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"We are looking at replicating our success models in India."

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DQI Bureau
New Update

-Doug Presley, President, Metamor

Enterprise Solutions.

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In the last one year, Doug Presley,

MD of Metamor Enterprise Solutions (MES), who is overseeing the take-off activities of the

company's India operations, has been shuttling in-and-out of the country. Presley joined

the operations of the $850 million Metamor Worldwide after a successful 24-years of

service at IBM. In Hyderabad recently to announce the operations of Metamor School of

Excellence at Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Doug Presley spoke to

DATAQUEST on a varying number of topics, including where India stands in the globalization

plans of Metamor Enterprise Solutions. Excerpts:

Metamor has in a way staged a late

entry into the Indian ERP scene. Any comments.

No, I don't think we have staged a

late entry as far as ERP business is concerned. In India, though there are a lot of

players, the market is young and there is low penetration. As the economy grows, we see

huge opportunities.

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What do you think are your strengths

as an ERP implementation partner?

There are two things that

differentiate us. In many cases, it is the level of experience of consultants. For SAP, I

have consultants with experience of six years, which is very high. Another unique factor

is that we have developed SAP and Baan industry solution packages for specific sectors.

Hence, we actually have a more useful package than just the generic SAP.

We are also trying to tell our

customers that we have the capability to implement your system anywhere in the world.

There are only seven to eight companies in the world that can truly say that they are

global in their implementation capabilities.

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Have you also developed any specific

ERP methodologies?

Typically, each ERP vendor develops

their own methodologies and we supplement, augment that methodology with something like

project arm, unique proprietary project management. We are also developing some additional

methodologies. For example in SAP-where the implementation time is long, we have developed

something like 'load and go' to accelerate the implementation process. That is a

proprietary methodology for SAP. We have similar methodologies for all vendors. But

predominantly what we try to do is use the vendor's methodology, tools and processes.

Don't you think there is a glut in

the ERP marketplace today?

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I don't think so. I suppose if I was

a client, I would like to have choices. If you look at the ERP scene in the world today,

88% of all revenues come from core companies such as SAP, Baan, Oracle, etc. Only 12% are

in these other choices.

Will competition in any way affect

the price level in the implementation business?

A lot depends on whether there is a

pent-up demand at the end of year 1999. Right now the year-to-year demand for ERP is

relatively flat though not shrinking. It is very much a function of supply and demand. As

recently as end-1997, lack of experienced consultants allowed every implementation partner

to set their way and for every way that was set, there were few people who could negotiate

their way. But the situation has changed drastically. Now everything depends on the demand

curve.

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What is your perception of the

Indian IT market?

The only observation I will make is

that the system is still very quasi-governmental. A lot of the industry today still has

some strong ties with government or even government owned and operated agencies. The

dependence is much more than in US or Europe, or even Japan where there has been a lot of

privatization. I am not saying that this is positive or negative. However, the level of

awareness is very high. In fact in the state of Andhra Pradesh, I see more interest than

practically anywhere in the world.

What is the market profile that you

are looking at in India?

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Broadly speaking, in the ERP space,

we are looking at how to penetrate the SME market. So one of the focus areas is how can we

either take an existing pre-package and make it much cheaper, less expensive and more

efficient, or implement them in other parts of the world.

The strategy is to create

accelerated process or an expressway or even create prepackage for industry segments. This

way we could offer a value-add in terms of efficiency. The other area we are looking at is

e-business. We clearly see e-commerce as a huge potential sector. Of course there are

infrastructure problems. One of the areas we are looking at is how we can quickly create a

capability to exploit that opportunity. And one area we are concentrating on is to develop

re-usable objects or reusable applications.

Where is India placed on the

business map of Metamor considering only 10% revenues flow from here?

I look at the India business in two

ways. One is the relatively immature domestic market place where I want to find a way to

penetrate that market. The other thing is to trap the vast proven raw material, that is

people and skills. We want to use the Metamor School at IIIT in developing these skills

and give students some practical experience. A typical business model in India would

comprise atleast 60-70% exports.

Right now we are also looking at

India for documentation solutions, which is basically creating technical documentation for

companies. We actually outsource these technical documentation skills. So eventually the

Indian operations will build ERP learning, outsourcing, and documentation services. This

apart, we will be looking at replicating our business models in the US in the country.

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