Finacle to integrate solutions with consulting practice

Finacle, which has provided banking solutions to over 100 customers in 55 countries, is looking at positioning itself as an end-to-end transformation player, by bringing in more consulting element to its portfolio.

The financial solutions' arm of IT bellwether Infosys is increasingly integrating itself under the Infosys banner by leveraging the parent company's consulting and BPO services.

"Essentially, a fundamental shift in the business strategy considering the significant growth in the market for a player like us, it is time we switch gears from an independent software vendor (ISV) to an end-to-end transformation player. We understand the banking segment very well and we will play a key role in providing consulting services," said Haragopal Mangipudi, vice-president and global head, Finacle.

Company sources said consulting was playing a smaller role in the earlier deals with banks and financial institutions since the deal sizes were relatively smaller, and the solutions did not involve complex architecture. "Earlier, consulting was part of our overall offerings, since the deal sizes were smaller and did not include our whole bouquet of our offerings," the sources said.

Finacle is also aiming to offer portfolio analysis, along with its universal banking solutions to banks, which aim to transform their legacy applications with universal banking solutions. The offering will include understanding the inefficiencies in the IT systems and helping the banks to identify the critical solutions in their legacy platform which they should retain and make them more efficient.

In some cases, it will advise the banks to replace certain applications not core to their banking business, to cater to the changing customer expectations.

"When the banks already have a spread of IT solutions, they prefer to take a portfolio approach. It is not just for the cost point of view, but it is a priority in terms of timeline," said Manigipudi.

Finacle, which notched up revenues of $68 million during the first half of the present fiscal, added nine customers during the last two quarters. This includes five customers in the second quarter of fiscal 2007-08. Of the 100 banks and financial institutions using Finacle banking solutions, about 53 are in the APAC region, and 42 in Europe, West Asia and Africa combined.

According to the company, though just 5 per cent of its customers are in the US, it is expecting a huge growth in that region since most of them are now looking at transforming their legacy applications.

Although over the years Finacle is witnessing huge growth in EMEA region, APAC continues to be its biggest market.

"We believe that different markets are getting ready for the transformation at different time. This is the reason why the share of EMEA has gone up significantly as compared to APAC region from revenue distribution point of view. We see that in less than a year, some decisions would start opening up in the US in the area of legacy replacement," said Sumit Virmani, Head, Marketing, Finacle.

Finacle is also making its products ready to address many untapped market in the EMEA and US.