PeopleSoft, Zensar ink HR pact

Zensar Technologies, a business process outsourcing (BPO) services provider, is partnering with PeopleSoft, a global enterprise application software firm, to offer human-resources (HR) services in India.

Ganesh Natarajan, Zensar's deputy chairman and chief executive officer, said, "We see a huge potential in HR outsourcing, mainly on PeopleSoft applications, with an expected $3-4 billion in revenues from India itself."

Natarajan said the company, through this tie-up, will offer a suite of HR services, ranging from personnel and payrolls to performance and competency management, apart from e-learning and knowledge management.

Zensar established its first shared-services centre in Pune. The services to be offered on PeopleSoft applications will be available on a pay-per-use basis through the centre.

"The company will offer HR services to both existing and new customers," Natarajan said. "We expect to provide services to around 20,000 employee-seats and around seven to eight strong clients by the end of this year."

Zensar will set up a new campus for the PeopleSoft initiative, which will be integrated with the company's recently launched 1,000-seater in Pune.

Zensar and PeopleSoft are planning to take the HR services to other countries too. "Plans are afoot, and we will start with the markets in the Asia-Pacific region," Natarajan said.

Meanwhile, Zensar is planning to scale up the capacity of the existing 150-seater Pune centre to around 200 and expects a new 300-seater within the next 12-15 months.

Natarajan said the company is also expecting a 400-seat contract in shared services in 2004-2005, and added that, as part of its optimisatiom moves, the company will set up dual-shore and multi-shore BPO delivery models.

The company also plans to provide multi-lingual BPO services, starting with French, German Japanese and Korean.

Thiru Vengadam, PeopleSoft India's country manager, said the company's revenues from India were not affected by the takeover fear of Oracle Corporation in the US. "We had no, or very little, impact in India," he said.