SoftBrands outsources support services

Shipra Arora / New Delhi

SoftBrands Manufacturing India, a 100 per cent subsidiary of SoftBrands Inc. has decided to outsource its global support to India. In addition to this, the ERP and SCM software vendor is also contemplating downloading development work of its Demand Stream software product.

Ronnie Sarkar, sales manager, SoftBrands said that in May the company moved support for all Asian countries (except China) into India. The roadmap is to gradually outsource the support activities for all its customers in English-speaking countries including the US, UK, Mauritius and some African countries into India. The first stage of this outsourcing exercise will be kicked off this month with support for customers in the US. In the next six months, the company will review the situation and accordingly extend it to the other English-speaking countries. By mid-2004, SoftBrands support for all US customers will be done out of India. As Sarkar pointed out, the support centre in Bangalore will provide all kinds of support ranging from knowledge-based support (however, the server will be maintained in the U.S.) to first level support, including email and telephone calls. On the higher-end, SoftBrands is contemplating outsourcing the development of its Demand Stream software into India. Demand Stream is an internal and external supply chain execution system that enables ‘demand-pull’ scheduling and material flow throughout an enterprise-wide supply chain. However, the company is not willing to take any risk by going for full-fledged development at one go. It has recently initiated a small pilot development programme on a part of the Demand Stream software at its Bangalore centre. The current development activities of the company in India include development of its Evolution software product and localisation of Fourth Shift solution.