SAP will team up with IIM-B to train business students in enterprise resource planning SAP announced Thursday a partnership with the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore (IIM-B) for addressing the e-governance market in the country, and training students at the institute on enterprise resource planning (ERP).IIM-B, which runs a vendor-neutral center for ERP for its students, also advises some state governments, and government agencies in the country on their e-governance strategies, D. Krishna Sundar, associate professor at IIM-B and head of the ERP center told reporters in Bangalore on Thursday.The investment by SAP in the center has not been finalized, Sundar added. During the Internet boom about five years ago, many e-governance projects worldwide consisted of putting up a Web site without having the back-end processes and systems like an ERP system in place, said Henning Kagermann, chief executive officer of SAP, of Walldorf, Germany, who is on a visit to India. The focus has now shifted to having the processes and systems in place first, he added.About 10 percent of SAP’s business worldwide comes from e-governance projects, said Alan Sedghi, president and chief executive officer of SAP India Sub Continent. The company is already working on some e-governance projects in India, and has some more deals in the pipeline, he added.SAP announced Wednesday that it is investing $1 billion in India over the next five years to expand its product development and services capability in India, and to address the local market. Though salaries of staff are going up in India because of economic growth in the country, it has not become too expensive for the company to continue to expand in India, Kagermann said. Germany and the U.S. are the only two countries where the company has more employees than in India, he added.“India is one of our key centers,” Kagermann said. Software Development