News »Browse Articles » IT firms in race for Indian Railways contract

Bangalore: Several Indian IT firms including majors like Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Wipro are looking forward to grab a $522 million (Rs. 2,500 crores) outsourcing deal from Indian Railways. In order to integrate and automate payroll, accounting and pension functions, the world`s largest civilian employer plans to obtain a human resource management system (HRMS).

According to The Economic Times, Indian Railways plans to implement a centralized system for better management of its 1.6 million employees. The railways intend to invest around $1.5 billion over the next 2-3 years to modernize its infrastructure with the implementation of technology. "We will be coming out with a request for proposal very soon. The idea is to have built-operate-transfer (BOT) model with the vendors," said a senior railways official.

In order to avoid high capital investments in acquiring these solutions, railways is exploring cost-effective models such as software-as-a-service, wherein entire infrastructure and application software will be owned by vendors. "We also plan to bring performance and efficiency-linked parameters for paying these vendors," the official added.

Indian Railways also plans to outsource another contract called `implementation of software-aided train scheduling`, worth around $9.3 million (Rs. 450 crore). IT bellwethers TCS, Infosys, Wipro and Mahindra Satyam are already bidding for this contract. The project will help railways do real-time train scheduling and management with the help of a software solution. The Railways is also planning to outsource three more contracts over the next few months, with each estimated to be in the range of $9.3-10.4 million (Rs. 450-500 crores).

Source:
http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/_IT_firms_in_race_for_Indian_Railways_contr

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