FAQ's

Overview of ABM | Some Recent Developments | How many IPRs do you hold? | You have a number of technology partners. What kind of arrangement do you have with them? | What is the market size and what potential do you see for the company? | What are some of the opportunities you see for the company? What are the factors which would trigger growth? | RoI achieved from ABM Products and Solutions | Tangible ROI | RoI for Citizens | RoI for MCGM | Any R&D initiatives? | Do you charge for the products or for service? How is your charging?

Overview of ABM

• A pioneer in the e-governance vertical in India, being the earliest private sector company to focus on this business.
• Over 1000+ man-years of experience in this vertical.
• Has built a huge repository of knowledge, expertise and experience of the functioning of this customer segment and their mindset, which plays a crucial role in successful completion of projects.
• Rich experience of successful implementations in this vertical considering the challenges faced with respect to the lack of pro-activeness of the customer towards IT projects in this not-so-mature market. This is particularly significant in the background of several failures by much bigger companies, which have abandoned projects in this vertical.
• In most tenders being floated nowadays, there is greater importance being given during technical evaluation to experience of successful implementations and only after considering this factor, are other factors considered. The primary reason for this is that it is not merely the IT skills of the vendor that get tested during the project execution but also the vendor’s ability to work with the government employees, take the project forward and complete it successfully. Hence, with its strength of successful implementations, ABM starts off with a natural advantage vis-à-vis other bidders.
• Has complete mastery of the business model as is evidenced by the year-on-year growth with sustained profitability with no long term debt.
• If one considers the “Rule of 3” paradigm as advocated by Professor Jagdish Sheth, Ph.D. who teaches at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University, USA & who is also advisor to Wipro and Professor Rajendra Sisodia, Ph.D. who has taught at Boston University & who is advisor to IBM, ABM’s success and growth in this domain is assured, since ABM is in the top of the heap in its focused vertical.
• Demonstrated Leadership with a proven and successfully running solution for Municipal Bodies.
• ISO 9000:2000 certified
• E-gov, has very high potential considering that it is still at a relatively nascent stage and evolving. In this background, a high budget/reliable client like “Govt” offers a long term growth potential with solid consistency. It also offers a choice of tapping market in commonwealth countries where the government processes would be similar to those in India, having been laid down by British Govt of those times.

• ABM has been declared winner of an award by the Wisitex Foundation viz. "Wisitex India Urban Development Lead Organization of the Year- (Information Technology) in Dec  2007.
• Several other national, international, govt. and industry awards for products and projects, developed and implemented by ABM, including  the award for “Best Technical Organization in e-Governance” in 2006 by a committee comprising senior IAS Officers from Government of India, Experts from IIT and the Industry .
• ABM  has signed an agreement with Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation, where its flagship product ABM MAINet® has been implemented, for joint initiatives to promote this product all over India after establishing replicability of this solution at several locations in Maharashtra
• Govt of Maharshtra has bought the rights for replicating the KDMC software all over Maharashtra (in the 245 Urban Local Bodies) by paying a royalty to KDMC.
• Replication of KDMC Project is being considered under Mission Mode Projects by Government of India for replication in over 2000+ Municipal Bodies across India. ABM MAINet® has recently undergone the stringent process of quality certification for this purpose by STQC, an organization under the Govt of India. It is learnt that ABM MAINet® is in the fore front in the proposed list of empanelled software solutions. The advantage here is that when the Government of India decides to provide funds for establishing e-governance in all Urban Local Bodies in India, the empanelled products may  get preference .
• Empanelment with National Institute for Smart Governance, Hyderabad (NISG) and also with nodal agencies of different State Governments like Maharashtra, Punjab, Haryana, U.P., Goa etc
• ABM, in consortium with HCL Technologies, has successfully implemented SAP HRMS (Human Resources Management) in KDMC in June 2008. The total order value is approx. Rs 1 Cr. 
  
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2. How many IPRs do you hold?

             ABM holds IPRs for the following software products

• IT Enabling Citizen/Customer/Consumer Services (ABM CFC®)
• Complaints Management and Redressal (ABM CARE®)
• Document Tracking in Govt Offices(ABM MOIS 2000™)
• Water Billing and Online Collection(ABM AQUA™)

             For the following software product, ABM holds exclusive marketing rights

• Municipal Administration Information Network  - ABM MAINet®
    Apart from these, ABM also has several  other Trademarks registered in its name.

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3. You have a number of technology partners. What kind of arrangement do you have with them?

• Oracle : Technology support as an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) and marketing support for ABM MAINet® which is developed on Oracle technology
• SAP : Marketing and Technical support for SAP business solutions
• IBM and Microsoft : Technology support as an ISV

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4. What is the market size and what potential do you see for the company ?

The Govt. of India has launched a national e-governance plan (NeGP) 2003-2008. The expected outlay is Rs. 12,500 crores in the next 5 years. The World Bank has also supported this plan recently by sanctioning a loan of US $500 MN for e-Governance. These outlays are further supported by the budgetary allocations made by the individual State Governments and Municipal Bodies, thanks to the pressure being brought on them by all their stake-holders to improve governance through the application of Information and Communications Technology.

ABM’s strong position, in terms of a proven track record with ready-to-deploy, customizable solutions, gives it the “Early Mover” advantage in this niche to reap the benefits of the focus brought in by all these govt. bodies.

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5. What are some of the opportunities you see for the company? What are the factors which would trigger growth?
   
   ABM has identified large opportunities in the three verticals listed below.The details for these verticals are outlined elsewhere on the website

• Municipal Corporations
• Utilities – Power & Water
• ERP Practice.
  
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RoI achieved from ABM Products and Solutions

Intangible ROI - Improvement in Consumer Service Delivery

Accountability – pre-defined escalation path for adressal of complaints and grievances

Time bound resolution of complaints – as per citizen charter

Transparency – tracking of applications in real-time

Information Availability – related to service delivery
                                           – anytime, anywhere

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Tangible ROI

• Increase in revenue

• Increase in number of transactions

• Timely dispatch of bills, notices

• Tracking of defaulters
• Timely issuance of Certificates

Example 1 - New Water Connection

 Example 2 - Birth & Death Registration Certificate

 Example 3 - Assessment of Property Tax

 Example 4 - ABM AQUA® implemented at Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM)

• Largest Municipal Corporation in South Asia
• Running successfully for the last 4 years
• 24 + 1 Locations with 10+ concurrent users at each location
• Decentralized Billing & Collection
• Rs. 600 Crores per year revenue
• Metered & Non-Metered
• 2,50,000+ Connections

…Implemented and Institutionalized for more than four years

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RoI for Citizens

• Timely Billing
• Multiple Payment Options
• New Connection Granting without administrative complexity
• Outstanding Info
• Helpdesk for Queries
  
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RoI for MCGM

• Connection Granting with Hydraulic Engineering approach
• Parameterized functioning for absorbing changes
• Disciplined Billing Cycle
• Integration with Accounts, Property, no redundancy
• Better Monitoring and Control
  
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• Any R&D initiatives?

In addition to the research activities that ABM undertakes to offer bilingual solutions in various technology platforms (ABM is the first vendor in Maharashtra to successfully deploy its software solution for the Govt. of Maharashtra with Marathi fonts in Unicode), ABM will focus on R&D initiatives for services delivery (G2C, G2B, G2G and G2E) through various channels like Portals, PDAs, Mobile Phones, Citizen Facilitation Centers etc.

• Do you charge for the products or for service? How is your charging?

Charges are for Consultancy, sale of Software Licences and IT services like implementation, training, post-implementation support, Database Administration.

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