IBM Global to set up consulting team

Information Technology major IBM Global Services India Pvt Ltd (IBM Global) plans to set up a high profile consulting team to offer specific business consulting to its clients.

The team initially to be located in Bangalore, will be expanded to the company's different locations within India.

IBM Global's Director, Global Delivery Amitabh Ray told Business Standard that the high end consulting service will be offered to clients acorss segments with whom the company has an existing relationship.

"The new service will be in addition to the application services we offer, and will seek to enhance the clients' capabilities in the areas such as Supply Chain Management(SCM), Customer Relationship Management(CRM) or Financial Cost Management(FCM)," Ray said.

The comapny is set to wear the hat of a management consultant, armed with a huge chunk of domain knowledge across industry and function spectrums and wants to capitalise on that to make it a business proposition.

IBM Global will create the team to be called 'Consulting & System Integration' group, that will comprise experienced subject experts who can add value to the application services business.

"The services coming from this group will generate addtional revenue for the company and will also offer an additional avenue to the domain expertise gathered while handling the mainstay business," he explained. Without putting a number on the initial size of the high profile group, Ray said the group will be big and will be scaled up as needed by the opportunity.

He said the initative will also work as a strong measure to control the rate of attrition by offering a window of work satisfaction.

Ray said the company has mustered steep growth in India over the 14 years or so that it is here. IBM began its India operation as a joint venture with the Tatas and later became a wholly owned subsidiary of the IBM Corporation, US by taking over holdings of the Indian partner.

From an employee size of 3000 in the year 1992, the company has grown to 38500 plus employee strength. It's India revenues have also shown significant growth as it rose 45 per cent in the year 2004 and 55 per cent in 2005.

IBM India signed a deal with the Bharati telecom Group to otsource the latter's entire IT requirement. It has struck similar deals with a 'few other' clients including public sector banks such as Canara Bank.

Pune is a major centre for the company after Mumbai and Bangalore as it has three locations as well as the BPO operation Daksh Technologies which IBM took over in the year 2003.