Outsourcing: Arul Murugan, Founder and CEO of Enrich IT (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: I really like the way you have done your positioning. I think you’ve got on the front end of a trend that is developing.  I have talked to enough CIOs at this point to know that the trend is there. Where would you point entrepreneurs? You’ve obviously done a nice positioning of where you saw a gap. You see an opportunity to [create] a substantial business. Where would you point entrepreneurs who are coming into the outsourcing space or into the cloud computing space? Using this kind of a model of services and outsourcing and so forth, where do you see some interesting opportunities? If you were a young entrepreneur today and you didn’t have Enrich IT, where would you start? >>>

Outsourcing: Arul Murugan, Founder and CEO of Enrich IT (Part 4)

Arul Murugan: Yes. We are in the early stage, and now that we’ve got three customers, this is an area which I believe will help us to get Enrich IT to the $100 million mark in next three to five years >>>

Outsourcing: Arul Murugan, Founder and CEO of Enrich IT (Part 3)

SM: Yes. So, you are managing the private cloud supply solutions for these enterprises?

AM: Exactly. Now our focus is on private cloud to large clients that are already using Oracle EBS. We also provide a public cloud model. But we are seeing more success in private cloud since that fits into the IT policies of mid to large enterprises. Moreover, it provides them true integration to their on-premise ERP systems where the public cloud has a lot of challenges. Also by providing private cloud, we are able to scale and increase the footprint to other applications. For example, with one of our clients we started with providing e-sourcing and e-procurement solutions on the private cloud. At a later stage, when the client decides that he needs to have a good MDM solution for products and suppliers first, before rolling out the e-procurement solution across the globe, we are able to put Oracle MDM into our private cloud. That gives a huge value proposition to the client, since we can deploy much faster in our cloud than their on-premise system, and it accelerates their time to value. >>>

Outsourcing: Arul Murugan, Founder and CEO of Enrich IT (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: You have this business from a financial services client. How does that business roll out from an implementation point of view? Is it that you are providing them with the 30 people that you were talking about, or is it [something else]?

Arul Murugan: Those 30 people are aligned for the managed services project that we got where they will be working both on support, which is SLA based, and ongoing project work. If any major implementation projects come in addition to regular enhancement and compliance projects, then we will do the effort estimation and sign another deliverable-based SOW. >>>

Outsourcing: Arul Murugan, Founder and CEO of Enrich IT (Part 1)

Enrich IT was founded by Arul Murugan and his wife, Kavitha Palani, with the idea to help companies by providing them with tailored solutions in areas like business process management, technology services, enterprise application management and software licensing. Bootstrapped with $25,000, the company is now a multimillion dollar enterprise that specializes in Oracle supply chain and procurement solutions.  >>>

Outsourcing: Matthew Heim, President of NineSigma (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Like any new concept, it takes time for the market to build up, right?

Matthew Heim: Yes, it does, and we are in that growth phase right now.

SM: Right. Here is a question that is perhaps more subtle. When a seeker chooses a solution provider, what is the basis of that selection? Innovation is a somewhat subjective discipline, because you don’t really know what kind of approach a team is going to apply to solving a problem or investigating a problem. Approaches can vary widely. Do you see that your seekers are testing what solutions and which directions people are going to follow, the researchers are going to follow? >>>

Outsourcing: Matthew Heim, President of NineSigma (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Who is your typical buyer on the customer side? Is it the head of R&D?

Matthew Heim: Most cases, the chief technology officer or a direct report to the chief technology officer. We are starting to sell more to business unit leaders, presidents of business units and chief marketing officers for very early stage market research. In addition to the intermediary type services we do, we also do technology intelligence and develop technology intelligence landscapes for clients. That’s very appealing to senior management and CMOs, chief marketing officers, in our client organizations. >>>

Outsourcing: Matthew Heim, President of NineSigma (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you are working more in manufacturing or maybe the health care space?

Matthew Heim: It’s virtually every manufacturing industry that practices open innovation. We work with all types of companies, but of late, the service industry has begun to open up to open innovation, financial services, insurance companies, and the like, and nonprofits that are conducting research in particular areas. For example, we just found work with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). We are working with an NGO called LAUNCH that is supported by Nike, USAID, the State Department and NASA to find alternative global energy solutions. There is a lot of other types of organizations that are really starting to pick up as well as the government. Not just the U.S. government, but governments around the world are now participating. >>>