R Systems International Ltd

Increasing geographical distribution of revenues

Location: Enschede
Activities: Technical support and customer care services
Industry: Information Technology

Founded in 1993, R Systems is a leading provider of outsourced product development and customer support services. In March 2007, R Systems entered the European market following the acquisition of Sento Europe, including the Dutch company Sento B.V. Ever since then, the company has been using the Sento B.V. location at Enschede as its headquarters in Europe and the company is more than happy to be based there. “The Netherlands is an English-speaking European country and it’s geo-centric in Europe. It is, therefore, a great launch pad for operations in the European market. Besides, we found that the Netherlands is comparatively, amongst the European countries, a more business and tech-friendly country. By entering into the Netherlands we are able to provide multi-language and blended services across the globe as we really wanted to when we set out to do this acquisition. So all in all, the Netherlands has worked out very well for our plans,” says Lt. Gen. Baldev Singh (Retd.), President and Senior Executive Director at R Systems.

R Systems started out as an America-centric company, but even before the acquisition of Sento, they realised the importance of entering the European market. “We needed to downgrade our total dependence on America a little bit in favour of entering the European market. At the time we acquired Sento, only 7% of our overall revenue came from Europe and the rest of it came primarily from the USA. By the addition of Europe, 27% of our revenues today are from there, up from 7%. We have also achieved a geographical distribution of revenues,” explains Lt. Gen. Singh. In terms of headcount, currently the company has about 210 people at Enschede in the Netherlands and about 60 in Metz, France.

The Dutch facility of R Systems provides a wide range of integrated technical support and customer care services through multiple channels in 18 different European languages across 24 countries. “So the biggest advantage is that these operations are able to provide services to any one of our American clients looking for support in different languages,” says Lt. Gen. Singh.

Interestingly, R Systems was not aware of NFIA at the time of the acquisition. Once they did get to know of them, Lt. Gen. Singh couldn’t help but be impressed with how proactive the agency was. “They came to meet with us and wanted to know more about our operations in the Netherlands. Then we discussed various taxation issues, various property acquisition issues, using Netherlands as a base while we set forth in Europe and things like that. They were very nice. In fact, Robert Schipper conducted a couple of very good seminars for my entire team in the Netherlands,” explains Lt. Gen. Singh.

In terms of the outlook for the future, R Systems is looking at several opportunities. They have already launched a sales team out of the Netherlands that is looking for more business within the Netherlands and in Europe. “That is one initiative we have launched. There are a few more in the pipeline. At this moment it would suffice to say that we are using the Netherlands as a launch pad for our European operations,” says Lt. Gen. Singh.

Source: Nupur; Date: June 2009