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 iVitesse offers enterprise resource planning solutions which cater specifically to the engineering industry. The company aims to tap into the fast booming construction industry by offering a set of unique solutions. Talking about the company, its current plans, and future roadmap, Dr. Sundararajan, CEO and President, iVitesse Technologies shares his thoughts with Network Computing’s Correspondent, Harshal Kallyanpur.
Q. What is the history of iVitesse? What issues does the EBEAS aim to resolve?
A. We started out about two years ago as a solutions provider for ERP based implementations and currently provide the Enterprise Business Exception Alarm System (EBEAS) for manufacturing companies who have an ERP installation in place. Besides this we also offer similar solutions for the construction industry. We have clearly identified the engineering industry and target our solutions specifically for it. A manufacturing company faces issues at every level of the procurement of raw material to meeting the high volume demands. Although most ERP solutions track data and transactions at these levels they do not issue alerts or indications on exceptions or issues occurring in this process. Exceptions are role and situation dependent. For example high value overdue receivable from a new customer is an exception, the same from an esteemed old customer may not be an exception or could be an exception if you have severe cash flow situation. Unusual rejections from an established product line can be an exception or rejection from a pilot project can be an exception. ERP is not very flexible when it comes to the requirement of having to define Exception and program it in at the 'user' level. Hence the need for an easily programmable/configurable Enterprise business alarm and exception system to be placed on top of an existing ERP. Since minimum stock level needs to be maintained for smooth flow of manufacturing operations, escalation alarms can be built-in, in case the stock level goes below set limits, so that timely action can be taken to restore normalcy in the supply chain.
Q. How does the solution work?
A. The solution sits on an ERP based environment such as SAP or Oracle, interfacing with the ERP implementation to pull transaction data and compares it with a pre defined set of values to identify exceptions. It then issues alerts on these exceptions which can be handled by escalating the matter to all concerned individuals with follow-up action, automatically, till the issue is fully resolved. The solution does not depend on any particular ERP platform and can be customized for use across any ERP implementation. The system can also send out a SMS to the concerned individual when a particular exception occurs.
Q. What issue does your solution for the construction industry address? How does the solution improve this process?
A. The primary requirement of a construction industry is to have visibility into multiple projects execution status from a central location so as to deploy resources optimally. Operational profits are dictated by success in cost effective procurement of material and making them available at site in a timely manner. The Measurement Sheet of the work done at the site is the manual document, which is converted into an Abstract sheet by the site engineer. These sheets are then entered into the SAP through a Service entry sheet. Once the Service entry sheet is completed the work as per the work order in part or full is completed. We have developed an interface for the input of the Measurement sheet entry in SAP, which is converted into an Abstract sheet automatically after approval. On approval of Abstract sheet, the system generates a service entry sheet in the background without any user interaction. This is then translated into an bill and is then printed out as an invoice from the contractor to the construction company. This document is signed by the contractor and returned to the construction company for the further invoice verification and payment as per the system found in SAP. The solution is the beta stage of testing although we have deployed it at a few locations.
Q. How do you go about deploying the solutions?
A. We deploy a team of 5 people over a period of four months at the user site to understand the requirements, offer a solution based on these requirements and explain its implementation. Once the user agrees for the implementation he is trained on using the solution. The team also creates reports specific to the implementation.
Q. How do you manage the customer data on your side?
A. Data from all the customers is stored and managed in a data center located in a 1000 Sq. ft area in the company running Sun Solaris based servers with dedicated leased lines per customer. We are responsible only for the physical storage and management of data and do not handle the data at the logical level.
Q. Who are your current customers in India? How many more are you looking at?
A. Currently we have around 12 customers totally with Vascon Engineers in the construction vertical and PMT Machines in the manufacturing vertical. With approximately 1,000 construction companies and 10,000 manufacturing companies we have a lot of potential to tap. We also plan to target U.S markets with warehouse management solutions for operations which have logistics and moving material issues.
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