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India’s textile industry needs no special mention in terms of its contribution to the country’s growth and export aspirations. For centuries muslin has been the most prized and valued commodity of the Indian market, even before the software services monopolized the spotlight internationally. So, how does technology serve its purpose in an industry which provides for four percent of GDP and 18 percent of employment in the industrial sector and paradoxically where mechanization is inevitable?

When Filix Consulting was approached by Ludhiana-based textile manufacturer and exporter Aarti International, the Delhi-based firm was only more than eager to render its services. When a yarn manufacturer has an installed capacity of producing 173,000 spindles, the strain on its IT methods is tremendous and transparency of production becomes vital.

As Aarti International decided to enhance its production process, it was approached by Wipro, KPMG and Filix with bids. Evidently with Wipro’s leverage as a Tier 1 integrator and its enlarged reputation, they were the obvious choice for the implementation. So Filix Consulting lost out this project, or so they believed. But this partnership with Wipro was not destined to last long.

“We are basically a skinning unit. When we approached Oracle for an ERP solution for our plant in Ludhiana, they suggested Wipro and Filix. We already had an ERP solution in place before but we wanted to improve upon that. Although the contract was awarded to Wipro, we had to part ways due to certain contractual issues that cropped up. The ERP solution brings in transparency to the management in the plant processes. So there is often some resistance internally. This therefore becomes a challenge for us,” says Vinayak Mittal, Director, Aarti International.

Result of Recommendation

Obviously with Oracle being a name to reckon with, its recommendation of Filix would have asserted a sense of confidence to Aarti International for the implementation. “We approached Filix with all our requirements and presented it to them and they in turn customized the solutions for us according to our needs,” adds Mittal.

Filix Consulting has been an Oracle partner for only a few years now. But it seems to have rooted itself well in these unmapped industrial sectors. “Ludhiana as a market is very challenging. There aren’t many IT companies working there, but it is an important industrial hub in the country. So awareness about IT is not too high. Therefore understanding the customer becomes important and companies need to do the grilling at a very fundamental level itself,” says Gaurav Mathur, Managing Director, Filix Consulting.

When Wipro decided to move out during the implementation and ended its association with the project, the additional thrust from Oracle helped Filix further in reinforcing its selection. Wipro had sold Aarti International a Sun bundle as Oracle had only recently acquired Sun and wanted to benchmark certain implementations on it.

“Our initial challenge was that the customer had installed Linux over Sun. Although they had bought high end servers, the power utilization was not set up. We had to replace Linux with Sun before we proceeded further. The quality of the documentation of study that was carried out was also not up to the mark. We were finding it difficult to comprehend it. So to expect the customer to make sense of the documentation would be much to ask for,” says Mathur.