Setting up in Australia just over a decade ago, engineering services group Cyient has grown its presence solidly since. Cyient provides engineering design and network and operations across its diverse portfolio of 11 verticals.
Of all the markets in which it operates, Australia's demand for telecommunication solutions are greater than anywhere else. “It may surprise many that the US and Europe are not the largest markets for Cyient for telecom,” says Sanjay Krishnaa, the company’s communications business unit global head and Asia-Pacific President. “We have about 500 people supporting the communication business in Australia. And we’ve got about another 600 people supporting Australian telecom customers from India.”
Part of the reason Cyient's strong showing is the rollout of infrastructure for broadband and mobile networks across the country and the solutions that Cyient provides to major carriers in achieving their business and operational goals. The other reason is that Australian businesses have grown more comfortable with outsourcing.
This was the reason it took until 2005 to set up here, explains Krishnaa.
“Fifteen or maybe 12 years back, the offshoring or outsourcing model was not adopted by Australia into their business culture. Companies like ANZ Bank, Telstra and some large corporations adopted offshoring, but most Australian companies were not used to the concept,” he explains.
“The other companies were understanding how the offshoring and outsourcing model operates. So that is when we thought ‘okay, now is the right time to enter the market.’”
Local support comes in a number of forms. For a major telecoms customer, Krishnaa describes this as four-fold.
Networks are updated constantly – for whatever happens in the field, such as a new suburb being laid out – and in real-time.
The second aspect is assisting the mobile market in design and engineering.
Then there is supporting the client’s major customers, ensuring connectivity is 100 per cent reliable.
Lastly is field activities. Cyient provides client’s hybrid fibre coaxial field activity work, with a crew that handles field survey activities.
Within Australia, besides telecoms, Cyient's other clients include mining, utilities, oil and gas, and rail companies. They are supported by a global network of more than 13,800 employees across 38 global locations.
Growing local skills
Australia’s engineer shortage is well-known and Cyient has partnerships to help address the issue. For this and other reasons, it made sense for the company to link with universities – as it has with Western Sydney University (WSU) and Deakin – to locate and train bright graduates.
“In order for us to still meet customers’ requirements, one of the unique ways is to get fresh graduates from university, train them on the skills and technology, and make them ready for the next level,” says Krishnaa.
This is the case with WSU, which has campuses near Cyient’s Centre of Excellence at Blacktown, officially opened last November.
Graduates train on the company’s processes and systems and become qualified as design engineers over three- or six-month periods. They gradually move onto a project, acquiring skills to support the company’s products and its customers’ programs.
Field Operations Management Systems
To make field engineers more productive, Cyient has developed a product called FOMS (Field Operations Management Systems).
FOMS assists workers, who are being pushed to connect more and more people, via a mobility solution, enabling real-time editing of field geometry.
The platform-agnostic application “helps bridge the gap” between Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software – such as GE Energy’s Smallworld – and field visits.
It syncs with the back-end GIS platform, populating a map (Google, Apple or proprietary) with this information. The telecoms module for FOMS includes fibre termination and connectivity, equipment connectivity and a conduit/duct occupancy wizard.
“Before, whenever an engineer was in the field, he used to carry a sketch of the network,” says Krishnaa. “FOMS also seamlessly integrates with the business application, SAP, which is implemented in many companies,” adds Krishnaa.
Places in space
Krishnaa has been at Cyient (which changed its name from Infotech Enterprises in 2014) since late 2000.
In the last decade he’s noticed a huge increase in the commercial importance of geospatial engineering. Previously employed just for asset tracking, nowadays it’s changing seemingly everything.
GIS’s impact and usefulness are undeniable. It underpins disruptive, newer enterprises such as Uber or Airbnb. Or consider a more mundane area – tracking a pizza from the store to your doorstep.
“If you look maybe ten years back, GIS was not the core system for any business or any industry,” says Krishnaa. “But today it has become an integral part of a whole business system.”
Krishnaa adds that some of Cyient’s customer base have GIS as the single, focal point of their system. No longer an afterthought, it’s an essential category of data.
“It provides you with varied intelligent information, whether you’re looking at geographic information or talking about business and market intelligence,” says Krishnaa. “It becomes an integral tool or system, which is required by any industry.”
Cyient is partnering with Engineers Australia to lead a summit themed Shaping the Vision – Building a Sustainable Business in a Disruptive Economy. The program (27 September, Sydney) will focus on ways industry and government can drive business growth through smarter partnerships to access new markets.