Polaris Software Lab Ltd is one of India’s leading institutions contributing to the knowledge economy of the global financial services marketplace. Headquartered in Chennai (India), In this knowledge quest, over the last 2 decades (11 years as Polaris), Polaris has established its solutions and services footprint globally contributing to the realization of the business vision of some of the world’s leading giants in the money vertical.
Polaris ranks 10th in the top 20 list of Indian Software companies up from 27th 4 years back!!
Strong roots – Respectable Pedigree
20 years ago, Citigroup began its quest to pioneer the utilization of the vast human intellect capital in India & the seeds of Polaris were sown. Polaris was fortunate to be one of the first vendors that Citigroup chose to partner with, through this Indian quest.
In parallel, Citigroup also started its own company called COSL (Citibank Overseas Software Ltd) which strategized and operationalized Citigroup’s vision of leveraging India.
Today, Polaris is the amalgamation of these two organization that traveled the path of successfully architecting & realizing Citigroup’s India led vision.
The Labor Pains of a Pioneer
The 2 Decade long journey was clearly an experience that helped Polaris participate, witness and experience every pitfall, every hurdle & fallacy in this path to leverage the Indian intellectual capital.
Polaris was recognized by Smithsonian Institute in 1993 for creating the first ever banking solution on distributed architecture
The challenges were many. The challenge of creating a successful global sourcing model, the challenge of creating an alternative distributed banking platform, the challenge of creating global competitiveness from a third world economy, the challenge of replicating success from one country to another… The biggest challenge was in being the first one in the world doing all this.
As Citigroup gained the competitive edge, Polaris gained two very critical experiences:
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The experience of creating mission critical solutions with leading edge functionality, built on reliable and robust technical architecture which could be successfully implemented and replicated across the globe. This capability is today brought to the customer in the form of a suite of modular solution components under the brand name of intellect Suite.
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The experience of creating successful outsourcing models which enable global organizations to sustain their competitiveness. This experience has been converted into a predictable and repeatable model of success and is known as the Entity model.
From Experience to Expertise
The journey gave Polaris one of its biggest differentiators – the intimate understanding of the Money business.
Polaris is organized into 6 Business Solution Centers (BSCs). Each BSC houses expertise in one of the domain areas. For example Hyderabad center houses the Investment banking and wealth management expertise.
While the rest of the Indian market was busy building expertise on COBOL, Java and Lotus, Polaris had built expertise on Investment Banking, Retail Banking, Credit Cards, Corporate Banking, Life Insurance etc.
Polaris decided to capitalise on this wealth of enviable experience of having partnered with Citigroup through its evolution.
Polaris made its strategic choices at this stage
* Stay focused on the money vertical – BFSI segment
* Create lasting value in only a few relationships
* Partner with the pioneers
* Dominate the Domain
* Build Turnkey capabilities – Products , Solutions & services
100 – 5 – 7 Strategy
100 Relationships
5 Customer Values
Cost
Quality
Reliability
Speed
Flexibility
7 Value Levers
Domain knowledge
Technology expertise
Customer understanding
Process excellence
Reuse of code
Tools
Energy of people
225 Million USD, over 8500 experts and 20 years later
Polaris is proud to be associated with some of the world’s most prestigious financial services institutions like Citigroup, AIG, Commerzbank, ABN Amro, Shinsei Bank, UBS, Deutsche Leasing, Maybank & DBS, to name a few. The strength of Polaris lies in its people. A unique blend of techno-bankers, banking & insurance practitioners, technology experts & quality process gurus help Polaris create enduring value in any relationship.
Nalanda University
A corporate university that has a mandate to create, cultivate and facilitate attainment of expertise across the different spheres of competency that we practice as a company.
At Polaris we call this philosophy ‘The Economics of Expertise’
* Expertise that benefits the consumers of our customers
* Expertise that helps our customers reach their goals better & faster,
* Expertise that helps our employees to satisfy their desire to add value and make a difference
* Expertise that helps our shareholders derive more returns from their investments and
* Expertise that helps build more experts in the society.
source http://www.erozgar.com