Keen on India

Keane India is planning to use the offshoring boom to strengthen its presence in the application outsourcing space, says Shipra Arora

The combination of SignalTree’s offshore delivery capability with Keane’s expertise in application development and management provides a compelling value proposition, says Parmindar S Miglani

Keane India, the wholly owned subsidiary of Keane, Inc has learnt its ropes the hard way.

The company is gearing up for the next agenda on its roadmap—to maintain a 100 percent growth rate when the industry is growing at 30 percent. As part of its hyper-growth plan, Keane has recently announced its foray into BPO and it is beefing-up its resource base, infrastructure and facilities with an anticipated investment of $25 million in India.

On a growth trail

Keane India got its present name when Keane Inc acquired SignalTree Solutions in March 2002. According to Parmindar S Miglani, managing director, Keane India operations, since the acquisition, the company has witnessed impressive growth in terms of revenues, projects and employee base. The company performed well in 2003, increasing its headcount from 500 in early 2003 to 1,300 by year-end. With over 100 percent growth it is emerging as one of the fastest growing medium-sized IT companies.

Keeping pace with this rapid growth, the company opened its third Advanced Development Centre (ADC) at Gurgaon in November 2003. The other two ADCs located at Noida and Hyderabad are also being beefed up to support its plans. Keane India has taken about 35,000 square feet at Hitec City in Hyderabad to support its expansion plans. A fourth ADC may also be set up if required. Keane’s combined employee strength is expected to touch 5,000 (including Keane India and Keane Inc.’s BPO arm Keane Worldzen) by 2005, up from the current strength of over 1,750 professionals. Keane’s focus on the Indian market is reflected by the company’s $25 million investment that will go towards expanding its resource base, infrastructure and facilities in the country. According to Brian Keane, president and CEO – Keane, Inc., “Keane’s focus in 2004 is on growing the business and our ADCs in India will play a key role, as they offer clients the benefits of offshore delivery for part of their application portfolio.”

The transition

Keane’s acquisition of SignalTree has augured well for the company considering the strong value proposition that the coming together of the two has created. Traditionally, Keane has delivered application development and management services on-site from the client’s facility, off-site from nearby locations or near-shore from its Advanced Development Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. SignalTree’s delivery capability comprised onsite, offsite and offshore delivery. The addition of SignalTree’s offshore delivery capability is an extension of Keane’s client delivery model. According to Miglani, the combination of SignalTree’s offshore delivery capability with Keane’s expertise in application development and management provides a compelling value proposition to its clients by letting them capitalise on the economic and quality advantages of offshore delivery as part of their application portfolio strategy. The fact that Keane and SignalTree had similar values, customers and people only helped to make things easier for the merger.

Application Outsourcing

Keane offers services in three areas-outsourcing (application outsourcing and business process outsourcing), development and integration services and other IT services such as IT consulting, project management, and staff augmentation. Application outsourcing is targeted towards helping customers manage their portfolio of business applications. The company offers full lifecycle application services, ranging from initial design, development and integration to ongoing management and eventual retirement of software.

In terms of technology the company’s solutions encompass Mainframe, AS/400, client server, e-Commerce and ERP. To stay ahead the company is setting up new practices in emerging technologies. It has recently set up a ‘New Practices’ group in ERP to handle SAP and PeopleSoft and is also setting up a testing practice.

Keane India plays a crucial role in its overall growth strategy as it provides the much-needed offshore delivery capabilities. The addition of the third ADC in India will now lend further strength to Keane’s application outsourcing offering in the market by enhancing its offshore delivery capabilities. As the company foresees an increased number of projects, the Indian operations will play a significant role in driving the company’s overall growth strategy.

Leveraging BPO

In October 2003, Keane forayed into BPO by acquiring a majority interest in Worldzen (now Keane Worldzen). The BPO initiative will help Keane India complement its IT services with BPO offerings. The company is working in tandem with Keane Worldzen towards this. It will essentially help in creating a well rounded offering, tapping both the IT services and ITeS markets. “Keane’s strategy is to capitalise on the rapidly growing sector and to establish a leadership position where the applications outsourcing and BPO markets converge as many customers begin to bundle applications and process outsourcing procurement to achieve near-term business improvement and cost synergies,” explains Miglani.

Focus areas

Over the next 1-2 years, Keane India will continue to focus on the burgeoning demands for offshore outsourcing. Keane says that the company is experiencing strong client satisfaction with its offshore delivery and an increased demand for solutions that leverage application outsourcing, BPO and offshore delivery to achieve significant cost reductions and business improvement. In such a scenario, Keane’s Indian unit plays a key role in its global delivery model comprising onsite, offsite, nearshore, and offshore delivery.

Keane India may not have taken the industry by storm like Infosys and Wipro. But, it is learning the tricks of the trade fast enough to overcome all challenges with a growth that far exceeds those of the industry. Keane India has been assessed at SEI-CMM Level 5 of the Software Engineering CMMI version 1.1 across all its ADCs. The company is now trying for the People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM). Keane India will strengthen its focus on verticals such as finance, banking, insurance, healthcare and manufacturing. It has 45 customers in India and gets a significant share of projects from its parent, which has nearly 2,000 customers. Having stabilised and created a market for the Keane brand and with the expected renewed interest in offshore outsourcing, Keane India now receives an impetus to take off on to the next phase of its evolution. With a fourth ADC likely and a BPO venture getting started, the company is all set for the journey ahead.

shipra@expresscomputeronline.com