Once the preliminary exercise is through, one of the three consultancy firms will be given the mandate to implement the project.

The firms are currently frequenting various branch offices of UTI to analyse the changes required to be made in the existing process. ``We are keen to take a relook at our business processes and do a complete re-engineering.

The initial mandate has been given to these three consultancy firms,'' said a top UTI source.

Sources indicated that the aim of the exercise is improvement in investor services and bring about a synergy between the various activities of UTI. The changes that are being envisaged willprimarily focus on investor services, caring for investor grievances and investor relations among others.

The Trust has over the past two years undergone a major technological upgradation. This has filtered down to all its 51 branches. The focus now appears to be on reworking the business processes in line with the recent changes at the Trust.

UTI is currently handling 5 crore investor accounts with about 65-70 running schemes. UTI handles 15-20 schemes in-house while the remaining 45-50 are handled by the registrars for UTI. ``The UTI is looking at a generic system for maintenance and servicing of all schemes as is done under US-64. For this we are looking at Business Process Reengineering in order to further improve our services. This will lead to efficiency in imparting timely services and the cost is likely to come down,'' said the source.

US-64 has an Electronic Clearing System for payment of dividend which UTI plans to extend to other schemes as well. ``If the whole system is made electronic itwill save a lot of office space by storing data in electronic form thus making management of large volumes easier and efficient. It will reduce manual operation work,'' the source added.

The UTI chairman, P Subramanyam, had in a recent interview with The Financial Express talked of bringing in synergy and leanness in the mutual fund behemoth. He plans to do this by converting the 1,00,000 strong sales agent force into an exclusive marketing arm of the Trust.

``The focus is going to be on investor care. Providing an investor with an array of products is going to be one way in which this will be achieved,'' said Subramanyam.

UTI had earlier this year appointed KPMG, another consultancy major to outline for it a Vision-2000 statement. This was aimed at giving UTI a sense of direction as to where it sees itself headed by the end of the millennium.