Spotlight

Spreading the light of e-governance

Poised to leverage opportunities in e-governance, ABM has the advantage of being an early mover with a proven track record and ready-to-deploy customisable solutions. By Kushal Shah

We are all aware of the success of Indian IT companies across the globe and the use of IT in all possible areas—banking, retail, travel, health, construction, and entertainment. In the mid nineties, one of the areas in which IT had not gained value was that of governance. IT in governance, better known as e-governance, is all about better administration, the automation of routine governmental functions, citizen satisfaction and bringing about transparency. Looking at the scope and the limited penetration of IT in this field, ABM Knowledgeware began offering e-governance solutions in the late nineties.

Take off

ABM Knowledgeware was founded by Prakash Rane and his wife in 1993. It is one of the pioneers in the field of e-Governance. Rane, an engineer and masters in management by qualification had a vision of excelling in the development of IT usage in government with a view to making governmental services easily accessible to citizens through e-governance. He and his team started venturing into e-governance in 1998-99.

The company has headquarters in Mumbai and various branches across Maharashtra, Goa, Delhi, and Dubai etc. Considering the business that the company operates in, it is necessary for it to set up a branch at every project site since it has to work closely with government officials. ABM has a business partner called Seven Seas Computers in Dubai and this entity has been working closely with ABM to promote its UAE business.

This company started in 1993 as a private company and went on to go public in 2000 after acquiring a financial firm. Later it discontinued the financial business. Currently Rane holds 60 percent of the shares. There are no plans to dilute shares unless a strategic investor approaches the company with a convincing valuation.

Marching to a different beat

One of the most interesting aspects of this company’s story is the fact that its primary business is to make the government use IT and related services in the best possible way. At a time when most organisations were looking for quick profits, ABM decided to deal with bureaucrats—an achievement in itself.

“When we started the business, I realised that the gap between what governments should achieve in computerising the processes and other related things and what they were actually buying for the same was wide. They were mostly spending on hardware and services but the quality of content was missing from those purchases. I opted to exploit this gap and started doing business with them,” says Rane, Managing Director, ABM Knowledgeware.

When it started working on e-governance projects, the company was under the impression that the field would grow in about three years but it actually took longer to come of age. “The maturation of e-governance began in 2004-05 but it is only now that it is poised to become a significant vertical in the domestic IT market,” says Rane.

The growth of e-governance can be seen from the initiatives undertaken by the government in this area. The Government of India has launched a national e-governance plan (NeGP) 2003-2008 with expected expenditure of Rs. 12,500 crores over the next five years. A $500 million World Bank loan has been taken for this purpose. These outlays are further supported by the budgetary allocations made by individual state governments and municipal bodies.

“The way we look at e-governance is different. Selling to government is different from selling to a corporate, with a corporate you sell to owners and in case of the government you have to deal with trustees, secretaries, and bureaucrats,” explains Rane. People often lack the faith that IT will work in governance and it is a challenge to convince them otherwise.

Into the limelight

The company first came to the public’s notice when it was doing a project called Setu for Thane Collectorate. Back in 2000 it was a new concept to re-engineer government processes to provide quicker service to citizens. This project won several awards and it became a standard across Maharashtra for similar implementations.

A significant milestone was a project for Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation (KDMC) in 2003 called MAINet.Enterprise. All the departments at the Municipal Corporation were computerised for e-governance. The project’s scope included over a hundred time bound citizen services rendered through citizen facilitation centres and the Internet. This project’s importance can be gauged by the fact that it is now standardised by the government of Maharashtra for use across 45 municipal bodies in the state. In addition to this, it has also been short listed by the Government of India and is undergoing final tests for recommendation as a standard for all municipal bodies in the country. This project has won many national and international awards.

Current scenario

ABM Knowledgeware has already completed over 50 projects. Even after doing this many implementations certain projects hold significant value for it. MAINet.Enterprise for obvious reasons is one such project. Some others are the implementation of CFC (consumer facilitation centre) for Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company (MSEDC) which is currently being used in 15 offices of MSEDC and will be used in around 500 more offices across the state.

Currently it is doing several projects such as KDMC project replication across multiple bodies in Maharashtra, a SAP implementation for the BMC, and an Oracle HRMS implementation for KDMC

Collaborating to succeed

“We have been in the e-governance business for quite a long time and have carved out a niche for ourselves in this area,” says Rane. ABM Knowledgeware has tied up with companies such as SAP and Oracle.

“These tie-ups along with our domain expertise, government process knowledge, knowledge of handling chain management and resistance management in implementation have helped us bag a significant number of orders in this market,” adds Rane.

ABM has set up shop in the Middle East and implemented its own ERP, developed in-house for the office of the President of UAE. This has been replicated at Al Ain, another office under the Department of Presidential Affairs. Apart from this, ABM will also address business opportunities in this part of the world for IT services through its business partner in Dubai, Seven Seas Computers.

RoI on e-governance

According to Rane there are two types of returns from an e-governance implementation, one tangible and other intangible. Tangible returns are in the form of increased revenue, increase in the number of transactions, timely dispatch of bills and notices, better tracking of defaulters, and timely issuance of certificates. For example, suppose issuing a water bill that formerly required 100 minutes now requires only 15 minutes after an e-governance deployment.

Apart from tangible benefits, a series of intangible benefits such as improvement in customer service delivery, accountability, and time bound resolution of complains, transparency and information availability due to computerisation also exist. Rane says, “With the use of e-governance, employees are free from drudgery; they get some appreciation which they usually don’t get being government employees and on top of these benefits the government can get more work done with the same number of employees.

It’s not only governing bodies that benefit from an IT exercise; the real winners here are citizens who get better services. They get bills on time; the system provides multiple payment options in the form of e-banking, credit cards payment etc; they can even new connections of various utilities without much hassle.

Taking care of employees

At the core of any business and its biggest asset are its employees. ABM maintains a relaxed atmosphere and has been successful in having a comparatively low rate of attrition. “Employees are quite satisfied with the casual atmosphere. I am accessible to anyone at anytime. Moreover they work on cutting edge technology and every successful project gives them the recognition of working with a project which benefits people,” feels Rane.

Employees feel that they are in safe hands when they look at the growth of the company. “Just because we work in the domestic market doesn’t mean that we will compromise on salaries. We have to match industry standards,” says Rane.

ABM has over 250 employees with about 700+ man years of experience. Of these ten percent are in business development; 40 percent in J2EE, Microsoft .NET and bilingual technologies; another 40 percent in delivery and deployment and rest are support staff. The company intends to increase its headcount to 400 by end 2007-08 and 600 a year after that.

Down the line

ABM would like to stay in its current business and do more with regard to utilities i.e. electricity and water. The company would also like to develop the products that it has made for the Middle East.

It sees its relationship with SAP and Oracle maturing and plans to integrate its product with ERP and increase its business in this segment.

Rane says, “We are currently an Rs 20 crore company, about Rs 25 crores if we count the projects in hand. We want to see ourselves as an Rs 60 crore company in three years time by conservative estimates and about 80 crores by optimistic estimates.”

Once it fine-tunes its remote delivery and maintenance mechanism, the company will move on to international e-governance projects.