IBM EYES RS 100-CR SBI DEAL

IBM is chasing around Rs 100 crore contract from SBI, as the company seeks to grow its outsourcing revenues from the Indian banking and financial services market. The contract, which is relatively smaller when compared to over $1 billion outsourcing deals that IBM has signed with Indian telco Bharti Airtel, involves deploying a data warehousing solution at SBI.

?The RFP is out, evaluations are going on and the contract will be awarded in six months?, confirmed an SBI official on the condition of anonymity.

The new data warehouse solution will be a repository of SBI?s customer data and will help India?s biggest bank analyse its customers better and offer them more specific products. However, IBM will have to outbid rival HP, which is also chasing this contract. HP already serves top banks such as Bank of India.

Meanwhile, SBI is also in the process of selecting a vendor for its customer relationship management (CRM) project. ?There is another Rs 2-3 crore contract to implement CRM service, and apart from IBM, Oracle is also one of the bidders?, the SBI official said. The CRM implementation will help SBI provide better customer service and enhance its marketing capabilities.

SBI expects to save 20-30 percent in operational costs by deploying these solutions, the SBI official added. ?Most of the Indian banks are looking to reduce the costs by utilising their hardware and software using virtualization technology. Data warehousing will allow clients to store huge data of their clients and analyze their profile in a more efficient manner ?, said Subram Natarajan, country manager, Systems Solutions Center India/SA.

 

Source: The Economic Times