Syncata Relocates E-Commerce Expert From Down Under to Lead Supply Chain Management Practice; Rakesh Batra Brings Best Practices on Information Sharing to West Coast

    LOS ANGELES--Jan. 31, 2001--Syncata, a West Coast e-business consultancy with a 10-year track record servicing clients like American Honda, Intel and Pacific Life Insurance Company, has hired business-to-business, electronic procurement and supply chain management expert Rakesh Batra, formerly with Andersen Consulting in Sydney, Australia, to lead its Supply Chain Management Practice Area.
    Before joining Andersen in mid-1997, where he initiated service partnership deals with Cable and Wireless Optus and Commerce One B2B Marketsite, Batra was national supply manager at Clyde-Engineering, a locomotive and railcar manufacturer associated with the Electro-Motive Division of General Motors. Prior to that, he was logistics manager for Atlas Copco, a Swedish multinational with a blue-chip stock market rating, where he implemented demand-driven forecasting and planning initiatives.
    Batra started his career in 1979 with Eicher Tractors, and later served as materials manager at Ranbaxy Laboratories, India's largest pharmaceutical manufacturer, where his initiatives reduced total manufacturing inventories by 12 percent.
    More than just a technologist, "Rakesh is a change-management strategy expert who brings Syncata almost 20 years of hands-on experience integrating supply chains for blue-chip multinationals," Ujj Nath, co-founder and CEO of Syncata, said. "He was using collaborative networks to help companies plan and manage their supply chains before electronic commerce or EDI existed."
    "The fact is, consolidating information systems to integrate trading partners is more about people than technology, so if you're embarking on a major supply chain initiative, make sure it works for your people first," said Batra, who relocated to Syncata's Irvine, Calif., office.
    In addition to his industry experience, Batra has two Masters degrees (Masters of Business and Technology from the University of New South Wales and Masters of Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management) and has studied supply chains from all sides. As a result, he says trading partners building collaborative supply networks should first decide exactly what and how much information they are willing to share.
    "There may be an area of your supply chain or proprietary data from it that you don't want your trading partners to see," Batra added. "Companies are beginning to realize there is a big difference between the technology of information sharing, which is essentially infrastructure driven, and the business process of information sharing, which is really about people and relationships."

    About Syncata

    Established in 1990, Syncata (http://www.syncata.com) is a closely held, e-business consultancy with financial backing from J.P. Morgan Partners and ABS Capital. Syncata, formerly NetBase Computing, provides business strategy and technology implementation services that help Fortune 1000 and middle market companies improve business performance through integrated e-business solutions which focus on the demand and supply chain. The firm has roughly 170 employees, is headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., and maintains facilities in Irvine, Calif.; Oakland, Calif.; and New Delhi, India.
    By identifying, adapting and integrating information technology into corporate business systems, Syncata helps companies such as American Honda, Intel, Chase Capital Partners and Pacific Life Insurance Company collaborate more efficiently with their business partners, make more accurate decisions and respond faster to customer demand. Specializing in business systems strategy, back-end, enterprise level software integration, data warehousing and Internet technologies, the firm has extensive experience designing and constructing sophisticated value chain management systems and collaborative networks for the automotive, high-tech manufacturing, financial services and insurance industries.