TCS bullish on BI, set ups Business Objects centre

A report by Frost & Sullivan estimates the total business intelligence (BI) application market in India at $10.7 million. By 2005, this is expected to touch $30.4 million, growing at a CAGR of 33.9 percent. Both TCS and Business Objects wants to tap this burgeoning space by exploiting their synergies. Stanley Glancy has the details

A product is as good as its implementation. Hence, it is very important to have the right systems in place to have more opportunities for success, says dr santosh Mohanty

Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicts that BI will be the biggest area of growth in the Indian IT space in 2004. A highly competitive market, complex situations and growing databases have today made business intelligence an imperative for many Indian organisations. Many have already implemented an ERP system, and are now deliberating on adding business intelligence systems and enterprise information portals. Considering the gargantuan opportunities presented by this rapidly growing market, it comes as no surprise that India’s largest software services exporter, TCS, has set up various Centres of Excellence (CoE) centred around the products and technologies of the leading players in this space.

The company’s most recent initiative has been its partnership with Business Objects, (BO), a leading provider of BI products and solutions. TCS’ business intelligence practice (BIP) has set up a Business Objects CoE with a separate BO CoE manager to handle operations. According to Dr Santosh Mohanty, global practice head for BI and KM, TCS, the BIP has been contributing significantly to the company’s bottom line over the last three years.

The BI practice of TCS offers solutions to industries across the board—from banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) to fast moving consumer goods (FMCG). Offerings include strategy consulting, end-to-end datawarehousing solutions and system integration (SI). The advantages TCS has over the competition are a large domestic presence and a keen understanding of business intelligence. The partnership with BO will further strengthen TCS’ position in the rapidly growing BI market, by providing strategic advisory and implementation services.

The CoE

TCS has six CoEs in the BI space—one each for Informatica, Cognos, Teradata, IBM’s BI division, BO and SAPBW. Each centre caters to different BI segments—online analytical processing (OLAP), database, extraction transaction loading (ETL) and closed loop technology.

BO is in a leading position in the OLAP and ETL space in India and has a sizeable number of installations in the Indian market.

The key objectives of the CoE are consulting, tools evaluation and selection, and providing a help desk for project teams. Other than this, the CoE will monitor the latest features and offerings of BO in addition to creating a forum of BO experts across TCS. The CoE will offer a host of services to both internal users and customers, encompassing product expertise, planning, training, assistance in tool evaluation, etc. Basically, the CoE will work as a hub for the BO-related activity that TCS is involved in.

It will also act as the hub for assimilating knowledge with reference to BO and disseminating the same to TCS’ consultants. These consultants, a unit of TCS’ BI practice, will investigate how BO can fit into BI opportunities that TCS comes across. The centre will also look at building a central repository of knowledge from the expertise gained during project execution. This experience base can then be leveraged to support ongoing projects.

TCS has made investments in setting up the hardware and software infrastructure to provide internal training, conduct testing as well infrastructure for external training. The manpower resources that TCS has committed will be a floating population headed by a CoE manager.

Of the more than 1,500 consultants at TCS, around 350 will be a part of the BO centre of excellence community. Of these, a five-member team will be dedicated to the BO program, on a rotational basis—they won’t work on any billable project at that point of time. This team will be rotated every three to four months. This will ensure that a large number of consultants will gain strong expertise in BO technology.

Dr Mohanty believes that though implementing the technology is important, exploiting the ETL system to its full potential is even more important. For this a good OLAP tool is required. Says he, “A product is as good as the implementation. Hence, it is very important to have the right systems in place to have more success opportunities.”

Advantage TCS

The CoE has been built to enable TCS to gain an in-depth understanding of BO’s technology. The benefits for TCS include the advantage of tracking and beta testing each new version of BO’s products. This provides the company with an early view of the product, enabling it to be equipped with tools required for faster implementation. This advantage can in turn be passed on to its customers.

Also, all technical queries arising from implementation of the technology would be routed through the CoE, which would also enrich its knowledge repository. This also gives the company a feeling of the technological challenges that its consultants may face during the process of implementation and later. All this information is documented and then circulated among the community. This, according to Mohanty, has helped the company significantly in delivering on time and on budget.

According to Sanjay Deshmukh, business development director, Business Objects, TCS also stands a better chance of winning a project by working with the best-of-breed products provided by BO.

TCS creates business analytical templates for different industries. The CoE then builds a prototype, which helps in marketing. According to Dr Mohanty, this provides the marketing team with something readymade with which the customer can relate. There have also been certain tangible benefits, as was proved by an internal test conducted by TCS. An internal study, which measures customer satisfaction levels, reported that after the setting up of the CoE customer satisfaction levels have gone up from 80 percent to 92 percent.

Other than higher customer satisfaction, the partnership will also enable TCS in building competencies internally. The company will also benefit from the extensive training programmes that will be provided by BO and its own senior consultants.

Advantage BO

For BO the partnership with TCS is of more importance than its partnership with its distributors and independent software vendors, as other than implementing the product TCS drives the solution to customers. Says Deshmukh, “The advantages we have is that we get a good partner in India. We would like to be associated with a company that can add value.” For BO the partnership promises great opportunities. TCS has got a large domestic focus, and according to Deshmukh, present in every single enterprise deal in the domestic market. The company also has the required focus and expertise for business intelligence.

The CoE has generated further business opportunities and even BO gets to keep a piece of the pie. BO gains indirectly whenever its expertise is required by TCS. It profits from the license revenue that will accrue whenever TCS bags a project with a business intelligence opportunity.

Marching together

Today, customers prefer to go in for a single-window technology provider. Customers are more comfortable with such a relationship than opting for best-of-breed products from various vendors.

There are three areas to BI: database, extraction transaction and loading (ETL) and reporting (OLAP). BO has traditionally been strong in OLAP space and has now ventured into the ETL space as well. According to Mohanty these are the two areas seeing maximum demand. This is one reason why TCS decided to invest in building a BO CoE. Says Mohanty, “We want to provide the best service. Hence, it is key for us to have a strategic partner at the highest levels.”

Other than the software and technology there are certain other key deliverables that BO brings to the table, including product training, and access to it’s knowledge base and support centre. And since TCS has invested in setting up a CoE, BO is now more comfortable with sharing its technology with the company.

Road ahead

Currently, BO India’s relationship with TCS is restricted to India and the SAARC region. But both TCS and BO are looking at extending this partnership globally once momentum builds up. Of course, TCS has the option of choosing another player. But, according to Deshmukh for BO the objective right now is to gain more and more mind share and keep TCS from going in for another product.

Out of the 150 BI projects undertaken by TCS worldwide, in more than 40 instances the company has implemented a BO solution. The partnership has already managed to garner two major clients in the Indian market—RBI and Clearing Corporation of India, and is now devising strategies to help the business grow through educatiion of customers.

stanley@expresscomputeronline.com