Ramco Systems CEO on ERP’s New Frontier
TEC principal analyst PJ Jakovljevic interviews Ramco Systems CEO Virender Aggarwal to find out how the company's cloud ERP and HCM offerings perform against competitors, the strategy for taking the products global, and his plans for and views on chatbots.
Contents
In 2016, we reported on Ramco Systems’ success in the cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) market. The gist of it was that Ramco’s business has been upbeat and the vendor’s thrust on innovation and culture has been yielding great results. On the human capital management (HCM) and global payroll software front, in addition to many major wins, Ramco struck an alliance with CloudPay to offer a business platform as a service (BPaaS) in the European and USA markets (while CloudPay will leverage over 40 country payroll solutions on a single platform of Ramco, which covers APAC and Middle East, Indian Subcontinent and Africa [MEIA] markets), which is expected take it to the next phase of growth. In the mid-market ERP software space, the vendor has identified a niche in the logistics and enterprise asset management (EAM) realms, which is helping it build focused capabilities. Last but not least, Ramco’s global leadership in aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) got a high-profile endorsement when Air France Industries KLM Engineering and Maintenance (AFIKLM E&M) chose to travel 13,000 kilometers to set up its first co-innovation lab in Singapore in partnership with Ramco. This initiative of the MRO Lab in Singapore had extensive participation by the Singapore Government, as well.
With the launch of a comprehensive administrative HR, talent management, and payroll solution in the cloud, Ramco is confident of growing its market presence substantially. The demand for full-suite cloud ERP software from mid-market companies continues to flow, with mature markets such as North and South America and Australia registering their first deals. Ramco has acquired clients in untapped countries like Papua New Guinea, Tahiti Islands, Myanmar, and Solomon Islands. The company is also getting traction in the South African market (the South African Government uses Ramco’s eGovernance solution). In terms of verticals, aviation and banking are the vendor’s strong points, and it is growing even stronger there.
Figure 1: Ramco’s CEO with staff during a coffee break
Technology Evaluation Centers: What is your value proposition vs. established ERP and HCM software players?
Virender Aggarwal: Our value proposition against Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Workday, and Epicor (to mention some usual competitors) is as follows:
VA: We have an active partner network of over 70 resellers spread across the globe. Ramco has been building its channel partner ecosystem globally. Our partners are involved in all aspects of business—business development, sales, delivery, development or personalization, and post-delivery support.
In terms of our partner network, we have large and established Tier One partners like Infosys, TechM, and other Global SIs. We also have the Big Four consulting firms, which leverage our platform to offer services to their end clients. The major focus is towards building regional partners that have strong local connections and business understanding. Some of the leading boutique partners include: Gatti HR in US; SmartMegh in India, Middle East and APAC; PT MultiIntegra, PT MII (Metrodata) in Indonesia; IA Group, Spectre Synergie in Malaysia, and so on.
Our partners are categorized as Business Partners and System Integration Partners—both either sell, or sell and implement, our solutions. We also have niche boutique partner terms, labeled as Consulting and Technology partners. We’ve had some interesting achievements where a project was implemented in two and a half weeks by a partner, and we also have many partners delivering customization or additional developed solutions on our cloud offering. Ramco has been engaged with the partner model for many years now. Our focus is on empowering partners, and this has been delivering good results.
TEC: How has the US market been challenging for Ramco over the years, and what do you plan to do there now?
VA: During the last few years, our focus has been to perfect the cloud offering and get the critical mass in our home ground. After successfully pioneering and growing our footprint to bring over 400 companies to the cloud, we were ready to take the product global. In order to differentiate and create a unique value proposition in the global market, we focused on building features around mobility, user interface (UI), and context awareness into the core offering.
We also realize that the market for standard ERP offerings is cluttered, with very little room for growth. We have identified a few niches including logistics software, asset maintenance on cloud, and end-to-end HR for mid-market organizations as our target offerings for the US. We also have a headstart in the aviation MRO segment, where we will continue to focus on developing innovative technologies. The current changes in the aviation software market landscape, with a niche vendor getting acquired by a larger ERP, has opened doors for players like us to penetrate their user base with a stable and strong product.
Our niche and focused efforts have started to bear results. We recently won a deal from G&D Integrated, a leading specialized provider of transportation and logistics, for an enterprise-wide technology revamp. We strongly believe this win will pave way for many more opportunities to come from the logistics segment, which is our identified area of strength and focus.
On the HCM front, buyers were left with very large vendors or very niche products that do not necessarily serve their complete HR needs. The mid-market, with 2,000 to 10,000 employees will be an area with strong opportunities, and our initial success has been encouraging.
TEC: What are some remaining functional gaps in your broad suite, and how do you plan to fill them?
VA: We believe the service sector is not well addressed yet and we are working to close the gaps. Another area is learning management in HCM. However, we will be covering this through integration with third-party products.
To address large enterprises, which have a distributed set-up, multiple suppliers, multiple dealers, multiple products, and presence across many markets, the company launched Ramco Connected Enterprise (RACE), a cloud solution that helps the parent company connect with its extended enterprise and ecosystem. In addition to RACE, we offer business process management (BPM) solutions, whereas learning content, product lifecycle management (PLM), and manufacturing execution systems (MES) are repackaged from third-party providers and offered as a part of our solution.
We are also looking at moving the more intense processes like materials requirement planning (MRP) and processes requiring real-time optimizations into our in-memory processing engine Ramco iPO (formerly known as MINNAL). Integrating Google Maps for location-aware services and offering data visualization to help executives with a “boardroom view” and empower them to take more informed decisions will be another focus area.
TEC: Have you seen any recent changes in enterprise software users’ adoption and buying attitudes? I.e., who are the advocates and decision-makers at prospective customers?
VA: The biggest change that has been observed and has been growing over time is that prospects and customers have started to look at alternative businesses and delivery models for enterprise applications. A lot of prospects are not very happy paying licenses, annual maintenance costs, and recurring costs attached to hardware and software upgrades and refreshes, which catch them unaware. Companies are continually under pressure to control the amount they spend on IT, and more so in the current economic scenario, where organizations are looking to curtail investment programs and optimize/reduce costs wherever possible.
Another observable trend is that companies are seeking to increase accountability of businesses and ensure expenses yield measurable business benefits. Accordingly, all expenditures on IT services are debated, questioned, and the same is charged back/allocated to each of the departments availing that IT service so as to optimize avoidable spend on IT services and invest instead on applications that have direct business benefit.
The recent trend of exploring cloud as an alternative, where you only pay for what is used and services can be scaled up and down as per business needs, seems to be gaining ground. It also prevents companies from over provisioning their IT infrastructure for peak loads, which would otherwise remain underutilized most of the time. The advent of and the continuing momentum around the cloud seems to be disruptive and there is skepticism. But the trend seems to be irreversible.
There are concerns around security, control of IT departments, and data protection. While these are genuine concerns, they can be easily addressed. Companies looking to move to the cloud need to complete the due diligence to satisfy themselves. With state-of-the-art data centers coming up, and conformance to standards and regulations around data protection and security catching up, CIOs realize that their roles need to evolve with the technology. Soon, the skepticism will prove to have been merely initial jitters!
VA: Social and gamification are gaining increasing importance in the following ways:
Social: Our HCM space offers extensive potential and actual requirements for these capabilities. In today’s HR scenario, scanning LinkedIn for profiles has become a reliable way to source talent. Also, with professional portals providing a variety of resume parsing facilities, integrating with them offers a quick and easy way to identify talent from the accumulated repository of resumes.
Gamification: Rewards are a key motivator for effective performance and process improvements. Rewards need not necessarily be monetary. Typical examples of gamification in our scenarios include the following:
VA: Getting your work done involves interacting with multiple UIs, people, and systems, which adds a lot of reactionary delays before arriving at a desired response. Chatbots are changing the way the world communicates. Tech experts predict that bots will replace 80% of what we use at work and half of what we use at home. That’s a lot of stuff to rewrite! With technology invading every nook and corner of our lives, the emergence of bots is set to transform the way we interact.
The bots work like most consumer interface chatbots, responding to queries and helping in tasks like checking your leave status and calendar before applying for leave, as well as giving you packing tips based on the predicted weather before you leave for the holiday. While most companies are experimenting with how bots can be employed to make their customer interface easier, Ramco is focusing on the lucrative enterprise side of these applications that can be used to run automated and repetitive tasks, with help of cognitive computing (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Ramco HCM bot
TEC: What is keeping you up at night, and who/what do you fear the most in the market?
VA: Our biggest challenge is to reach the target audience and make sure the increased marketing spend enables a reach required to take the offering to the next level. Being a homegrown solution provider, Ramco has a significant footprint in Asia. In the global market, however, our major concerns arise when (in)famous players compete on evaluation, and when the prospects aren’t aware of who we are. That’s when our fear kicks in. Otherwise, we are always ready for competition.
How Bots Can Change the Customer Experience and Improve Productivity in the Telecom Industry
Ramco & Microsoft Present Webinar on Rise of Chatbots
Unit4’s Next-gen ERP Software for Services—Providing Intelligent Digital Technology to Liberate Users’ Time
A Good Start to 2017
This year seems to have started off on a great note for Ramco—the vendor recently signed a multi-million dollar cloud human resources (HR) and payroll transformation deal with Panasonic Group of companies in Malaysia. Panasonic Group, part of the leading Japanese electronics manufacturer, has chosen Ramco HCM integrated with global payroll to digitize and transform its HR operations, including recruitment, performance management, time and attendance (T&A), and payroll, for nearly 20,000 employees across twenty-one legal entities, with a unified platform. With this digital transformation, the role of HR management in Panasonic Group is expected to evolve from administrative to more strategic by leveraging Ramco’s reporting and analytical capabilities.With the launch of a comprehensive administrative HR, talent management, and payroll solution in the cloud, Ramco is confident of growing its market presence substantially. The demand for full-suite cloud ERP software from mid-market companies continues to flow, with mature markets such as North and South America and Australia registering their first deals. Ramco has acquired clients in untapped countries like Papua New Guinea, Tahiti Islands, Myanmar, and Solomon Islands. The company is also getting traction in the South African market (the South African Government uses Ramco’s eGovernance solution). In terms of verticals, aviation and banking are the vendor’s strong points, and it is growing even stronger there.
Candid Remarks from Ramco’s CEO
We spoke to Ramco CEO Virender Aggarwal about the secret behind the “dark horse” cloud ERP software company’s recent upbeat times. One key tenet is that the company has lately become a fun place to work, where ideas are thrown out by staffers during the frequent coffee breaks with the top brass (see Figure 1), and where yoga and Zumba classes complement the hard work of software innovation.Figure 1: Ramco’s CEO with staff during a coffee break
Technology Evaluation Centers: What is your value proposition vs. established ERP and HCM software players?
Virender Aggarwal: Our value proposition against Microsoft Dynamics, NetSuite, Workday, and Epicor (to mention some usual competitors) is as follows:
- Having grown organically after years of research and development (R&D), Ramco’s is the most complete and comprehensive ERP software suite, which includes manufacturing (process and discrete) and distribution, coupled with EAM and HR & global payroll. This makes us distinct when compared to other ERP solutions, where you would have to invest substantially in other solutions for things like manufacturing, EAM, or HCM.
- Flexibility and adaptability, where a common business process is configured to suit the customer’s requirements.
- Relatively shorter implementation time frame, with a simple license/subscription structure.
- Fit for businesses of all sizes, and customizable too—Ramco’s Extension Development Kit can be used to create extensions to existing business processes. Multiple reports and workflows can be combined to generate new reports.
- Project accounting and profitability as a part of the base solution.
- Experience and customer reference in the local markets (India, MEA, Europe, APAC, and the US).
VA: We have an active partner network of over 70 resellers spread across the globe. Ramco has been building its channel partner ecosystem globally. Our partners are involved in all aspects of business—business development, sales, delivery, development or personalization, and post-delivery support.
In terms of our partner network, we have large and established Tier One partners like Infosys, TechM, and other Global SIs. We also have the Big Four consulting firms, which leverage our platform to offer services to their end clients. The major focus is towards building regional partners that have strong local connections and business understanding. Some of the leading boutique partners include: Gatti HR in US; SmartMegh in India, Middle East and APAC; PT MultiIntegra, PT MII (Metrodata) in Indonesia; IA Group, Spectre Synergie in Malaysia, and so on.
Our partners are categorized as Business Partners and System Integration Partners—both either sell, or sell and implement, our solutions. We also have niche boutique partner terms, labeled as Consulting and Technology partners. We’ve had some interesting achievements where a project was implemented in two and a half weeks by a partner, and we also have many partners delivering customization or additional developed solutions on our cloud offering. Ramco has been engaged with the partner model for many years now. Our focus is on empowering partners, and this has been delivering good results.
TEC: How has the US market been challenging for Ramco over the years, and what do you plan to do there now?
VA: During the last few years, our focus has been to perfect the cloud offering and get the critical mass in our home ground. After successfully pioneering and growing our footprint to bring over 400 companies to the cloud, we were ready to take the product global. In order to differentiate and create a unique value proposition in the global market, we focused on building features around mobility, user interface (UI), and context awareness into the core offering.
We also realize that the market for standard ERP offerings is cluttered, with very little room for growth. We have identified a few niches including logistics software, asset maintenance on cloud, and end-to-end HR for mid-market organizations as our target offerings for the US. We also have a headstart in the aviation MRO segment, where we will continue to focus on developing innovative technologies. The current changes in the aviation software market landscape, with a niche vendor getting acquired by a larger ERP, has opened doors for players like us to penetrate their user base with a stable and strong product.
Our niche and focused efforts have started to bear results. We recently won a deal from G&D Integrated, a leading specialized provider of transportation and logistics, for an enterprise-wide technology revamp. We strongly believe this win will pave way for many more opportunities to come from the logistics segment, which is our identified area of strength and focus.
On the HCM front, buyers were left with very large vendors or very niche products that do not necessarily serve their complete HR needs. The mid-market, with 2,000 to 10,000 employees will be an area with strong opportunities, and our initial success has been encouraging.
TEC: What are some remaining functional gaps in your broad suite, and how do you plan to fill them?
VA: We believe the service sector is not well addressed yet and we are working to close the gaps. Another area is learning management in HCM. However, we will be covering this through integration with third-party products.
To address large enterprises, which have a distributed set-up, multiple suppliers, multiple dealers, multiple products, and presence across many markets, the company launched Ramco Connected Enterprise (RACE), a cloud solution that helps the parent company connect with its extended enterprise and ecosystem. In addition to RACE, we offer business process management (BPM) solutions, whereas learning content, product lifecycle management (PLM), and manufacturing execution systems (MES) are repackaged from third-party providers and offered as a part of our solution.
We are also looking at moving the more intense processes like materials requirement planning (MRP) and processes requiring real-time optimizations into our in-memory processing engine Ramco iPO (formerly known as MINNAL). Integrating Google Maps for location-aware services and offering data visualization to help executives with a “boardroom view” and empower them to take more informed decisions will be another focus area.
TEC: Have you seen any recent changes in enterprise software users’ adoption and buying attitudes? I.e., who are the advocates and decision-makers at prospective customers?
VA: The biggest change that has been observed and has been growing over time is that prospects and customers have started to look at alternative businesses and delivery models for enterprise applications. A lot of prospects are not very happy paying licenses, annual maintenance costs, and recurring costs attached to hardware and software upgrades and refreshes, which catch them unaware. Companies are continually under pressure to control the amount they spend on IT, and more so in the current economic scenario, where organizations are looking to curtail investment programs and optimize/reduce costs wherever possible.
Another observable trend is that companies are seeking to increase accountability of businesses and ensure expenses yield measurable business benefits. Accordingly, all expenditures on IT services are debated, questioned, and the same is charged back/allocated to each of the departments availing that IT service so as to optimize avoidable spend on IT services and invest instead on applications that have direct business benefit.
The recent trend of exploring cloud as an alternative, where you only pay for what is used and services can be scaled up and down as per business needs, seems to be gaining ground. It also prevents companies from over provisioning their IT infrastructure for peak loads, which would otherwise remain underutilized most of the time. The advent of and the continuing momentum around the cloud seems to be disruptive and there is skepticism. But the trend seems to be irreversible.
There are concerns around security, control of IT departments, and data protection. While these are genuine concerns, they can be easily addressed. Companies looking to move to the cloud need to complete the due diligence to satisfy themselves. With state-of-the-art data centers coming up, and conformance to standards and regulations around data protection and security catching up, CIOs realize that their roles need to evolve with the technology. Soon, the skepticism will prove to have been merely initial jitters!
The ERP Software Frontiers
TEC: Are social and gamification capabilities a requirement for your target market? What are you doing in that regard?VA: Social and gamification are gaining increasing importance in the following ways:
Social: Our HCM space offers extensive potential and actual requirements for these capabilities. In today’s HR scenario, scanning LinkedIn for profiles has become a reliable way to source talent. Also, with professional portals providing a variety of resume parsing facilities, integrating with them offers a quick and easy way to identify talent from the accumulated repository of resumes.
Gamification: Rewards are a key motivator for effective performance and process improvements. Rewards need not necessarily be monetary. Typical examples of gamification in our scenarios include the following:
- Effective Induction Process—where the inductees are offered a quiz at the end of induction, and are offered various rewards as they keep performing and participating in the induction process. The awards include badges, credits, movie tickets, and dinner for their family.
- Motivating Prompt Time Booking—Time booking is the most undesired activity in an employee’s day. However, prompt time booking offers critical visibility into the project activities and their current state. Gamification comes in handy in such scenarios. Based on the promptness of booking, employees are provided badges that keep getting reassigned to more prompt employees. These badges appear at prominent places in the solution, which, in turn, gives visibility to the employee.
VA: Getting your work done involves interacting with multiple UIs, people, and systems, which adds a lot of reactionary delays before arriving at a desired response. Chatbots are changing the way the world communicates. Tech experts predict that bots will replace 80% of what we use at work and half of what we use at home. That’s a lot of stuff to rewrite! With technology invading every nook and corner of our lives, the emergence of bots is set to transform the way we interact.
The bots work like most consumer interface chatbots, responding to queries and helping in tasks like checking your leave status and calendar before applying for leave, as well as giving you packing tips based on the predicted weather before you leave for the holiday. While most companies are experimenting with how bots can be employed to make their customer interface easier, Ramco is focusing on the lucrative enterprise side of these applications that can be used to run automated and repetitive tasks, with help of cognitive computing (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Ramco HCM bot
TEC: What is keeping you up at night, and who/what do you fear the most in the market?
VA: Our biggest challenge is to reach the target audience and make sure the increased marketing spend enables a reach required to take the offering to the next level. Being a homegrown solution provider, Ramco has a significant footprint in Asia. In the global market, however, our major concerns arise when (in)famous players compete on evaluation, and when the prospects aren’t aware of who we are. That’s when our fear kicks in. Otherwise, we are always ready for competition.
Related Reading
Ramco—Bringing Cognitive and Predictive Tools to ERPHow Bots Can Change the Customer Experience and Improve Productivity in the Telecom Industry
Ramco & Microsoft Present Webinar on Rise of Chatbots
Unit4’s Next-gen ERP Software for Services—Providing Intelligent Digital Technology to Liberate Users’ Time
About the Author
Predrag Jakovljevic | Principal Analyst
Predrag (PJ) Jakovljevic focuses on the enterprise applications market. He has over 20 years of industrial experience within the discrete manufacturing sector, including the machinery and equipment, automotive, construction and engineering, and electronics ...