NCR was outsourcing some of its software requirements from Indian software companies like Satyam and HCL for almost five years. Now, it has decided to tie up with local software companies to help in its implementation of projects. It is tying up with Indian software companies like Satyam Computers, Wipro, HCL Technologies, Polaris Software and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

The company will leverage local resources while implementing projects in India, and would like its local operations to be totally self sufficient. With this end in view, it is going to invest aggressively in intellectual capital, distinct from say a factory or a unit as the company does not have the bandwidth to service its Indian operations alone.

The tieups with the Indian software companies envisage four types of contracts. The alliance partners could be authorised to sell NCR products, to implement/service projects or to sell, implement and service or jointly implement a project. It is seeking to augment its staff by working out arrangements with the software companies. In fact, some people from Satyam and Polaris have already been certified. At a later stage, it would like to accelerate its software development in India by outsourcing some of its research and development activities and tools and utilities from India.

NCR's Teradata Solutions Group's chief technology officer, Stephen Brobst, said that the return on investment is huge for a bank investing in an Relationship Optimiser and is generally 100 per cent in the first year. The company has already sold its first Relationship Organiser to ICICI and is in an advanced stage of negotiations with two major private sector banks in India. The two banks will in all probability be foreign banks since the installation and use of the Relationship Optimiser requires a high level of sophisticated infrastructure. The data has to be collected from different branches and stored. Moreover, the data has to be clean and be available.

Teradata's marketing manager-southeast Asia, Sudesh Kuckian, explained that they have adopted an incremental development strategy which allows the implementation to proceed in phases. This allows the bank to gradually change the corporate culture and refocus on the customer. Thus, banks can take cycles of 90 to 180 days to complete each phase instead of doing it in one go.

The Relationship Optimiser, an advanced communication tool, integrates and implements the elements of Teradata solutions enabling marketers to engage in personalised dialogues with their customers.