Satyam expects 70% growth in business intelligence revenue

Satyam Computer Services, after its acquisition of Singapore-based Knowledge Dynamics (KD) in July last year, is gearing up for further growth through the inorganic route.

Kiran Cavale, global head of Satyam's business intelligence (BI) and datawarehousing practice, said that with an evolved enterprise resources planning (ERP) and SAP package software implementation practice in place, Satyam was well positioned to add value through BI across different verticals for its existing ERP clientele.

"BI is a key value-add where we propose to build our data analysis and warehousing expertise on top of our ERP solutions. The acquisition of Knowledge Dynamics is now helping us team up with Microsoft to develop our Singapore data centre as a dynamic datawarehousing hub, and also expand our BI footprint in the APAC region and China," he said.

Satyam's BI solutions are being offered to 55 Fortune 500 companies. The company currently has over 150 Fortune 500 customers on its rollcall.

Deal sizes for innovations on iDecisions, a BI product from Knowledge Dynamics, are currently in the region of $1.5 million to $2 million, Cavale said, noting that BI solutions on ERP frameworks can create immense customer value.

"Besides, BI also has applications in the day-to-day operations of our BPO set-up, Nipuna. On the customer side, BI gives us the potential to tie up all technology touchpoints in a company to deliver business solutions."

Satyam expects to have 10,000 associates handling its BI offerings by 2010. BI revenues for the company will grow 70 per cent by the end of this fiscal year, Cavale said.

Satyam has achieved strong verticalisation of services down the years through its centres of excellence (CoE) for BFS, healthcare, pharma, telecom and auto.

With the CoEs achieving greater specialisation in providing BI solutions across verticals, the company would be able to provide strong differentiators for its business software solutions, Cavale said.

Satyam sees an ideal offshore-to-onsite ratio of 60:40 on its BI services, but with increasing BI specialisation coming out of its Indian CoEs, Cavale notes that the ratio is currently in the region of 70:30.

"With greater specialisation across specific verticals, we hope to bring the onsite component of our BI services down further," Cavale said.