Cincom System Signs Deal with Syrex

Posted Monday, October 19, 2009 By ITVN Network

 

Cincom Systems announced that it has entered into a deal with Syrex Information Services. As part of the deal, Cincom Systems will replace Syrex’s existing solution with the Cincom Synchrony Express solution built on the IBM Smart Business platform.

Cincom Systems unified agent desktop solution, Cincom Synchrony Express, is a new integrated Contact Center and Communication platform that dynamically increases efficiency while reducing overall cost of deployment. Synchrony Express provides Syrex with an all-in-one Contact Center software suite that includes a multi-channel inbound/outbound interaction management, universal queue, skills-based routing, predictive dialing and campaign management application along with complete ACD, IVR & Voice Logging application. Synchrony also ensures unmatched customer service solutions on worry-free IBM Smart Business platform that includes pre-integrated and pre-configured firewall and back-up & recovery services.

Pantulu Avarasala, Director, Cincom India, said, We are very pleased that Syrex Information Services has selected Cincom’s Synchrony Express Solution. This is a key customer win for a Cincom solution on IBM Smart Business Platform and this order further endorses Cincom-IBM association in the Indian market. Cincom’s Synchrony Express Solution offers a complete Contact Center platform that will meet Syrex’s present needs while ensuring a sound platform for embracing new technologies in the future.

Naresh Kakkar, Director, Syrex Information Services, said Syrex’s primary goal was to increase the efficiency of the operations by automating the processes with flexibility to meet future needs. After evaluating multiple vendors, we decided to invest smartly by selecting the Synchrony Express Solution on IBM Smart Business Platform. Synchrony’s unprecedented simplicity, ease of usage and manageability with IBM as single point of contact ensured its win. Cincom’s Synchrony Express solution on IBM Smart platform increased our productivity by 25% and delivered the perfect customer experience.

 

Serving Solutions

The server market in India is clearly undergoing a major transformation from box-selling to solutions selling

 By Varun Aggarwal

After recording a flat growth in 2008 and negative growth in Q1 2009, the Indian server market is expected to bounce back. In 2008, the overall server market in India stood at $700 million according to Gartner. Of this x86 servers contributed $318 million, while the remaining came equally from Itanium-based servers and RISC servers.
However it was in the first quarter of 2009, when the server market took a major beating. According to Gartner, the server market shrank 30 percent sequentially from $150 million in Q4 2008 to $130 million in Q1 2009. The biggest fall was experienced by the x86 server market, which dropped from $75 million in Q4 2008 to $60 million in Q1 2009—a drop of 21 percent. 

“No doubt the economic slowdown has had a negative impact on the server market. But we are positive about the market and expect good growth going forward,” opines Anoop Nambiar, Country Manager, Business Partner Organization, IBM India and South Asia.
Despite a bad Q1, Gartner believes that the market will recover the lost ground and will be marginally down by a percent in 2009.
“After the initial slowdown, the server market is back on the growth path. We are seeing good spending coming from the government for e-governance projects and IT automation of various departments. Education is another sector where demand for servers is on the rise,” says Arunangshu Basu, National Server and Alliances Manager, Dell India.

 

The IT and ITES sector, which had seen a lull in their infrastructure investments due to unfavorable business scenario, have now resumed their spending albeit to save cost. “The sector is increasingly investing in server refresh for infrastructure consolidation and virtualization,” adds Basu.
Telecom is another sector that is likely to see increased demand for servers. With new entrants in the process of rolling out mobile services and existing players focusing on bringing 3G services to the market, server demand from this sector would only increase.

Intel expects server refresh to dominate demand over the next 6-12 months on the back of the launch of its Nehalem architecture Xeon family. “Servers based on our new Xeon processors provide significant productivity gains and energy savings. The strong ROI benefits will compel customers to look at refreshing their server infrastructure and that’s what will drive demand,” says Sandeep Aurora, Director, Sales and Marketing Group, South Asia, Intel.

 

Emerging trends
As the server market moves on the path of revival, there is a major transformation underway in terms of how customers buy servers and how vendors are positioning their products.
Opines Naveen Mishra, Senior Research Analyst, Gartner, “The Indian customer is coming of age when it comes to buying servers. Apart from technology, they are keenly looking at other important aspects like power consumption, floor space requirements and manageability.”

Agrees Santanu Ghosh, Country Manager, Business Critical Systems and Nonstop Servers, TSG, HP India, “Earlier when we talked about TCO, it was mostly about the acquisition and the maintenance cost over the lifecycle of the product, but now customers want to know about parameters like the power and cooling costs, floor area, etc. When you factor these aspects, the older TCO calculations account for only 25-30 percent of the actual TCO.”

As a result, HP has recently launched its G6 Proliant servers based on the Intel Nehalem platform—which has the concept of modular power supply—that gives customers a choice of power supply with the server. “When a server is designed, it has a lot of expandability built into it. The power supply that comes with a server is in accordance with the maximum expandable configuration. Our servers now come with a modular power supply which can be switched to 400W, 800W, 1200W or 2000W depending on the current capacity and utilization,” explains Rajesh Dhar, Director, Industry Standard Servers, HP India.

According to Dhar this could mean an annual power saving of Rs 25,000 for a Rs 1.5 lakh server. HP has also incorporated its proprietary sensor technology in the rack servers, which was earlier available only with blade servers. “Our rack offerings come with sensors that have the ability to switch off a fan that is not being used and automatically increase or decrease the speed of a particular fan. This further saves cooling cost,” Dhar adds.

HP’s staunch competitor IBM has also refreshed its entire server product range in keeping with the changing dynamics of the server market. In May, IBM overhauled its entire System x, BladeCenter and Express server portfolio to address the challenges of hefty costs of power usage, IT management pileup and under utilized or idle processors. The new portfolio, IBM claims, offers a power saving of at least $100 per server per year, drives server utilization up to 80 percent, achieves 9:1 server consolidation and reduces operating cost by 90 percent.

“Infrastructure consolidation, virtualization, and green IT have been leading the change in the server market, even among SMBs. Despite the difficult economy, Indian companies are eager to invest in green technologies,” states Nambiar.
Nambiar points to a recent survey done by IBM that found that nearly 63 percent of the polled Indian SMBs have already deployed green server rooms to increase energy efficiency or have a pilot project underway. “A majority of the SMBs polled also said that within 12 months they are planning to virtualize their server technology, consolidate storage systems or retrofit their server rooms to become energy efficient,” he adds.
Dell too has refreshed its server line. “We have innovated extensively on server power and cooling by introducing  completely new thermal designs and better efficiency supplies. We will also introduce newer servers both in the rack and blade form factors,” informs Basu.

 

Market strategies
While technology innovation is driving vendors’ product strategy, sales strategy, especially in the fast-growing SMB segment, is being led by offering vertical-specific bundled solutions. HP has identified 25 new microverticals and more than 200 ISVs that have specific business applications for each of these microverticals. 
“We have invested substantially in creating Proof-of-Concepts for SMB customers in each of the focus microverticals. For instance, in the healthcare space, we have tied up with an ISV called Shrishti—who has locally-made hospital management software. Using which we have created a bundled offering for under Rs 10 lakh that can computerize a mid-size hospital end to end,” says Dhar.

HP has also created a digital library bundle based on Open Source software developed by MIT Labs to help colleges easily convert all their paper records to digital. Another solution bundle created by HP is a school ERP system.
IBM too has been aggressively promoting what it calls the Smart Business platform, aimed at providing vertical-specific SMB solutions. “Smart Business is our integrated IT platform that delivers pre-loaded and pre-integrated applications with IBM software. Currently, 30 ISV have ported their applications on this platform. The initiative is backed by customer financing program,” said Nambiar.

IBM claims that the unified offering can save over 60 percent cost. “The acquisition cost is reduced as the integration, validation, and testing of the total solution eliminates the need for expensive sizing and installation services during implementation. The administration cost is also reduced as we automate patch management, simplify user definitions, streamline backup and recovery, and make support more proactive and effective, thus reducing downtime. The total savings will depend on the solution, but 30 percent reduction in acquisition cost and 30 percent reduction administration cost is common,” states Nambiar.

 

Partner drive
With aggressive go-to-market strategies, vendors are doing everything to enable their partners so that the server-led solutions opportunities in the SMB segment are realized. IBM recently launched a campaign called IBM BladeCenter Express Bus, where along with its business partners it went on a multi-city road show to showcase real-time benefits of blade server and Smart Business offerings.

“With the server market expanding, we are creating tools to make it easier for partners to sell. We have created a widget using which partners can access any partner-related tools, programs, offers, pricelist in a single window. Other major initiative is the mobile price tracker, which allows partners to access the latest information on IBM run-rate products, options, prices, schemes and rebates on their mobile phones. The application also helps partners configure base models with required options and arrive at a final price. In addition, we have invested in the Online Price Request Application (OPRA) which allows partners to pass on their leads and incorporate price requests online,” informs Nambiar.

Dell which launched its SMB channel program two quarters ago is also aggressively enabling its partner network. Recently, it conducted an eight-city campaign called SMB Experience Roadshow bringing its partners and customers on the same platform to inform them about the virtues of its server and storage offerings and emphasizing on the benefits of technology refresh.
“We along with our partners are studying customer environments and helping them calculate the cost of
running older inefficient servers, and the ROI of replacing them with latest technology,” says Basu.

 

Conclusion
The server market is clearly undergoing a major transformation from boxselling to solutions selling. And to capitalize on the server opportunity partners will have to follow a solutions-based sales approach. 

 

http://www.crn.in/Serving-Solutions-Market-Focus-001Sept009.aspx

 

Cincom Systems to further expand footprint in India

Surabhi Agarwal

New Delhi: The US-based software products company, Cincom Systems is planning to increase its reach in India as part of its focus on emerging economies. The $200-million privately held company currently derives around 10% of its global revenue from India and is planning to increase the share to 30% in a year or two. “Despite the global slowdown on IT spends, Cincom sees a huge potential in India’s domestic market,” Gerard Maret, managing director, Asia Pacific, Cincom Systems told FE.

The world’s oldest software company launched its flagship document management software — Eloquence — in India last week. “With Eloquence, we are targeting around 10% of the electronic document management market in the country within a year,” said Pantulu Avasarala, director, Cincom Systems.

The company sees huge demand for such softwares in the financial services and insurance sectors in the country, which continue to be paper intensive. “There is a need to take processes like loan grants and foreclosure online and reduce their processing time. Same is the case with the insurance industry,” said Avasarala.

Cincom is also targeting other industries like manufacturing and call centres in India with its other products like Quote-to-Order and ERP applications.

The company which has tie-up with IBM for its smart business programme along with being the partner with other leading IT giants like HP, Microsoft and Oracle is scouting for more partners to increase its India reach and penetration. “We have eight partners in the country and want to add four more in the future,” said Avasarala. He added that the new partners will be largely for its Eloquence product. The company had recently tied-up with KM Techno Solutions.

“While we have had very minimum impact of the recession in major economies of the world, we see maximum growth coming from the Asia Pacific region, especially India and China. Australia is also a growth market for us,” said Maret.

The company gets around 65% of its revenues from outside the US. It has around 900 employees out of which 120 are based in India. Cincom’s development centre in Gurgaon, which was set up eight years ago, is its largest globally.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/cincom-systems-to-further-expand-footprint-in-india/435830/

 

 

50 MILLION WORKERS MAY LOSE JOBS IF CRISIS WORSENS, WARNS ILO

Aruna Viswanatha, New Delhi
Mint  DNA  Asian Age  The Financial Express  

As many as 50 million workers could be left without jobs in 2009 if the economic crisis worsens, the International Labour Organization, or ILO, said.

Unemployment this year could increase by between 18 and 50 million, the United Nations agency that works for labour rights said in a report released on Tuesday. ILO says the unemployment rate is likely to rise between 6.1% and 7.1% in 2009, compared with 5.7% in 2007.

In a warning to India’s workers, the ILO report suggests the worst hit might be the “working poor”, those who earn less than $2 (or Rs 97.80) a day, and workers in “vulnerable employment”, a term that characterizes insecure employment and low productivity.

The largest share of the newly unemployed comes from developed economies, which shed 900,000 jobs in 2008. But the layoffs that began in US financial firms and spread to retail, automobiles, manufacturing, consumer goods and information technology, are now triggering aftershocks in developing economies.

In the worst-case scenario, where the unemployment rate could rise to 7.1% in 2009, the report says almost 1.4 billion of the world’s workers may become part of the working poor, many of whom live in India and South Asia.

In 2007, four-fifths of South Asia’s workforce were classified as working poor, with almost 60% earning less than $1.25 per day.

According to some scenarios, the report argues, 95 million additional workers in South Asia could fall back into extreme poverty this year.

Any such downward spiral would put the brakes on dramatic growth, since South Asia accounted for 33% of all the new jobs created in world in 2008, the report says. Its nearest competitor sub-Saharan Africa accounted for an additional 21%.

Separately, new data suggests Indian employers are already tapping on their brakes. A quarterly employment survey released on Tuesday by staffing firm TeamLease Services Pvt. Ltd identifies telecom as the only industry showing signs of hiring growth in India. The ILO report shows that South Asia still boasts a relatively low 5.4% unemployment rate.

North Africa tops that list, at 10.3%, followed by the Middle East, at 9.4%. In sub-Saharan Africa, 7.9% of workers are unemployed, and in East Asia, the region with the lowest unemployment rate, only 3.8% of the workers is looking for jobs. Employment by sector in South Asia mimics global patterns.

The service sector now employs 43% of the world’s workforce, and 30% of South Asia’s. Agriculture, which employed almost 41% of the workforce 10 years ago, is down to 33.5% worldwide.

South Asia’s share has dropped from 60% to 47%.

 

REDEFINING THE ROLE OF THE CFO

Viveat Susan Pinto
The Financial Express

As investigators attempt to put a finger on the quantum of fraud committed at Hyderabad-based Satyam Computer Services Ltd, it is increasingly becoming clear that nothing could have happened without the knowledge of the company’s chief financial officer (CFO) Srinivas Vadlamani, despite his assertions to the contrary. The role of the CFO in general has come under scrutiny following the Satyam episode, which brings us to the question: Does it need to undergo a transformation in the changing business order?

To most, the CFO is the number-cruncher rattling off figures concerning the company at results meets and conferences. But he also has a larger role to play, say observers, in raising finance, performing audits, understanding the income and expenditure of the company, thereby helping to put in place cost efficiency measures wherever required. “It is already very broad-based,” says S K Joshi, director (finance), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL). “All listed companies adhere to Clause 49 of the Listing Agreement by the Securities and Exchange Board of India. This helps the regulator monitor corporate governance levels of these companies,” he says. Adds the CFO of a prominent Indian company, “There is a framework in place to monitor disclosures made by a company. It’s required if you want to bring about overall credibility.”

Despite this, frauds still happen. Satyam is a case in point. It was the fourth largest Indian IT services provider till a few months ago. It had bluechip clients with offices all over the world. Yet, founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju, overstated accounts by his own admission for several years. This was done ostensibly to prevent a takeover attempt by rivals since the promoters held a small percentage of the company’s shares. Poor financial performance would make the company an easy target, Raju reasoned in an open letter to the Satyam board earlier this month. Of course, all of this is in the realm of investigation at the moment.

But many observers are of the opinion that a fraud of this nature couldn’t have happened without the active collusion of members of Raju’s team, including CFO Vadlamani. It explains why besides Raju and his brother Rama Raju, who was the managing director of Satyam, even Vadlamani has been subjected to intense interrogation following their arrest recently. Says Bakul Dholakia, ex-director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who is now director at the Adani Institute of Infrastructure Management, “Rules and regulations have been formed so that one can adhere to them. The issue is about enforcing them.” But the question is: who’s going to do this?

The position of the CFO like that of the chief executive officer is not a statutory one under the Companies Act, 1956. This means there are no rules and regulations under the Companies Act at least, which bind the conduct of the executives directly. It is the board of directors, which has been given express powers under the Companies Act to govern the conduct of the CEO and the CFO.

In the event of the board being compromised by either of the two, malafide conduct can be easily brushed under the carpet, leave aside it being penalised, say experts. That’s what seemed to be happening in the case of Satyam where Raju was allowed to overstate accounts for such a long time with no objection coming from any quarter, not even from external auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers. The audit firm’s motives have been questioned since the breakout of the episode, with some calling for its ban in the country.

 

DEALING WITH THE SLOWDOWN DILEMMA

Renuka Vembu
Express Computer

The global recession has made the job of CIOs tougher. Let us look at how they are coping up with the challenging times and what strategies they are formulating to deal with it

The economic meltdown has created ripple effects impacting industries across the globe; the IT/ ITeS, BFSI and the service sectors being the major verticals taking the hit. But with increasing security concerns, technological advancement surging at a rapid pace, the growing importance of service delivery timelines, and real-time access and decision-making, the job of CIOs, to give an optimum level of performance amidst working under pressing budgets, is a tough one. Additionally, they also have to adhere to new compliance and environmental regulations and grapple with new products and operations. Though it is an established fact that IT no longer just aids business, but is an integral part of business, in today’s scenario, IT heads are walking on tight ropes in an effort to attain a balance between the performance scale vis-à-vis the cost factor.

Under the scanner
The areas where spending can be restricted wholly depends upon the nature of business, scale of operations, need of the company, their focus for the future and the ways they have chartered out to deal with the changing scenario and the fields where amendments have been impending. While some CIOs eye the day-to-day operations to pull the budget strings, some take a medium-term view while still others adopt the long-term approach to even out the edges.

T G Dhandapani, Chief Information Officer, SCL-TVS Group, said, “As a CIO, my attention is not only on IT capex and opex control but also to look to hasten IT spend that will impact efficiency gains or cost cut elsewhere in the short run. We re-look at assumptions made on various projects and identify the fat caused by ‘over design’ and ‘changed scenario.’ This helps us in reducing non value adding cost. Any new IT enabled business investment will have a target for return, and a cross functional team from business and IT will have joint ownership to ensure flow of returns. This remodeled scenario will ensure that the IT team aligns technology initiatives to the business goals and at the same time creates ownership on business colleagues to own the IT enabled processes and get best out of them. The velocity of reporting by IT can also be enhanced, by cutting the period to shorter cycles—month to week to day to hour, to enable faster decisions and transparency that may be enhanced.”

The prudence here would be to embark on projects that will ensure maximum returns on investment with minimal risk proposition. Likewise, proposals that are under consideration and can be deferred, should be put on hold till the economic/financial situation brightens up.

Vijay Sethi, Vice President, IS and CIO, Hero Honda Motors, explained, “In the IT portfolio, there are always some ‘vital,’ some ‘essential’ and some ‘desirable’ projects. While we are continuing on ‘vital’ and most of the ‘essential’ projects, we are taking a hard look at ‘desirable’ ones and seeing what can be deferred or scaled down. Also, we are reviewing all the IT expenses to see if can defer some of them. There is an increased focus on workflows to improve efficiency in the system and reduce paper work. There is also focus on projects that would help to reduce maintenance costs, improve utilization of equipment and reduce energy costs.”

There will always be a certain amount that organizations will incur as their IT spend. The objective here should be to use the money prudently, towards identifying potential areas where there are chances of a slip-up and then working out ways towards rectifying it.

Remodeling the process
Upal Chakraborty, CIO, DLF Limited, pointed out the aspects that need to be considered while remodeling:

- Look at doing more with less
- Use tools to reduce manpower requirement
- Re-look at bandwidth/server costs (through consolidation)/ reduction of power costs
- Outsource areas where core competency is not there


Identifying areas of waste, aiming for reasonable and attainable profits/revenues, curbing wasteful expenses, can help organizations and CIOs scrape through the rough tide. Sethi added, “We need to review our equipment refresh policy and look where we can extend life of assets. Other areas are projects like application or infrastructure consolidation to reduce maintenance costs and putting technologies like e-learning to supplement training and reduce travel. I think economic conditions like this give us all an opportunity to have a closer and harder look at our way of working and take measures to remove inefficiencies in our systems and processes. I think another thing could be that we need to ensure that when we add expenses in our setup, we need to look at long-term impact of ‘fixed’ expenses that we may be adding in our setup.”

In some lines of business, with falling transactions, needs may not be greater. Vendors too understand that if they want to ‘partner’ and not just ‘sell,’ they cannot increase rates. Certain ROI does not change, for example, if return was in terms of saving in manpower or avoiding duplication of effort or benefits of a new integrated platform, such return does not change. Implementation of processes and procedures helps to streamline operations and leads to greater efficiency which indirectly contributes to cost saving and better ROI. Sharing of resources or phasing out expenditure will reduce the pressure on cash flow.

 

HOW WE FOUND 'THE BEST EMPLOYERS'

Business Today (Edition: January25, 2009)

The approach… This is the fifth year that the BT-Mercer-TNS team has conducted the survey to identify the Best Companies to Work For in India. The response was overwhelming with strong participation from a cross-section of industries. The core of how the study was done remains the same: we invited companies to participate, gathered data, contacted various stakeholders for feedback, and finally, analysed and ranked the Top 10 companies to work for in the country.

The unique tripartite approach to the survey continues to work successfully. Mercer defines the selection criteria, provides knowledge management support and result analysis, and proposes the ranking order. TNS coordinates all front-end interfaces with the participants through the study web site as well as through regular interaction. All the company-specific information is communicated to Mercer in coded formats. This arrangement ensures that Mercer, at no point and time, gets to know the company names till the final rankings are proposed, thereby avoiding any possibility of conflict of interest and bias. There are four stages to the study:

Study launch and registration: Business Today announced the study for 2008 through an article in its May 2008 issue. Interested companies were asked to register through the survey site, keeping in mind the eligibility criteria of four years of operations in the country and 200 white-collar employees. The eligibility criteria ensured a threshold level of complexity in people management based on headcount, as well as a degree of stabilisation of the processes based on the age of the organisation.

Data collection: The methodology was the same as the previous year. The initial contact with registered companies was established through a company overview questionnaire, through which the participants provided financial information, manpower statistics, demographic data, and the contact details for its employees, alumni, campuses etc. In the next step, the HR representative of the company was contacted and a comprehensive HR process and policy review questionnaire was handed to them so as to gain an insight into their human resource management policies and practices.

Data analysis: The company information on each of the above was collected by TNS in predefined formats and given unique company codes. This coded information was then given to Mercer for analysis. The Mercer team carried out the analysis of the responses across the four quadrants based on the company data. This analysis was conducted only for the top quartile of companies which received the highest scores on the internal employee perception questionnaire.

Scores and proposed rankings: The analysis of the company information resulted in scores on a 100-point rating scale for the four quadrants of the study. HR metrics were evaluated based on the complexity of the people management agenda, nature of industry, investments in people processes, including training and development, attrition, robustness of the budgeting processes and career velocity.