No wonder therefore that both SAP (Neyveli Lignite, Anchor Electricals, JK Industries) and Oracle (Hindalco, Godfrey Philips, Cummins India) tasted SCM success across diverse verticals. Pharma, textiles, electronics, and consumer products were the major new industries to invest on SCM during the year.

Indian CRM Market Company Revenue (Rs crore) Avaya 142 Aspect Software 135 Oracle 119 SAP 111 Talisma 48 Sage Software 31 Others 103 Total 689
Source: DQ estimate CyberMedia Research
Besides traditional sectors, the CRM market started seeing demand from retail, distribution, services, and manufacturing

Factors such as globalization, leaner supply networks, and heightened customer expectations also affected the SCM market. New business pressures ensured renewed corporate spending in supply chain initiatives for sectors like automobiles. The prices of four-wheelers in India increased in 2006 on account of the rising costs of steel and other inputs. Despite this, the market has seen a flood of new passenger car models. The complex product life-cycle of an automobile with thousands of suppliers and sub-contractors necessitated that an OEM must have complete visibility into its supply chain to reduce costs and stay innovative.

Price erosion and the availability of tailor-made solutions ensured mid-market organizations increased interest in SCM solutions. OyzterBay Jewelers, Chiron Pancea, Pure Pon Chemicals, Purvankara Builders, and Mitsubishi Electric Automotive India were few of the SMBs who went for SCM.

In the ultimate analysis, the Indian SCM story in 2006-07 could be divided into two trends that prompted businesses to invest in structuring their supply chainDemand-Driven Supply Network (DDSN) and collaboration between subcontractors/tier II/tier III suppliers and OEMs. DDSN had four driving factorsorder accuracy, forecast accuracy, inventory management, and new product development. Collaborative forecast models involved a forecast starting from the bottom of the sales hierarchy and moving up to the apex level.

BPO: CRMs New Market
CRM fired on all cylinders during 2006-07 primarily driven by contact management, marketing and email campaigns, service requests, response to proposals, and order management. As SMS and the Internet gained mainstream acceptance as channels for customer service, the number and complexity of interactions that needed to be managed exploded. Companies started to use personalized customer service and hence CRM was being increasingly looked as a strategic differentiator.

CRM was the area where SAP and Oracle did not rule.

The Indian BPO industrys explosive growth and its special

needs meant other CRM vendors flourished. The top two CRM players during 2006-07, Avaya and Aspect, owed much of their successes to their strong presence amongst call centers and BPOs.

Avaya had a strong focus on both the domestic BPO sector as well as international call centers; its partnership with Nice enabled it to bag customers like Allsec, Accenture, American Express, Aviva, Citibank, Daksh, Dell, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank, Tata-AIG and Wipro BPO among others. Aspect focused on outbound contact center solutions and had clients like Bajaj Allianz in its kitty.

The leadership of Avaya and Aspect did not however slow down the growth of Oracle and SAP, and they very well might usurp the top two positions in 2007-08. Oracle focused strongly on SMBs with its micro vertical solutions and its strong partner network started paying dividends during 2006-07 both with enterprises and mid-market organizations. The acquisition of Siebel CRM too helped boost Oracles CRM presence. Bharti, Tata Motors, UTI Bank and ITC were few of its flagship customers during the year; for SAP, the marquee names included KLG Systel, Smilesys and Apollo Health Street (won back from Aspect Software).

SAP also hosted CRM on demand at Zydus Cadila during the year itself underlining the growing acceptance of software as a service model. The result was fewer large new license deals and a transition to recurring and variable revenue models where maintenance was driving growth. SMBs offered succor to the likes of Sage and Talisma too bringing in customers like Cox & Kings, Blue Dart (Sage) and Bharti AXA Insurance, Franklin Templeton, Kingfisher Airlines and Pantaloon (Talisma) to the table.

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