SDG Software: Taking on the big boys

Gaurav Patra on the plans of the Indian branch of SDG Corp, US

Headquartered in Norwalk, USA, SDG is led by principals with a combined corporate and consulting experience of over 50 years in various IT disciplines. The company was established in 1993, and started its India operations in January 1998 as an offshore development centre (ODC). The Indian arm underwent a major change last year when it was decided that apart from being a major ODC, SDG Software India would also cater to the needs of the Indian market, which it started doing in April this year.

Strategy

SDG focuses on specific verticals like banking and finance, telecom, manufacturing and PSUs. As far as the e-governance area is concerned, the company does not have a state-level focus; rather, it wants to focus on public organisations that have e-governance needs, so it will target universities and municipal bodies.

The product roll-out strategy in India will be to first focus on existing clients in the US who have an Indian operation. After that, SDG intends to use their local implementation expertise to bag new clients here. “Apart from large enterprises, we also have plans to target small and medium enterprises for certain advisory services and content management portal solutions,” says Aditya Agrawal, the company’s general manager for technology and operations. He says that as Indian companies try to match their global competitors, there is a huge opportunity for SDG in India.

SDG has niche technical expertise in specific domains. “Our domain knowledge is our greatest asset. This approach has helped us in the US market, and we are confident that it will also help us in India and Asia-Pacific,” says Sriram Potti, lead account manager, SDG Corp, US. Adds Agrawal, “We are not like any other small company that will fight on pricing. We will compete on technology expertise with all the big service companies that are present in India. We assure the customer better RoI and value for money.” Indeed, from the pricing standpoint, SDG is not a low-cost company in the sense that it will not compete with commodity technology companies on rates. Agrawal feels that the bigger services companies have less technology expertise in some areas because they have a wide range of areas to focus on. “A large diversified services company will have at least 50 different practices. But we have been focusing on just a few areas from the beginning,” he says.

Services

SDG blends innovation, knowledge, experience and skills to meet each unique client challenge. “Ours is a holistic approach, based on the appropriate use of proper tools by skilled hands to meet the stated challenge. Any challenge may take a number of different tools. These tools are the services that we provide,” says Agrawal.

TIP (Trust, Identify and Provisioning Services): The first practice that the company offers is TIP, with three kinds of solutions—single sign-on solutions (SSO), enterprise directory services, and integration of applications. The company has already done some major projects in the US.

E-business solutions: This is the second major practice. E-governance, enterprise and corporate portal services come under this. Apart from the government sector, the company is also looking at tapping the BFSI and telecom sectors. “In this practice we help our customers improve business performance by delivering a complete end-to-end Web-enabled business solution, including e-commerce, an intranet and extranet,” explains Agrawal.

Enterprise solutions: SDG specialises in services that provide comprehensive business solutions to clients. Under this, the company integrates the existing applications of customers with data warehousing and other business process applications. It implements enterprise solution packages in a phased manner using proven methodologies. Says Agrawal, “This approach helps the client understand the benefits of enterprise-wide solutions and how they help in realising greater RoI and competitiveness.”

Managed support services: SDG also helps its customers define the enterprise computing infrastructure, and provides its clients with strategies, architectures and solutions for enterprise systems management. These days building a proper infrastructure is very important. There is a need for infrastructure from where one can access vital information for business processes, but with disparate systems this becomes almost impossible. “One needs to build an SSO infrastructure. With that a person does not have to do his metrics at the application-level, so whenever he is building any application he just has to plug in things,” says an SDG company official. Typically, all these services not only take care of operational costs but also enhance end-user productivity. SSO is going to have wide acceptance in the Indian market. Except for the big three (TCS, Wipro and Infosys), very few services companies in India are putting up a service call when it comes to enterprise directory services and single sign-on solutions.

SDG company has practice heads for all these different services; besides, it has partnerships with different product and solution firms.

Roadmap

Over the next three years the Indian arm of SDG is looking to contribute at least 10-15 percent of the company’s global revenues. To achieve this they are initially going to focus on their existing MNC clients. Next, they expect to capture referral business from their global accounts. In the US a considerable amount of business comes from referral accounts, which company officials claim speaks for their commitment and the quality of the services they provide to customers. Reveals Agrawal, “We are positioning our service lines somewhere between the global Big 5 consulting firms and the top Indian services companies like TCS, Wipro and Infosys.”

“Providing niche services was our strategy in the US and will also be our strategy for the Indian market,” Agrawal concludes. “We know we will not grow without a specific focus.”

gaurav@expresscomputeronline.com