IT Implementation Trends 2013

This year, we received 175 valid project nominations from more than 105 unique companies. More than 27 different types of organizations nominated their projects, and we got an opportunity to go through more than 40 different types of project deployments.

This obviously allows us to gain some very useful insights into the technologies being adopted by various organizations in India. The fact that we've been tracking it for a decade helps us understand how technology has moved across different types of organizations in the country. Here are some of the insights we've gained into the IT implementation scenario over the past year.

E-Gov Projects Focus on Process Automation

Projects related to business process automation and management used to be at one time, the highest type of project nominations that we received. This time, however, the number of these projects has slipped to the fourth spot, with only 10% of the nominations of this type. Business apps like ERP, CRM, and HRM were the third highest type of implemenation we received this time. It's also higher than what we received last year. While the highest number of nominations came for IT infrastructure related projects, the second highest types of implementations was a surprise packet. These were e-Gov projects.

Communication, Security, and Online Deployments Higher Than Last Two Years

Quite a few IT project categories that weren't so much of a focus picked up this year. We received healthy participation in the number of communication projects being deployed by companies. These include unified communication solution deployments, WAN connectivity, and even bandwidth optimization related solutions. Security implementation also received a big boost this year, forming 9% of the IT implementations. Last year, only 8% of the nominations were security deployments, while it was a mere 4% in the year before that.

Online portals and social media deployments in enterprises have also witnessed growth as compared to the past two years. Another area that is witnessing growth is mobility and field force automation related implementations. 7% of the project nominations this year were of this kind, while last year, it stood at just 5% and the year before was worse at a mere 4%. Interestingly, this year, we even received nominations for strategic IT outsourcing, something that was non-existent in the last two years.

Industry Participation

This time, the highest number of nominations came from the manufacturing organizations (which incidentally is also the highest we've received over three years), followed by nominations from the banking and financial services sector. Total number of govt. departments that nominated their projects stood at number three, followed by IT companies.

There's no change as far as industry participation is concerned. The same 4-5 industries nominated the highest number of projects, while other companies were far behind. This is possibly an indicator that other companies still have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to leveraging IT for their business.

Highest Participation from Manufacturing Segment

About a quarter of the nominations we received this year from the manufacturing sector were from companies with less than Rs. 500 Crore turnover. Out of these, quite a few were from companies with less than Rs. 200 Crore turnover. Around 40% of the nominations (which was the majority) were from large manufacturing enterprises having more than Rs. 10,000 Cr turnover. The remaining nominations were from companies whose annual turnover fell between these two extremes.

A few years ago, most project nominations we used to receive for this sector were for ERP deployments. That was possibly a ripple effect, wherein manufacturing companies went ahead with ERP just because their competition was doing it. Whatever the cause, the good thing is that companies used this as the baseline to gradually move to other business applications like CRM, HRM, etc. Perhaps that's why, starting two years ago, 20% of the projects we received were a mix of ERP, CRM, and HRM applications.

This year, companies who've already deployed a lot of applications are busy taking their IT infrastructure to the next level, by reducing complexity with the help of technologies like virtualization. About 14% of the IT projects we received this time from the manufacturing segment were related to IT infrastructure enhancements. Another 12% of the manufacturing organizations nominated projects related to enhancing their communications infrastructure and an equal percentage were busy automating their business processes.

Given the sheer size of manufacturing sector in India, a lot still remains to be done even at the basic level. That's why, 12% of the nominations in this sector were for ERP, CRM, and HRM applications.

IT in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance Companies

Nominations from this sector comprised of about 20% of the total nominations received, and of these, 57% were from companies with an annual turnover in excess of Rs. 10,000 Cr. This segment has always been at the forefront of implementing technology, and has demonstrated some truly fascinating projects in

the past.

The segment doesn't disappoint this year either. The one noticeable highlight this time is a slew of mobility based technology deployments. 21% of the deployments this time were for mobilizing the field force. So whether it was a sales officer going for opening new bank accounts or a collection agent moving out to collect payments from delinquent customers, the BFSI segment is enabling everyone with mobile based solutions that run on smartphones or tablets. Likewise, this sector is also trying to empower its customers with mobility based solutions, wherein customers can do petty financial transactions or even file for their insurance claims from their mobile phones.

Given the vast span of IT implementations in this segment, it's necessary to continuously keep optimizing the IT infrastructure. Hence, 14% of project nominations this time were for virtualization, Green IT, and even BYOD deployments. Other notable deployments nominated by this segment were for security, CRM, HRM, online portals, and communications projects.

IT in Govt.

The Indian govt. has been one of the most active adopters of technology over the last year, which bodes well for other industries who are reeling under the pressures of slow economic growth. Govt. spending on technology provides some impetus to the private sector in this regard.

The govt.'s focus has shifted from building massive information systems to automating processes across various sectors. Nearly 40% of the project nominations from the Govt. were of this kind. Given the fact that this is automation of processes in various govt. departments, the scale is obviously huge, thereby creating a huge impact.

The govt. has been busy deploying a variety of technologies, as can be seen from the pie chart.

Annual Turnover of Participating Organizations

About 30% of the nominations received this year were from companies with more than Rs. 10,000 Cr annual turnover. There were a good 18% that did not wish to disclose this figure, while another 3% were govt. departments who did not really have this information.

About 12% of the deployments were from companies with less than Rs. 100 Cr turnover. Another 16% were from companies with 100 to 1000 Cr turnover. Another 21% were from companies having turnover between 1000 to 10000 Cr.

No. of Employees of Participating Companies

About 6% of the nominations were from extremely small companies having less than 50 employees. 13% were from companies having 100-500 employees. About 22% of the deployments came from companies with 500 to 2000 employees, and nearly similar percentage of 21% was from companies with 2000 to 10000 employees. Nearly a quarter of the implementations, i.e. 26% came from companies with employee strength between 10000 to 1 Lakh. 4% of the nominations came from companies with more than 1 Lakh employees.