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Part - VI

During the post- implementation stage, some of the key areas that generate business for the Indian IT firms are up gradation of the HRIS package from one version of a product to another version, adding third- party tools to the HRIS package, providing training to the end- users of the HRIS package or maintaining help- desks for answering the queries of the end- users. A lot of Indian companies focus in these areas as such activities can be carried out in their offshore development centers which gives better profit margins than the work carried out at the client locations as the offshore billing rates for the employees are much lower as compared to the onsite billing rates.

The global market for enterprise applications is marked by phases of high growth, often termed as boom and phases of low growth or stagnation. This is particularly true for the enterprise applications services market. The initial interests are created through the research reports published by major IT research and analysis firms like Gartner. These reports indicate the probable areas of future IT investments that corporations all over the world might make. Based on such reports, interests are generated into new areas. Corporations brainstorm and find out the necessity of new software in their organizations and the benefits that can be derived from such software solutions.

For example, in the CRM sphere, till a few years back there were major investments made by several corporations with a view to increasing their profitability and customer retention. However, lack of a measurable ROI on investments, or lack of ways of quantifying the benefits out of these software installations, has raised concerns about the rationality of such huge investments. This has resulted in a more cautious approach towards further investments in enterprise- wide applications. Almost all of the enterprise application areas are characterized by such phases of growth and stagnation. It is for these changes in business cycles, that the enterprise application service providers plan their resources.

During a phase of rapid growth, there are more projects for the IT and consultancy firms and hence they require more resources. Among these resources also, there are gradations. Some resources may be certified in SAP, Oracle etc. while others might have strong domain knowledge to go along with their SAP, Oracle etc. expertise. These consultants come at a very high rate and hence it is not profitable for the consultancy and IT firms to employ too many of these people on their payrolls. This is for the simple reason that when the market is not in a growth phase, then it becomes difficult to deploy these resources. However, when the market is growing, then the consultancy and IT firms have projects and hence they require these ERP resources. It is precisely at such points that these companies look either at outsourcing or subcontracting. This can be explained with the help of the figures below.

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* Contributed by -
Rupam Das,
The Media Cell.
XIM Bhubaneswar.