"WE focus on enterprise level training, not necessarily for the mass market," says Anton Ravindran, the chief executive officer of Genovate Solutions Sdn. Bhd. Ravindran is talking about the training and professional services division of the company.

"For instance," he continues, "if you take SAP training, it's not about training on product, or how to use a software. Its not training on what technology is all about." He goes on saying that what matters is how to integrate technology into proper investment.

"SAP, for instance," he says, "is a half a million to a million dollar investment from the software standpoint. You buy the software, and if you don't get it implemented on time, a huge cost will be incurred. Secondly, ensure that your software investment really result in return on investment on the software itself, which is, in itself, an investment. So what it takes to implement the system correctly is to understand the business processes. SAP, as you all know, is enterprise-wide software, this means one has to have a good thorough business domain knowledge. It doesn't matter whether its finance, administration, human resource et cetera."

Genovate Solutions were established in early 1997 and founded by software professionals in Singapore. It has offices in Mumbai and Sydney with total staff strength of about 150 IT (information technology) professionals. Amongst the services it provides are software development – in particular for the financial services industry, where it's key services are in turnkey projects, design, development and implementation of customised software, e-services, and training and professional services. Genovate's clientele include multinational corporations, government institutions, small and medium enterprises.

Genovate is an authorised traiing partner of SAP, Software AG (XML), AU System (WAP), CIW Prosoft (e-commerce) and ASPLinux. It is also a business partners of IBM, SUN, Oracle and Netrust.

The company prides itself in its product which is catered for the small to medium enterprises (SMEs), called the eZHR-eZPay Suite.

"We developed this product specially for the SME market," says Ravindran. "A product, like any other product, runs entirely on any operating system. Its 100 percent Java, XML driven so it's truly open."

The HRMS and Payroll functionalities of eZHR-eZPay include the ability to manage personnel data – payroll administration and distribution, process leave applications, submit claims, computerised payslip creation, and a host of other features seamlessly integrated into a single user-friendly interface.

Ravindran finds no difficulty in the company's survival during the economic difficulties in the region. "No doubt it's a difficult market," he says, "however, there is an opportunity, immaterial of whether its recession or depression or otherwise; as long as we can find a niche area and show our customers that there is return on investment by increasing productivity while cutting cost."

Amongst the niche area that Genovate is looking into the future is bioinformatics.

"We are spending some time and efforts in this field. We are working on projects like BioJava and BioXML. Not too much, because its not mass market yet, but we are putting our feet in there to be ready for that."

Ravindran is very sure that bioinformatics is worth looking into seriously due to its potential. There would be, according to him, a strong market potential for it in the next three to five years time, the reason being the implementation of technology in the pharmaceutical side takes a long time.