Infrascape 2013 | Great opportunity in 2013

Thiru Vengadam, Managing Director, IFS Solutions

Most of the contracts in the Infrastructure sector are long lead time projects with significant investments. Whic­hever customer of ours in these industries that we speak to, they all have experienced the effects of overall economic slowdown and the difficulty in getting funds for these projects. Larger projects such as in the power sector or in the road construction have continued to face problems in land acquisition and obtaining all the governmental clearances.  Some of the projects that we are involved with are in Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh which have experienced acute labour shortages. Others in the port sector have been hit by multiple bans imposed on export of ores in the southern states.

Developments: We focus on delivering integrated enterprise business applications to the Infrastructure industry. Large capital intensive assets are the core of operations of the infrastructure industries – whether they are Nuclear, hydro, thermal or alternative energy based power generation projects, power transmission corporations, distribution companies;  EPC contractors involved with oil and gas, road, dam, airport and such large scale industrial construction. These utilities require integrated, scalable and reliable enterprise applications that can cover Enterprise Asset Management, Enterprise Resources Planning, and Project based procurement, etc. However, our systems can not directly help them to control the macro-economic issues they face, they can effectively manage their operations whether they are in the pre-construction stage; or the construction (EPC) stage or in the operation and maintenance.

Expectations of 2013: We believe there is a great opportunity in 2013 for these industries to look up.  There is cautious optimism in the stock market with some swift actions taken by the Government.  We expect more of these organisations in the Infrastructure sector to use IT to address their operational problems more effectively across all the stages of their operation.