Indians helping Fonterra switch

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

Consultants from Indian technology giant Tata Consulting are supporting dairy conglomerate Fonterra's ageing logistics and management systems as it moves to new technology.

According to IT company Sustema, which won the contract to manage the mainframe systems, there are not enough skilled New Zealanders able to work on this kind of project. Sustema has had a relationship with some of the organisations that joined to create Fonterra.

Fonterra is moving to a multimillion-dollar SAP information system, which will replace the logistics and management, global marketing and finance information systems.

Sustema director Tom Jameson said that when the company won the contract for logistics and management in 2003 it used existing staff but added four Tata consultants because of the lack of skilled Kiwis available for the project.

He said Kiwi staff usually preferred more certainty in project work, and at the time the length of this project was unknown. It has now been extended and is expected to run for another six months before the SAP system is brought online.

"We filled the holes with people from Tata."

Jameson said the Tata staff were happy to work with less certainty on the project's finish.

A spokesman for Fonterra's chief information officer said the company was winding down the sunset legacy systems and was not concerned with how many staff were employed in the process as long as budgets were met.

He did not know how many staff from India were employed though contractors.

"We have outsourced support of the legacy systems because the intellectual property is being developed by Fonterra staff and no one has lost their job over this."

The executive director of the Information Technology Association, Jim O'Neil, said that until recently it had offered an advisory to the Immigration service that stated there were very few mainframe jobs available in New Zealand.

That means those skill sets were not missing from the local market.

O'Neil said that post Y2K there were a lot of people with skills in this area looking for work.

Wellington's Sustema was set up in 1986 and offers consulting services to a range of Government and business organisations

It has 12 staff and a strategic alliance with Tata, which has had a presence in New Zealand for over 20 years. Tata originally had a partnership with mainframe company Burroughs before it became Unisys. Tower Corporation also uses Tata for some of its project work.

Jameson said he first looked to India five years ago for highly skilled staff who were available on demand.