The midrange practice runs dedicated Product Competency Centers as virtual extensions for a number of world class ERP companies, significantly reducing their costs and Time-to-Market.
Most of these ISV’s operate in a development partnership model (Product Co-Development) where HCL partners in:
- Core Product Development
- Base Technology Enhancement
- Code Perfection
- Product Testing
- Localization
- Customization
- Product Upgrades
- Porting
- Professional Services
- Global Customer Support
- Help Desk
- User Documentation and Technical Writing
HCL replicates the partners' infrastructure and combines it with their world-class workforce to ensure rapid realization of benefits. The co-development partnership leverages HCL’s vast experience without compromising on confidentiality.
Tangible Benefits of the Model
- Speed-to-Market: Teaming up with HCL, the co-development partners bring out their products much faster than their competition.
- Choice of Engagement Model: There are various options for engagement models available for the co-development partners. They can opt for onsite-offshore, complete offshore model, or a near-shore team located in one of the HCL global delivery centers. These models enable co-development partners to leverage the time-zone difference and have 24-hour development teams taking their products from concept to market. The unique ‘Follow the Sun’ model provides smooth 24x7 support to all end customers across the globe.
- Protection of Intellectual Property: HCL maintains complete confidentiality about the work done for co-development partners. Their intellectual property is protected on all counts. Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDA's) are available and abided without hesitation.
- Dedicated Product Competency Group: The co-development model is fortified by proven best practices of knowledge management. Take for instance the transition phase – HCL uses its proven ASSET™ transition framework for knowledge acquisition or the steady state phase – where HCL uses the academy model for knowledge sustenance thereby ensuring availability of niche product skills at all times.
- Proven Solutions on Product Upgrades and Porting: The upgrade factory framework from HCL provides the framework for seamless migration of an older release of ERP to the latest version with minimal disruption to the business. Usage of automated tool set provides significant reduction in analysis time and is 50% less expensive than traditional upgrades.
The framework has been extensively used by HCL’s co-development partners for major upgrades of their end customer implementations.
Upgrade Factory Framework
The Upgrade Factory Framework is a unique offering from HCL System i practice, enabling any ISV to offer an effective and low-cost upgrade solution to its end customers. This solution works on a three-way source comparison to establish the gaps between current and target release along with any localization and customer modifications.
The tool-based approach is highly scalable and provides quick source migration, data conversion and target environment creation without any disruption to business as usual.
