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September 20, 2007
I am a believer
Day 1 in Mumbai. What an overwhelming city this is. After ‘surviving’ Mumbai rush hour I will never complain anymore when stuck in traffic (ok, maybe a little). But this is probably the only city in the world where you don’t get RSI from clicking your mouse but from honking your horn (if you have been here you know what I mean). After driving through the slums – overpopulated with people so poor they cannot afford to buy shoes - back in my hotel room I found two chocolate cupcakes with fresh whipped cream! So does this mean that we should consider the Indian IT solutions to be at the bottom of the value chain as well? Or at best be of mixed quality? Is India only a country for low cost IT resources – or is there more than meets the eye?
I have spent the day talking with people that know how to do business. And their knowledge of Business Intelligence (BI) far exceeds the ‘simple’ data warehousing and reporting capabilities. Ok, it’s confession time. I also thought of India as a quick fix for our resource problems. Let’s just dump our specs over the wall and let the Indians build it. But guess what? They have strong knowledge of consulting – in for example supply chain or customer value – and of BI integration, and development and even outsourcing and maintenance. Some customers have said to me: “India is a great concept but that does not work for BI. Also all our documentation is in Dutch. This will not work”. But can you believe that today I met some Indians who actually spoke some Dutch! They had worked on a project where originally all requirements were in Dutch but were translated (in India) into English. After they were checked again in the Netherlands they started building the solution in Dutch using an English/Dutch glossary as reference. By working together with the end customer in the Netherlands they quickly picked up some of the lingo. So I have seen the proof here. A lot of successful BI projects (91% of the customers valued it as good, very good or excellent). And although I have to admit that BI is not standard and will probably be different for each customer or even subject area, I am pretty sure these guys can solve anything thrown at them (or already have).
So here are my questions for you:
• How mature can a BI solution or project from India be?
• What are the limitations? What are the opportunities?
• Is it limited to offshore development based on onshore requirements? Or can they do more?
• Where will it end?
Please let me know what you think of this
Posted by Jorgen Heizenberg at September 20, 2007 8:30 AM
