IT Implementation : Trends 2009

Business process management and automation seems to be on top of the agenda for most organizations, which isn't surprising given the slowdown. Presented here are details of what kinds of implementations are happening across different industry segments

Monday, June 01, 2009

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While IT is required by all organizations, there's a very distinct pattern that's visible on the requirements across different industries. Banks and financial institutions are now looking at their existing customer base and implementing solutions to provide them better service. Manufacturing organizations continue to automate their internal workflow with ERP. The govt. has moved beyond deploying information systems to automating and managing different types of business processes. The IT/ITES segment continues its pace of deploying the latest technologies. Plus, the education segment has also become very active this year. Here's the lowdown on each of these industries.

Projects in Banking and Finance-Focus on existing customers
If exploring new markets and avenues for growth was the mantra last year for the banking and financial services sector, this year it's more about improving customer service. The top three types of projects that we received this time were business process management and automation, CRM, and BI and decision support systems.

Banks have been the heaviest adopters of technology. This has made their IT infrastructures extremely complex and difficult to manage. They have multiple applications for different services each with its own set of business processes that need to be followed. Managing so many processes has a direct impact on the bank's functioning. They can cause delays in service delivery, errors that could be very costly, longer times to implement anything, etc. Overall, it reduces employee productivity and the bank's effectiveness in handling its customers.

Deploying BPM and A solutions for different processes improves the turnaround time, better processing speeds, and a more scientific approach reduces the chances of errors.

Banks are also seen as deploying CRM applications, which again comes as no surprise. In today's tough times, most organizations are giving higher priority to retaining existing customers over acquiring new ones. Considering that banks have large customer bases to manage, a need for CRM solutions becomes imperative. Here again, they don't require just any kind of CRM solution. When the market was booming, most banks added multiple communication channels to reach out to more customers. These included web, email, mobile, IVR, to name a few. Now, banks are deploying CRM solutions that can integrate multiple communication channels so that their customers' support requests reach a common, central touch point.

The next highest deployment in banks was for business intelligence and decision support systems, and not without good reason. The role of the customer service representative who handles the bank's CRM solution has seen a face lift. Not only is the executive expected to answer mundane queries of the bank's customers, but also try to cross-sell different services. For this, the executive needs to know which services to cross-sell and to the right customer. For this, the executive needs to know enough information about the customer to make a pitch. This is where business intelligence and decision support systems become important. There are other uses for such solutions as well, such as generating the right types of reports quickly for faster decision making. This is easier said than done, because it requires accessing databases from multiple applications, and then presenting reports in an easy to understand format.

Projects in Manufacturing-mostly ERP
The picture in this segment is the same as last year. We received the highest number of projects for this segment. Moreover, a majority of the projects being deployed by manufacturing organizations continues to remain ERP. IT infrastructure projects are the next highest type.

Manufacturing is the most diverse and spread out segment in the country, and is facing considerable amount of competition from China. One thing that a lot of manufacturing companies in India are realizing is that it's no longer sufficient to have standalone or customized software packages that are running in their own silos. So, they can't rely on basic accounting packages in the accounts department, inventory management packages in the store, and separate software for production planning, etc. These need to be integrated and proper workflow needs to take place between them, if they want to be able to compete globally. That's why most of them are resorting to ERP solutions, so that they could have a single window view of all information resources.

We also noticed another interesting trend in the manufacturing segment, which is causing a shift to ERP-mergers and acquisitions. Indian manufacturers are acquiring companies to grow their business. As a result, they're getting companies that were comfortable with their own business processes. In order to streamline the operations, they're moving all units onto a common ERP platform.

While some manufacturing companies are busy moving to ERP, others are still in the process of setting their basic IT infrastructure in order. Here again, we've seen everything from a simple email system implementation to security and bandwidth management, and all the way up to a complex virtualization deployment that reduces server clutter. There are even companies that are arming their field force with PDAs that can take customer orders, and upload them to the server via GPRS.

IT/ITES Projects-A step ahead of the rest
As usual, if you expect exciting, and large, technically complex implementations, then you have to look at the IT/ITES segment. Just like last year, the IT/ITES industry continues to deploy state-of-the-art technologies that stand a class apart from what other segments deploy. So while the rest of the world is stuck on Web 2.0 based solutions, IT/ITES has already moved to web 3.0, also known as the symantic web. While the rest of the world is doing business analytics, IT/ITES deploys complex data warehousing tools that can track an employee's performance right from pre-hiring to hiring, recruitment, and going live. So, imagine being able to measure the performance of the trainee and even the trainer at every step.

While others are busy putting their support systems in place, IT/ITES is making theirs compliant to standards like the ITIL. You think you've heard enough? There's more. Imagine an online training program that's role based, which takes into account both the business and employee's requirements. You can also expect high-end contact center solutions that can take millions of inbound calls per month from this segment. You can also expect this segment to deploy complex business management solutions for niche industries like project based engineering companies.

There are many other interesting projects that use the latest technologies in this segment, which you can read about in the IT/ITES projects section. The top three types of deployments in this segment this year were web based solutions, online portals, and BPM & A projects.

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