Satyam Computer Services is targeting a 35-40 per cent growth in its revenue from packaged software implementation this fiscal, especially from SAP services.

This is compared with a 15-17 per cent growth in the overall services income projected by the company for the current fiscal over the last fiscal revenue of Rs 2,003 crore (Rs 20.03 billion).

The packaged software implementation business contributed 21.33 per cent to Satyam's revenue last year or in rupee terms around Rs 427 crore (Rs 4.27 billion).

"We are planning to increase the number of associates in our SAP and engineering practice to 1,200 by March 2004 from the existing  850," said Subu D Subramanian, director and senior vice-president (SAP and engineering).

Satyam announced last month during its annual results that it would add 2,000 people in the current year in all its technology verticals put together.

The packaged software implementation business is the only unit of the company to have grown from a 13.94 per cent revenue contributor to 21.33 per cent.

The contribution of the software design and development, and software maintenance units have slipped to 49.11 per cent and 26.61 per cent, respectively, from 52.11 and 29.65 per cent, respectively, in the previous year.

SAP services constitute a larger pie of all package implementations for the company. Satyam started its SAP implementation services unit in 1998.

"Right from day one we were recognised by SAP as its national implementation partner in India. A big booster for the unit was the dot-com boom in 1999, during which the global Big 5 consulting companies, which were the major players in this business till that time, temporarily moved out of the space and started retraining their consultants (employees) on emerging areas such as customer relationship management and e-business.

"But we were convinced that entrepreneur resource planning has a bright future and could attract best-of-the-breed talent from the Big 5," Subramanian said.

"We offer a 30-50 per cent cost advantage over the Big 5, which do not have remote configuration capability. We are also placed above a majority of the Indian players which are yet to build credibility in this space," he said.

The company has so far implemented SAP for over 100 customers and currently there are around 75 active customers to whom it offers maintenance, enhancements and other services.

"On-site billing rates in the business are currently hovering around $60-125 per hour depending on the contract nature. With some of the big consulting companies such as Accenture, Deloitte and CapGemini trying to increase their offshore capabilities, Satyam might face more challenges in the coming days," he said.

Satyam has recently started focusing on the 'global template' model, which is being widely adopted by the Fortune 100. Under this, Satyam will first design and deploy a global template for organisations after which it will be spread across to organisations' locations worldwide.

"This will help our customers to bring down initial and operational costs as well as achieve higher returns on investment," he added.

Satyam has also trained around 50 of its employees on the SAP 4.7 version, which will be commercially launched shortly.