for localisation consists of 400 researchers.

Where are you in the PLM (project lifecycle management) domain?

We offer a platform that ensures the flow of information right from the ideation stage. SAP has been offering PLM solutions for three years now. We are in the process of completing a PLM project for an automotive firm herein India. It used two PLM components by us — project definition, and resource and project management. (Note: Traditionally, electronic design automation (EDA) vendors and serviceproviders such as IBM are into PLM. Some of the other players are: UGS,Parametric Technology, Microsoft-Borland, HP, BEA, Telelogic.)

What new technologies are you ready to tackle?

We have a fairly huge focus on RFID (radio frequency identification). SAP Research, the division that conducts fundamental R&D, is planning to set upan RFID competency centre with partners in the next few months in India. These technologies, when integrated with our suites, can become powerful tools. We are also leveraging on the mobile revolution. The pharma industry is accessing SAP on mobile. This is useful for salesmen, when they are negotiating with their client.

What is your strategy for the SME market in India?

We have tied up with over 20 partners to tackle India's SME market. The advantage of having partners reach out to the SME segment is that they know the businesses of the customer (microvertical solutions that are structured to the individual company) better and are able to communicate better with the firms. We have seen that implementation time, when done with partners, has come down from 16 weeks to 4-6 weeks. We are looking at both growing and stable companies as targets. So even as we implement a large SAP backbone for oil and gas behemoths, we are also looking at the Rs 25-crore firms. Currently, there are solutions specific to 29 verticals.

What emerging target verticals are you excited about?

We see the government sector growing in the next two years. SAP solutions are being used for better governance in various States. The municipal corporation of Mumbai and Chattisgarh electricity board depend on SAP solutions.The hospitality and travel industry is mushrooming in the country. Many hotels use proprietary software, but as the industry grows, it will soon realise the need for an international-level software management suite. The challenge is that this vertical currently has no up-to-date industry standards. Other fast rising verticals that are adopting our software are chemical, manufacturing, textiles (from Raymond and Madhura Garments to spinning mills in Coimbatore!) and the entertainment industry.

There are a lot more implementations in the pipeline in the entertainment industry. (Note: The firm recently announced IP protection software integrated in its mySAP suite for music recording firm Saregama.)

Finally, can you share some unique deployments of your software suites?

From recycling (Cognizant's WasteTrace) to publishing (Macmillan), SAP's software suites are being used in various industries to improve efficiency. Macmillan implemented SAP to take care of inventory management in sale of school books. So the distribution of books to schools became easier. We did another implementation, in partnership with an Israeli firm for Sun TV that let it view programme-wise profitability, perform better booking of advertising with increased visibility of slots.

preethij@thehindu.co.in

More Stories on : Interview | Software | Enterprise Resource Planning

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Delivering news - and satisfaction

Following - up...

Too stretched, by far?

Booting trouble

`Acute lack of good articulation, team work'

Talking with SAP - beyond ERP

Looking into 2007

Say it in your own lingo

Quiz

IT infrastructure is like an elephant...

Cartoon