Having first entered India through a company called Think Systems, i2 recently got FIPB approval todo business as i2 Technologies and is planning to invest at least $8 million in its operations this year. While the company, to date, catered to the global market, it has just started sales, marketing and customer support activities that will exclusively cater to the Indian market. In an interview with The Financial Express, Swaminathan shared his company's objectives and ethos.Excerpts:

Where does your business-scoping report place the Indian market in terms of readiness to adapt and implement supply chain management packages?
Whoever we consider potential customers for supply-chain solutions either have a fairly well-established ERP system in place or at least have the requisite computing infrastructure organised. That is our basic requirement--that the day-to-day aspect of business is computed and data is readily available. Beyond that, we are not religious about which ERP solutions the company has. So, I will say that all companies that have matured a transaction-tracking system are readyfor supply chain solutions.

So, will that mean that i2 will not seek business through an ERP provider at all? In such a case how do you plan for the future when companies like Oracle are launching their own supply-chain packages?
Yes, we see more competition, but we think we are ready because given the pace at which we are moving and the number of innovations we have under our belt, it is going to take any company a very long time to come up to our speed. Also, we have groups within our product-development organisation that simply focus on what the competition is doing, which way are they likely to to move and how will we continue with market pace. i2 has established clearly that this is where the value lies to the extent that if a company makes an announcement that they are going to go in for a supply chain planning software, their stock actually rises at Wall Street. So, shareholders have also begun to recognise that this will bring the level of optimisation.

Meanwhile, we will continueworking with any ERP system as we do have a strategic alliance with ERP providers like Oracle. But it would need looking at, once they come up with their own package.

What kind of clientele have you managed in India?
While it is not possible to share client names, what I can say is that we held a seminar on this issue in September and had more than 40 CEOs of top companies of India attend it. Ostensibly, we thought that we will have to start laying the ground to explain what is supply chain management, what is the benefit available, etc. But we found that none of this was required as they were already familiar with the package.

I think there is a very large market out there but our priority is not to get multi-million dollars worth of business but to pick a couple of companies and make them highly successful and then use that as an edge to go after the market.

Are you guaranteeing a threshold return on capital employed to your clients as part of the business agreement?
Yes. That isthe whole idea. This is what we do as a value proposition when supply-chain management opportunities start coming in. I will, however, use the word guarantee with a little bit of caution in the sense that there have been a number of cases where we have said to people that if you don't achieve this result do not pay us. I think there is no better guarantee than this.

One has seen that ERP solutions have been embraced blindly by many corporates leading to huge hidden costs.

How would i2 ensure that its packages do not get mistaken for a "a magic mantra"?
Is there, therefore, any pre-sale diagnostic effort done by you before deciding to sell? I agree with you on the concern related to blind adoption of such solutions without sufficient preparation and understanding. At i2, therefore, we use a supply chain opportunity assessment process to establish the value proposition. Here, we clearly take into account the company's strategic objective, who they consider to be their competition, our ownknowledge of their business, information gathered from the public domain and from our own contacts and what we really present to them then is the opportunity in their supply chain. We have one objective set by our CEO which says that on any account we get, the customer should get 100 per cent payback. A second condition he imposes on all of us is that within six months of our taking up a job, some discernable business benefit must be realised.