Software industry: Collaborating success

Indian software companies traditionally have had an inclination towards banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and telecom verticals. Most of the major software companies derive a significant proportion of their revenues from these domains.

With the decline in market size (due to the cut in IT budgets all over the globe) the competition in the segment has intensified. This has caused software companies to look at other areas for growth. At one end, Infosys is looking at IT enabled services (areas like business process outsourcing) while Wipro, HCL Tech and Hughes continue to be focused on technology. The manufacturing sector could be an interesting area to look at for identifying new growth opportunities.

Infosys's veriticalwise revenues break up	4QFY01	1QFY02
Insurance, banking & financial services	33.6%	36.8%
Insurance	13.8%	16.4%
Banking & financial services	19.8%	20.4%
Telecom	18.3%	16.7%
Manufacturing	17.9%	18.3%
Retail	11.1%	11.1%

Manufacturing organisations, especially, those that manufacture products need to co-ordinate information flow throughout the product development life cycle. Design needs to communicate with manufacturing and this department in turn needs to communicate with support. Apart from this, at any point of time, information exchange with support functions like procurement is also critical.

Again the need to work closely with the suppliers and customers has given rise to a demand for software that will help commerce or business to be done in a more synchronized or collaborated way. Collaborative product commerce will result in increased efficiency and lower costs for the organisations. Companies are adopting collaborative commerce due to the fact that they work across geographical boundaries. Hence, the need for seamless information flow has become mission critical.

To cash in on this opportunity, Satyam recently announced an enterprise consulting partnership agreement with Parametric Technologies (PTC’s). Satyam will implement PTC’s Windchill software solutions. Windchill solutions span the entire product development cycle, allowing collaboration from design to in-house or contract manufacturing, to service and support. The concept of collaboration product commerce gives rise to another set of interesting opportunities. There is a very vital need for the engineering and manufacturing departments to communicate. Engineering changes get delayed adding time and expense. Therefore, the lack of solutions, which will help the manufacturing departments to view and manipulate drawings on computers, does tend to be a major source of inconvenience. Companies like Geometric are looking to address this space, leveraging on its background in geometry.

While a part of the solutions for collaborative product commerce could be inclined towards the enterprise management software. However, the integration of geometry causes the nature of the solutions to be slightly more complex. This gives rise to the opportunity for software development. Apart from this, the demand for integration and implementation will be the other areas that will bring in business for the Indian software sector.