'Contribution from Asia Pacific to global revenue will go up to15% by 2009'

Keith Budge, senior VP and GM, Asia Pacific and Japan, Business Objects, was

in India recently on a business visit. His mission was to meet few customers to

freeze plans to strengthen some of its existing businesses. An industry veteran,

Budge is responsible for sales and operations for China, Japan, and Asia

Pacific. He reports directly to John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. He also

serves as a member of the company's executive committee. In an interview with

Dataquest, he shared the roadmap of Business Objects, and the role of India in

its global operations plans. Excerpts:

What are the main trends in the business intelligence industry in India?



We have been in India in direct presence since 2001, and prior to that, our

business in India was completely through distribution channels. We have 300

corporate customers across multiple sectors. The largest adopters in Business

Intelligence (BI) so far have been service sectors, insurance,

telecommunications, and BPO sectors. We have started seeing a lot of interest in

non-service sectors like manufactures and retailers. The public sector is still

nascent, and is still analyzing opportunity for BI. However, over the next one

or two years, they will look harder at how BI can help various aspects. In the

telecom space, it is certainly one of the earlier adopters.

We are seeing a trend toward a lot more interest in performance management

(PM). The other aspect of PM is around budgeting and planning. We are also going

to have product portfolio, good capability in the area of cost and profitability

analysis.

Are you looking at any expansion in terms of headcount in India?



The current total headcount from the sales side of our business in India is
about 30, and we expect it to go to 40-50 by this year-end. Until a year ago,

BO's presence in India was fairly small. Since then, we have expanded our Mumbai

office very significantly. We also expanded our Delhi office more than double.

On the other side of business, there is very large investment in the

development segment. In Bangalore, we have outsourced R&D activity to a company.

Last year, BO acquired part of that company. Nes Technologies India, which

consists of 300 people, will focus on growth. We are expanding as a company

globally, and it will be Indian development that will help expansion. We also

have a technically outsourced support group of 120 people in Pune. Also, BO is

operating seamlessly as part of the global BO technical support organization. We

also have plans to open a center at Chennai.

Are your R&D initiatives assisting Indian companies in a big way?



As software companies have invested in global infrastructure in India, it is
actually very beneficial for Indian customers. So, in some projects that we do,

customers have active involvement with the R&D engineers from our Bangalore

center, and that's a very good experience for customers.

If you look at the banking sector, the characteristics especially of retail

banking, is that it has got a very large number of relatively low value

accounts. Another example will be in the telecom space, where telecom service

providers might have issues with extremely large number of customers. So, there

are issues around running a bank or telecom business in India, without which

people cannot do business. Therefore, we need to push technology to our

customers. You may want to do something with a product, and you might need some

capability in the product to be applied. Sometimes, that deep engineering

understanding of the product development, and how it's deployed will be very

crucial.

What are the trends among large enterprises in developed markets?



In the large customer base, we are focusing on expanding the footprints of the
use of our products within those accounts. We have seen a strong trend in a year

or two in other parts of the world where customers are going for more enterprise

way for BI, because they want to make sure that everybody in the company is

operating with same data. BI can actually let you have that consistency in

operations. So, lots of our customers are the ones who want to have a broader BI

deployment, so that they can ensure that everyone in the organization is using

the same data

What is India's contribution to BO?



India's contribution is quiet low at the moment. The Asia Pacific as a whole

contributed just 8% to the global revenue (Asia Pacific includes Japan). We have

estimated to get the contribution from Asia Pacific up to 15% by 2009. India

will make a very strong contribution to this. In terms of the Asia Pacific

markets, in growth terms, India, Korea and China will be the three highest

growth markets. So, India will play a very important role in helping us get the

Asia Pacific contribution. It's definitely our fastest growing region in the

world. The other initiative that we are taking is in mid-market, as more than

half of the revenue comes from there. Mid-market means everyone other than the

top enterprise customers. So, we have a strong initiative globally where we have

released products, which are very specifically tailored for mid-market

customers. Mid-market customers are very different from enterprise guys. They

need very sophisticated IT departments, very rapid implementation, and very

rapid return on investment. They need a six-day BI implementation project. For

easy, quick implementation, they need licensing in pricing which is tailored to

specific requirements. Mid-market organizations clearly need a pricing package,

which is tailored for the scale of their business. So, we put all that together

and got some specific details from our R&D center on those mid-market products

to make sure that they fit the needs of mid-market very well.

Are you facing any pricing pressure in India?



It's a highly price sensitive market. Everybody is price sensitive in India,
but mid-market, in particular, is very price sensitive. So, we put together

pricing packages, which we think will fit well in that space. The other factor

to be mentioned is awareness, and it is very much required that you create

awareness in that market where you have a new product, product capability. It is

a very creative value proposition, because in mid-market you are dealing with

owners/managers. We will be working with our partners to do that and create that

awareness and demand in the market. So, we are launching that mid-market

initiative in India early next month.

How is the campaign going to be?



We will have to prioritize the A, B and C centers. So, we will prioritize
mid-market in Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai. And then, we will start with cities

like Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. The strategy to be adopted for this will not be

unique as we already have a mid-market strategy in the world. But it will be

very unique in the way we execute it.

Will the pricing also be unique?



The standard pricing will be same around the world, as we have a list price,

but we also have the ability to provide certain discounts within the market

place. Further, we will look at pricing that addresses the Indian market, as

customers in India are good at driving a good bargain.

Baburajan K



maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in