Birlasoft scouting deals to gain SAP leadership

New Delhi, Dec 5: Birlasoft Ltd, the IT arm of 1.2 billion dollar C K Birla Group, is actively pursuing SAP deals to become a major player in the market space.

''We are already seeing a lot of traction in the market. Our sales team is actively pursuing SAP deals. Our vision is to be a major player in the SAP space,'' Birlasoft CEO Kamal Mansharamani said.

Birlasoft had earlier evaluated both the inorganic and organic options for building its SAP capability. Two SAP organisations were also assessed by it for possible acquisition.

However, it decided for organic build-up. It hired some senior SAP professionals in June 2006 to lead the practice. A robust team has been put in place to form the core of the SAP practice, the company said.

The company, a leading provider of software application development, implementation, support, QA/Testing and IT governance services, has recently tied up with SAP India as a mySAP All-in-One Business Partner.

It today secured a contract from Nandan Exim Ltd, a part of the Rs 1,000 crore Chiripal Group, to execute a business transformation programme based on mySAP ERP 2005.

The core focus of implementation of the programme will be enhancing organisational efficiency.

The implementation will be conducted in two phases over a period of 10 months. The first phase will focus on enabling the transaction-processing core and the second phase will focus on achieving optimised organisational performance.

The pre-implementation phase is planned from mid-December 2006 with a formal project kick-off in the first week of January 2007.

Birlasoft bagged its first SAP practice contract when it signed a major end-to-end SAP implementation with Hyderabad Industries in June 2006. Kicked off on July 1 and expected to be completed by March 2007, the deal involves integration of five factories and 50 sales depots across the country.

Its clientle includes Fortune 1000 as well as mid-sized organisations. With corporate headquarter at Noida, it employes over 3,500 employees across the United States, United Kingdom, India, Singapore and Australia.

UNI