India’s Department of Post lines up $1 bn to automate business processes
India’s Department of Post (DoP) is set to spend up to $1 billion on its IT-led business revamp over the next five years. Firms like IBM, TCS, Infosys and Wipro are pursuing several outsourcing contracts for helping the postal department automate and integrate its business processes with a standard software solution.
DoP, which has already short-listed Accenture, Ernst &Young , KPMG, McKinsey and PwC as potential consultants for this project, will be announcing one of them as partner for selecting a tech vendor and also defining the scope of 3-5 year IT revamp by end of this month. DoP will select different vendors for system integration, software, data centres and network management.
DoP’s IT revamp is a classic example of old, legacy systems and software applications being unable to cope with rising operational pressures and newer business models. The department has been using software applications such as Meghdoot developed in-house for over a decade. With the government seeking to evolve DoP as a well diversified services provider offering postal, insurance and financial solutions across remote parts of the country, there is a need to upgrade the systems.
A consultant, to be finalised by this month end, will help India Post decide whether to continue upgrading its in-house developed software applications such as Meghdoot or switch to more sophisticated software platform from SAP or Oracle. An enterprise resource planning (ERP) software from SAP or Oracle will help the department standardise its different business processes without having to dedicate internal resources for deployment and maintenance.
Apart from several outsourcing, system integration projects, the department will also need to invest in procuring computer hardware systems for modernisation of around 155,000 post offices across the country. “The government is now looking at post offices as a vehicle for distribution for different services, and therefore, it’s critical for us to upgrade the infrastructure,” said a government official involved with India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA).
According to the experts tracking this sector, Indian government organisations such as India Post, Indian Railways and other departments including LIC will spend around $2 billion on information technology this year, as the government’s share of total IT spend in India is set to cross 10% over next two years.
