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“We have a tremendous opportunity to revolutionize workforce management in India”
Aron J Ain, CEO, Kronos Inc talked to Heena Jhingan
about the company's plans for the Indian market through partnerships
How important is the Indian market with respect to Kronos'
growth plans?
 We
have witnessed rapid growth globally over the last few years and India is central
to that growth plan. Kronos had expanded its R&D Engineering center in India
to support the global workforce management needs of organizations and opened
up a new office in October 2010. We started in India with the intention of more
than doubling the workforce in 24 months.
Apart from the skilled talent base that India provides, the country is also
a great market for workforce management solutions. The market in India—
particularly in the manufacturing, healthcare, retail and services sectors—is
increasingly embracing the benefits of using workforce management solutions.
With a labor force of 467 million workers across organizations in the country
that typically rely on manual processes to manage workforce management, India
represents a tremendous opportunity for us to revolutionize the way that businesses
manage their workforces. Since we set up new office in the country in 2010,
we have grown our workforce more than 40% and are on track to achieve our target
of doubling our workforce. Kronos India is now the second largest employee base
of Kronos after the US and that reflects our commitment to the Indian market
Where do you view India on the workforce management solutions
adoption map as compared to the other markets?
As of now we have about 45 customers in India. However, we are still relatively
an early entrant in the market as 85% of the market remains untapped. Reports
show that amount of non-productive time and absence is higher in India as compared
to that in developed countries.
In India, a majority of the companies continue to manage most of their workforce
processes either manually or through disparate systems that do not talk to each
other. This does not provide the workforce visibility that is required to make
better decisions for improved throughput. Today's business requires systems
that can provide a real-time integrated view of employee across four key workforce
management dimensions namely workforce planning and scheduling, tracking presence,
absence management and activity tracking. Since most of these are not in place
at Indian business houses, this provides us with a great opportunity.
Though, at present, we are concentrating on technologically mature IT and manufacturing
sector, we see immense scope in the public sector as well.
Considering you look at India as an important market,
what is your strategy to tap the market opportunity?
We have grown significantly in the Indian market with strong adoption of our
solution across industries like manufacturing, BPO, retail, logistics and healthcare.
Kronos' revenues in India have risen by 300% in the past 18 months. Our client
list includes names such as Bombardier Transportation, a global player in the
rail sector; Eaton, a global diversified industrial manufacturer; Genpact; Hindustan
Zinc Ltd., the largest integrated Indian producer of zinc and lead; Medanta
- the Medicity, one of largest multi-super specialty institutes in the country;
and Viraj Profiles Limited, one of the world’s largest producers of stainless
steel products.
Recently, we acquired customers like Aircel, a growing telecom service provider;
Cummins, a diesel engine maker; Delhi International Airport (DIAL), the largest
airport in India; Good Year, a global tire manufacturer; Jubilant, a life sciences
company; Lakshmi Machine Works – a textile machinery manufacturer; Schneider
Electric and Sterlite Industries
Our business is largely partner driven. Partners like Systime and Blue Tree
are already working with us on many projects. We have built and invested in
multiple partnerships over the last year and will continue to do so. We intend
to grow by over 100% y-o-y in the current financial year.
Traditionally, HR departments have focused on IT to achieve
basic automation for workforce management. What kind of new innovations are
we observing vis-a-vis companies integrating mobility with workforce management
systems?
We recognize the basic value proposition of consumer-oriented technologies,
which is that users do not have to sacrifice functionality for ease. We are
rethinking on the way that business application software is designed and used,
defining an entirely new generation of workforce management tools for today’s
tech-savvy business consumer.
Specifically with regard to mobile devices, we are seeing an increasing demand
for mobile workforce applications. With these mobile applications, wherever
the users are, whenever they need to, employees and managers can access their
workforce management system through their smartphone or other mobile device.
This helps managers easily see and respond to potential workforce management
issues. Employees can perform time management tasks and submit requests. All
the team members can instantly engage, take action, and move on to what is next.
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