Advertisment

Buffalo or Bank, Apps are Where You Find Them

author-image
DQI Bureau
New Update

"I WILL MAKE software when I grow up," said the kid in shorts,

"because India will be a software superpower. But where can I see some

Indian software? I don’t have any."

Advertisment

This was a small school in Meerut, UP, but it’s an old question I face.

Where’s all the software India makes?

But I still don’t have any newer answers except that many small

productcompanies are still valiantly at it, and Nasscom’s trying to help them,

and funding may trickle in again…

…so I will instead take up another part of the picture, the other big gap

in the Software Inc story.

Advertisment

Services around products. Application integration. Especially for the bulk of

smaller and businesses, it almost doesn’t exist.

After our cover story on enterprise application integration, I received

several mails from readers, including CIOs, saying that if EAI was happening,

why such poor service levels from Indian business houses, where one hand doesn’t

know what the other’s doing? One CIO quoted an editorial where I’d referred

to ICICI as a pioneering tech user…but whose apps were so disconnected that

you could get bonuses and thanks, threatening letters, and solicitations from

the same address on the same day.

And most smaller businesses are a long way off from EAI. Our publications

group itself is a case in point: a host of business apps that don’t talk to

each other: circulation, editorial, HR. We have RFID-based access, but not

linked to payroll.

Advertisment

Or take Dominoes pizza. Till today, this pioneer of 30-minute delivery has

not discovered caller ID in India, while my driver knows and uses caller ID.

Good old CTI (computer-telephony integration) lets Dominoes USA do simple but

amazing things such as pick up a regular customer’s call within one ring,

greeting her with a "Hello Ms White, would you like the same as

always?" cutting down average call durations from 3 minutes down to 35

seconds. Believe it or not, even Airtel figured out caller ID in its own call

center just last year, while its services (such as directory, 904 in Delhi)

still ask you for your number.

Which is why any example of integration and innovation we come across,

whether of RFID tags for an attendance system for buffaloes (with a clear

measure: increased production) or of deploying wireless to solve a distribution

problem, it excites us enough to put the stories on our cover. Which we hope

will help highlight to the many resellers and others looking for services ideas,

that there’s lots of business waiting to be got, for those who can solve real

problems with innovation, integration and a bit of technology.

Prasanto K Roy

Advertisment