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LogicaCMG gets a foothold in India
The company is gaining momentum in the Indian banking and
telecom business, says Abhinav Singh
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After RTGS, we are now planning to target banks with
our anti-money laundering solution, says Kannan Ramaswamy |
With a focus on Indian telecom and financial segments, LogicaCMG
considers India to be an area of strategic growth. It is fast expanding its
offshore development services as more infrastructure management, application
management and maintenance projects are pouring into its Bangalore-based offshore
development centre.
In recent years, LogicaCMG’s banking and telecom solutions have found many
takers in India. The company won a prestigious project from the Reserve Bank
of India (RBI) for its Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) solution. RBI, HDFC
Bank, IndusInd Bank, UTI Bank, ABN AMRO, ING Vysya, Citibank and Centurion Bank
deploy LogicaCMG’s Quaestor Liquidity Manager to help them use RBI’s
RTGS system efficiently. Tata Teleservices, Hutch, Bharti, Spice and BSNL (CellOne)
use its telecom solutions. Its offshore development centre in India remotely
manages IT infrastructure for customers such as Britannia Airways, Foxtons–a
UK based real estate agent firm–and T-Mobile, a German mobile operator.
The company is all set to ramp up its headcount in India and is looking forward
to moving into a bigger office by November 2004.
Banking and telecom to fuel growth
LogicaCMG is bullish about the banking and telecom sectors
in India. Its Rs 75 crore RTGS systems project, which went live at the RBI in
March 2004, will see banks connecting to the RBI to manage their liquidity positions.
Kannan Ramaswamy, managing director–South Asia, LogicaCMG, says, “A
large number of banks are connected to the RBI through the RTGS solution. We
are also planning to target banks with our anti-money laundering solution.”
LogicaCMG has two solutions in the anti-money laundering space namely NetEconomy
(which is a partner’s product) and HotScan. ING Vysya bank has already
deployed the NetEconomy solution. LogicaCMG will shortly deploy its anti-money
laundering solutions at five more banks. Within the banking domain, the company
is in talks with many banks to work on core banking projects as a systems integrator.
In telecom, LogicaCMG had a major catch in the form of Tata Teleservices. The
project is worth $6 million and LogicaCMG claims it is the first CDMA-based
SMS solution in India. The company is in talks with Reliance to implement its
MMS solution.
IT infrastructure management; a growth enabler
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We are managing close to 300 servers from Bangalore
with a 25-member team taking care of the remote IT infrastructure management
service, says Mike Weston |
LogicaCMG’s offshore centre in Bangalore specialises
in offering remote IT infrastructure management services to clients in the UK,
the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. The offshore centre at Bangalore
manages IT infrastructure for 50 clients of whom 30 are in the UK, 10 in the
Netherlands and 10 in other parts of Europe and in the US. Mike Weston, chief
executive, offshore services, LogicaCMG, explains, “We are managing close
to 300 servers from our centre here in Bangalore and have 25 people dedicated
to the remote IT infrastructure management service. We are looking forward to
getting some more projects in the IT infrastructure space.”
LogicaCMG is managing 50 percent of Foxtons’ applications from its Bangalore
offshore centre. It also runs around 120 applications (including finance, HR,
flight schedules and sales) from its Indian centre for Britannia Airways. It
handles helpdesk applications for T-Mobile. LogicaCMG has also won an outsourcing
contract from Aon, a UK-based provider of risk management services, insurance
and reinsurance brokerage. A part of Aon’s IT infrastructure is likely
to be managed by LogicaCMG’s, Bangalore centre.
BPO operations scale up
As part of its offshore services in India, LogicaCMG has also stepped into the
Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) arena and has around 60 people dedicated
to it. Alan Forder, LogicaCMG’s operations director, outsourcing services,
Bangalore, explains, “We primarily do back office transaction work in the
financial services sector as part of our BPO operations out of India. We are
planning to ramp up the number of people involved in BPO operations by a couple
of hundreds in the next few months.” LogicaCMG expects more BPO work at
its Indian offshore centre from clients in the UK.
Offshore ahoy!
LogicaCMG is on an expansion spree in India, and expects to add 400 people to
its existing headcount of 800 in its offshore development services arm by year-end.
It currently has four facilities in Bangalore, which will be consolidated into
a single operation. The company will continue with its focus on the banking
and the telecom space in India and expects more projects in verticals such as
transport, retail and energy.
| A key project for LogicaCMG in India has been RTGS
at the RBI. Banks do millions of transactions across interbanking systems
on any given day. These transactions involve large funds transfers requiring
national payment systems and security in place to reduce the settlement
time and risks. All these factors can affect the final settlement of individual
fund transfers on a continuous basis during a processing day. In order to
provide faster settlements of funds and sound risk management, the RBI implemented
a RTGS system, which went live in March 2004. RTGS reduces ‘systemic
risk’ in the banking system by providing irreversible final settlement
for large payments and provides liquidity to participants of the system
by making funds flow in real time. In simple terms a RTGS system will help
intra-city credit settlements which otherwise used to take three to four
days for local cheques and seven to eight working days for outstation cheques.
Now with the RTGS in place it will be done instantaneously. The project
will help RBI improve money supply systems in the country. |
abhinav@expresscomputeronline.com
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