Q&A with Manoj Nagpaul

Wipro has just celebrated its tenth anniversary of providing SAP services in the ANZ market. Inside SAP spoke to Manoj Nagpaul, vice president and regional head – ANZ and Japan for Wipro, about the company’s current focus.

 

ISAP: What is the focus of Wipro’s SAP presence in Australia?

MN: We concentrate on business transformation and operational transformation opportunities and building long-term relationships with key customers. We are focusing heavily on the utilities, natural resources, manufacturing, government, services and banking and financial services industry units. We have won some new projects recently in the manufacturing, utilities, government and services space, but names are confidential.

ISAP: What have been your most successful projects over the last 12 months, and what results have you achieved there?

MN: Origin Energy has been our most successful program in Australia in the last 12 months – Origin won the 2011 SAP Award of Excellence in the Best SAP ERP Project category for their Retail Transformation Project with Wipro as their strategic SI. This project covered a multitude of technologies covering SAP ISU, Avaya Telephony, Document Management, address management, web-based self-service and real-time integration with banks, post office and credit agencies. It involved the development of 1350 SAP and other discrete technology objects in a record span of seven months, with over 5000 test cases run to ensure the system worked. As a result of the project, the number of processes were reduced by up to a third, over 2.5 million customer accounts were migrated to SAP and nearly 1500 staff were trained.

ISAP: What differentiates Wipro from other partners in the market?

MN: The primary differentiator for Wipro is that we deliver what we promise. Seems simple, but it is a big differentiator as customers see us today. We have been in a multitude of programs where we have come in after failed projects or programs and have helped customers recover.

ISAP: What is your view on the range of new solutions SAP is bringing to the market – are there any areas where you might expand your offering or specialise further?

MN: We have been keeping abreast of all new technology areas that SAP is introducing in the market. This includes the technology areas of HANA and Sybase as the mobility platform. Due to our Global Services Partner status (the highest level of partnership for services partners), we have early visibility of new products being introduced in the market, as well as tie-ins to the SAP development teams in Germany and US to ramp up our competencies, as well as executive level commitments from the CEO down in both organisations.

ISAP: What do you think will be the major trends influencing the way companies use SAP over the next few years?

MN: We are seeing two camps on how our customers are adopting SAP.
There is a set of SAP users who have long established their business processes and are looking at ways to get more out of the system – making things mobile and analysing the data to be made available to users to make decisions – in the office and on the move. They are thus more focussed on the areas of BI and mobility.
The other type of customers are looking at getting their business processes right to gain benefits from smoother transactions and lower administration for their operations across the business. This is driven by companies targeting growth, through organic or inorganic means. These companies are investing more in their core ERP programs and how it enables business aspirations.

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