ICICI-Infotech's North American Strategy for Success
Part Three: Challenges and User Recommendations
Featured Author - Joseph J. Strub
Introduction
ICICI-Infotech
has developed a well-earned and respected reputation in the Europe, Middle East,
and Africa (EMEA) region of the world. Now it has set its sights squarely on
the North American market. To reach this target, ICICI-Infotech has developed
an intriguing strategy to attract new customers. This research note explores
this strategy to assist you in determining whether ICICI-Infotech and its enterprise
resource planning (ERP) offering, ORION, makes sense for
your company, deserving a closer inspection and careful consideration.
After
providing some background information on the company, the strategy is examined
from the viewpoint of its market focus, customer focus, and innovative pricing.
You'll see how pricing, both for software and professional services, is critical
to making this strategy work and is the underlying foundation for the other
two components. The research note concludes by discussing the challenges facing
ICICI-Infotech and presenting user recommendations.
This
is Part Three of a three-part note.
Part
One provides a brief background of the company and discusses its strategy in
terms of market focus.
Part
Two discusses the company's strategy in terms of customer focus and innovative
pricing.
Challenges
Having
made excellent progress in a short period of time, ICICI-Infotech needs to improve
and expand its North American customer base in terms of mainstream accounts
and numbers. This will provide immediate help in an important aspect of the
software selection process, namely reference checking. While you can pay for
the overseas conference calls, nothing beats home cooking and on-site visits!
On
first inspection you will notice that ORION does not have the more traditional
graphical user interface (GUI) look and feel of other ERP solutions.
User-ability has long been a bone of contention with ORION. While possessing
certain GUI aspects, the software lacks ease of use.
Transition
from one menu to another can be tedious and, in some cases, inconsistent. While
you can certainly navigate from one menu to another, the path is not as direct
as you would expect or desire. In a large part, this is a result of the choice
of Oracle as its development platform. However, this problem
is being attacked from two directions. First, ICICI-Infotech has committed to
customers as to when this issue will be resolved and is willing to put this
commitment in writing at contract signing. Secondly, Oracle is revising its
own development suite and tools. Prospective customers must satisfy themselves
as to ICICI-Infotech's resolve and commitment to change rather than relying
on Oracle to make needed architectural changes.
The
total reliance on Oracle, with the exclusion of all others, presents prospects
with another dilemma. Typically, North Americans expect and like comparative
choices. Some companies have already made a significant investment in Microsoft
technology and are reluctant to bring in a new database design. ICICI-Infotech
mitigates this problem by providing a single and total source of implementation
and support services.
ICICI-Infotech
will argue that concerns about a new technology are unfounded since they will
assume the support responsibility as part of the standard and ongoing maintenance
agreement. The differences between structured query language (SQL)
and Oracle's query languages are not that significant although existing queries
would have to be rewritten. Can you say contract negotiating point? Finally,
Oracle is in outstanding company and business partner. Don't let IT technocrats
use the introduction of Oracle as the main reason for excluding ORION from consideration.
Finally, ICICI-Infotech needs to overcome the emotional issue of support coming from distances greater than normally expected and in disparate time zones. With the decline in IT jobs, particularly in the United States, offshore outsourcing (or as it is commonly referred to, offshoring) comes with a certain amount of backlash and concern. Will this concern be significant enough for prospects not to look at a potential savings in software acquisition and implementation costs? There was a certain German software vendor, that successfully brought its ERP package and jobs to the North American shores, but its well-known name temporarily escapes this author.
User Recommendations
It may appear that ICICI-Infotech is buying its way into the North American ERP market. The reason is simple; they are.
ICICI-Infotech has narrowed its focus on industries utilizing process manufacturing and on companies looking to migrate from legacy systems, islands of information lacking effective integration, and obsolete software. The company has attractively priced its software by using creative techniques and offshore development resources. In this way ICICI-Infotech can provide a full range of implementation services and still remain cost competitive. Prospective customers must overcome their concerns about offshore support and use of the Oracle database technology. These concerns, however, should not be considered deal breakers in lieu of the software and implementation services pricing.
ICICI-Infotech's
ORION competes favorably with ERP offerings from vendors as Ross Systems,
Intentia, IFS, and Infor Global Solutions,
formerly Agilisys. Customers that fit ICICI-Infotech's defined niche, should
take the time to seriously evaluate ORION because they may be pleasantly surprised
by the results and subsequent savings.
This
concludes Part Three of a three-part note.
Part
One provides a brief background of the company and discusses its strategy in
terms of market focus.
Part
Two discusses the company's strategy in terms of customer focus and innovative
pricing.
About
the Author
Joseph
J. Strub has extensive experience as a manager and senior consultant
in planning and executing ERP projects for manufacturing and distribution systems
for large to medium-size companies in the retail, food and beverage, chemical,
and CPG process industries. Additionally, Mr. Strub was a consultant and Information
Systems Auditor with PricewaterhouseCoopers and an applications development
and support manager for Fortune 100 companies.
He
can be reached at JoeStrub@writecompanyplus.com.