Author: Asha Rai
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: May 30, 2003
URL: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=47892223
Dennis Roman was spiritually hooked
on to India long before i-flex Solutions' senior management made a secular
pitch to him - to join them as chief marketing officer for the Americas
and Japan, and establish the i-flex brand there.
Roman's 15-year Indian connection
goes back to his guru Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. Introduced to her in 1987
by his wife, who works in the fashion industry in New York, he was sold
for life. The Romans are now regulars to Gurumayi's Ganeshpuri ashram near
Mumbai - their daughter's spent a year there. "I follow Indian traditions
in my house," says Roman, adding it's got "a meditation room with all the
gods and goddesses."
The call from i-flex last year came
just when Roman was contemplating quitting Hewlett Packard (HP), where
he was worldwide director of banking and financial markets, with special
focus on Latin America and the Asia Pacific region.
He had heard of i-flex, as it's
a big partner of HP. Though it meant moving from an organisation employing
1,20,000 to one that was 2,000-strong, he says he decided to come aboard.
"I was very smitten; very taken with i-flex. Of all the partners HP has,
i-flex is perhaps the one with the most pronounced value proposition for
the financial services industry. I liked the leadership and management
style of the people at i-flex."
In fact, when he was asked to go
to India to meet with the team, he didn't feel it was necessary. "I know
I'm going to fit in; I like the company," he said. Promptly he was told:
"Yes, but the team in India has to figure whether they like you!"
Obviously they did and Roman joined
i-flex on October 2, 2002 - a date he was very particular about as it was
on that date Swami Nityananda (Gurumayi's teacher) attained moksha. That
it was also Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary was an added bonus.
Having spent nearly all his 30-year
career as an information and technology executive in the financial services
sector - with companies like Bank of America, Kidder Peabody and KPMG Peat
Marwick, and a stint as Wall Street broker/dealer thrown in as well - he
sees i-flex (revenue Rs 610 crore) as having "assets of a billion-dollar
company."
Roman feels the company's rich in
cash, rich in reference accounts around the world (400 customers in 90
countries) and has a deep heritage in the financial services industry.
"To help package and introduce that in the US market is very, very exciting."
Also, he's a believer of the larger Indian IT story. "The Indian solution
is very attractive in the global marketplace," he says.
His mandate, he laughs, is to "make
as much noise as is humanly possible about the company and get an unreasonable
amount of coverage, beyond which it would be unreasonable for the company
to expect!"
To build the brand in the market,
i-flex has "a well-articulated and executed industry analysts programme."
The Gigas, Gartners are well known here. But Tower Group, for example,
is a pure US play and is critical to the financial services industry, he
feels. The 'go- to-market' strategy is to build strong alliances with large
systems integrators like IBM and HP to cater to the high end of the market.
i-flex is also partnering with smaller firms to get to the smaller banking
space.
To establish the i-flex brand in
the US, Roman's team is working towards building alliances and partnerships,
in addition to generating leads for the sales team. "A lot of my marketing
is built around facts and figures. I like to stay away from adjectives,
and use nouns and verbs," says Roman. Facts like it's rated the No 1 core
banking vendor in the world, he adds. i-flex spends about seven per cent
of its revenues (Rs 43 crore last fiscal) on marketing costs.
One of i-flex's biggest wins has
been the Citibank order. Roman, like others at i-flex, won't say how big
this is, though it's claimed to be one of the few $100-million-plus multi-year
orders that's been won by an Indian company.
It look i-flex three years to sell
to Citi. That Citigroup has an substantial equity stake in i-flex didn't
make the selling easier; they had to compete like anybody else and prove
that their product was superior, says Roman. Flexcube - i-flex's universal
banking solution - has progressively replaced the ageing Cosmos package
at Citi.
i-flex solutions entered the US
in February 2002 and now has 30 sales and marketing people. It's already
got 10-11 customers in a year, with the IMF one rolling out recently.
The US contributes about 25 per
cent of i-flex's revenues. Even as the overall revenues go up, the US share
is expected to rise to about 30 per cent. "US and Japan are the two biggest
IT spenders, so it's natural for more business to flow from these two geographies,"
explains Roman.
Roman feels the current spotlight,
mostly negative, that's falling on Indian IT professionals, is a temporary
phenomenon. "The attribute of the Indian employee base is too attractive
and, in the end, economics will score over politics," he says.
