The country's largest software exporter Tata Consultancy Services has bagged an over $50 million deal to deploy its accounts management and payments solution for a financial services unit of Swisspost.
“After an intensive evaluation phase involving a number of possibilities, PostFinance chose the TCS BaNCS product of TCS. The current systems will be replaced in stages over the next four years,” said a statement on the PostFinance Web site.
(TCS BaNCS, is the company's bouquet of financial software products to banks, insurance companies and capital market entities.)
A Swisspost unit, PostFinance, is the fifth largest retail financial institution in Switzerland. Its main area of activity is in the national and international payments space.
In fact, PostFinance made the largest contribution, at 2.16 billion Francs, to the group's earnings for the year ended March 31, 2010. The 8.74-billion francs Swsisspost is the state-owned provider of postal services.
Dip in postal volumes
A general fall in postal volumes, coupled with the liberalisation of the postal business in Switzerland (which is to happen by 2012), is prompting the Government-owned entity to increase investments in technology, analysts say.
The pricing mechanism in a software product deal revolves around the licence fee (along with the initiation fee) and it is followed by an annual maintenance fee for the duration of installation.
Job cuts ruled out
PostFinance has said that this engagement with TCS will not result in any job cuts at its information technology department.
However, there will be ‘shifts in functions and competencies' and the ‘order volume for external employees will be reduced'.