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From The ediTor
"Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
execution is the key to any transformation.
To Dream Upon a Star Every groundbreaking project starts with one bold man's vision.
As we sifted through the projects and achievements of CIO 100 winners, what stood out beyond technology, was the manner in which these projects were executed. Apart from the IT solutions they chose as strategic tools, most of the projects involved end users and business leaders early to ensure IT-business alignment. Boldness is a critical element for effective leadership, and it's heartening to see a 100 of them championing IT-led transformation at their organizations. This year, our honorees demonstrate different flavors of bold IT leadership, ranging from finding innovative ways to excite users about an ERP solution, and helping their CEOs identify an entirely new business opportunity, to even embracing the latest technology ahead of the pack with a promise to make their These stories will infect IT organization a profit center. others with a relentless zeal to So what is boldness in the context of raise the bar, and change the our own IT leaders? way businesses do business The dynamics of business in the country are changing with Indian enterprises seeking to become more global by acquiring businesses across the world. This presents a whole new opportunity for the Indian CIOs to — not only adopt globally successful best practices but also — share what they have achieved in India. "It's about time we talk of our own IT achievements, and let the world know," Jai Menon, Bharti Airtel CIO said during our annual symposium. But what happens to the bold IT leadership beyond the 100 organizations we honored this year? While the CIO 100 is aimed at identifying the best 100 examples of IT leadership, we at CIO India believe that these stories will only infect others with a relentless zeal to raise the bar, and change the way their businesses do business. As we prepare for the CIO '09: The Year Ahead, we feel a pressure on us to chase and identify some of the unknown stories of IT excellence, not yet narrated by anybody. We promise to present such stories to you, fortnight after fortnight. In the meanwhile, please join me in saluting the CIO 100 Bold leaders again. Cheers.
Pankaj Mishra Executive Editor firstname.lastname@example.com
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september 15 2008‑ | ‑Vol/3‑ | ‑issue/21
166 I Tagged! Underneath the glitz of a Wills Lifestyle store were tricky challenges like shrinking product lifecycles, unpredictable demand, and a long and inflexible supply chain. IT helped tame these monsters using RFID. Feature by Kanika Goswami
view from the top 170 I Activating Leadership Manoj Kohli, CEO, Bharti Airtel, wants IT to help his company cope with the complexity of serving almost 125 million customers by 2010, and make Airtel the country's most admired brand. Interview by Pankaj Mishra
CIO BOLD 100 HONOREES 18 I The Bold cios of 2008 We profile the winners of this year's CIO 100 Awards and show you the risks they took and the rewards they brought their companies. By Team CIO
Case File 150 I Security Insured HDFC Standard Life doubled its staff in one year to 17,000. Creating a flexible security framework to give them access to data would need some nifty footwork. Feature by Gunjan Trivedi
154 I Banking on the Sun
Cover : design by Jayan K Narayanan
The Bank of India turned to solar energy to power their rural branches — not because they wanted to, but because they had to. Feature by Balaji Narasimhan
158 I No Stop Shop
Harsh Mariwala, CMD, Marico Industries, says in the fiercely-competitive FMCG industry, IT-led innovation can make a huge difference. Interview by Sneha Jha
180 I The Boldness of Simplicity In a market that confounds most investors, Kshitij Jain, MD and CEO, ING Life India, wants simplicity to differentiate his company. It's a bold proposition — and he's counting on IT to back him. Interview by Kanika Goswami
EVENT REPORT 184 I Trading-off a Bank A recap of the CIO 100 Awards 2008 held in Jaipur.
In retail, the number of stores you own separates the boys from the men. But how fast Shoppers Stop could open a store was partially dictated by its storage needs — until IT changed that. Feature by Gunjan Trivedi
162 I Loud & Clear With operations spread across the globe and 14,000 staffers, communication at i-flex was a nightmare. Until IT helped the company turn the tide in its favor. Feature by Gunjan Trivedi
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174 I Innovation Keeps Them Smiling
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(cont.) departments
158 Trendlines | 7 Project Management | Six Skills That Make a
Project Manager IT Budget | To Data Security, With Love Internet | Firefox 3 Breaks Records, Then Itself IT Management | Firing IT Workers Can Backfire Security | Weak Passwords, Strong Defense Study | Asian Companies Prone to Disaster
From the Editor | 2 To Dream Upon a Star
By Pankaj Mishra
CIO 100 Index | 202 Find your CIO 100 winner by name or by company.
For more opinions, features, analyses and updates, log on to our companion website and discover content designed to help you and your organization deploy IT strategically. Go to www.cio.in
c o.in
Think Tank Taking on Change | 10 BPR might be business-driven, but with IT's power to innovate, CIOs need to understand that IT can help smoothen the process of transformation.
Column by Cheryl Currid
Peer-To-Peer Restructuring Your Role | 12 By being bold and moving out of their traditional role of managing technology, CIOs can pave the way for better business. Column by Carsten Larsen
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Skills That Make a Project Manager no direct influence and who can make or break a project. 4. They're good communicators. Successful project managers effectively use e-mail, meetings and status reports to communicate their ideas, make decisions and resolve problems. 5. They're pragmatic. "[Bad managers] analyze things to death before they move ahead," she notes, which slows progress on a project. Good project managers focus on getting work done with the resources available to them. 6. They're empathetic. "Project managers rely on others to be successful," says Kondo. They need to learn stakeholders' concerns about a project, take those concerns seriously and address them.
MANAGEMENT The best project managers are those who consistently deliver, on time and within budget. These project managers understand that leadership and people skills are more important to good project management than a sound methodology and project tracking tools, says Fumi Kondo, managing director of Intellilink.
Kondo's firm analyzed the skill sets of its own best project managers and those of its clients and came up with the following six attributes: 1. They possess the gift of foresight. Good project managers are able to anticipate and head off problems that can jeopardize deadlines, budgets and user acceptance. 2. They're organized. "In most projects, there are so many things that have to get done that it's hard to stay on top of everything and in control of everything," says Kondo. "Being able to prioritize work for your team is a critical aspect of what a project manager has to do." 3. They know how to lead. Project managers have to interact with and influence their project teams and project sponsors. Since many project team members don't report directly to the project manager, he has to find ways to motivate workers over whom they have
—By Meridith Levinson
To Data Security, With Love I T B U D G E T IT security budgets are on the rise, reflecting growing concern over data breaches and increasing CEO involvement in the task of protecting sensitive data, Forrester Research analysts say. Ten percent of IT operating budgets is devoted to security in 2008, an increase from 8 percent last year, a Forrester study revealed. In a survey of 1,255 security decision-makers at North American companies, 21 percent expect to increase IT security spending in 2009, compared with 6 percent who expect security spending to decrease. Those are impressive numbers in this slowdown, analyst Khalid Kark said in a keynote during Forrester's Security Forum. "I remember when the security budget was less than 4 percent of the IT budget," Kark said. "This number is amazing. In this tough economic time, three out of four of us are saying we're going to keep this 10 percent budget and one in five of us are saying we're going to increase this budget in the next 12 months. Wow, that's great."
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If there is a downside for security-minded IT professionals, it's that more money brings greater scrutiny. More red tape is needed to justify purchases of even relatively minor security products, Kark said. An organization-wide focus on security also brings higher, and sometimes conflicting expectations from the various departments in a business. But IT security pros are enjoying greater influence with business executives. Security has been the top priority for CIOs in Forrester surveys for four straight years, and 30 percent of security decision-makers surveyed report having a "dottedline relationship" with the board or CEO. "We've all been frustrated in making the case for information security, getting [the business executives] to buy in. But I think times have changed," Kark said. He attributes this change partly to data breaches and resulting media coverage and lawsuits that focus public scrutiny on information security. —By Jon Brodkin
BREAKS RECORDS THEN ITSELF Mozilla's Firefox 3 set a new record for browser downloads in a single day: more than 8 million copies in just 24 hours. So it's no surprise that these days hackers are spending more time hunting for Firefox holes. Mozilla issued updates to patch two security holes in both Firefox 2 and 3. The first fix blocks a malicious attack program from crashing Firefox by sending more pipe (the vertical line, or '|') characters than the browser can handle. The second vulnerability involves a similar overflow attack risk. Neither bug has spawned real, in-the-wild attacks as yet; but with both unfixed, visiting a poisoned Web page could leave your PC infested with malware. Firefox isn't the only browser in patching mode this month: Opera 9.51 corrects a security glitch rated 'moderately severe' in the just-released 9.5 version. Opera has declined to disclose any details about the flaw, so as not to tip off hackers; thankfully, the patch predates real attacks. Version 9.51 also fixes several stability issues and a bug that could let a bad guy read random portions of your PC's memory, possibly exposing sensitive information. Unlike the Firefox and Opera bugs, a Microsoft Word hole is under attack right now. As with many Office bugs, you'd have to open a poisoned Word document sent via e-mail or offered as a download to be hit. Microsoft is probing a different zero-day assault that takes advantage of a hole in the ActiveX control for the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access. The company says that it has seen limited, targeted attacks that trigger the flaw through Internet Explorer. Viewing a malicious Web page could leave your system completely compromised, and you're at risk if you have Access 2000, 2002, or 2003 installed, or if you downloaded the Snapshot Viewer for Microsoft Access on its own to read Access reports in IE. As with all zero-day vulnerabilities, no patch is yet available. Microsoft suggests a few largely unpalatable workarounds, which include disabling Active Scripting in IE, prompting before running Active Scripting, or editing the Windows Registry to disable just that particular ActiveX control (see the advisory for instructions). Be careful with the Registry workaround, as making a mistake in editing the Registry can hamper or even break Windows.
Firing IT Workers Can Backfire I T M A N A G E M E N T When IT employees are dismissed, watch out! A new survey by Cyber-Ark Software, a provider of identity management products, reports that theft of sensitive information by disgruntled former insiders is out of control. "Businesses watch out. You need to control the power within your companies. One of your biggest security threats exists behind your firewall. Survey results revealed that 88 percent of exiting employees will use their IT-know-how to take your company data with them, including privileged password lists that give them access to hundreds, even thousands of sensitive data files," said Adam Bosnian, vice president of products, strategy and sales at Cyber-Ark. And it's wise to remember that allowing your former employee to leave with dignity can save you some headaches down the road. "If laid off tomorrow, [they] would take valuable and sensitive company information with them. The target information includes the CEO's passwords, the customer database, R&D plans, financial reports, M&A plans, and most importantly the company's list of privileged passwords, Cyber-Ark said in a statement. "Only 12 percent revealed that they would plan to leave empty handed." The survey of 300 IT security professionals was conducted at Infosecurity 2008. The survey also found that a third of IT staff use their privileged rights and administrative passwords to snoop for confidential files, including personal and salary information, e-mails, and merger and acquisition plans. Still think your important files are secure?
—By Stuart J. Johnson
—By Shawna McAlearney 8
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Weak Passwords, Strong Defense alone is now an out-of-date security protocol. In fact, the Aberdeen study found 64 percent of organizations do not even require users to change their passwords, 45 percent allow standard dictionary terms, like 'password,' and 29 percent of organizations have no requirements for password length. The research found 88 percent of enterprise users have multiple work-related passwords, averaging between five and six. "That becomes a management problem for users because they have to remember them all and keep them separate," said Brink. He said more companies should be considering twofactor authentication processes that use software tokens, digital certificates or user biometrics as an additional layer of security. "We have daily incidents now with regard to people gaining unauthorized access to data," said Jackson Shaw, a senior director of product management with Quest Software. "With the recent, well-publicized incidents of network and identity theft, companies need to put security first and require more than just passwords for user authentication." TRENDLINES
S E C U R I T Y As a security manager, you know how easily passwords can be compromised — and you are doing all you can to add extra layers of security, right? If your answer is no, you're not alone. A new study finds most organizations are still relying primarily on passwords to protect important data. The research, titled 'Strong User Authentication,' was conducted by Aberdeen Group. Fifity two percent of organizations require only passwords for employees to access critical data, rather than augmenting passwords with stronger forms of authentication such as hardware tokens, digital certificates or riskbased scoring. The research firm polled nearly 150 organizations around the world, according to Derek Brink, vice president and research fellow for IT Security, Aberdeen Group. "The fact that passwords are so predominant is probably not a surprise," said Brink. "But a high percentage use only passwords and that is bad because people don't practice really good policy with passwords." Brink pointed to problems such as weak, short, word choices and poor policies in organizations as reasons why the password
—By Joan Goodchild
Asian Companies Prone to Disaster
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Thirty-one percent of APJ respondents reportedly feared DR testing would impact their customers, while around 20 percent admitted DR testing would affect sales and revenue. "Combine these two reasons and you'll find many people not wanting to do DR testing often," said Rajan. Human error was the top reason for DR test failures (33 percent of respondents cited this), followed by technology failure (30 percent), insufficient IT infrastructure (25 percent), an out of date plan (20 percent), and inappropriate processes (19 percent). "Human error can be countered by automation, while better planning and deploying the right technologies can lead to less technology failure," said Rajan. Hardware and software failure (40 percent), external computer threats (27 percent), power issues (22 percent), internal computer threats (21 percent), data leakage or loss (20 percent), were the
top reasons cited for companies' decisions to execute their DR plans. The study showed that only about 20 percent of APJ organizations could achieve full operations in a week, in the event of major trauma to the data center, while 36 percent would be able to resume basic operations within a day.
System failures are the bane of every organization, yet, how many companies actually have a feasible disaster recovery (DR) plan in place? Research shows that Asian organizations may not be equipped to get their datacenters up soon enough to prevent business loss, in the event of an emergency. According to the study commissioned by software provider Symantec, 92 percent of Asian businesses polled had tested their DR plans at least once since creation, but only 52 percent tested their plans either once a year, or less frequently. The study further stated that 30 percent of tests conducted had failed, which led Basant Rajan, chief technology officer, India, Symantec, to conclude that "nearly one in three Asian companies are ill-equipped to deal with disaster or attack. Asian businesses are not testing frequently enough to improve DR plans."
—By Melissa Chua
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Cheryl Currid
Think Tank
Taking on Change BPR might be business-driven, but with IT's power to innovate, CIOs need to understand that IT can help smoothen the process of transformation.
n an era when companies are growing at a blistering pace, there is a pressing need to redefine the rules of the game. Conducting business in a fiercely competitive and rapidly evolving environment is all about making and breaking rules, rather than following them. Transformation is in the DNA of successful companies. They are warming up to the fact that process remodeling is a key to growth. Such companies need to build an insatiable appetite for taking risks. They need to create business value that everyone wants but no one has attained. Spurred by the thought that radical reinventing of business processes can help them gain a competitive advantage, organizations are embracing business process reengineering (BPR). The success saga of several BPR projects (Wal-Mart, Hallmark cards and HP) marks the culmination of daring dreams that were realized by bold decisions.
Why BPR?
Il lustration by MM Shanit h
If you ask me, BPR is all about reinventing, rethinking, redesigning, redirecting and rebuilding. It touches five segmentsstrategy, processes, organization, technology and culture. BPR is an ongoing process critical to a company's success. Faced with a constantly changing business environment, companies are scurrying to grasp the potency of this trend — propelled by competition, globalization and need for speed. The most important reason for companies to launch BPR projects is to gain efficiency and productivity. Once this is achieved, they can boost organizational efficiency and streamline business and production processes. BPR helps companies optimizework flow and productivity. A well10
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Cheryl Currid
Think Tank
IT has to become an integral part of BPR initiatives to ensure organizational commitment.If it is not involved, business will remain oblivious of the challenges heading its way. executed business process redesign equips an organization to meet inevitable market challenges. Despite the fact that BPR is a business stream, IT can be a facilitating agent to it. As IT gets more closely aligned with core business units, IT-enabled BPR initiatives are a sure-fire way of achieving results. IT has the inherent capacity to innovate. If IT doesn't get involved in it, the transition will be a mess because IT knows where the data is. It has the brain power. Once IT realizes what's going wrong, it can find solutions and address the critical concerns. IT has to become an integral part of BPR initiatives to ensure a high level of organizational commitment. If IT does not get closely involved in BPR, business will remain oblivious of the challenges heading its way. When IT takes charge of BPR initiatives it enhances the department's value within the organization and brings it closer to business.
CIO's New Avatar Today, more and more companies across the globe are entrusting IT with the responsibility of spearheading BPR. A CIO, being the head of IT, is a strategic partner in the process of redesigning. Consequently, a CIO's role has assumed a greater significance. Gone are the days when CIOs were 'back office boys' and were only concerned with their department. Now they think strategically and leverage technology for fulfilling the company's goals and objectives. They are undertaking new responsibilities and effectively bridging the technologybusiness integration gap. Driving business transformation requires a change champion and the modern-day CIO is proving to be an effective change agent. He is no longer content playing the role of a service provider or a 'go to' guy who is reached only when a system needs immediate attention. In his new avatar, a CIO is supposed to foster IT-driven BPR initiatives and not just decrypt cutting-edge technologies. He can offer IT solutions to business and exploit the potential of emerging technologies for generating growth. These traits make a smart CIO stand out. If a CIO makes these astute moves, earn the trust of business executives and take charge of BPR, the results are encouraging to say the least. So, he has to be very instrumental in forging strong relations with top-line business leaders. Gaining their trust is the only way of finding that coveted position in corporate boardrooms. For this, he has to demonstrate that he is a methodology-driven person infused with the drive to make things happen. But all said and done, effectuating this process-oriented change is an onerous task.
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There are risks involved in adopting new technologies, risk that many organizations are reluctant to take. Companies are skeptical of change and want to traverse the growth path with deliberate steps. The more drastic the transformation, the greater is the risk. And BPR is a revolutionary process that defies old organizational structures, work flows, career paths and longestablished organizational cultures. The stakes are high. So there is a very strong resistance to the changes it entails.
Conquering Resistance to Change Getting started is the biggest challenge for many companies. The process is fraught with uncertainties and anxiety. Dispelling the apprehensions of people is difficult. One critical issue is overcoming resistance (from the workforce) to changes driven by technology. Here, a CIO has a huge task at hand. Conquering the aversion to change is the key issue that CIOs need to address. When a BPR project is launched, people think that they will lose their jobs. They harbor the fear of getting displaced and not being able to envision a definable career path for them. People are scared of hearing "your job doesn't exist anymore". A lot of people can't think beyond their jobs, but this needs to be overcome in the larger interest of the company. Conquering the 'it won't work' psychology is another key issue. At the same time, companies need to make sure that they don't scare people into sabotaging the project. It is particularly difficult to adapt to a new way of doing things because the traditional methods are entrenched in the organizational structure of the company. Adapting to a new organizational culture is difficult. Besides, BPR is a time consuming initiative. It requires a huge investment in terms of finances, efforts and energy. To dismantle all these barriers, a CIO should begin with devising a plan. His business insight and troubleshooting abilities play a key role in getting the project off the ground. He should employ a strong sense of direction and draw up workable plans and solutions. A CIO should be far-sighted enough to identify the roadblocks in the path of project implementation. He should get very organized and plan things strategically. He has to undertake the ticklish task of delicately balancing people, processes and tools for optimal decisions. And more importantly, the CIO has to convince his people that BPR is 'business as usual.' CIO As told to Sneha Jha Sneha Jha is correspondent. Send feedback on this column to firstname.lastname@example.com
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Carsten Larsen
Restructuring Your Role By being bold and moving out of their traditional role of managing technology, CIOs can pave the way for better business.
Il lustration by un n ik rishn an AV
e live in a changing world and we need leaders who believe in change. The way CIOs position themselves needs to change because a CIO can make a difference and be an effective leader. Having been a CIO for many years, I know that it is often difficult to move out of the traditional role of managing technology. However, we must realize that we have to be more than just technology managers, we have to be business managers and business leaders. Althgouh some CIOs are very happy being in charge of IT, most would like to move beyond that role and put themselves in a position where they can actually be involved in the business in a much larger way. CIOs have reached the level of chief because they have leadership qualities and they can put this quality to use in other departments as well. But it depends on them: whether they can actually become a transformational CIO by taking on the bigger role of a strategist or remain a functional head in charge of IT. Companies are going to give the CIO greater scope if he can prove himself. It is all about proving to the company that he can be a functional head beyond IT and that he can run technology properly by meeting his KPIs. That way the CIO's role will be seen as a transformational one and the company will not hesitate to make him responsible for solving real business problems. Once the CIO proves himself, bigger opportunities will automatically come to him, where he could be responsible for actually managing business rather than just IT in business.
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Carsten Larsen
Leading from the Front The most important function of the CIO is to lead staff. He has to envision the goals of the company and then empower his staff to actually move towards that goal. He also has to ensure that the IT vision of the company stays alive when the going gets tough. When there is a client vision that you find difficult to achieve, it is your duty as a CIO to keep your staff motivated so that they can deliver. However, you need opportunities to deliver. If you are irresponsible in your attempt to be bold you are never going to get the opportunity to deliver. It is absolutely important to be rational. You need to plan what you are going to do. If you don't, you are never going to get to your goal. Being bold does not mean being irrational and irresponsible. It means being forceful because you see the future in what you are doing. It means having a grand vision and taking a calculated risk to implement that grand vision.
the site of the datacenter, we were reducing transmission losses and aimed to save Rs 60 lakh on power annually. I believe these days green IT is something we should all consider seriously. I made nine speeches on green IT last year. I hope the hype around green IT, which I call sustainable IT, delivers results. Sustainable IT actually brings benefits to business. It reduces your costs across the board. There is a price for carbon and if we reduce the cost of carbon, we reduce the cost of IT. Green IT not only reduces expenses but also shows the world how sustainable we are and what we are doing for the environment. Going back to my project, because it was environment friendly, it was easier to convince people about its advantages. But we ignored one aspect and we had to pay a heavy price for that. We did not communicate enough about the benefits of the project. The CIO has to ensure that all the key stakeholders understand the benefits of the project. One of the most important lessons I have learnt from the CEO of
One of the key lessons I have learnt as a CIO is that a small company can take on the big guys if only you dare to be bold. So, be bold and make a difference — not just for yourself but for your organization, too. All grand visions and good ideas do not see the light of day because these ideas and visions are not presented as good business cases. The CIO has to leverage his own strength in terms of his own team and his own company. He has to figure out how he can make a business out of IT by using it to make business smarter or earn it more profits. There's no way that the management is going to be convinced of a project if the CIO says it's a good idea. He has to be able to put forward a business case which will justify the investment. The management has to be convinced of returns from the project. At the end of the day, companies are out to make money and that aspect has to be looked into by the CIO. There are many good ideas but the ones that get approved are the ones which are convincing in terms of returns.
Getting to a 'Yes' The Canberra Technology City, which is the most challenging, bold and ambitious project of my career, got approved because I could present a good business case. It is a Rs 12,000 crore gas-powered datacenter project. It was a challenge to convince the board of the project and find investors willing to spend that amount, apart from finding customers for the datacenters. However, I convinced them that it was going to get them business returns and it was environment-friendly. By manufacturing power at
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the company I have worked for during the last nine years, is that we have a social responsibility and we can prosper only if the community we live in prospers. With this philosophy in mind, we managed to deliver profits year after year. As the bold CIO tries to make an impact, he has to keep certain things in mind. You have to have respect from your managers, like the CFO and the COO. If you do not have respect then you cannot succeed. To get that respect you have to go back to the fundamentals. If you are a new CIO start with something small, start with something that you know you can manage so that you are on time and on budget. This will help you build trust and respect. After this, you can move on to bigger projects. That way you will no longer have to sell your projects on your own, you will have the backing of other departments to sell your projects. One of the key lessons I learnt as a CIO is that a small company can take on the big guys if only you dare to be bold. So, be bold and make a difference, not just for yourself but for your organization too. CIO
As told to Saurabh Gupta Saurabh Gupta is correspondent. Send feedback on this column to email@example.com.
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Prof. N. Ravichandran
Staying Ahead With Strategy Devising a competitive strategy might sound complex, but with creativity and innovation, CIOs can simplify the process and help their business grow.
Illust ration by pc an oop
ift a book on strategy by Philip Kotler to your CEO and keep inquiring how many pages he has read. I am sure his expressions will say it all. This is how strategy is perceived: complex and cagey. Well, the basic need for a competitive strategy is to enhance the stakeholder's value in the business and boost resource productivity. Competitive strategies are very generic in nature, where competence and capability are its inherent dimensions. The roles of all those who are involved in strategy-making, right from the one who drives or engineers or enables it are equally vital. And you cannot forget their contribution. The co-creators of wealth have to be rewarded adequately for their involvement. There is no escape from giving them their well-deserved share of incentive. You just cannot please them with monthly compensation but have to be more generous in appreciating their value addition. Creativity and innovation again remain influential factors for any competitive strategy. Sometimes, things have to be seen in a new light. You have to continuously review your own perception. For instance, doing business smartly need not necessarily mean doing dirty work. We have to do away with the negative connotations attached to doing business 'smartly'. An ideal case in point would be that of low budget airlines. Maintaining a commercial staff is expensive but their need is inevitable. They have smartly outsourced their entire commercial staff. This is indeed an astute move to cut down the expense in the business interest and at the same time adhering to ethical business practices. 14
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Prof. N. Ravichandran
Plan for Results While maintaining ethical practices, it is also critical for a business to the cost of the value chain and the price of the product. Also, without being specific to any vertical, cost leadership has to be a key component for devising a strategy with an aim to achieve total productivity. The great Indian Postal Service (IPS) is a classic example of efficient process and differentiation of the same. Any parcel or mail you send via the IPS will surely reach its destination on, say, the seventh day. But try and trace it in transition and you will be clueless. Now a private courier service, on the other hand, will enable you to track your mail but you are still unsure of when it will reach its destination — despite the use of the best technology. In fact, it will give you some fancy ID to play on its system to track your parcel but will not commit on when it will reach you. It's essential to deliver outputs and not just refine the process. But again, it is obviously indispensable to be focused on the framework of the strategy. Strategic positioning of the product cannot be overlooked. A popular chain of coffee shops, Café Coffee Day, clearly states — 'a lot can happen over coffee.' It is consolidating its image by a simple, yet powerful tag line. Your strategy should be able to assure longterm growth. There has to be perpetuity to the strategy design. When you talk about strategies that can be replicated, I have a case in point: the famous cookie brand of Mrs. Field Cookies. These cookies are available everywhere in the world but taste the same no matter where you eat them. What I'm trying to demonstrate is that business models have to be necessarily replicable — and not just scalable.
federation of organizations that would impact the overall business culture. We all know that products have stopped selling, so it is time to sell services. A very tongue-in-cheek remark, but I am sure you would agree. Experimental solutions would command significant weight in the overall business strategy. This again, emphasizes on being creative and innovative. When mergers and acquisitions are making headlines every other day, consolidation of the markets will be soon the order of the day. The current number of mergers and acquisitions are only the tip of the iceberg. But with all these factors, technology would continue to dominate and processes would rule the roost.
Knowing When to Back a Technology Adoption of the latest technology trend is the key. One has to keep up with the pace of technology use in the external environment. You simply cannot work with bar codes when the rest of the world has moved to RFIDs. IT will have to be
Experimental solutions would command significant weight in the overall business strategy. This emphasizes on being creative and innovative.
Made to Order Well, the latest trick in town is mass customization. Asian Paints was quick to understand the psyche of the customer and accordingly provided them with a customized color palette, which is a classic example of adapting to mass customization. It became an instant hit and definitely gave some sleepless nights to its competitors. Envisaging multiple factors that would govern the competitive edge of business, some existing standards anticipate addition of few new pointers. Price-performance relationship has always been critical to any business. And it will continue to be so. Mass customization, as said earlier, will continue to make a difference and give an edge to your organization in your domain for sure. With globalization now settling down, it is wise to leverage global resources to minimize the cost. In the near future, it would be the 16
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leveraged to the fullest, given the socio-political, economic and technological environment. CIOs will have to ensure that the managerial support available will help develop certain maturity level in the business process. In course of time, new systems will be replaced by old and that would obviously involve hardware and software translating into a lot of investment and training. But when the business challenges are critical, relative emphasis on the IT department is bound to change. IT applications need to provide tangible and non-tangible benefits such as cost benefit analysis, trust, credibility, etcetera. The applications should collectively strengthen the competitive position in business parameters of cost containment, aggressive sales, integration of information and so on. But at the end of the day, the emphasis has to be on making things simpler. For a CIO, it is challenging to stay away from the complexity of the technology. Complex technology has to be leveraged to simplify business processes. And that is the mantra of strategy for a CIO. CIO
Based on excerpts from the presentation made by Prof. Ravichandran at CIO 100 Awards, 2008. Send feedback on this column to email@example.com.
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eing bold is about taking risks; without risk, there can be no reward. There is an element of boldness in the manner in which this year's CIO 100 winners have leveraged technology and redefined the scope of what IT can deliver for their businesses. The following profiles of our winners demonstrate the risks they took and the rewards they reaped for their businesses. Apart from dealing with complex change management issues and making their IT organizations sustainable profit centers, these IT leaders have also aligned technology with business by using IT boldly. The leaders we feature this year have used technology, both new and old, to help their companies enter new markets, generate revenue and reduce operating costs — apart from empowering their business with the ability to listen to their customers more effectively. CIO
Index Page 20 — 147 i The Winners Page 149 — 168 i case studies Page 170 — 182 i view from the top Page 184 — 201 i event report
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T. Jaganathan Ajuba Solutions India Director-Technology
PhotoS by S RIVatSa ShaNDIlya, D R lo hIa SURESh, bhaSk aR MallICk, MI lIND
On One Platform Ajuba Solutions India wanted to centralize its datacenter infrastructure across three processing sites. But before it could do that, it needed to implement a high-speed and highly-reliable metro ethernet mesh for the sites. And it also wanted automatic data replication to an alternate site for fail-over. The biggest challenge to the project was gaining acceptance from end-users. This was addressed by properly communicating the benefits to all the stakeholders. "The project was primarily handled by the IT department with limited involvement from 20
SNAPSHOT PRESIDENT: Devendra Saharia EmPLOyEES: 1,500 IT STAff: 40 PROjECT: Datacenter Centralization COST: Rs 30 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: September 2007 – June 2008
the operations team for pilot tests, migration, and so on. Complete planning, execution and project management was handled by IT department," says T. Jaganathan, director-technology, Ajuba Solutions. The project facilitated operations. It has given a lot of flexibility for the operations to optimally use the production seats across the locations and also plan resources for new projects. The initiative has led to a reduction of tech manpower by reducing the requirement for data backup and restoration from multiple sites. It has resulted in a reduction of production downtime. This is expected to give minimum of 3,000 production hours per annum. CIO
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Rx for BI Allergan wanted to build on various transactionallevel data sources and facilitate diverse analytics and scenario analysis. The company's transactional level systems (covering areas like financials, inventory, sales, etcetera) were based on ERP and other solutions. While these systems catered to MIS needs, it had limitations. So, the company chose a BI solution: reusable business intelligent components (RUBIC). This is an enterprise data warehouse catering to sales and distribution, finance, marketing and market intelligence. But there were challenges. "Since the solution exposed the inefficiencies of individual business units, it required a lot of maturity among users. Over time, people opened to giving and taking feedback in the interest of running a highquality business operation," says K.T. Rajan, directoroperations, IS & projects, Allergan India. Once in place, Allergan reaped significant benefits. Their forecast accuracy improved and employees got quick access to data. This helped them manage their business more efficiently. Post the implementation, processes have been simplified and data is consolidated automatically. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Raghu kumar R. EmPLOyEES 260
K. T. Rajan Allergan India
Director-Operations, IS & Projects
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IT STAff: 3 PROjECT NAmE: RUbIC
Cementing Organizational Ties Ambuja Cements embarked on an ERP implementation project called Connect IndiaPlus. The project links over 250 locations with central servers in Navi Mumbai. It also unifies over eight distributed legacy systems. The infrastructure was a challenge as the cement plants and warehouses were located in far-flung areas. To fix this problem, a reliable network with adequate bandwidth was implemented in record time. The functional processes also varied across the organization. "It was an arduous task to attempt a very large-scale integration of eight different legacy systems to a uniform system in just thirteen months,� says Bihag Lalaji, vice president-IT. To get everyone onboard, the organization decided to impart training to the users. They set up eight training centers across the country and trained over 2,500 employees. The project standardized various business processes and now everyone follows a uniform way of working across the organization. It led to the formation of a world-class system with data at the fingertips. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: a.l. kapur REvENuE: Rs 6,470 crore EmPLOyEES: 3,500 IT STAff: 79 PROjECT: Connect IndiaPlus gO-LIvE DATE: august 2008
Bihag Lalaji Ambuja Cements Vice President-IT
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A New Shade of IT With over 20,000 retailers serviced by 550 field sales officers, Asian Paints needed a solution that could address the information needs of their field officers. To keep the Asian Paints sales machinery humming, field sales officers needed to manage relationships with retailers across the network. But to do this, they needed data, for which, they had to drop by an Asian Paints sales office — a waste of time, given India's vast geography. At stake was the organization's ability to react to changes in the market quickly. Hence, the primary objective of Project M-Power was to improve effectiveness of the sales force that would in turn help them serve their customers better. The project enhanced the company's ability
SNAPSHOT ExECuTIvE CHAIRmAN: ashwin Choksi REvENuE: Rs 4,404 crore EmPLOyEES: 3,900 IT STAff: 51 PROjECT NAmE: Project M-Power COST: Rs 1.5 crore gO LIvE DATE: october 2007
to capture and track the status of their dealers' issues. But more importantly, it has improved the quality of dealer interaction due to availability of the most up-to-date information and has also enhanced the sales force's credibility with dealers. The execution of the project, however, was not trouble free. Validation of the concept was a long drawn out affair with live testing at the concept stage. A live pilot was conducted with limited functionality prior to solution design. "The biggest contribution was the IT team's drive to increase utilization of the solution by providing support to the field sales officers in resolving any issues," says Manish Choksi, Chief Corporate Strategy & CIO, Asian Paints. CIO
Manish Choksi Asian Paints
Chief Corporate Strategy & CIO
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Mahesh Kumar Pinnamaneni Aurobindo Pharma Chief Information Officer
Breaking Communication Barriers Innovation needs a platform and Aurobindo Pharma realized that unified communication (UC) fits their needs, as it would help the company meet the needs of a rapidly evolving business and help it walk away from the quicksand of its legacy set up. But before the project got under way, Aurobindo Pharma had to ensure that their end users were fluent in the technology. A series of online training programs provided a satisfactory resolution to that problem. 24
SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: k. Nityananda Reddy EmPLOyEES: <5,000 IT STAff: <30 PROjECT: Unified Communications
"A project team headed by the CIO was involved at each stage including solution design, implementation, migration and roll out," says Mahesh Kumar Pinnamaneni, CIO, Aurobindo Pharma. Post-implementation a single unified messaging, communication and collaboration system now offers integrated communication capabilities, providing employees 'anytime anywhere' access to e-mails, bridging the communication gap that existed for more than ten years. CIO
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Profit on the Fly Bangalore International airport wanted to improve IT operations by extending tools for management and productivity. With this end in view, it deployed an initiative called GO Live at the airport. Project viability was a major concern. Coping with change was another. But what could have grounded the project was top management. "There was a need for upfront investment in technology and to convince the management that 'sunk cost' returns would come over five years was a huge challenge," says S.Francis Rajan, HeadICT, BIAL. But once the IT team came to grips with the challenges, the project was implemented smoothly. By deploying central IT infrastructure and services, the airport has removed all pain areas for the customer. "As head-ICT, it was my responsibility to look at the total solution and to seek any change control to align with business needs," says Rajan. Today, all airlines operating out of BIAL use enterprise class technology, which would have been impossible for many to deploy on their own. CIO SNAPSHOT CHIEf OPERATINg OffICER: Marcel hungerbuehler EmPLOyEES: 550 IT STAff: 70
S.Francis Rajan Bangalore International Airport
Head Information & Communication Technology
PROjECT: Go live COST: Rs 605 crore gO LIvE DATE: 24th May 2008
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Banking on the Web Bank of India wanted to lend a competitive edge to its business. And success came in the form of an online banking service on Web 2.0 platform. "Our bank has been looking at the Web as a channel to increase business for retail and corporate customers. It is rapidly emerging as the most strategic channel to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability,� says P.A. Kalyanasundar, General Manager, Bank of India. But innovation comes with a price. One of the challenges the bank faced was ensuring authorized access. But Kalyanasundar, realized that the level of protection should be commensurate to the level of information services. Thanks to the initiative, the bank is able to provide a rich, dynamic, responsive, Web user interface to its online banking services. It has also helped the bank provide an array of hi-tech, secured online banking services to its customers. The system has benefited the Bank of India by widening its customer base. The customers are benefited with a fast, easy, transparent and hassle-free way to perform their transactions. CIO SNAPSHOT mD & CHAIRmAN: t. S. Narayanasami OPERATINg PROfIT: Rs 3,701 crore EmPLOyEES: 40,616 IT STAff: <600
P. A. Kalyanasundar Bank of India General Manager
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PROjECT: online banking Services on a Web 2.0 Platform gO LIvE DATE: February 2008
Inflammable Growth
With an increase in air traffic, the business of aviation fuelling has also grown. And one of India's most formidable petroleum companies BPCL — which caters to at least 21 airports — wanted to be a preferred supplier. An aviation fuel management system was a compelling solution, but it cost plenty. "In a competitive environment, when margins are being impacted, we had to opt for an indigenously developed solution that competes in functionality with foreign solutions but brought enormous saving to the corporation," says Srikant P. Gathoo, executive director-IIS, Bharat Petroleum. Going it on their own was not easy. The biggest challenge
CHAIRmAN & mD: ashok Sinha REvENuE: Rs 1,12,410 crore EmPLOyEES: 14,000 IT STAff: 200 PROjECT: aviation Fuel Management System COST: Rs 2.5 crore
was to get accurate results from the signal converter. There were doubts if the output of the signal converter would match with the volume shown on the mechanical counter. In the initial round of prototype testing there was variation of about 0.1 percent, which was not acceptable to the business. Worse, the variation was never constant — every test would show a different result. The signal converter was redesigned and complex algorithms were written to make it accurate. With a little over six months, BPCL not only implemented the solution, but did such a good job that it also sold the solution to prospective users both in Indian and international markets. CIO
Srikant P. Gathoo Bharat Petroleum Executive Director-IIS
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With Full Talk-Time Bharti Airtel's innovative IT initiative BSS (business support system) stack is a single sign-on integrated suite to support endto-end customer service from cradle-to-grave. The organization had an eye on a host of key benefits. It would reduce time to market. It would also lead to seamless customer communication since it is equipped with all selfservice interfaces. Scalable order management would help manage its growing customer base. But, it was hard work all the way. Various crossfunctional teams had been formed. The company had more or less developed a virtual nexus with a single agenda to seamlessly rollout the project for its mobility operations. The project has streamlined several business functions and processes. "It has enhanced our capability for generating a single converged customer view from the perspective of products and services offered," says Jai Menon, director-CS & IT, Bharti Airtel. CiO SNAPSHOT PreSideNT & CeO: Manoj Kohli reveNue: Rs 27,025 crore emPlOyeeS: 25,543 iT STAff: 190 PrOjeCT: Business support system (BSS) COST: Rs 840 crore
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Dr. Jai Menon Bharti Airtel
Director, Customer Service & IT
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Managing Growth Bilcare, a pharma packaging research and solutions company, wanted to identify opportunities for cost savings and revenue enhancement. The chief objectives behind the conception of project Bhaskar were process enabling, standardizing and operations reporting across two legal entities and two manufacturing plants in India and Singapore. They also wanted a platform to manage business growth and create enterprise-wide competitive advantage in the company.
SNAPSHOT CHAirmAN & md: Mohan Bhandari reveNue: rS 670 crore emPlOyeeS: 350 iT STAff: 14 PrOjeCT: Bhaskar COST: Rs 4 crore
And that's where the project fit in. The program design was based on planned business objectives in a defined timeframe to meet expectations across all user categories up to CMD, COO and other business heads. The project helped Bilcare establish sales forecast and sales orders driven financial budgeting, production planning, manufacturing, sourcing, order fulfillment and collections tracking. "Bilcare is on its journey to replicate the Bhaskar program in its supplies & services operations in US, UK & India. This is expected to payback in two years of time after go-live," says Manoj Arora, Global CIO, Bilcare. CiO
Manoj Arora Bilcare
Global Chief Information Officer
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Politically Correct From being the first political party in the country on the Web, to using the best of OpenSource Software, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has always been a step ahead of the rest. The party came up with one more project — BTX. It is an IP-based unified communication system that has been created using Opensource tools. The party has installed video-telephony that would enable, say, BJP President Rajnath Singh to just pick up his phone and talk to the party's chief ministers. But the project was not received with open arms. Most politicians were wary of using technology. Convincing them that it was a much simpler way of communicating with their leaders was quite a challenge. Once they addressed the critical issues the project was executed. "The value of getting to speak to one's leaders faceto-face is immeasurable. While we cannot figure out the financial productivity, the emotional productivity has been immense," says Prodyut Bora, National Convenor-IT Cell, BJP. For a tech-savvy party, with its BTX project, BJP has crossed one milestone after another — setting the pace for innovation. CiO SNAPSHOT PArTy CAdre: 4 million NATiONAl PreSideNT: Rajnath Singh PrOjeCT NAme: BTX GO live dATe: May 2008
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Prodyut Bora BJP
National Convener-IT Cell
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They've Got the Power
The traditional method of meter reading, left BSES wanting for more because the procedure was error prone and open to manipulation. It was also time consuming and manpower-heavy. The company decided to implement AMR (automated meter reading) technology to remotely collect energy consumption data from meters. Now all processes from meter reading to billing are automated. An implementation on this scale was a first in India and proved to be a monumental task. Connectivity at remote locations and signal strength of service provider was a major issue.
CeO: Arun Kanchan reveNue: Rs 5,626 crore emPlOyeeS: 12,127 iT STAff: 177 PrOjeCT NAme: AMR COST: Rs 22 crore
"It is one of the largest deployments in India. Connectivity across a vast geographical stretch for its streamlined operation also makes it very unique," says K. B. Singh, head-IT, BSES Power. The project influenced business, customer care, technical operations and regulatory compliance. It enabled faster, efficient and reliable meter reading. Collection efficiency improved by five to 10 percent translating to Rs 4-6 crore a month. The system reduced the amount of power theft by four percent, equivalent to Rs 1-3 crore every month. CiO
K. B. Singh BSES Power Head-IT
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Harcharan Singh CARE India Director-IT
IT Cares for You CARE India, an NGO, was grappling with the intricacies of preparing budgets on MS Excel. The bottlenecks of an Excel based system were hampering their productivity. The enormous database became a proprietary document for just a few individuals who manage the budget and everybody else depended on them. The company realized the need to develop an automated solution, which could simplify and de-mystify the entire process. The solution emerged in the form of EndPoint — a budget management system designed to assist various stakeholders in the organization. 34
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SNAPSHOT COuNTry direCTOr: Elizabeth Sime emPlOyeeS: 500 iT STAff: 10 PrOjeCT NAme: EndPoint COST: < Rs 5 lakh GO live dATe: May 2007
Providing a solution to replace staggered MS Excel files and changing the existing established user habits was difficult. The team tackled this by dividing the business processes into logical and intuitive steps and then discussing each step with stakeholders separately in one-on-one sessions. EndPoint has checked confusion and inconsistencies."In the first year of its implementation alone, the solution has saved 15-20 days of precious time and effort to finalize and submit budgets to its headquarters at Atlanta," says Harcharan Singh, director-IT CARE India. CiO
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Pulling Meters Down Customer satisfaction is the key to competitive advantage. Realizing that a satisfied customer is the biggest business reward, Carzonrent India, a car rental company, decided to deploy an initiative to boost its customer service. Carzonrent implemented a taxi dispatch system for its radio taxi business. This GPRS based system provides two way communication between cabs and the contact center. With the taxi dispatch system, Carzonrent was using a technology which no one had ever tried or tested in India. The project entailed a huge risk. "GPRS connectivity was poor and our mobile data terminal stopped polling. Sometimes we could not locate some of our cars as they were not reflecting on our map and there was no data available," says Rajesh Munjal, head – IT, Carzonrent India. However, the project brought susbstantial business benefits to the company. Carzonrent India is now the number one radio taxi company in India and it operates more than 500 vehicles in Delhi NCR and 1,500 all over the country. CiO SNAPSHOT CeO: Rajiv K. Vij reveNue: Rs 100 crore emPlOyeeS: <430 iT STAff: 20
Rajesh Munjal Carzonrent India
Head - Information Technology
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PrOjeCT NAme: Taxi Dispatch System COST: Rs 2 crore
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Train to Innovation The Crew Management System (CMS) supports booking of freight, coaching and shunting crew of the Indian Railways, which is among the largest rail networks of the world. Th e CMS solution automates their day-to-day business functionalities for better crew management by providing information and fostering duty allocations for 35,000 crew members. It uses 350 kiosks that are driven by bio-metrics. The system also provides a status-wise record of the crew. It has been developed to bring in transparency and accuracy of information. But the adoption of this technology was not bereft of challenges. Meeting the continuously changing user requirements and making users comfortable with the IT solution, readily, was not easy. In spite of that, the company reaped significant business benefits. The CMS enabled its users to have instant access to information regarding the current status of crew at all times and also helped them maintain inventory. "CMS users have been provided with instant access to the central database not only through the web but also through SMS,� says Deepak Ganju, GM, CRIS. CiO SNAPSHOT emPlOyeeS: 786 iT STAff: < 500
Deepak Ganju Center for Railways Information Systems General Manager
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PrOjeCT: Crew Management System (CMS) COST: Rs 15 crore
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At Your Own Risk
It is always prudent to embark on an important project after having done a full scale assessment of the risks involved in it. Realizing the judiciousness of this idea, Cognizant undertook an initiative in July 2007 — project risk assessment. The project was aimed at identifying and mitigating critical risk domains for client projects. It identifies the risk values for each domain and also captures the impact value of the risks on individual projects. A team led by Satish Kumar Das, CSO, Cognizant Technology Solutions, designed a questionnaire to capture the risk domains. The questionnaire was then
PreSideNT & CeO: Francisco D'Souza reveNue: Rs 8,560 crore emPlOyeeS: 58,000 PrOjeCT: Risk Assessment COST: Rs 10 lakh GO live dATe: october 2007
migrated to the corporate security portal. Based on the risk score and impact value, the applications provide a 'project risk score.' This can be evaluated across benchmarks set by different projects. Coordinating the entire implementation process was a challenge. Active participation from different vertical heads, towards triggering this project within their verticals helped the company address the issue. "We are better able to manage our risks of project delivery. It has helped in standardizing our processes. It also helped us track the progress of improvements made to mitigate identified risks," says Das. CiO
Satish Kumar Das Cognizant Technology Solutions Chief Security Officer
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Arvind Saxena Consilium Software Group CIO & CTO
Homework Works The luxury of working from home is a concept alien to most companies in the sub-continent. But Consilium Software changed it all. The company initiated an ingenious project called work from home — alternate workplace (AW) Initiative. Since the job involved 24/7 availability of the Net and maximum time on the phone, Arvind Saxena, CIO & CTO, Consilium Software decided 40
SNAPSHOT CEO & FOuNDER: Pramod Ratwani EmPLOyEES: 25 IT STAFF: 15 PROjECT: Alternate Workplace Initiative
to let his staff work from home. But he also had to keep operating costs low and remain competitive. Getting more productive hours from employees specially the senior management was another concern. But the company addressed these issues successfully. "The project reduced capex and opex of upto 50 percent on real estate and allied expenditures like security deposits, electricity, air conditioning etcetera," says Saxena. CIO
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All Sold-out Sales and marketing organizations a l w ay s combat multiple challenges of expanding customer base, enhancing customer and reseller relations and generating additional revenues, among other things. e4e solutions came up with an innovative sales generation program. The initiative addresses sales pressures and helps companies gain a competitive edge. The project involved an entire supply chain of shipping media backing, and then recovering the hard drive data. But the deployment of the solution was not free of complications. The company's clients had some critical concerns which had to be addressed before the project was executed. It had to increase awareness of new initiatives and expand market reach and sales. e4e did a current state assessment of the client's sales and marketing support operations. This helped them get a good understanding of their call volumes and costs. "The project has improved business processes and enhanced efficiency through the sales cycle, resulting in revenues of 25-30 percent for a leading client," says Dr. Sridhar Mitta, MD, CTO & founder, e4e Business Solutions. CIO
SNAPSHOT PRESIDENT & CEO: Somshankar Das EmPLOyEES: 1,603
Dr. Sridhar Mitta e4e Business Solutions
Managing Director, CTO & Founder
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IT STAFF: 40 PROjECT: Sales generation program
Transforming Business Electrosteel Castings is growing at an exponential rate. Its geographical spread has crossed the country and has expanded its presence in Europe, South East Asia and the Middle East. And that's why synchronizing business operations across units was the key concern of the company. Electrosteel was already equipped with an ERP solution since 1996, catering to one manufacturing unit. Strengthening its supply chain further with the right mix of ERP and ensuring cycle of planning, manufacturing and servicing at the highest level of efficiency was the company's prime objective. This triggered project TransBiz. Handling differences in opinion over the integration across business processes was a major challenge. "There was a legacy hang over. People had problems adapting to the new system because they were more comfortable with the old one," says Saradindu Paul, GM-Corporate IT, Electrosteel Castings. But, there were more benefits than one. Planning has become easy and effective. Most importantly, there is transparency across business functions. The spirit of ownership has further improved. CIO SNAPSHOT REvENuE: Rs 1,200 crore EmPLOyEES: 1,500 IT STAFF: 20 PROjECT NAmE: TransBiz
Saradindu Paul Electrosteel Castings
General Manager-Corporate IT
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Fire In Its Belly At Emami, the first phase of ERP Implementation 'Project Udaan' was completed in June 2007 and user expectations were on an all time high. But the project was suffering from postimplementation problems. The IT team faced major challenges to make the company's ERP run successfully. The MRP, quality management and product costing were not live. Project FIRE was an initiative to address all post implementation issues and make ERP a single system for the entire organization. Emami organized module specific extensive training sessions on SAP usage for factories and
SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: S. K. Goenka REvENuE: Rs 640 crore EmPLOyEES: 1,200 IT STAFF: 20 PROjECT: FIRE (faster information retrieval from ERP) COST: Rs 2 crore
depots to improve the system and make it error free. Two application servers were added and dynamic load balancing was implemented using logon groups. But the deployment of the project was fraught with challenges. Change management was a key issue. Many workshops and training programs were conducted to increase user base. The project facilitated seamless integration of all business functions. It led to faster access to shared information. "All customization changes were done by Internal IT. The entire installation got completed in a record time of three months," says Vikram Saxena, senior general manager, Emami. CIO
Vikram Saxena Emami Sr. General Manager
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2 Tamal Chakravorty Ericsson India Chief Information Officer
IT Calling Field service management is the lifeline of any telecom operator. It is what keeps their service running and subscribers calling. To ensure that customers didn't have to wait, Ericsson's fault and repair department needed a system so that they stayed informed about problems on a reliable and speedy basis. Tamal Chakravorty, Chief Information Officer, Ericsson India, however, had one more challenge: he had to keep the system's price down. Given the price constraints, Chakravorty decided to use a ticketing system that worked on e-mail and hand-helds. Trusting e-mail was a bold move, "Please understand that one miss, if one e-mail Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Mats Granryd REvENuE: Rs 8,000 crore EmPLOyEES: 5,000 IT STAFF: 81 PROjECT: WFM COST: Rs 20 lakh
does not reach, if one handheld fails, it could cost thousands of subscribers in that locality," says Chakravorty. Chakravorty and his team needed to ensure that the system they were building had no chinks. "There was a need to build a fool-proof system which would ensure 99.95 percent uptime and work seamlessly," Chakravorty. He managed to complete the project under Rs 20 lakh and in 11 months. Thanks to his work, customer satisfaction ratings went up and the company saved between Rs 8 to Rs 10 lakh in the first year. CIO
Credit Risk Anibandha Mukhopadhyay, CTO and Sr. VP, Family Credit, wanted to upgrade CAS (credit approval sheet) to automate loan origination operations and approve loan applications. The upgrade of modules for key functions like credit was a task that would challenge his team. What made the task harder was the risk of not meeting deadline — a potential disaster for a financial institution. "The risk was with project timeline which could have been affected due to some unforeseen obstacles," he says. Since the project's goal was to reduce data entry time and improve the satisfaction levels of business and the end users, both sets of people would have to embrace the system — creating change management challenges. But post the implementation, data entry time was reduced by half. Certain business processes saw a positive change as the response time for any loan application was improved. CIO
SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: N.V. Swaminathan EmPLOyEES: 700 IT STAFF: 8 PROjECT: CAS Upgrade
Anibandha Mukhopadhyay Family Credit CTO and Sr. VP
COST: Rs 20 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: January to April 2008
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Keeping Tabs Although his existing systems worked fine, Amit Gupta, Vice President, Fidelity Business Services, could not afford to be complacent. Not in an industry where regulators are constantly on the prowl. Future-proofing the enterprise's data management infrastructure was the need of the hour. But it was not easy to convince management — especially because of the excellent job he had done with the existing systems. But, that was just the first hurdle. He also needed to integrate multiple solutions and platforms, while keeping the TCO under check and ensuring zero downtime. "This was a complex implementation and involved working on live technology components, which were critical to business," says Gupta. The efforts of the IT team, led by Gupta, started to reap benefits. The cost of data storage reduced by a whopping 40 percent, much to pleasure of the business. Other than increasing IT infrastructure efficiency by 25 percent, other intangible benefits included saving power and reducing e-waste. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Caron Mcdonald REvENuE: Rs 1,000 crore EmPLOyEES: 7,000 IT STAFF: 130 COST: Rs 600 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: February 2007 – May 2008
Amit Gupta Fidelity Business Services Vice President
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Shopping for Efficiency
Meheriar Patel, GM & Head IT, Globus Stores, had to implement a flexible and scalable IT infrastructure to replace its information systems. He had centralize up-to-date data in a database to enable quick decisionmaking. Integrating financial information to avoid re-processing and errors introduced by manual processes was another challenge. All this had to be done without increasing staff numbers. Reports derived from various systems were static. Although
REvENuE: Rs 200 crore EmPLOyEES: 800+ IT STAFF: 6 PROjECT PERIOD: 2007 — 2008
transaction systems were performing satisfactorily, transaction processing was not error free. This meant that plenty of time to convert reports into business information, leading to slow business response. Patel decided to deploy a solution tailored to his business. A common framework for document management and collaboration was built. The feedback mechanism developed with online response system helped communicate with the customer efficiently and also improved business. CIO
Meheriar Patel Globus Stores GM & Head IT
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Johny Paramian GMR Group Group CIO
Putting in the Pipes In an industry growing like infrastructure development, early entrants face plenty of pain. Addressing these, while bringing different business on a common technology platform, was a phenomenal exercise for Johny Paramian, Group CIO, GMR Group. He realized the need to move away from legacy applications because they were limited in scope. He also wanted a single app that covered all the businesses, with access controls. "A lack of access control, combined with different legacy systems across the group multiplied risks," recollects Paramian. Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
SNAPSHOT BuSINeSS CHAIrmAN: G.B.S. Raju reveNue: Rs 2,600 crore emPlOyeeS: 4,000 COST: Rs 1 crore PrOjeCT PerIOd: June 2007 — February 2008
The change entailed many firsts. It was the first time, for example, that the organization was to be integrated by an enterprise-wide application. There was also process standardization to be instituted across the group — but it needed to be done without compromising security controls. And, Paramian had to achieve all of this in a mere five months. Today, the business has seen a massive reduction in cycle time. The new platforms have enabled the organization to become leaner. Process efficiency improved, which gradually increased productivity. CIO reAl CIO WOrld | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 8
IT Power eNSUREIT was designed to introduce transparency and centralization to IT. The first hitch for P.V. Ramadas, V P -Te c h n o l o g y, HCL Technologies, BPO Services, was to explain that to IT. "The initial challenge was resistance to change, primarily from IT staff who were unable to understand their changed roles,� he says. The second challenge was to convince business that centralization would not hamper business but improve co-ordination resulting to efficient and smooth systems. Involving the stakeholders not only helped clear resistance but also improved the platform development. Considering that technology is the backbone for any BPO unit, this project has enabled the organization flexibility to run with minimum lead-time and improved timelines. It also resulted in better IT alignment with business as projects. Unscheduled downtime and risk was also reduced. Indirectly, it benefited employees by reducing their stress. Finally, technology is now process-driven, thus ensuring error-free processing. CIO SNAPSHOT PreSIdeNT & CeO: Ranjit Narasimhan, reveNue: Rs 668.16 crore emPlOyeeS: 12,174 PrOjeCT NAme: eNSUREIT
P.V. Ramadas HCL Technologies BPO Services VP-Technology
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COST: Rs 1.8 crore GO-Ive dATe: January 2007
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In Their Hands After successfully testing a pilot solution for his mobile workforce, Sunil Rawlani, CIO, HDFC Standard Life Insurance, decided to implement it across the organization's 14,000 employees and 500,000 financial c o n su l t a nt s . Obviously that was a lot harder than the pilot. People management was a key challenge. Another impediment was the non-availability of key resources at the right time. This lengthened the timeline of the project, recalls Rawlani. Apart from these issues, he faced technical challenges, too. The entire gamut of the company's data had to be integrated and made available on different platforms depending on the end-user need. But soon, he hit gold. Efficiency and transparency improved immediately after the implementation. And there was a sizeable amount of revenue addition with 100 percent saving on man-power costs for branch MIS generation. "The company is now contemplating the removal of physical attendance norms for the mobile workforce as this would improve productivity," he says. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAGING dIreCTOr: Raymond S. Noronha reveNue: Rs 4,859 crore emPlOyeeS: 17,000 IT STAff: 56 PrOjeCT COST: Rs 600 lakh PrOjeCT PerIOd: April 2007 – March 2008
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Sunil Rawlani HDFC Standard Life Insurance
Chief Information Officer
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Driving Green
Vijay Sethi, VP and CIO, Hero Honda Motors, wanted to green his IT infrastructure and he had the support of management. Not that this made Sethi's job any easier. He had the uphill task of building participation among stakeholders — the people would actually drive the green principle. The change management was challenging, he says but "it has helped the organization further fulfill our social obligations and do our bit to save environment."
mANAGING dIreCTOr: Pawan Munjal reveNue: Rs 10,500 crore emPlOyeeS: 2,000 PrOjeCT PerIOd: April 2007 — March 2008
It was not easy to bring in and convince users to change some processes they were used to. Replacing most of the IT hardware with energy-efficient devices was also hard. His team was a catalyst in the project and played a key role in initiating, executing and sustaining the project, he says. A new datacenter was constructed where every small detail was consciously designed to be ecofriendly. Their efforts paid off and the project will achieve ROI soon. CIO
Vijay Sethi Hero Honda Motors VP & CIO
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Satish Pendse Hindustan Construction Company Chief Information Officer
Where Eagles Dare As CIO of Hindustan Construction Company, Satish Pendse has to ensure that his projects located on the Indo-Pakistan border get protection from the nation's armed forces. It's also his job to ensure that all his farflung sites remain connected. At stake are significant financial losses, with every delay translating into millions down the drain. He decided what was needed was to improve the efficiency of the HCC's logistics. Given the business domain, it was a one-of-a-kind project and standard solutions were hard to find. In an age when even out-of-the-box solutions have their problems, Pendse realized that he was treading a 56
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SNAPSHOT mANAGING dIreCTOr: Ajit Gulabchand reveNue: Rs 3,000 crore emPlOyeeS: 3,000 IT STAff: 60 PrOjeCT: Improving logistics Efficiency COST: Rs 45 lakh
virtually non-existent road. "Getting a vendor with appropriate skills was a challenge. It amounted to some iterations in the process," recalls Pendse. But, with help from his stake holders, Pendse and his IT team achieved the mammoth task of monitoring the company's logistics even in the remotest parts of the country. The automated reports generated by the system gave decision-makers an accurate idea of the movements of goods. This drastically brought down dependency on people and avoided any manual errors in reporting. It not only resulted in profits but also more transparency. CIO
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Dealer Delight Nishi Vasudeva, Executive Director-Information Systems, Hindustan Petroleum, had the unusual task of developing and implementing a solution for her end-users. What was unusual was that the end users were not the employees of Hindustan Petroleum but the company's dealers. Buy-in from the dealers to change over to the new indent management system was the first challenge Worse, there weren't any off-the-shelf solution that suited the organization's needs, so an in-house solution was developed. After a few technical glitches, her IT team stabilized the software and made it adequately fault tolerant. Integrating the system with Hindustan Petroleum's ERP system was also a challenge. The biggest benefit was dealers delight since business processes became transparent and reliable. Another gain was the elimination of non-productive activities of planning officers and sales officers. It also brought down the time required to enter sales orders into the ERP system. This time saved translated straightway into substantial savings. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAGING dIreCTOr: Arun Balakrishnan reveNue: Rs 10,3837 crore emPlOyeeS: 11,300 IT STAff: 150
Nishi Vasudeva Hindustan Petroleum
Executive Director-Information Systems
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PrOjeCT: Indent Manag ement System GO-lIve dATe: June 2007
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Efficiency Discount In the f ast-growing retail industry, Veneeth Pur ushottaman, HeadTechnology, HyperCity, has to constantly deploy technology to smoothen its expansion. He wanted to make the store rollout process more efficient and productive. While setting up each new store, it's crucial to label the right products at the right place with right price and description. A lot of man hours were wasted in correcting wrongly placed labels, in the final, most tense hours just before a store was opened. Veneeth Purushottaman, Head-Technology, HyperCity Retail, used Intactix, a space planning tool in a novel way to create two-faced labels which helped resolve the problem. That one innovation helped reduce store rollout time by 15 percent. The real challenge was getting trained resources in a cost effective manner. At times, product licenses had to be borrowed from the group companies. Also, his team wasn't really trained, although that didn't stop them. "The team had not undergone any formal training on the product, they were supporting the business from what they learned from manuals, downloaded materials and self study." CIO SNAPSHOT mANAGING dIreCTOr: Andrew levermore reveNue: Rs 161 crore emPlOyeeS: 900 IT STAff: 8 COST: Rs 26 lakh
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Veneeth Purushottaman
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Changing Gears
M. Suresh, General Manager, Hyundai Motor, had to find a solution that would not only enable his senior management but his entire dealer network a complete consolidated sales report. He adapted industry best practices and delivered competitive services to top management. The biggest hurdle was to integrate the new system into the main sales module. The application had to be installed at far-flung and remote dealer sites which was also a big challenge. The online
CeO: H.S. lheem emPlOyeeS: 7,000 IT STAff: 80 PrOjeCT: Production Planning GO-lIve dATe: June 2008
integration was done using a state-of-the-art EAI method. The new tool has helped dealers and the company's sales team to slice and dice sales data, thereby speeding up the operations and eventually benefitting both the customer and the company. It helps dealers and the sales team track their performance in relation to their targets. It ensures smoother functioning between sales operations, enabling the generation of more online reports and reduce manual work. CIO
M. Suresh Hyundai Motor General Manager
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Pravir Vohra ICICI Bank
Group Chief Technology Officer
Green Credit Pravir Vohra, Group Chief Technology Officer, ICICI Bank, geared up to drive green IT initiative across his giant organization by using virtualization. It was a colossal effort given the size of his organization — but one driven by profit. "This initiative not only addresseses the question of being a responsible business but also leads to efficiency gains and associated cost savings." The road to green was not without headaches. High CPU and memory utilization led to frequent performance degradation, which was compounded Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: K.V. Kamath reveNue: Rs 4,000 crore eMPlOyeeS: 38,000 IT STAff: 800 PrOjeCT: Virtualization
by a choking network. Worse, they didn't have anyone to turn to for answers because, they were among the first to implement such a solution on this scale. In the end, the issue was resolved by using dynamic memory and CPU allocation to avoid creating performance chokes. As a result of the project, ICICI managed to cut flab, evolve lean processes and also benefit from building an environmentally-aware organization. And there were significant savings on the operational costs. CIO
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Partners All the Way U.C. Dubey, Executive VP-IT, IFFCO TOKIO General Insurance, needed a solution that could track all the movements of the company's business partners. With so many CRM packages available Dubey's first task was to first identify a suitable option. At the same time, it was essential that the new CRM package integrate with the existing core system. Implementing the new CRM application at innumerable offices and partner locations was a phenomenal task. "It was a big challenge. Many locations did not have the adequate facilities." Dubey realized the need to bring changes to various processes. An implementation group was formed and standard operating procedures were made. Training and hand-holding sessions were done in small groups. The project not just resulted into competitive advantage to marketing and sales but also in customer satisfaction. It also introduced more transparency and service. About 40 policies are now issued through pointof-sale resulting in substantial savings in back office operational expenses. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: S. Narayan reveNue: Rs 1,245 crore eMPlOyeeS: 700 IT STAff: 20 PrOjeCT: CRM
U.C. Dubey IFFCO TOKIO General Insurance Executive VP-IT
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COST: Rs 300 lakh PrOjeCT PerIOD: January 2007 to January 2008
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Simple Connectivity 'Keep it simple' is what S. Hariharan, Sr. VP, Infrastructure Solutions and Services Group, demonstrated when he upgraded his network infrastructure. Thanks to its global footprint, staffers at i-flex need to connect with their peers in other offices on different continents. As the business spread, the cost of communications increased. A study of various solutions showed Hariharan that he needed to leverage his existing network infrastructure and introduce new technology to bring down costs. "After a detailed study, we decided to leverage our existing network infrastructure and introduce an advancement in technology in the form of VoIP." After smooth and simple changes in software and upgrades to support VOIP, the telecom bills came down by as much as 80 percent. The outstanding achievement of the implementation was that ROI started to trickle from day one and was achieved within one year of the launch. With single phone, a user leverages existing infrastructure while getting great service. Combined with 99.99 percent uptime, customer satisfaction increased. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: N.K. Raman reveNue: Rs 2,308 crore eMPlOyeeS: 14,000 IT STAff: 450 PrOjeCT: VoIP COST: Rs 134 lakh
S. Hariharan i-flex Solutions
Sr. VP, Infrastructure Solutions and Services Group
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No Oil Spills S.S. Soni, Executive Director (IS), Indian Oil, needed to set a business continuity solution for all IOCL businesses across the country. But he also needed to keep the cost of the project — especially hardware and software investments — under control. "The major challenge we faced in designing the business continuity solution was to keep new investment low or nil." Although he could use compression techniques to shrink data that needed shipping, the requirement for bandwidth was high. And data
SNAPSHOT DIreCTOr fINANCe: S.V. Narasimhan reveNue: Rs 24,7479 crore eMPlOyeeS: 35,000 IT STAff: 227 PrOjeCT: Business Continuity
transfers needed to be done with minimum loss. He would have to set up WAN communications for 682 locations at the disaster recovery site and plan for a DR mock drill. But business could not stop. Any mistakes could put the company's image at stake. There was a threat of losing mission critical data and thus increasing the possibility of sizeable revenue loss. He also had to ensure that the faith of all the stakeholders in the company was not destroyed. CIO
gO-lIve DATe: January 2007 (Jaipur)
S.S. Soni Indian Oil
Executive Director(IS)
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H. Krishnan Indian Rayon Assistant VP-IT
Threading Their Way For a manufacturing company, logistics not only have to be timely but also transparent. As a part of Indian Rayon's logistics system, incoming and outgoing trucks were weighed at an electronic weight-bridge. After truck drivers got a print out, the weight of the truck was updated manually in the main application. Indian Rayon's management wanted a vehicle management system to improve the turnaround time of trucks. They felt the extra time could translate in to competitive advantage. Since the company already had SAP as it's ERP system, the objective before the IT team was to interface directly with the ERP. 66
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SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Rahul Mohnot reveNue: Rs 520 crore eMPlOyeeS: 3,150 IT STAff: 6 PrOjeCT: Vehicle Monitoring System COST: Rs 6.5 lakh
"User training was a challenge. Due to a lack of educational qualifications and skill levels, training was a challenge." But this was resolved by training and some hand-holding. Connectivity to remote locations was another roadblock. First, the company's internal telephone connections were used as dedicated line but due to inconsistent quality of connectivity, the IT team had to look for alternative solutions. But in the end, the implementation resulted in significant business results: truck loading time improved and with it so did truck availability. CIO
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Quality Control Sivashankar and his team work consistently to improve application performance for their huge user base. To that end, he wanted to design a homegrown Quality of Service (QoS) framework that would cater to exponentially expanding volumes. But it was a herculean task because it had to be designed where the relative operational transactions were in multitudes. The aim was to isolate problematic infrastructural components and applications and to monitor and detect errors instantaneously. The new QoS increased visibility of application behavior on the production environment. It assured app performance through automatic and early detection of performance related issues and corrective action. It provided proactive notification of actual or impending component failure. The new QoS, AMPLIFY's early performance defect detection and governance to close defects would help apps leverage maximum capabilities of the servers and consistently maintain performance which translated in huge savings for IT infrastructure. CIO
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: S. Gopalakrishnan reveNue: Rs 15,648 crore eMPlOyeeS: 92,000 PrOjeCT: AMPlIFY
J. Sivashankar Infosys
VP and Head, Information Systems
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COST: Rs 36 lakh PrOjeCT PerIOD: Feb 2007
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Break With the Past For Infotech Enterprises' new facility at Hyderabad, B.L.V. Rao, VP, Infotech Enterprise, decided to migrate and transition to NextGen IT. His aim was simple: to build a secure, state-of-the-art architecture that is scalable, secure, flexible and give the organization a 99.58 percent uptime. An important part of the project was to enhance security systems to layered protection. He had six months to complete it. Because it broke new ground, getting everyone on board required serious spadework. "It was a significant change from the perspective of users, business units, customers, and vendors," says Rao. He effectively completed the migration ahead of schedule. This not only helped him generate direct and indirect revenue for organization from customers but also gave his employees satisfaction and support. The new implementation came with almost zero downtime. The new architecture was saleable for next seven years and also reduced the IT budget by 12 percent. CIO
SNAPSHOT PreSIDeNT, glObAl Hr AND COrPOrATe AffAIrS: B. Ashok Reddy reveNue: Rs 705 crore eMPlOyeeS: 7,600 IT STAff: 85 PrOjeCT: Refurbishing IT Architecture
B.L.V. Rao Infotech Enterprises Vice President
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COST: Rs 520 lakh gO-lIve DATe: May 2007
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Win Some, Lose Some
Ravishankar Subramanian, Director-IT & Corporate Services, ING VYSYA Life Insurance, had to design and implement an auditable system for sales incentives and contests across ING VYSYA Life Insurance. Their earlier system limited the company's ability to be innovative in designing incentive schemes. After evaluating multiple solutions, he realized that too much customization would be required or that the organization would be too vendor dependant. "So we decided on a custom developed approach using a rules engine. The use of a rules engine for the purpose of computing incentives and contests is a relatively
MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Kshitij Jain reveNue: Rs 1,159 crore eMPlOyeeS: 7,771 IT STAff: 58 PrOjeCT: Sales Incentives and Contests System PrOjeCT PerIOD: June 2007 to February 2008
new concept. No insurance company in India has attempted to do this," says Subramanian. But the rules engine they wanted was developed by an Indian company, which was bought up by SAP, leaving ING VYSYA high and dry. "We had to reschedule the project by three months. And also look for resources from other vendors who had prior experience," says Subramanian. But once they completed the project, the organization can now monitor and audit its incentive schemes more efficiently. With incentive payouts almost doubling every year, the new solution ensures a smooth process. CIO
Ravishankar Subramanian ING VYSYA Life Insurance Director-IT & Corporate Services
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Rajendra Deshpande Intelenet Global Services Chief Technology Officer
PhoToS by S RIVaTSa ShaNdIlya, d R lo hIa SURESh, bhaSK aR MallIcK, MI lIN d
Staff Watch Rajendra Deshpande, CIO, Intelenet Global Services, is a happy man today as the overall attrition at his company has dipped from 54 percent to 35 percent in less than a year. But it wasn't easy getting here. The company realized that it was losing a major chunk of its employees during its 90-day training period. And given that it was spending Rs 75,000 on every employee, that hurt. Deshpande's team looked at the problem and came up with an incubation tracker. It is a mix of pre-hiring workflow with data capture at every stage in the 90-day period. It provides a unique endto-end view and insight to the management about employee lifecycle during this period. 72
SNAPSHOT CEO: Susir Kumar REvENuE: Rs 897 crore EmPLOyEES: 25,000 IT STAff: 160 PROjECT: Incubation Tracker COST: Rs 7-8 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: July - october 2007
The tracker saves pre-hiring, training and operations executives' time from compiling reports. The internal development team delivered a custom product, speedy development and a costeffective solution. The tool gave the business the power to 'slice and dice' the information to meet business needs. "The IT team has given yet another pathbreaking product to the organization. The incubation tracker has significantly increased cost consciousness and guided our efforts to arrest attrition across sites and improve our hiring quality," says Prabhu Srinivasan, chief operating officer, Intelenet Global Services. CIO
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Turning A New Leaf Being the man in charge of IT at the fast-growing Intergraph, Akella Aswani Kumar had a job on his hands. With operations expanding, an aging IT setup was getting in the way. The need of the hour was to reposition IT as a strategic asset. After conceiving and executing the entire IT revamp, the IT team is proud of the results. Better infrastructure and optimization has enhanced the efficiency of product development and facilitated deliveries as per expectations. Virtualization has added convenience to users and reduced electricity and airconditioning costs. "At the end of this project we have a state-of-the-art IT infrastructure which enabled us to position the IT organization as a strategic asset,� says Kumar. With a competent and highly motivated IT staff the organization is adding value not only to its Indian operations, but also extended competence and expertise to other countries in the Asia Pacific. The project has turned an aging IT infrastructure into a new leaf, proving that change is for the better. CIO SNAPSHOT DIRECTOR: chiru Panuganty EmPLOyEES: 380 IT STAff: 13
Akella Aswani Kumar Intergraph Consulting Head-IT & Quality
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PROjECT: Revamping IT Infrastructure PROjECT PERIOD: Mid 2006 to March 2008
Dare To Be Different The apparel industry is characterized by short product lifecycles, product variety, unpredictable demand, and a long and inflexible supply line. It's exactly where RFID can help says O.P Bansal, divisional CIO, ITC Lifestyle Retailing. The fashion house has rolled out RFID across two of its major warehouses and all stores in the NCR region. The project brought with it a set of challenges. IT demanded radical changes in process and integration with existing enterprise systems. Unavailability of a standard program interface with RFID hardware; and risks like investment in a technology which is yet to be accepted globally. But for Bansal, it's time to sit back and enjoy seeing his company reap benefits of his initiative. Today It takes 20-30 seconds to inventory 30-35 garments (about one boxes worth) – from between five and eight minutes. On a yearly basis that jump in efficiency translates to Rs 15 lakh a year in savings. It also gives garments more time in the stores leading to a 1 to 2 percent uptick in sales. CIO SNAPSHOT CEO: chittranjan dar REvENuE: Rs 300 crore EmPLOyEES: <600 IT STAff: 40 PROjECT: RFId COST: <Rs 400 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: Sept 2006 to Sept 2007
O.P.Bansal ITC Lifestyle Retailing Business Divisional CIO
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Under One Roof
For the new FMCG business, ITC needed to work with multiple manufacturing units. The problem was that the old set up did not support processes like SCM and CRM. The cost of running multiple systems to meet business requirements was becoming a burden. Project SAPPORT seamlessly integrated planning, manufacturing and supply chain. It also simplified demand forecasting using heuristic/stochastic models. The project took into account all constraints in maximizing service delivery at optimal cost.
fINANCE DIRECTOR: K. Vaidyanath EmPLOyEES: 21,000 IT STAff: 650 PROjECT: SaPPoRT COST: Rs 80 crore
"There were 225 people working on the project and the IT department was involved in the overall management,� says V.V.R. Babu, Sr. Vice President, ITC. To keep things moving smoothly, the constant participation of process owners was ensured by holding regular meetings. De-customization of the ERP system has made future upgrades easy to implement resulting in a reduction of effort on maintenance and being Web-enabled facilitates anytime, anywhere access to users. CIO
V.V.R Babu ITC
Senior Vice President
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Ajay Kumar Dhir Jindal Stainless Chief information Officer
A Steely Resolve Jindal Stainless' plant was running with the PLCs (programmable logic controllers) disconnected from its business application. There was absolutely no visibility of its manufacturing processes and its disparate processes called out loud to be integrated. The IT department facilitated one of the first implementations of SAP xMII in the Metals and Mining space over 14 months of hard work. This has totally revolutionized the way work is done and the way information is gathered, making it a very bold IT initiative. The project ensures visibility of manufacturing processes across the plant making it more transparent. Also for an Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
SNAPSHOT jT. mD & COO: R.G.Garg REvENuE: Rs 6,000 crore IT STAff: 70 PROjECT: Integration of Plcs COST: Rs 70 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: March 2007 to May 2008
organization that depends on manufacturing, it enables tracking a defect source for a bad quality products and analysis of customer complaints. Ultimately, these result in a level of plant intelligence and gives the company significant competitive advantage. It also enables real time online monitoring of the manufacturing process. "Understanding the product, getting the teams to work together and managing the project were huge challenges," says Ajay Kumar Dhir, CIO, Jindal Stainless. The man behind the implementation and his IT team have shown what it takes to make a weak business more than just strong. CIO
One for the Road JK Tyre wanted to bring all its processes on one platform. They looked at SAP to do the needful. The seamless integration of processes and change from function orientation to process orientation has taken the company ahead. But it wasn't smooth sailing. JK Tyre had to tackle challenges like user adaptability and business process re-alignment. It has resulted in an increase in revenue, lower inventories, a reduction in logistics cost and increased productivity and transparency. The project also included the creation of a state-of-the-art datacenter. The company also did not shy away from going green. Its green initiatives include three precision AC's in the datacenter. This enabled automatic (switching) on/ off lights in the datacenter to conserve energy. Another important feature is scalability. S.S.Sharma, Chief GM-IT, JK Tyre, is convinced of the smart features of his implementation when he states, "The most obvious positive of this implementation is better management by in-house IT staff and low cost of operations for running the datacenter." CIO SNAPSHOT REvENuE: Rs 3,196 crore EmPLOyEES: < 8000 IT STAff: 25 PROjECT: SaP
S.S.Sharma JK Tyre
Chief General Manager-IT
COST: Rs 12 crore PROjECT PERIOD: april 2005 to September 2007
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On Auto Pilot Initiated to cater to the increasing need to hire people, the iRecruitment project works seamlessly with the Human Resource Management System (HRMS) to manage the firm's entire workforce lifecycle. It automates the recruitment process. Adopting iRecruitment meant opening the entire ERP system to the Internet with its associated risks. To mitigate this, the app is hosted in a DMZ. After project approval, a detailed project plan was prepared with the HR team. Besides IT and HR, there was active participation from the finance team. "The project will save recruitment costs and will provide a good experience to job-seekers and add to the KPMG brand value," says Suresh Kumar, director-IT, KPMG. It is also expected to enhance the productivity of the HR staff. Being green, an access control secure printing solution was implemented to ensure no wastage of paper. "KPMG has stated objective of reducing carbon footprint by 25 percent by the end of 2010," says Kumar. Not only bold but green too. CIO SNAPSHOT CEO: Russell Parera EmPLOyEES: 3,100 IT STAff: 60 PROjECT: iRecruitment COST: Rs 65 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: January 2008 to July 2008
Suresh Kumar KPMG Director-IT
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Unity In Diversity
Dhiren Savla, CIO, Kuoni Travel, had a huge job on his hands when VFS, a BPO run by Kuoni India, expanded incredibly by winning a contract to handle front and back office operations in seven regions for various diplomatic missions of the British government. The company was seeking a common universal application that VFS could use. The idea was to use a hybrid network setup with a mix of MPLS & IPSEC VPN Networks. "A contract was awarded to a leading software company to develop the app. Simultaneously, we carried out development with a second partner to avoid huge penalties due to delay,� says Savla.
CEO: Zubin Karkaria REvENuE: Rs 2,200 crore IT STAff: 43 PROjECT: Flexible Global application COST: 60 crore PROjECT PERIOD: February to december 2007
The project enabled VFS to fulfill a contract with the UK government which will generate revenue to the tune of about Rs 1,750 crore over five years. Apart from the IT team, the business project team and the information security team were the key stake holders. To ensure that everything went smoothly, a proper governance structure was set up for this project. Teams were created for application development, procurement, infrastructure, rollout, and information security. All these teams worked in tandem to produce a company that shared a single platform. CIO
Dhiren Savla Kuoni Travel
Chief Information Officer
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S. Anantha Sayana Larsen & Toubro Head, Corporate IT
Creating History The past had come to haunt Anantha Sayana, head corporate IT, L&T. The company's data depended solely on excel sheets that were sent every month to the corporate treasury. This led to less effective hedging and completely exposed the business to higher risks. The company knew that it had no time to lose. They had to make a choice between living in the past and changing for the future. This gave birth to Enterprise Service Bus: L&T's tool to improve agility. Efficiency, increased productivity, competitive advantage and regulatory compliance were the four business goals that Sayana had in mind when he decided to implement this project. It was meant to set the benchmark for all integration projects at L&T. 82
SNAPSHOT CHAIRmAN & mD: A.M.Naik REvENuE: Rs 25,187 crore IT buDgET: Rs 205 crore EmPLOyEES: 35,000 IT STAff: 380 PROjECT: Enterprise Service Bus COST: Rs 50 lakh
The implementation provides accurate and timely information on all business transactions that carry a potential currency rate or commodity rate risk, enabling hedge management to be more effective. The project had seven teams operating from different locations and coordinating and synchronizing the activities of all the teams was a major challenge. Creating a combined project plan and arranging weekly status review meetings addressed the issues. Sayana declares, "Business users have appreciated the solution since it enables them to get the right information at the right time." Sayana and his team have taken the company from living in the past to creating history. CIO
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Yours Truly LG Electronics India provides services to its customers through third-party service providers called authorized service centers (ASC). It has 480 service centers for consumer electronics and home appliance and 650 for its mobile division. With such a widespread network, it was becoming increasingly difficult for LG to manage key functions like finance, procurement, supply chain and sales and service. LGCSNet was the common IT platform it needed. It is a B2B site provided to the LG service franchisees and call centers. Connectivity was a major challenge but it was addressed by developing offline version called SPX with sync facility. The project brought a set of perks for the company. Improvement in productivity and quality of service, reduced response time due to regular call monitoring and effective spare part inventory management. "In a Business World survey on customer satisfaction, the project saw us in the first place for its ability to resolve customer problems on a first call and for the skill of its helpline personnel,� says Daya Prakash, Head-IT, LG Electronics India. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: M.B. Shin REvENuE: Rs 9,500 crore EmPLOyEES: 3,000 IT STAff: <100 PROjECT: lG Customer Support online
Daya Prakash LG Electronics India Head - IT
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COST: Rs 4.5 crore PROjECT PERIOD: october to December 2007
A Track Record An excess of anything is bad. At Lifestyle International they learnt that the hard way. As customers bought the company's gift vouchers, Lifestyle International found it more and more difficult to track vouchers as they moved through multiple points. Every voucher moves from the vendor to the corporate office, then to regional office and the stores and finally to a customer. Sudesh Agarwal, VP-IT, Lifestyle International, took the bold step of bringing the entire transaction process of gift vouchers under IT. His team came up with a Gift Voucher Tracking System (GVTS) — a mechanism that enables management to control a voucher's movement across the organization. At the start and end of every day, all stores capture master and other store sale and redemption data to their Pointof-Sale Server to transact the sale and redemption of gift vouchers. "Customers are happy to have this system as it is easier for them to purchase or redeem their vouchers at any of our stores." And an excess of customer happiness isn't bad. CIO SNAPSHOT ExECuTIvE DIRECTOR: Kabir lumba REvENuE: Rs 800 crore EmPLOyEES: 4,500 IT STAff: 95 PROjECT: Gift Voucher Tracking System COST: Rs 15 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: February - July 2007
Sudesh Agarwal Lifestyle International
Vice President-IT
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Keeping It Simple
Due to Mafatlal's management structure, the company had its exports and domestic database at its head office where invoices from factories were uploaded. This resulted in inter-database transactions and inefficiencies. The challenge was to merge these databases without losing history and in minimum downtime. What they needed was a de-centralized ERP system. "The CEO threw us a challenge. He said 'I want simplicity'." remembers Nikhil Gujar, senior GM-IT, Mafatlal Industries. Today, all factories have their own server enabling invoicing and
PRESIDENT-TExTILES: Rajiv Ranjan REvENuE: Rs 350 crore IT buDgET: Rs 1 crore EmPLOyEES: < 2500 IT STAff: 10 PROjECT: ERP
other business activities. At the end of every day, all invoices are copied to the head office server automatically wherein payments are monitored. Mafatlal Industries gained a 15 percent reduction in inter-database transactions leading to an increased level of productivity. Better still, the project was completed with no downtime. The departments benefiting from the project include accounting and finance, HR and sales and marketing. Because the project entailed the risk of losing data on all the older transactions — as the IT team could not afford to copy databases — it is a truly bold effort. CIO
Nikhil Gujar Mafatlal Industries
Senior General Manager-IT
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Suresh A. Shanmugam Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services National Head-BITS & CIO
Connecting People With an eye to expand its rural businesses M&M Financial Services launched Mfconnect-3000. By equipping its 3,000-strong workforce with a mobile handheld device that acts like a mini-mobile branch, it sought to ensure business agility in rural India. The solution has helped the organization swiftly roll out fully operational branches and achieve faster turnaround time for internal users to enhance competitive service to customers. It has also increased the satisfaction levels of the executive and customers. Today, about 700 concurrent users can access apps across the country in addition to users at HQ. With this implementation, expansion plans have become easier to address and execute because the Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Ramesh G. Iyer REvENuE: Rs 1,299 crore EmPLOyEES: 4,899 IT STAff: 138 PROjECT NAmE: Mfconnect-3000 COST: Rs 4 crore gO-LIvE DATE: April 2008
associated infrastructure costs have been minimized. Suresh A. Shanmugam, national head-BITS & CIO, M&M Financial Services says, "Our effort has been to recognize and develop innovative, extraordinary and pioneering products and services and since we are an emerging company this made us think out-of-the-box and differentiate ourselves in the market." Today, speed and reach is the mantra in banking, and this project has helped the company achieve exactly the same. "The end-user experience has definitively improved due to better application manageability and connectivity. The company has also enhanced customer services by delivering new products more quickly. We are now looking to leverage more ROI," says Shanmugam. CIO REAL CIO WORLD | S E P T E M B E R 1 5 , 2 0 0 8
On the Web What do you do when your company is expanding across geographies and you want to connect all your employees? You blog. At least that's what Mahindra & Mahindra did. The company's One Mahindra initiative creates a common interface for sharing information and knowledge across the Group. It reaches every employee, and supports different teams and groups within the organization through an MPLS network. The company has set up blogs and Wikis to encourage internal discussions, idea generation, and project documentation. But, it wasn't all easy at the start. There were challenges of change management. The constraints and compulsions of enterprise working, in terms of information security and regulatory compliance also needed to be addressed. "Wide understanding of the opportunities throws light on threats and risks that the new e-world brings. Balancing technology obsolescence and exploiting new opportunities is one of the major functions of corporate IT," says Arvind G. Tawde, Senior VP & CIO. The project has led to improved collaboration, improved access to information, knowledge and structured and effective content management. CIO SNAPSHOT vICE CHAIRmAN & mD: Anand Mahindra REvENuE: Rs 13,000 crore EmPLOyEES: 8,000
Arvind G. Tawde Mahindra & Mahindra Senior VP & CIO
IT STAff: 120 PROjECT NAmE: Mahindra Group Intranet
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On the Trail Maruti Suzuki India's dealer network consists of 300 dealers spread over 250 cities. The network dispatches 70,000 vehicles every month using a transporter base of around 65 transporters with a fleet of 5,600 vehicles. When these numbers aren't lined up vehicles don't arrive on time and resources are used badly. Maruti's outbound logistics traceability project fixes that problem. A specially-designed device is mounted on each of the company's trailers. The device uses GPRS to record the location of the trailer and is made available to dealers so that they can plan deliveries. The IT department was the main contributor in conceptualizing the project and providing technology support. Since the solution is unique in its size and it created new challenges, like drivers tampering with the devices. But these were resolved. "Now our dealers and customers are informed in advance of a delivery leading to customer satisfaction," says Rajesh Uppal, Chief GM, Maruti Suzuki India. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: S. Nakanishi REvENuE: Rs 18,000 crore EmPLOyEES: < 7,000 IT STAff: 64 PROjECT NAmE: outbound logistics Traceability COST: Rs 5 crore PROjECT PERIOD: Beginning of 2007 to March 2008
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Rajesh Uppal Maruti Suzuki India Chief General Manager
Insuring Productivity
Customer service representatives at Max New York Life Insurance were stuck in a rut. It was becoming increasingly difficult for them to solve their customers' problems because data was spread over multiple applications. The company came up with a customer service portal. The project focused on providing easy access to data for its employees, agents and customers. The IT department leveraged available technology and this helped reduce the project's timeline as well as the over all cost of ownership. The key challenges were implementation of functionality in Web services
mD AND CEO: Gary Bennett REvENuE: Rs 2,954 crore IT buDgET: Rs 100 crore EmPLOyEES: <10,000 IT STAff: 65 PROjECT PERIOD: 2006 to September 2007
and publishing customers' documents in a secure and non-editable format. Being key stakeholders, the customer services team and customer relationship department were actively involved in every leg of the project. The IT department was the backbone of the initiative. "Earlier for retrieving customer data from multiple applications used to take around four minutes, and with this implementation, it now takes only a minute," says Hitesh K. Arora EVP & Head-IT, Max New York Life Insurance. It has also increased productivity of the customer service representatives by almost 30 percent. CIO
Hitesh K. Arora Max New York Life Insurance EVP, Head-IT
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Sudhir K. Reddy MindTree Chief Information Officer
All In the Shade
MindTree was spreading its branches rapidly across the world. The number of projects it delivered annually was growing at the rate of more than 40 percent. This led to the realization that an ERP solution was necessary to handle growing complexity and diverse nature of operations. This gave birth to the mPower project. The project was meant to streamline operational efficiency at MindTree. What was bold about this initiative from a business perspective, was its allencompassing vision. The challenges that the IT team faced were both technical and organizational in nature, although technical challenges were
CFO: Rostow Ravanan
REvENuE: Rs 739.79 crore EmPLOyEES: 5,800 IT STAFF: 140 PROjECT NAmE: mPower COST: Rs 10.83 crore PROjECT PERIOD: october 2004 —June 2008
easier to deal with. Like all ERP solutions, Project mPower it did not leave anyone untouched in its scope or impact One of the greatest benefits the system has provided is to eliminate questions on the validity of data. As there is only one data source and everyone goes to the same well, there are no further discussions within the organization on 'my data' versus 'your data.' This allows leaders to spend most of their time on decision-making. "The single-minded support and commitment of the leadership team and the resolve of the corporate information system team to not allow proliferation of applications, helped the company accomplish this extraordinary feat," says Sudhir K. Reddy, CIO, MindTree. CIO
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For a Better Vision A spurt in the number of SKUs (stock-keeping units) as a result of organizational growth led to Project Dhristi at MIRC Electronics. The company could not manage the increase in transactional volumes and it needed an effective and intelligent supply chain management (SCM) system. The aim of the project was not only to bring visibility to the supply chain, but also incorporate important SCM metrics in its measurement system. The project included a Web application that transfers data from the system to provide the SCM metrics for every product for every sales location. The technology deployments made the project unique in its implementation. Productivity, user convenience and reliability of the information were a class apart. "The improved visibility of the sales and stock figures with its increased reliability helped the organization take the right decisions on real time information," says J. Ramesh GM- IT, MIRC Electronics. CIO SNAPSHOT CEO: G. Sundar REvENuE: Rs 1,680 crore EmPLOyEES: 1,450 IT STAFF: 22 PROjECT: Dhristi
J. Ramesh MIRC Electronics
General Manager-IT
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COST: Rs 40 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: January 2007 — May 2008
Making Data Omnipresent Information anytime, anywhere. Sounds good, but is it possible? Mudra Communications thinks it is. The company realized that most of the SBU (strategic business unit) heads were not using the existing ERP system effectively. To ensure easy and accurate accessibility of information, the company launched the Mudra Dashboard. It takes care of the existing ERP as well as the HR database and provides a summarized view of data. By default, the information provided is at a macro level and the user has an option of drilling down to get a micro view. Prior to this solution, the SBU heads had to rely solely on the respective commercial heads for data. With the drill down facility, a SBU head can analyse the data himself. "The team was given a week to develop certain simple applications as proof of concept. Solutions to most of them were found through the documentation on the net. It was more of a self learning experience," says Sebastian Joseph, VP- IT, Mudra Communications. CIO SNAPSHOT mD & CEO: Madhukar Kamath REvENuE: Rs 1,200 crore EmPLOyEES: 359 IT STAFF: 8 PROjECT: Mudra Dashboard COST: Rs 13 lakh
Sebastian Joseph Mudra Communications
PROjECT PERIOD: May — December 2007
Vice President-IT
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Profit Takes Flight
When Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) took over the airport from the Indian government there was no IT existing in the airport. The main challenge was to build an infrastructure which would not only ensure a world-class network but also put in a common user network which could be used by airlines for their operations. The airlines could use the network for passenger processing including concepts like common use terminal equipments (CUTE) where any airline could check-in passengers at any counter. The entire infrastructure is pure VoIP. The IT department
mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Sanjay Reddy REvENuE: Rs 900 crore EmPLOyEES: <2,500 IT STAFF: 60 PROjECT: Unified Communications COST: Rs 17 crore
devised the entire project plan, commercial tariffs and the necessary tie-ups with vendors for the roll out. The entire cost versus revenue model was built internally by the IT department. "Since I didn't have a legacy riding on my shoulders, I could build whatever I wanted," says T.P. Anantheswaran, head-IT, MIAL. Both passengers and airlines have benefited by a single network which has increased efficiency tremendously. This also gives extreme flexibility to airlines and passengers. And this is how MIAL created a new runway on technology. CIO
T. P. Anantheswaran Mumbai International Airport Head-IT
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Avinash Arora New Holland Tractors India
Director-IS India & S.E. Asia
Off the Assembly Line New Holland Tractors India, wanted to provide online access to dealers and stockists across the country. The challenge: a lot of these stockists were based in rural India. The company came up with an innovative e -Catalog. A special feature of this project is that it is integrated with mobile technology to provide information to customers about order registration and dispatch. The process is also completely automated because orders are fed directly into the ERP package. The catalog is updated online, based on the orders that get implemented on production once the tractor moves off the assembly line. An added bonus of this 100
SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Mario Gasparri REvENuE: Rs 1,100 crore EmPLOyEES: 650 IT STAFF: 10 PROjECT NAmE: E-Catalog COST: Rs 60 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: 2007 — 2008
project, explains Avinash Arora, director-IS India & South East Asia, New Holland Tractors India, "The system also acts like an e-learning platform for technicians because it helps them to visually explore how to assemble and dissemble critical assemblies in the field and what special tools are needed for servicing the tractor." One of the challenges faced by the IT team was that business requirements kept on changing along with project development. The team also had problems with usage because the users came from a rural background. However, training took care of this issue. The project made it possible for the company to reach places it could only imagine. CIO
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CIO and the City The project taps the power of SimCity to unite thousands of people to build a better Pune. Using a Website (DesignForPune.com), the project seeks to connect thousands of people in an effort to share their visions, strategies and designs for Pune over the next 20 years. The IT team, under Dr Anupam Saraph, CIO, Pune Municipal Corporation, was charged with the responsibility of initiating the idea, mobilizing critical mass around it, and evolving the technology solution. It also had to face the challenge of ensuring participation from citizens. The technical problems faced while implementing the project largely revolved around logistics. The IT team built the entire initiative around a wiki framework. To ensure participation from citizens, the IT team relied primarily on LinkedIn, Google groups and idea camps to ensure participation. "This is the first known instance of using a popular computer game for mobilization of a community for a capacity building initiative,� Saraph proudly says. CIO SNAPSHOT muNICIPAL COmmISSIONER: Praveen Pardeshi EmPLOyEES: 15 IT STAFF: 15 PROjECT NAmE: Design for Pune
Dr. Anupam Saraph Pune Municipal Corporation Chief Information Officer
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COST: Rs 20,000 gO-LIvE DATE: June 2008
Jyotish Chandra Mohanty Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission Joint Director-IT
Keeping Track The case tracking system was developed for OERC to monitor cases from petition filing to disposal of cases. The system automates the case handling procedure of the Commission. One of the biggest drawbacks of the old system was that many cases never came up for hearing for years because there was no proper process in place. But today, thanks to the system, all the cases with the proceedings and final order are available on the Commission's portal, www.orierc.org. "The system displays cases that have not been heard for a certain number of days. Today, not a single case remains unattended for a long time," says 102
SNAPSHOT mD & CHAIRPERSON: B.K. Das EmPLOyEES: 50 IT STAFF 5 IT BuDgET Rs 10 crore PROjECT: Case Tracking System COST: Rs 6 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: January 2006 — January2007
Jyotish Chandra Mohanty, joint director-IT, OERC. These cases were primarily handled by people who did not appreciate the advantages of IT. The system was perceived as an extra burden to the division. Shortage of staff also created problems for entry of cases pertaining to previous years. To manage the more-serious initial problem, the IT team went through the list of cases and highlighted some cases that had been filed over a year ago and had never come up for hearing even once. It believed that that this could be highlighted and fixed by the IT system. This helped the IT team to win the approval of the users, and paved the way for prompt usage of the system. CIO
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Lift to the Top Floor Otis India had manual and standalone systems and because of this, cycle time to process information was quite high. It was not easy to manage and maintain multiple systems across the company. Project One Vision paved the way for a system that would be instrumental in standardizing processes and thereby improving efficiency. The project also involved cleansing of a large volume of data and fine tuning it to align with the ERP system. This was a seamless migration with no business down time. "Freezing requirements was quite challenging, considering the complexities involved, but it was important to ensure it is aligned with the ERP system," says V. Subramaniam, CIO, Otis Elevator Company India. Subramaniam and his team put in extra hours to ensure that things went smoothly. The IT team leaders awarded their team members with interim breaks. They were also appreciated for crossing major milestones. The efforts of the CIO and his team helped the company reach new heights. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: Ashok Malhotra REvENuE: Rs 566 crore EmPLOyEES: 2,363 IT STAFF 12
V. Subramaniam Otis Elevator Company India Chief Information Officer
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PROjECT NAmE: one Vision PROjECT PERIOD: January 2005 — october 2006
Sanjeev Kumar Philips Electronics India IT-Chief
On a Lighter Note Philips Electronics India faced a unique problem. The company employs a set of specifiers who are experts in providing lighting design. They work closely with lighting development engineers and provide customers with a variety of options — an important part of any organization. To service these specifiers, the company did not have a structured tool to capture live projects, status of proposals and information on which an employee from the lighting development team could visit the specifier. There was no system to identify successful projects or failed ones with reasons for corrective actions. 104
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Murali Sivaraman REvENuE: Rs 1,200 crore IT buDgET: Rs 28 crore EMPLOyEES: 3,000 IT STAff: 44 PROjECT: Specifier Relationship Management System
The IT team then set up a specifier relationship management system — a CRM and KM application that caters to the lighting division. This solution delivered excellent results — increasing the specifier base by 30 percent — and is being rolled out in other Asia Pacific countries like China, Korea and Taiwan. The solution has increased the percentage of specifier orders from 20 to 60 percent. "Thanks to this project, the number of specifiers giving orders has gone up from 20 percent to 60 percent and sales have gone up by 18 percent," says Sanjeev Kumar, IT Chief, Philips Electronics India. CIO
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The Power of One IT had a solution for every problem. But soon Polaris realized that too many solutions on too many platforms created more problems. There was no integration between systems. So, the IT team worked toward integrating these systems. They automated integration of assets, which also acted as a security layer to keep unauthorized assets off the network. The company then implemented an external layer of integrating applications to interlink all these industry standard applications. To minimize risks, none of the delivered ERP or enterprise solutions were to be disturbed. "Continuous tracking of IT assets resulted in a 20 percent improvement in yield, resulting in savings, in terms of capex avoidance, of upto Rs 2 crore,� says V. Balakrishnan, CIO, Polaris Software Lab. Since this affected the organization, top management, including the CEO, COO and CFO, played a big role in taking this forward. With the project, Polaris found itself in control of all its systems as it was all on one platform. It recognized the power of one. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Arun Jain REvENuE: Rs 960 crore EMPLOyEES: 7,000 IT STAff: 100
V. Balakrishnan Polaris Software Lab Chief Information Officer
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PROjECT: Integrated IT Assets Tracking System COST: Rs 30 lakh
Power for All Keeping the government's 'power for all by 2012' mandate in mind, the Power Grid Corporation Of India (PGCI) came up with a project to ensure efficient power management. Generators of varying capacities at remote locations feed power to a country-wide interlinked network. This network delivers power to state load centers that distribute it to consumers. The challenge was to efficiently operate this grid on a daily basis through real time load generation balance. This gave birth to the National Power Monitoring Center project. This project provides an instant online and offline view of the Indian power system to the Ministry of Power. " It has i mp r ove d co-ordination with power utilities and has been appreciated by Secretary of Power, Government of India," says Samir Chaudhury, DGM-IT, PGCI. Today, the project facilitates quick and timely information exchange. It also provides transparency in information management. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: S. Majumdar REvENuE: Rs 5,082 crore EMPLOyEES: 7,685 IT STAff: 30 PROjECT: National Power Monitoring Centre COST: Rs 4.7 crore PROjECT PERIOD: January - February 2007
Samir Chaudhury Power Grid Corporation of India
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Value for Money
'Time is money', they say. Especially for a bank that runs all its procurement processes manually. But at Punjab National Bank (PNB), things were about to change for good. The IT team implemented an e-procurement system to automate this process end-to-end. This aimed at improving efficiency and making the entire process paperless. PNB also implemented reverse auction as a negotiation tool to achieve better cost-efficiency as compared to conventional negotiation methods. The upside of this was business process re-engineering, which brought about more
MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Dr. K.C. Chakrabarty REvENuE: Rs 16,262 crore EMPLOyEES: 58,000 IT STAff: 400 PROjECT: E-procurement System gO-LIvE DATE: January 2007
efficiency by reducing the cost and time of the entire procurement cycle. "Implementation of reverse auction resulted in huge cost saving. On an average, we saved around 20 percent to 36 percent per transaction," says RIS Sidhu, GM, Punjab National Bank. The IT team also identified the implementation partner and procured the hardware and software for the project. They also realized big ROI savings — by spending just Rs 18 lakh, they have already saved Rs 4.69 crore after going live. And with figures like these Punjab National Bank is letting money do the talking. CIO
RIS Sidhu Punjab National Bank General Manager
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Atul Luthra PVR Head–IT
In a Theatre Near You Gone are the days when movie-goers stood in queues to buy tickets to watch their favorite flick on 70 mm. Today, booking tickets is just a click away – what's more, it's faster and a lot more convenient. And when you are PVR, the name itself is proof of great customer service. But, a big roadblock for PVR's online ticket booking system was tracking unsuccessful transactions. The time taken to process one unsuccessful transaction request was around two days. The company felt that it needed an efficient automated workflow. The IT team then got into action and deployed a CRM application 110
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Amitabh Vardhan REvENuE: Rs 260 crore EMPLOyEES: 2,000 IT STAff: 28 PROjECT: CRM COST: Rs 25 lakh gO-LIvE DATE: April 2008
solution that could reduce the time taken for the transaction from two days to a few minutes. "The idea was very challenging because, as compared to other industries, the database of the existing customers is very high in the cinema industry," says Atul Luthra, Head-IT, PVR. Today, it is able to track all customer queries, enquiries, suggestions and complaints more efficiently. Connectivity was a daunting task. But this was overcome by setting up a VPN network linking all the 22 cinemas to the corporate office. And like all great movies, this project proved to be a classic — one with a happy ending. CIO
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The Right Prescription This project concerned the global deployment of the Pharmacovigilance system for Ranbaxy. This was created to track adverse events associated with products and to facilitate correct compilation. To expedite the process, the system was setup at the vendor's site. Then, existing data was imported and validated. The functional enhancements and additional change management implementation were handled in the post go-live scenario. Thus, technology led the business process change. The first part of the project went live in six months. A lack of compliance can lead to delisting of products and prevent new launches. Thus, ensuring compliance has a potential upside of millions of dollars. The IT personnel helped facilitate and manage the process, technology inception and upgrade. "As CIO, I acted as a project sponsor and ensured that an initiative originally planned for over a year prior to delivering benefits, enabled ROI within six months," says David Briskman, VP & CIO, Ranbaxy Laboratories. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Malvinder M. Singh REvENuE: Rs 7,000 crore EMPLOyEES: 12,000 IT STAff: <100
David Briskman Ranbaxy Laboratories Vice President & CIO
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PROjECT: Pharmacovigilance System PROjECT PERIOD: January - July 2007
Make Way for IT The Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group has numerous companies operating in various sectors. It was felt that all the companies should share IT infrastructure by means of an IT services company. A company called Reliance Tech Services (RTS) was created to derive synergies from the in-house strength of the IT resources and assets at various group companies. RTS will initially provide IT consulting, services, and system integration to the group companies. It also aims to reduce spending and resources cost by 20 percent. While RTS will initially provide services within the ADA Group, the plan is to expand to companies in India and abroad. The IT team had to get the top management's buy-in and work with various departments to manage the project and define SLAs. "Consolidating the IT assets of a company is a mammoth task, but we did it for the Group," says Rajeev Batra, President, Group IT, Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. CIO
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Anil Ambani REvENuE: Rs 35,000 crore EMPLOyEES: 65,000 IT STAff: <2000 PROjECT: launch of Reliance Tech Services PROjECT PERIOD: April 2007 to May 2008
Rajeev Batra Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group President, Group IT
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Always at Your Service Reliance Communications had a CRM system to provide customer care through its call centers at Navi Mumbai and Chennai. This system was used by over 36 million customers, with about 10,000 users accessing the application at peak time. This served over 5 lakh customers each day. With a potential increase in subscriber base to 100 million in less than three years, the company needed to upgrade its CRM application. Several key architectural changes were scoped in for improving transactional integrity across systems. And this had to be done without any downtime. The IT team devised something similar
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Anil Ambani REvENuE: Rs 19,068 crore EMPLOyEES: 15,000 IT STAff: 1,500 PROjECT: Uninterrupted Customer Service (UCS) COST: Rs 11 crore
to a 'heart-and-lung machine' to implement an application named UCS (uninterrupted customer service) to ensure business continuity. "Doing it right the first time with a foolproof 'anytime rollback' strategy was a major challenge," says Dr. Sumit Dutta Chowdhury, CIO, Reliance Communications. UCS used a replicated customer database that was synchronized with the CRM system. This delivered business continuity, ensuring that customer service, revenue and reputation were not impacted. Reliance Communications is now planning to package the UCS solution so that it can be sold as a standalone CRM system. CIO
Dr. Sumit Dutta Chowdhury Reliance Communications Chief Information Officer
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Sudhir Bahuguna Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure Sr. VP & Head – IT
Stepping on the Gas Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure (RGTIL) has been incorporated to build, own and operate pipeline transmission and distribution network for natural gas. RGTIL is laying the country's largest diameter gas transmission system passing through Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat, known as the East-West gas pipeline, linking sources at Kakinada and other demand centers. With a view to automate the pipeline lifecycle, applications had been developed in GIS (geographic information system) environment. The GIS application portal developed for the pipeline industry is an integrated approach towards Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Mukesh Ambani eMPlOyeeS: 4,000 IT STAff: 120 IT buDgeT: Rs 65 crore PrOjeCT: GIS for pipeline routing COST: Rs 35 lakh PrOjeCT PerIOD: August 2007 to March 2008
achieving the goal of automating all phases of pipeline lifecycle in a Web-based environment. RGTIL's pipeline data model had been developed based on international standards followed by major global pipeline players. This is their first attempt to implement the same in a Web environment. Remote sensing imagery and GIS for pipeline routing have helped achieve great results with lower manpower and time needs. "The project has reduced the time spent on the field from 75 to 25 percent," says Sudhir Bahuguna, senior VP & head-IT. The routing, done with a bird's eye view, had helped in reducing the length of the pipeline as compared to traditional method of surveying. The applications were entirely developed by in-house teams, with constant interaction with business domain experts. CIO reAl CIO WOrlD | s e p t e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 8
Insurance in a Kit Reliance General Insurance is the first general insurance player to sell retail insurance through agents in the form of over-the-counter (OTC) kits. The process had to maintain an inventory of kits and ensure that agents got them only if they showed a certain minimum utilization. Previously, it took two to three weeks to get a medi-claim card. Today, it is much less. The IT team worked with the product team to design a product with mass appeal. The sales team helped get the market pulse on product requirements. The IT team did the ideation, project development, rollout and support. The idea itself came from the business technology group, which is a part of IT. RGI sold 0.5 million kits, generating a premium of Rs 130 crore since the application launched in December 2006. "Key to this project was IT enabling a radically different business process without compromising any control aspects,� says Sriram Naganathan, chief technology & operations officer, Reliance General Insurance. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: K.A. Somasekharan reveNue: Rs 1,940 crore eMPlOyeeS: 3,000 IT STAff: 33 PrOjeCT NAMe: Kit system
Sriram Naganathan Reliance General Insurance
Chief Technology & Operations Officer
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COST: Rs 20 lakh gO-lIve DATe: December 2006
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May I Help You? With 22 businesses and 16 plants under one umbrella, Reliance Industries realized that increasing tech dependence would require a systematic IT management strategy. The IT service management system provided RIL with just that. It supports all IT services including SAP, infrastructure, application and datacentre management. The hunt ended when the IT team developed an IT helpdesk system. It was created for computer users at all RIL sites. It was designed for online registration and resolution of complaints. It enables users to log into this system and register their issues. The IT team then assigns these complaints to different engineers. The user's response is then captured against each call for self-improvising by the IT team. Issues which took days due to manual processing are today resolved in minutes. "A key benefit was real-time and accurate stats to the top management on all assets," says Ashish Chauhan, CIO, Reliance Industries. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Mukesh Ambani reveNue: Rs 110,000 crore eMPlOyeeS: 40,000 IT STAff: <1000 PrOjeCT: IT Service Management System COST: Rs 30 lakh PrOjeCT PerIOD: April 2006 - July 2006
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Ashish Chauhan Reliance Industries Chief Information Officer
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Information at the Right Time Reliance Infosolutions is the IT arm of Reliance Industries. The group felt that a project management strategy would be key to the company's progress. Initially, IT teams started with manual processes and Excel sheet-based practices. However, with the ever-increasing size and scale of projects, tracking their progress became an issue. They breathed a sigh of relief when the IT team developed an IT Project Management System. The project was
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Mukesh Ambani eMPlOyeeS: 2,200 PrOjeCT: IT Project Management System IT STAff: 2,200
executed in three stages: concept and development, launch and mass awareness, and consolidation and benchmarking. It selects projects, assigns resources and then continues to monitor the project's health. It also takes care of accurate CMMI level documentation for all development based projects and ITIL level documentation for all operations based projects. "We needed to bring efficiency and transparency, even if it came at the cost of popular sentiment," says Alok Kumar, CIO, Reliance Infosolutions. CIO
Alok Kumar Reliance Infosolutions
Chief Information Officer
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Chandrasekaran Mohan Reliance Life Insurance PhoToS by S RIVATSA Sh AN DIlyA, D R lohIA SURESh, bhASK AR M AllI cK, MIl IND
Chief Technology Officer
Extending Your Lifeline The Lifeline Portal was designed to provide a onestop-shop for customers to shop for insurance, access personal insurance info, and track status. This was integrated with the core insurance system. To offer a secure and scalable system, the solution was architected with an operational data store component, which would insulate back-office systems from the Web and minimize external Internet related threats. The objective of customer satisfaction was achieved because online information made 122
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SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: P. Nandagopal eMPlOyeeS: 18,500 PrOjeCT: Net Insurance IT STAff: 201
transaction and execution a breeze and could be done anytime. For the customer, the option of paying premium, switching funds and updating profile online added a new dimension of convenience. It also helped the company reduce cost and the dashboard feature made it easy for the management to evaluate the performance of the sales force. "With the implementation of the Lifeline project, we are now able to offer service to customers 24 x 7,� says Chandrasekaran Mohan, CTO, Reliance Life Insurance. CIO
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For a Rainy Day R-eGen is an integrated system that addresses the requirements of regenerative initiative of Reliance Life Sciences. It is designed to address business requirements of cord blood banking services of Reliance Life Sciences — Relicord. The solution consists of seven modules spanning from CRM initiatives such as enrollment, counseling, to customer ID for all future references. R-eGen was envisioned to be integrated across multiple systems to provide a single window access for all transactional and reporting requirements across multiple systems for all stakeholders. The development entailed extensive collaboration between IT, business development, regenerative labs, SAP R/3 team, legal and finance teams, and the top management. Due to this, the prospects enrolled per week went up from four to seven, while customer conversions rose from 2.8 to 5.6. Also, the responding time came down from a day to an hour. "R-eGen was created to address the teething lacunae in the existing solutions that partly addressed the requirements of cord blood logistics," says Gopal Rangaraj, VP-IT, Reliance Life Sciences. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Anil Ambani eMPlOyeeS: 1,250 IT STAff: 35
Gopal Rangaraj Reliance Life Sciences Vice President-IT
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PrOjeCT: R-eGen COST: Rs 20 lakh
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Express Checkout Reliance Industries' vision of enabling India's supply chain and distribution was realized by setting up a retail chain. The challenge was to deploy organized retail as fast as possible with the entire IT backbone in place. The IT team at Reliance Retail rose to the challenge and delivered an end-to-end retail technology solution that included Point-ofSale, merchandizing, warehouse, procurement and Business Intelligence systems. Among the fastest retail rollouts in the world, it covers 780 stores across 13 formats (Fresh, Hypermart, Digital, Jewellery, among others) in 14 states and 75 cities of India. With 35 distribution centres and 100 collection centres. All this in 19 months. Timothy Kasbe, CIO, Reliance Retail, is very aware that retail business involves a sharp focus on measurements, costs and basic 'blocking and tackling' of ever-changing variables. The secret sauce is to anticipate the needs of users and deliver whether the user can articulate those needs or not. "Every IT staffer has to work under a store manager at least one day a year. Close proximity to the customer and shop floor is the key to success in retail IT," he says. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: Manoj Modi eMPlOyeeS: 32,000 IT STAff: 411 PrOjeCT: Retail solution
Timothy D. Kasbe Reliance Retail Chief Information Officer
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All in Your Hands Repco Bank functions under the Ministry of Home Affairs. The management decided to develop CBS software on its own with the help of a software company in order to own the source code. While an external software company was involved in the process of creating the CBS, the bank's IT team and users also played a major role. In fact, the bank pointed out nearly 5,000 bugs to the software company. Once these bugs were ironed out, the CBS started functioning properly and later on paved the way for offering facilities like ATM and Net banking.
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIreCTOr: M. balasubramanian reveNue: Rs 40.35 crore eMPlOyeeS: 500 PrOjeCT: core banking solution COST: Rs 5 crore IT STAff: 10
The drive for the CBS came from the MD's office. A joint review committee, consisting of all division heads and senior branch managers was formed to finalize the issues relating to CBS. All the policies for the CBS were laid down in these meetings. Once this was done, the IT department worked with the external software company to select the technologies involved, finalize the SLA, and implement the CBS. "We are the first bank to use handheld devices for daily deposit collection at the door step of the customer," says R. Rajagopal General Manager-IT, Repco Bank. CIO
R. Rajagopal Repco Bank General Manager-IT
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Rajesh Chopra Samsung India Electronics VP-Information Systems
Automating Quality Control At Samsung, each stage of the complex assembly line was operated as an individual unit. With growing production volumes, this was an inefficient approach, especially because there was no way of monitoring the entire Outgoing Quality Control (OQC) process from a single place. Not, at least, until Rajesh Chopra, VP-Information Systems, Samsung India Electronics found a way. The IT-led Auto Process Management System (APMS) automated the OQC process by monitoring quality parameters online at various stages of the production line. This eliminated the need for manual inspection. "This system brought the 128
SNAPSHOT PRESIDENT & CEO Suckha oh REvENuE: Rs 5,600 crore EmPLOyEES: 2,500 IT STAff: 60 PROjECT: Auto Process Management COST: Rs 2 lakh
performance of the entire assembly line to a single screen from where individual stages could be monitored and controlled by pin-pointing defects,� explains Chopra. This facilitated the gathering of production information from the assembly line in the factory to a central server where data is compiled. The biggest challenge was integrating the different systems with the network, and connecting them to the LAN without halting production. Chopra successfully consolidated different data types into a single database. The APMS implementation ensured optimal inventory and assured quality along the production chain, says Chopra. CIO
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Standard Experience "Shoppers Stop's legacy supply-chain application faced challenges such as a lack of visibility, issues in tracking and managing requests and a lack of standard processes," recalls Arun O. Gupta, CCA & Group CTO, Shoppers Stop. He took on the challenge and delivered an enterprise-class 'unified' B2B supply chain solution called Spandhan B2B. Spandhan has bi-directional data flow and enables suppliers to participate in end-to-end standardized supply chain processes. It also helps connect various primary data sources on multiple layers of security. Spandhan went live in March 2008 and has been deployed over 350 suppliers. Another 500 are fast on their way in. The platform's intuitive and consistent usability is one of its main features. Spandhan should make up to Rs 30 lakh a year at current costs for current volumes and suppliers. As the number of suppliers increase, so will the benefits. Improved supply chain processes will add value to the retail experience that Shoppers Stop is known for. CIO SNAPSHOT mANAgINg DIRECTOR & CuSTOmER CARE ASSOCIATE B.S. Nagesh REvENuE: Rs 1,210 crore EmPLOyEES: 4,500 IT STAff: 46
Arun O. Gupta Shoppers Stop CCA & Group CTO
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PROjECT: B2B Supply Chain Platform gO-LIvE DATEA: March 2008
Integration Lift-Off When SpiceJet realized that a lot of their customers were reluctant to use credit cards online, they needed a solution. A site like BillDesk.com would provide instant access to 25 online banks without the hassle of integrating Spicejet's accounts with each bank's systems and accounts reconciliation. But hanging over Chief Technology Officer, SpiceJet Virender Pal's head was a deadline set by the airlines' passengers. Pal and his team needed to get the integration done in time to leverage the offpeak season bookings — or the airline would lose money. "It was a very significant step towards achieving our firm belief of 'Flying for everyone'," says Pal. "We achieved automation to the extent that even reconciliation reports are automatically generated and sent to Billdesk," says Pal. "This ruled out the need for additional manpower and helped keep our costs low." More importantly, the integration supported the business. "This [project] gives us an edge over our competitors as none of them offer this unique facility." CIO SNAPSHOT CEO Siddhanta Sharma EmPLOyEES: 2,800 IT STAff: 14 PROjECT: Integration with Billdesk.com gO-LIvE DATE: January 2008
Virender Pal SpiceJet
Chief Technology Officer
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Lifting All Boats
When the country's oldest and largest bank decided it needed to expand the use of technology, it had a completely business-oriented objective: it needed to open 4,500 more branches to service some of the most remote villages in India. IT also wanted to enter into new businesses via tie-ups. These included pension funds, general insurance, private equity, mobile banking and advisory services. For that it needed a seamless, secure flow of information. It also needed an internal VoIP, automated treasury and risk management. The biggest challenge was carrying out the mandate over the huge network of 15,000-plus branches.
REvENuE: Rs 25,700 crore EmPLOyEES: 230,000 IT STAff: 60+ PROjECT: SAP Upgrade COST: Rs 700 crore (over a five-year period) gO-LIvE DATE: 2002
Being SBI, failure carried political repercussions. "It was clear that unless we embraced technology, this would be a nightmare," remembers S.K. Sehgal, GM-IT, State Bank of India. Vitally their strategy had to cover people. So, they set up an internal communication program called Parivartan. The bank rolled out over 3,300, two-day workshops and covered over 130,000 employees over 100 days using about 400 trainers. The benefits were just as humongous: their bold IT initiative has given SBI business' coverage of 99.7 percent. The number of daily online transactions went up from eight to 16 million and gross income increased by 40 percent. CIO
S.K. Seighal State Bank of India GM-IT
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Md. Jawed Ahmed Sterlite Technologies Head-IT (Power Business)
Putting a Sheen On Automation Sterlite Technologies' raw material traceability project helps them locate raw material and intermediate products for its finished goods (they are India's largest manufacturer of power transmission conductors and optical fibre cables). Sterlite purchases and processes close to 70,000 tons of raw material and according to projections, this is likely to increase to over one lakh tons in 2008. (They are also the largest consumers of raw aluminum in India.) Tracking every ingot of aluminum —ranging from 22 kilos to 600 kilos — was a mammoth task. Md. Jawed Ahmed, Head-IT (Power Business), Sterlite Technologies, realized that the solution was automation. By using barcodes that are 132
SNAPSHOT CEO & DIRECTOR Dr. Anand Agarwal REvENuE: Rs 1,050 crore EmPLOyEES: 200 IT STAff: 7 PROjECT: Raw Material Traceability COST: Rs 25 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: Sept 2007 — March 2008
scanned upon entry to a factory, and when ingots are being assigned for production, manual work was reduce by almost 90 percent and production time cut down. To ensure that this system worked 24x7, Ahmed implemented a Web-based solution to replace a hand-held terminal program and Wi-Fi enabled hand-held terminals and wireless. This ensured that the entire plant was covered with industrial wireless access points, helping to transfer data straight from handheld terminals. Another solution was reusable high temperature stickers. The savings these simple changes have generated has added huge value. Besides a drop in labor requirements, Sterlite also enjoys better customer trust. CIO
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Steering Inventory Straight GS Online is what keeps T.V. Sundram Iyengar & Sons' global sourcing business (GSB) humming. GSB is responsible for sourcing auto parts from different countries to meet the company's global needs. Before GS Online, these activities were carried out via e-mails and that meant huge delays. The application is used by teams — RFQ, development, and supplies — to source vendors, get quotations, zero in on suppliers, maintain technical requirements and ensure compliance. The development team works on delivery schedules, quality control and purchase. The supplies team maintains supply schedules. "This IT solution has become the backbone for GSB as it offers real-time information from endto-end," says V. Sundar, CIO, T.V. Sundram Iyengar & Sons. The new system ensured losses were minimized by increasing transparency. It also heralded in huge reductions in lead-time. This would lead to a revenue increase by a minimum of Rs 2.8 crore per year. CIO SNAPSHOT jOINT mANAgINg DIRECTOR: R. Dinesh REvENuE: Rs 3,000 crore EmPLOyEES: 3,389 IT STAff: 42 PROjECT NAmE: GS online
V. Sundar T.V. Sundram Iyengar & Sons
Chief Information Officer
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COST: Rs 5.6 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: october 2007 — April 2008
To the Next Level Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) had been using Oracle for over six years. But for more scalability, reliability and functions, it would need to upgrade. At the same time, the IT team needed to weed out customizations on existing modules. Alok Kumar, VP and Head Internal IT, TCS, decided it was time to upgrade the database and the application system. "This would introduce new features to meet business requirements. It would deliver better performance, increased consistency and continuous vendor support," he says. While the 1.1TB database that could not suffer even the shortest downtime, change management and preparing the team for the upgrade were also challenges. "Upgrading an ERP system in the shortest time is a challenge. The impact of the upgrade could affect the transaction system and attract risk," says Kumar. Today, his work enables TCS to close all its books in less then 14 days. There is also a marked improvement in performance, stability and security — not to mention savings in hardware costs, he says. CIO SNAPSHOT CEO AND mD S. Ramadorai REvENuE: Rs 22,863 crore EmPLOyEES: 111,000+ IT STAff: 1,700+ PROjECT: oracle App Upgrade PROjECT PERIOD: April 2006 – January 2007
Alok Kumar Tata Consultancy Services
VP and Head Internal IT
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IT Scrubs In
Tata Refractory has a 60-bed hospital in Orissa that was prone to frequent breakdowns because it ran on standalone systems. Worse, essential hospital processes were not linked and there was little accountability of inventories or cash. Ranjan Padhi, CIO, Tata Refractories, realized that an Integrated Hospital Management System (IHMS) would pull the hospital together and reduce cost — but Padhi would have to create it himself. The new system would provide uninterrupted service, generate monthly P&L accounts and link various data fields like registration, validity, eligibility, testing, medicine billing and patient billing.
mD C.D. Kamath REvENuE: Rs 773.44 crore EmPLOyEES: 610 IT STAff: 9 PROjECT: Integrated Hospital Management System COST: Rs 5 lakh
While all this should have been available on the main ERP, the existing BaaN ERP did not have it. This meant that doctors and nurses had to be trained on the new system. Interestingly, the deployment is not part of the main business at all. And since cost is the driving force of any technology deployment, it is also worthwhile to note that there was no extra cost involved. "With the IHMS application, savings have amounted to Rs 40 lakh while revenues have increased by Rs 30 lakh per anum," says Padhi. "Our chief medical officer was awarded the 'Best Medical Officer in the State' for quick service," he says proudly. CIO
Manas Ranjan Padhi Tata Refractories Chief Information Officer
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Navin Chadha Tata Teleservices President & CIO
Dialing Pre-paid The Indian mobile market is driven by prepaid revenue. In fact, prepaid accounts for nearly 80 percent of the market. To keep that market moving, recharges are vital and any work to iron out problems in helping users recharge goes a long way. The electronic voucher distribution systems that are used by most telecom companies have limited features and high operational complexities. So, Navin Chadha, President & CIO, Tata Teleservices, and his team came up with their own electronic voucher distribution system. The solution is scalable and provides a comprehensive end-to-end view that starts with voucher distribution and ends at revenue accounting. Today, the application handles over 600,000 recharges everyday with few or no 136
SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Anil Kumar Sardana REvENuE: Rs 7,000 crore EMPLOyEES: 7,000 IT STAff: 1,200 PROjECT: Electronic Voucher Distribution COST: Rs 150 lakhs PROjECT PERIOD: Dec 2006 - April 2007
operational and scalability issues. An added bonus? It facilitates customer self-recharge over the Web. "The EVD solution has been a huge success within Tata Teleservices — from a cost savings perspective and how it streamlined operational stability," says Chadha. But to get here, the IT team faced challenges. An important one was taking business owners into confidence about the in-house development for such a critical requirement. Figuring out the optimal features was another challenge. But, in the end, it brought substantial savings: to the tune of Rs 20 lakh a day. "Total savings till date are Rs 20 crore, and growing," say Chadha, who is ready to leverage the solution at outside organizations in partnership with TCS. CIO
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Medical Innovation In organizations where the lives of people depend on the smooth flow of information, SMS technology can hold the key to many user-friendly applications — and lives. The Calcutta Medical Research Institute found a way to use SMS to do that. This automated service benefits hospital staff as patient information is relayed to them instantly. It enhances the efficiency of the in-patient service delivery system by reducing gaps in communication. Using a VBS Script and a SQL Server platform, the SMS service initially started with notifications about patient admission, discharge, referrals, bed transfers, etcetera, to doctors and management whenever an entry or a change was made. "We have taken a SMS gateway from SMSLIVE to push SMS taking data directly from database every five minutes, says Vishnu Gupta, CIO, The Calcutta Medical Research Institute. "It is extremely convenient for both doctors and patients." The IT team now plans to add multiple instances that can generate and insert data in a SMS database as per requirements. CIO SNAPSHOT COO: Rupak Barua REvENuE: Rs 58 crore EMPLOyEES: 1,100 IT STAff: 16 PROjECT NAME: Automated SMS Alert Service
Vishnu Gupta The Calcutta Medical Research Institute
Chief Information Officer
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COST: Rs 15,000 gO-LIvE DATE: March 2007
Lighting the Way In December 2006, the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company and the Ahmedabad-based Torrent Power signed a Distribution Franchisee agreement to provide power to the Bhiwandi circle. IT played a crucial role in this first-of-its-kind PPP as it faced the challenge of facilitating the business. Data management was crucial since most data was not computerised. These made meeting implementation deadlines a huge problem. "The existing systems were disintegrated. But we delivered an IT-enabled business in four months," recalls Jyoti Bandopadhyay, VP-IT, Torrent Power. On succesful completion, there was an all-round enhancement of quality. CRM activities started on the date of the takeover. Many complex processes were simplified including billing, cash collection, distribution and transamission of power. Bandopadhyay gives full credit to his IT team. "A key success parmeter was the sense of ownership which enabled us to deliver a quality project," he says. CIO SNAPSHOT DIRECTOR: Murli Ranganathan REvENuE: Rs 3,722 crore EMPLOyEES: 5,000 IT buDgET: Rs 5.4 crore IT STAff: 30 COST: Rs 3 crore gO-LIvE DATE: January 2007
Jyoti Bandopadhyay Torrent Power VP-IT
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July to January 2008
Tracking Tractors
The TAFE Information Management System (TIMS) was conceived to create consistency among business processes across dealerships and arrive at a common yardstick — all using dashboards. It also introduced standardized data entry screens, which facilitate the capture of secondary sales data, customer complaints, workshop details, secondary sales of parts, channel funding details, etcetera. The data is captured by direct entry, uploads, SMS or IVR. The solution is aimed at integrating TAFE's business intelligence solution with cluster management, competitor and market information.
DIRECTOR & CEO: S. Mallika Srinivasan REvENuE: Rs 1,950 crore EMPLOyEES: 1,200 IT STAff: 85 PROjECT: TAFE Information Management COST: Rs 2 crore
"We architected this solution as a foundation for future. It has the scalability, reliability and capability to meet the next revolution," says P. Shobhana Ravi associate VP-IT & Learning, Tractors & Farm Equipment. The biggest challenges were change management, data collection and creating an interface with multiple technologies and integration to legacy portal system. But the business advantages made up for the troubles the IT team took. "We achieved a 10 percent increase in sales in micro-marketing in villages, and almost a 100 percent accuracy of dealer funding. The result was a 5-6 percent improvement in sales force productivity." she says. CIO
P. Shobhana Ravi Tractors & Farm Equipment Associate VP-IT & Learning
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T.G. Dhandapani TVS Motor Corporate CIO
Importing Benefits — Not Problems To cope with the increasing cost of raw materials and components, TVS Motor decided to source them from China. But its inability to streamline the logistics of this new supply chain led to inflated costs, and defeated the whole purpose. The challenge before the IT team was to find a way to minimize inventory yet ensure that components were available on time so that the manufacturing line did not stop. T.G. Dhandapani, Corporate CIO, TVS Motor, had a plan. His strategy was to set up an application that would provide complete stock transparency along the entire supply chain, enable appropriate triggers to take timely action and — most importantly 140
SNAPSHOT PRESIDENT: K.N. Radhakrishnan REvENuE: Rs 3,900 crore EMPLOyEES: 6,000 IT STAff: 60 PROjECT: Material Requirement Planning COST: Rs 20 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: March — July 2007
— improve the process of material requirement planning. His constraint? It would have to be designed with the existing IT infrastructure. The facility that he created provides a dashboard that shows the availability of materials from order, L/C opening to receipt of material at various stages in the supply chain. Through work-flow, all agencies update the various events, including at the source in China, as the material is being put on a ship, or whether material is waiting at customs. The function is a simple browser-based application. "This has helped TVS Motor to reduce its inventory in transit by almost 15 percent and reduce material cost by 12 percent by reducing wastage and optimizing raw material usage," says Dhandapani. CIO
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The Long-Term View In April 2005, Unitech took up a three-pronged IT development program within the organization: communication, collaboration, and business integration through SAP including a parallel implementation of CRM and HR. The challenges that stood were many. There was business processes that needed re-engineering and change to be managed among stakeholders. In addition, the existing IT strategies needed continuous work and innovation to meet the needs of the new environment. "An interesting challenge was to bridge the gap between business trade practices and technology," says Umesh Vashistha, CIO, Unitech. The strength of the project, Vashistha believes, is that it is not a collection of custom solutions, but instead a logical integration of processes across the organization, which helped achieve horizontal and vertical integration. The biggest achievement was that the project ensured that Unitech reached the business continuity program and valueadded services standards that it had set for itself. CIO SNAPSHOT CEO: Ajay Chandra REvENuE: Rs 4,281 crore EMPLOyEES: 1,700 IT STAff: 20 PROjECT: IT Development Program
Umesh Vashistha Unitech Chief Information Officer
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COST: Rs 4.5 crore PROjECT PERIOD: April 2005 — June 2008
IT Profit Center Ratnakar Nemani, CIO & SAP Practice Head, VST Industries, brought VST's ERP back in-house after five years of outsourcing it. His aim was to increase efficiency and aid the organization's self-dependence. But winning over his bosses' trust and getting them to invest Rs 140 lakh was a challenge. He needed to convince the top management that his IT team — without a background in IT but who had worked closely with the outsourcing partner could handle the responsibility. "I was asked to be on the IT team despite my finance background. We did a SAP upgrade by ourselves and that helped convince my bosses that I could do a good job," he says. With his team standing by him, he successfully completed the upgrade and built enough know-how to ensure that today, VST's IT organization is a profit center that offers services to other enterprises that need SAP expertise. In fact, VST has bagged two customers. The IT team also found a way to reduce hardware costs by 30 percent, by introducing thin clients. CIO SNAPSHOT MANAgINg DIRECTOR: Raymond S. Noronha REvENuE: Rs 773.4 crore EMPLOyEES: 1,100 IT STAff: 30 PROjECT: SAP Upgrade & IT Profit Center COST: Rs 140 lakh PROjECT PERIOD: April 2007 — March 2008
Ratnakar Nemani VST Industries CIO & SAP Practice Head
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Sharing Costs
This project involved migrating from a conventional TDM-based telephony system to MPLS technology under a Hybrid Hosted Contact Center Model. The need for this approach was felt two years ago and Wipro BPO (WBPO) started discussions around a hosted model with multiple service providers. "We finalized the solution around a year back," says P.C. Jain, GM-Technology, Wipro BPO. The initiative provides advanced contact center functionality with the latest transport technologies. "Since we had already invested a huge amount on our own technology infrastructure, we wanted to have a model which protected our investment and
HEAD WbPO: Ashutosh Vaidya REvENuE: Rs 1,160 crore EMPLOyEES: 20,000 IT STAff: 400 PROjECT: MPlS under a Hybrid Hosted Contact Center Model COST: Rs 15.8 (over four years)
our ability to expand to new geographies. So, we decided to go with this hybrid model," adds Jain. Apart from convincing customers and management of the solution, the IT team also had to select the appropriate service provider. Then they faced the risk of integrating the provider's infrastructure with their own. The migration has benefited the company. "We will save around Rs 6 crore over a period of five years," says Jain. Other not-so-obvious benefits include an increased ease of management and flexibility. In addition, delivery timelines for new locations or projects will be reduced by two to three weeks. And if you're a BPO outfit, that's an important benefit. CIO
P.C. Jain Wipro BPO
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Laxman Badiga Wipro Technologies Chief Information Officer
A Model Makeover Wipro's traditional ODC Model (Offshore Delivery Model) faced issues including skills mismatch across locations and scarcity of skilled resources. The Global Delivery Model 2.0 (service delivery using a virtual delivery model) was developed to provide service deliveries virtually. It removes physical boundaries and creates a virtual environment with security controls. Wipro is now location-agnostic and also contributes to better deployment of onsite resources, thus lowering cross-training costs with better utilization of special skill sets. 144
SNAPSHOT JOINT CEO IT BuSINESS: Girish Paranjpe REvENuE: Rs 20,000 crore EmPLOyEES: 90,000+ IT STAff: 800 PROJECT: Global Delivery Model 2.0 COST: Rs 4 crore
The Wipro E-Win project (Wipro Intelligent Enterprise Network) with a new MPLS network, with Intranet bandwidth doubled from 500Mbps to 1,000Mbps. This reduced cost by 15 percent with a further annual reduction of 10-15 percent. The Internet bandwidth increased three-fold, so employees could work from home. The UC infrastructure also solved real business problems and helped make progress on the $100 million (about Rs 400 crore) revenue target from resource utilization. "This is first time in the IT/ITES space that multiple technologies have been combined to evolve a complete change in the service delivery," says Laxman Badiga, CIO, Wipro Technologies." CIO
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Bringing It Together WNS Global Services handles a range of clients and geographies giving rise to complexities in terms of technology, compliance and regulations. The challenge before it, therefore, was to move to a centralized architecture that would maintain security, create greater cost efficiencies and eliminate duplication of resources towards extending its customer environments. "We faced compliance roadblocks and challenges in terms of a seamless migration between existing individual domains to the centralized platform, data consolidation and centralization of backups. These had to be done without compromising zerovisibility between customer environments," recollects Sanjay Jain, CIO, WNS Global Services. The task demanded innovative thinking to work with complex regulatory and contractually-enforced compliance requirements of multiple customers while meeting their own set of requirements. "Challenges included gaining customer trust, and delivering on deadlines, while getting approval from security functions as well as compliance approvals of each customer, " says Jain. CIO SNAPSHOT GROuP CEO: Neeraj Bhargava EmPLOyEES: 18,000 IT STAff: 150
Sanjay Jain WNS Global Services
Chief Information Officer
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PROJECT: Centralizing Architecture GO-LIvE DATE: March 2008 (Mumbai and Gurgaon); June 2008 (Pune)
Suresh R. Shenoy Wockhardt Sr. VP-IT
A Healing Process When Wockhardt acquired Pinewood in Ireland, one of the challenges was to help sales and medical representatives in that country by using a Blackberry Ordering System (BOS) that was tightly-integrated with SAP S&D module. The retail pharmacist division processed between 400 and 500 orders everyday and the SAP implementation would enable placing orders online, and generate a warehouse management picking list with auto printing instructions, and process all the way to packing. The application showed OTIF (On Time In Full) percentages as high as 98 percent, and provided 146
SNAPSHOT CHAIRmAN: Habil Khorakiwala REvENuE: Rs 2,600 crore EmPLOyEES: 6,000 IT STAff: 50 PROJECT: SAP Implementation COST: Rs 12 crore
multiple data including products, customer details, sales history, customer outstanding, and sales operational reports. "This implementation made all this possible with only two people at the office," says Suresh Shenoy, Sr. VP-IT, Wockhardt. Because revenue generation was involved, "it was built with architecture of online and offline with a backup of Internet browser compatibility," says Shenoy. The implementation increased topline sales by 20 percent with no increase in workforce, and a jump in customer satisfaction. The minimum turnaround time for order processing has decreased from two days to half a day. CIO
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Agile Banking "The main idea with which I conceptualized the CRM was to stay away from mature and stable CRM packages because our retail business model itself was demand-based and fluid. We wanted to start with a small, framework-based model which changed as we grew or changed to suit our needs; in other words agile," says Suvanjay Kumar Sharma, VP (Corporate Strategy) & Chief Enterprise Architect, YES Bank. Sharma created YCCRM (YES Collaborative Customer Relationship Management) using Open Source. The complete application was developed in Web 2.0 and was integrated with the core system enabling YES Bank to capture data to help with cross selling. It also has an audit and compliance report feature. It was a major challenge, says Sharma, to convince the business to use Open Source CRM software and the collaborative feature for sharing leads. Post implementation, there was an increase in sales leads, and customer service improved by 60 percent. Cross-selling strategies also improved. The largest benefit has been, "to manage and maintain (data volume) and easier DR and backup." CIO SNAPSHOT EmPLOyEES: 6,000 IT STAff: 65 PROJECT: CRM
Suvanjay Kumar Sharma YES Bank
VP ( Corporate Strategy ) & Chief Enterprise Architect
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PROJECT COST: less than Rs 25 lakh PROJECT PERIOD: February – March 2008
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Breaking the Mold
Every pioneering group needs a vanguard. The winners of the CIO 100 Special Awards lead the way in five important areas of IT.
he bold organizations play to win — not just to survive. This is an attribute that is reflected in the following case studies — all five are CIO 100 Special Award Winners for Green IT, Smart Infrastructure, Smart Storage, Security and Innovation. These winners have demonstrated how technology can play an instrumental role in helping their businesses become more eco-friendly, optimize their existing IT infrastructure and manage enterprise data more efficiently to allow on-demand information. They also show how to ensure information security with just the right amount of flexibility to allow rightful access, and finally, how to help their enterprises create new business opportunities through sustainable innovation. In almost all the cases, end users and business leaders were brought into the process early, allowing IT to align itself with the business, and resulting in real benefits. CIO
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INDEX 150 i Security i HDFC STAnDArD LIFe 154 i green it i BAnk OF InDIA 158 i Storage i SHOpperS STOp 162 i infraStructure i I-FLex 166 i innovation i ITC LIFeSTyLe reTAILInG
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case file
Reader ROI:
The benefits of IDM How to combine SOA and IDM
Insured Why the first steps are the hardest
HDFC Standard Life doubled its staff in one year to 17,000. Creating a flexible security framework to give them access to data would need some nifty footwork. By Gunjan Trivedi 150
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IllUSt ratIon by an Il t
Assured Access Internally, too, HDFCSL was facing the heat. To keep up with the business, the insurance major was hiring internally staff; in fact, the number of HDFCSL employees doubled in a year. With such an influx of new recruits, the costs and the time spent by the managed security services to handle
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internal user access management went through the roof. The situation was begging for an access management solution. "We have a managed services team that takes care of user access management for about 18,000 employees. A security gap is not being promptly addressed if somebody has not been de-provisioned fast enough. Similarly, there is a productivity issue if a new recruit has not been provisioned fast enough," says Rawlani. At the same time, it was getting expensive to administer the system because multiple administrators and helpdesk staff were needed to provision users and help with password management. Regular audits, demanding consolidated and reconciled reports from across applications, worsened the situation. The IT team at HDFCSL came up with a solution to enable an encompassing yet modular enterprise-wide security framework. The idea hinged around reusing security process frameworks. The result was HDFCSL's first SOA-based project. "With this, the organization is one of the first insurance companies in India to fully deploy an Identity and Access Management (IDM) solution," says Rawlani. Importantly, the ability to reuse the components managed the three C's of the organization: cost, complexity and compliance.
Photo by SrIVatSa ShandIlya
ow much money a company makes is directly proportional to how much information it can push to its people — especially for a financial organization. With the right information at right time, the bottom line doesn't have to be an unhappy place. But, the inability to offer a secure environment to transfer information directly impacts revenue-making opportunities. HDFC Standard Life (HDFCSL) was not untouched by this simple equation. To promote their life insurance products and services, the business was signing up as many financial consultants as it could. (Financial consultants are like insurance agents who sign up with HDFCSL so that they can help other people plan their insurance, for a fee). But sitting in their homes or offices, the financial consultants could not access data they needed. Limited access to leads from a HDFCSL promotion in a local mall, for example, hurt them critically. And not having the most up-to-date information on a certain scheme or policy severely affected their credibility — and their chances of getting clients to part with their money. These were just the business problems. On a security front, it was imperative that the access of a financial consultant that had parted ways with HDFCSL be taken away. With security worrying them and over five lakh financial consultants banging their doors for access to information, the organization realized it was time to move. "Our mobile workforce solution first went live in early 2004, soon expanding to a full-scale B2B and B2E initiative for our financial consultants, employees and institutional customers in three years. But with it came the call for a robust, scalable and reusable security framework that could easily accommodate newer applications," recalls Sunil Rawlani, executive VP of IT, HDFCSL.
"We've been able to recover our cost by just taking into account how much less it costs to manage services over eight months. " — Sunil Rawlani,
Executive VP-IT, HDFCSL
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case file
The security framework of the IDM solution to be done as far as incorporating new was mapped to user roles in various groups applications is concerned. The challenge of and this ensures that changes to someone's tweaking applications will exist, but won't access levels (due to changes in hierarchy) can be as bad. Now it won't take more than a SNAPSHOT be dealt with automatically. few days to bring about similar changes to "From a user management perspective, newer applications," says Thomas. HDFC we figured out who will manage what "We'll also have better control on the Standard and who will approve what. If we have a new applications. We have incorporated Life layer-1 raising a request, then a layer-2 will self-service modules for application Revenue: Rs 4,859 crore approve it. This is all based on rules and administrators and owners. We foresee most of them can be reused. During the federated identity as a way to incorporate Employees: 18,000 development cycle, we implemented SOA group businesses and channel partners principles. New applications can be easily seamlessly and securely using the standardsIT Staff: 56 provisioned now thanks to the standardized based integration," adds Sadadekar. framework," explains Sharad Sadadekar, CIO: Sunil Rawlani associate VP-IT, HDFCSL. The HR application was selected as The IDM solution went live in January this the authoritative source for the IDM as it had the most year and it addresses the four A's of security: authentication, comprehensive and up-to-date database. It contained all authorization, administration and audit. The system the information of the company's employees, temporary has also been able to demonstrate authoritatively to the staff, support partner and contractors, and this was used to business that it enjoys greater returns on the investment create a logical database for the security system. A common in addition to securing the most prized asset of the attribute was identified across all the applications to help organization: information. achieve user provisioning and de-provisioning. "The "The cost of manually provisioning and entire project was dependent on this common attribute de-provisioning is far greater than doing it automatically. as it forms a permanent relationship between the HR and We have been able to recover the cost of solution by just the pre-existing object in the database," explains Thomson taking into account how much less it costs to manage Thomas, VP-IT, HDFCSL. services over eight months. If we have achieved ROI in But finalizing on common attributes across applications just eight months, the project is obviously going to fly," threatened to be showstopper. Sadadekar recalls the substantiates Rawlani. selection of attributes such as the employee ID format as ROI has been a major driving factor for the systems. a major pain. Each application was designed with its own The IDM solution has clocked a 116 percent in returns set of structures and certain apps either didn't have it or in the first year. That is expected to rise to 132 percent in if they did, then it was in a variety of formats. "We had to the second year. manually incorporate these attributes before uploading "In phase two, we are working on single sign-On. Not them in the IDM solution," he says. all the employees are currently working on single sign-on The option of waiting until more order emerged access. It is still being rolled out, informs Thomas. wasn't as sound as it seems. "In our line of business, the As far as financial consultants are concerned, Rawlani numbers we deal with change drastically. The more we feels that there is now confidence that this community waited for a solution the bigger the problem would have can be reached using Web-based and SMS-based got," says Thomas. interfaces. "With this confidence, we are now looking Managing user accounts was also a huge task. Orphan at an e-learning solution. With secure access and single accounts threatened the business, as there were certain sign-on, the company is going to drastically cut cost, accounts that had illegal or extra rights on applications improve turnaround time and will have standardized — with no central auditing facility. "There were accounts way of delivering training to everybody. There will be we never knew existed. Figuring out issues like these no disconnect and everyone will have access to the same took a lot more time than we thought they would," says content and consistent levels of training," he states. Sadadekar. The most time-consuming phase was user "It is still evolutionary. There's a long way to go," data cleansing. It took almost 30 days to associate user he adds. CIO accounts on different systems to a single individual on the identity management system, he adds. But once those issues were thrashed out, it cleared Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to the way for the future. "We are now know what needs firstname.lastname@example.com
Scaling Up
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Banking on
the Sun Reader ROI:
How green IT and business can work hand-in-hand
How to effectively harness the power of the sun for computing
Case Study - BANK OF INDIA.indd 154
The Bank of India turned to solar energy to power their rural branches — not because they wanted to, but because they had to. By Balaji NarasimhaN
IL LuStrAtIon by unn I k rIS h nAn AV
the Price of Power
batteries. A branch office would open at 9 AM and we'd have to tell our customers that we could not help them," recollects Pralhad Sangamkar, Zonal Manager, Sholapur. In a city, any other company would have happily used a diesel generator, and in many cities it is the standard response to power problems. But the Bank of India couldn't do this in a rural area. One of the reasons was the environment. But more pertinently, it was uneconomical. Each rural bank has to look after its own profit and loss, and using a generator for several
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Photo by Sr IVAtSA ShAnd ILyA
hours at a stretch would have had a detrimental impact on the here are some people who take a great deal of particular branch's profits. pride in going green, but P.A. Kalyanasundar, Sangamkar says that 40 out of the 56 branches he is GM, Bank of India, is not among them. in-charge of face between 16- to 18 hour-brownouts everyday. By using the sun to generate power for the Just to keep each branch running costs about Rs 4,500 a banks branches in rural areas, he has gone month in kerosene. green like few CIOs have dared. But ask him And even if the Bank of India had cleared a budget for to discuss his green project and he says, "necessity is mother diesel generators, the ground reality in rural India would have of invention." prevented them from taking that plan through. Fuel is not "The project was conceptualized because of a burning easily available in rural areas due to severe shortages. Even desire to do a little bit for the environment and with a view to when fuel was available, branch personnel had to travel long overcome the acute power shortages, load shedding, erratic distances to procure the fuel required to run the generator, power supply or no power at our computerized rural remote creating a manual and inefficient process. branches," he explains. It was a business nightmare. Due to the organization's dependency on electricity, non-availability or acute power shortages led to scenarios where entire branches would grind to a brutal halt because. Because of this, employee morale and productivity went There was just one way that the Bank of India could meet down. Worse still, customer service was affected to a great its rural power requirements: it would have to harness the extent and business growth had almost stopped. power of the sun. While the bank had UPSes, using them to power the branch was a bit like trying to put out a volcano with a water hose. This was because the power scenario was so bad that the UPS wouldn't charge fully. Even if "The payback period it did, it would only work for a short period, is about four to five and this was wholly inadequate to run the years. After that (for branch smoothly. 20 years), we'll spend "Power was a problem. We'd get a few a nominal Rs 3,000 for hours of supply post-midnight, which annual maintenance." would charge the UPS. But sometimes — P.A. Kalyanasundar the voltage would be too low to charge the GM, Bank of India
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"With the introduction and implementation of While the productivity boost for employees solar power, we have been able to overcome our and cost savings in terms of electricity were the electricity problems," says Kalyanasundar, who greatest benefits of going solar for the Bank of adds that by using a renewable, non-polluting, India, there were also some other advantages. SNAPSHOT and eco-friendly source of power, computerized Today branches no longer have to spend time Bank Of rural branches were able to offer uninterrupted and manpower on fuel and maintainting India banking services to all its customers. their diesel generators. The absence of noisy Operating Profit: Rs 3,701 crore "By using solar energy, our desire to generators also enhanced branch ambience and contribute to, and to do a little bit for the customer service. Summing up, Kalyanasundar Locations: 2,883 environment has also been fulfilled," he adds. says, "the negligible maintenance of solar Computerized While the Bank of India went green because panels and the trouble-free operation that they Branches it had no other option, it did have a choice of who provided was a great relief to our staff." IT Staff: to partner with and it chose Tata BP Solar. The Kalyanasundar is also happy that, along with 600 bank entrusted their vendor with the complete improvements to the bank, the green initiative GM: implementation of the project, including site has also reduced air and noise pollution, P.A. Kalyanasundar survey, installation, and maintenance. Post the thereby contributing to the environment. implementation, solar power not only charges the UPS, but it's aslo used to light up office premises. Thanks to solar power, Kalyanasundar says the Bank of India doesn't But, while helping the environment is a feel-good factor, a have to depend on rural ESCOMs (electricity supplying CIO is judged on ROI — and here, Kalyanasundar is happy companies) at all. to point out that Bank of India has achieved this. But these advantages came after the implementation. The Explaining this, he points out, "The whole project ensures major task before Bank of India, once the strategy to use solar business continuity at branches where the project has been power was adopted, was ensuring proper coordination with all implemented, and this, in itself, is good. Over and above this, 48 zonal offices. An internal study was conducted to determine expected returns from the solar power project can be classified the status of the power shortages, and then bank officials into two parts, namely the subjective or cost or visible benefits had to coordinate with the vendor to conduct a site survey and the objective or invisible benefits." before the vendor could carry on with their implementations. Elaborating, he points out that the average life of the panels "Geographical spread of the branches posed a huge logistical is approximately 25 years. "We found that the payback period challenge," recalls Kalyanasundar. is approximately four to five years. After that, we'll spend a Not surprisingly, a lot of problems they faced had nothing a nominal Rs 3,000 for annual maintenance." In addition, to do with technology. For example, the premises on which the the burden on the profit and loss of the branch is reduced on bank stood were rented, which meant that they had to obtain account of zero expenditure on generators, fuel for generators permission from owners to install equipment like solar panels, and also maintenance of these generators. which, given the timeframes for execution of the project, These benefits are spreading throughout the organization became a challenge. There was also the issue of obtaining road fast. Sangamkar, for example, is gunning to make Solapur a permits for the transportation of equipment. Once this was 100 percent solar zone by the end of the year. Currently, 29 out done, and it was found that the roof of the bank could hold of the 56 branches under him have gone green. the weight of the solar equipment, then the implementation The invisible benefits include uninterrupted power got the green light. supply, which enhances and assists in efficient customer Explaining the benefits, Kalyanasundar says, "Our service, points out Kalyanasundar. "Additionally, clean, ecocomputerized rural remote branches are successfully friendly environment no-smoke and sound pollution in the operational on clean, eco-friendly solar power. Now our branch premises decreases the health risks and increases the computerized branches are able to transact their business efficiency of the staff members." smoothly without any power interruption. Apart from Summing up the solution, Kalyanasundar says, "This improving the environment, it also contributes substantially solution to paucity of power is very unique in the entire to the overall power generation capacity and also gives a good financial sector and has the potential to revolutionize return on investment." computerization in the rural sector of the entire country. It is Not only are branches no longer at the mercy of ESCOMs, a matter of pride that our banking services are functioning on but generating their own power has saved them plenty. eco-friendly power at the remotest location." Apart from the Rs 4,500 each branch saves on kerosene Guess who's smiling their way to the bank. CIO every month, they save an additional Rs 1,500 on regular electricity supply. Assistant editor Balaji Narasimhan can be reached at email@example.com
Sunny Times
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Reader ROI:
How inflexible storage can directly affect business The benefits of a single storage platform What to watch out for
In retail, the number of stores you own separates the boys from the men. But how fast Shoppers Stop could open a store was partially dictated by its storage needs — until IT changed that.
sk the CIO of a retail business about his worst nightmare and he'll probably say storage management. Supporting the data needs of a chain of stores selling thousands of items is a highly complex task. That's because the retail format can generate piles of data, escalating storage needs phenomenally. To avoid under-provisioning — and holding up the business — many CIOs over-provision, which is a safe, if expensive, way to deal with the problem Arun Gupta, the CTO of the Rs 1,210-crore Shoppers Stop, was one of those CIOs, until recently. He has since learnt the art of systematically adding juice to his storage boxes in order to avoid a data deluge. Gupta also has another challenge: how to predict data growth and stay ahead of the curve by about a year and upgrade the storage infrastructure with minimal impact on the business. He's found a way to do that, too. Gupta and his team not only doubled their storage capacity from about 7TB to over 15TB for their SAN and NAS ecosystem but also deployed a data-intensive business development application for real estate management.
By Gunjan Trivedi data, back up and recovery activities — without disrupting the business — were becoming challenges. "We needed a scalable and flexible solution to meet the demand for storage while keeping the TCO low and protecting existing investment," says Gopakumar Panicker, senior manager, solutions and technology team at Shoppers Stop.
IN A TIgHT SPOT Shoppers Stop's meteoric rise to a house-hold name is partially because of the number of outlets it has. But driven by aggressive plans to expand even more, has increased the use of Shoppers Stop's current apps — and the need for new ones. "Every new business unit that is set up has unique application requirements. The dynamics of our business also calls for many specialized applications and high data-storage capacity due to data retention policies," says Gupta. Traditionally, the enterprise used direct attached storage but that offered limited scalability options. It resulted in the underutilization of storage resources in some pools, while others were running short. Simultaneously, backing up data (it took between eight to nine hours) was becoming an insurmountable problem. With an increase in the amount of
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"We are able to address the requirement for quicker turnaround time for application rollout with a flexible and scalable solution." — Arun Gupta
CCA & Group CTO, Shoppers Stop
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In the meanwhile, the business was fighting substantiates how the storage ecosystem is another battle. In the retail world, the leaders consolidated and virtualized. are those who could can find affordable space While the storage infrastructure overhaul to open new outlets. Real estate was the new was primarily driven by the rapid expansion of SNAPSHOT definition for success. "Today, in the retail the business, the introduction of data-intensive sector, monitoring and managing properties apps like SPARK added to urgency to the Shoppers is critical," says Kumar Sitaraman, chief of project. The challenge for the IT team was to Stop business development, Shoppers Stop Group. concurrently manage and rollout both projects, Revenue: Rs 1,210 crore To help the organization cope, Shoppers without an impact on either. Stop created a separate division. It's business Before juggling both projects, the IT team Employees: 4,500 development team is responsible for identifying analyzed app processes and their storage and evaluating properties where Shoppers Stop needs to understand the impact of storage IT Staff: 46 can open stores in any of its 15 retail formats. requirements of SPARK and other apps. "This Members of the business team worked on the proactive measure to analyze storage impact CIO: Arun Gupta Excel spreadsheets and faced many challenges and the input/output behavior of various because of the fast-changing nature of the applications in simulated environments real estate business. What they needed was a centralized helped us to introduce relevant tweaks and changes before repository of site data and property evaluation matrices. we commissioned the new storage systems," says Panicker. "There are thousands of documents related to sites under It helped that the technologies performed as expected. evaluation. The team stored their data on individual laptops, "The good part of this tale is that certain storage technologies so consolidating data for MIS took a lot of time," says Panicker. worked as advertised. This eased our attempts to cause This led to to slow decision-making — a death blow when minimal impact on business processes while adding disks, you're trying to grab a space everyone wants. and helped us to complete our project in time," says Gupta. The business team turned to IT for help. "When everyone else was on a signing spree with the real estate owners and agents, we realized that we needed a systematic approach. Project SPARK successfully continues its data-crunching That would require revamping the storage infrastructure. This with the help of new the storage ecosystem, and aids the would also aid other applications," recalls Gupta, "Hence, the organization optimize its property acquisition process, Project SPARK (System for Property Acquisition, Research which can now store a larger number parameters and has the and Knowledge-sharing) was born." ability to review past decisions. Thanks to project SPARK, SPARK assists the business group capture all the data the turnaround time to approve or reject a piece of property related to properties clearly and scientifically, and assists them is now two days — from 10 days earlier. making properties decisions using analysis and comparison Shoppers Stop's consolidated and virtualized storage has methods. "Without this type of software, we'd probably have given it one view of the entire enterprise's data. The upgraded chaos managing this data," says Sitaraman. infrastructure allows the organization to allocate storage Faced with multiple problems that could be solved with space on demand, simplifying new application rollouts, while a single storage platform, Gupta took on the challenge. An using resources optimally. "We see a reduction in like-to-like unified storage solution from NetApp was selected after investments by about 30 percent," says Panicker. thorough evaluation. "The unified solution eliminated the The back up window has been reduced by 50 percent. The need to implement separate solutions for both SAN and improved ecosystem has had no unscheduled downtime over NAS. This ensured better TCO across the implementation," last one year, and reduced incidences of data loss. says Panicker. With the new, upgraded system in place, the need to have The storage in the SAN and NAS ecosystem was upgraded high availability, flexibility and agility to respond to rapidly incrementally from 7.8TB to 15.3TB over six months. The first changing business needs with lower investments has been acquisition of storage technologies occurred about 18 months adequately met, too, says Sitaraman. ago. This increased the total storage space to about 30TB. "We are able to address the requirement for quicker In addition to this, the data warehouse 10TB of capacity turnaround time for application rollout with a flexible and and the AS400 server has 5TB. The fact they used a AS400 scalable solution. Our storage architecture ensures that server with that capacity shows how much data was being upgrades occur seamlessly without impacting systems and created because normally AS400 servers store their data in applications availability," says Gupta. CIO pure ASCII format and each file isn't more than a few bytes. Gupta points out the fact that the organization is procuring Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to servers without directly-attached storage for last six months, firstname.lastname@example.com
The Goodies
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Reader ROI:
How communicating through one platform can reduce costs How technology can bridge communication gaps
With operations spread across the globe and 14,000 staffers, communication at i-flex was a nightmare. Until IT helped the company turn the tide in its favor.
ILLUSt rAtIon by PC Ano oP
have a bad habit. I love cracking practical jokes on my team. Just the other day, while I was at an airport waiting to board a flight to Mumbai, I logged on to the public wi-fi network, tunneled through VPN into our enterprise network. I used the VoIP softphone on my laptop to dial out to one of my team members. Not expecting me in the office, but seeing the call routing from my extension, rattled my team members. I, indeed, had a mighty laugh at their expense," he smiles. S.Hariharan, senior vice president of infrastructure support services at Oracle Financial Services Software (OFSS), the erstwhile i-flex Solutions, piggybacked on the organization's extensively revamped communication and IT infrastructure. Just to have a little fun. This is quite obviously one small side-effect benefit of a never ending list of perks that the company's innovative deployment brought in. A list that included 80 percent reduction in telecom costs. But how did the company get there? The answer lay in necessity. A necessity that would foster innovation sitting on virtualization and VoIP. The communications infrastructure situation at OFSS had grown pretty gloomy. The organization had a conventional infrastructure to meet its communication and data networking requirements. With about 14,000 employees spread across multiple locations around the globe, the cost of communicating between various offices increased in material and frequency. "The international long distance (ILD/ISD) and national long distance (NLD/STD) intra-office communications increased and emerged as one of the biggest annual infrastructure expenditure," recalls Hariharan. A lot more than the company would like. Moreover, as the number of internal projects at OFSS grew, the set of server and other IT inventory, in addition to the domain servers, grew phenomenally. This put pressure on the IT infrastructure support group in the organization as the completed projects left behind a barrage of unused and underutilized servers. "To sustain competitive advantage and enhance productivity, we had to enable frequent global
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connects among our locations. This stressed our endeavors to keep a tab on costs, and improve user productivity at the same time," says V.Srinivasan, chief of staff and corporate development at OFSS.
reaChIng out Hariharan knew he had a job on his hands. He embarked on a painstaking journey of revamping the operational facilities and bringing in newer technologies. The need to have zero downtime and minimal business disruptions during the
Photo by S rIVAtSA S hA ndILyA
By gunjan trivedi
"Though we can't put a number to the rise in productivity, we're seeing better performance and more user satisfaction. — S.Hariharan
Sr. VP Infrastructure Support Services, OFSS
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entire overhauling process was imperative. points, before roping in senior management, But that made the task even more demanding the systems were rolled out to a facilities and onerous. and administration team of about 400 "A complete rip-and-replace scenario users. This eliminated any practical or SNAPSHOT would have set us back astronomically. perceived problems with the systems. Hence, whatever solution we had to come up "We had suspected some performance i-flex with, had to optimally leverage the existing issues with users at remote locations. Solutions infrastructure and protect the investment," With the feedback from the pilot users, we Managing Director: recalls Hariharan. resolved performance issues by leveraging N.K. Raman A detailed study of the existing network quality of service and by upgrading the Revenue: infrastructure was undertaken to understand bandwidth marginally wherever required," Rs 2,308 crore the call volumes and patterns. The IT team says Hariharan. Employees: collated data on telephony usage and the On the IT infrastructure side, virtualized 14,000 growth pattern across various offices over a environment riding on VMWare tools was IT Staff: period of six months. brought in. A number of underutilized 450 "To enable people to communicate in an servers across three distinct datacenters in Project: optimal manner, we decided to introduce Mumbai were collapsed into one box sitting VoIP enterprise-wide VoIP and invest in large at the new, consolidated datacenter. Once the telephony infrastructure," says Hariharan. projects were over, the virtualized setup was The team designed the VoIP architecture, ran proofreused and the resources were allocated to other projects of-concepts and tested various call volume tools. The in the pipeline. Currently, VMWare supports a total of five detailed study and the trend analyses helped the IT team applications on 27 virtual servers. This has naturally led in designing PBX migration roadmap, VoIP trunks and to substantial savings in terms of procurement of systems, bandwidth requirements. real estate space, and reduced power consumption. To cut costs on migration of PBXs to the newer VoIP ecosystem, the existing PBXs were VoIP-enabled by software upgrades. Using logical partitioning (a subset of The project, very evidently, brought in more rewards computer hardware resources, virtualized as a separate than one. Telecommunication cost for the enterprise was computer) the existing fleet of PBXs was leveraged to route immediately cut down by more than 80 percent. The VoIP both VoIP and PSTN calls across the enterprise. phones ran on POE (power over Ethernet) at the office locations. This eliminated the need to run additional power cabling to the instruments. The POE had intelligent power sensing capabilities to offset different power consumption The revamped infrastructure went live in June 2007. levels depending on whether the phone is off or on-hook. Hariharan and his team proactively accounted various This helped the enterprise to significantly reduce roadblocks that could have possibly cropped up during power usage. the entire phased deployment cycle. Redundancy was "Though we can't yet put a number to the rise one aspect that stood out like a sore thumb. "Since we in productivity, I am sure we are seeing improved wanted to accomplish our goal of rolling out the new VoIPperformance translating into better end-user satisfaction," enabled network without any downtime, we stressed on says Hariharan. building a resilient network with adequate redundancy," One directly visible impact of the data communications says Hariharan. revamp is the post migration state of email infrastructure. In addition to the three carriers being roped in to check While the servers have reduced from 11 to two, the mailbox redundancy, connectivity between US and India were triplesize has increased from 10MB to 50MB per user. The routed. With all his systems in place, Hariharan also had to availability and reliability has quantifiably increased from connect continents and cross oceans. While submarine cable 94 percent to 99.99 percent. connects were chosen over the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic With a project like that against his name, Hariharan is a Ocean, a third route was devised over satellite. The locations in happy man, sitting at an airport and playing pranks. Just India networked to US through a direct route, another routing for fun. CIO through Singapore and the third going through Europe. "This way we removed any chance of harboring a single point of failure and minimizing breakdown instances," he says. The IT team had expected certain performance issues Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to with the new VoIP ecosystem. To figure out the threshold email@example.com
Voicing Benefits
Connecting Continents
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caSE fIlE
Underneath the glitz of a Wills Lifestyle store were tricky challenges like shrinking product lifecycles, unpredictable demand, and a long and inflexible supply chain. IT helped tame these monsters using RFID.
Tagg agg gged ged e ! By KaniKa Goswami
Reader ROI:
The far reaching benefits of RFID How RFID can produce greater efficiencies
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IllUSt ratIon by an Il t
MakIng IT STIck ITC Lifestyle Retailing has two gigantic warehouses, which swallow up everything their factories produce and carefully distribute clothing based on location,
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season and host of other parameters. The warehouses run on a warehouse management system that are tied into MOVEX, a fashion ERP. They have separate bays that receive, scan, store (in metallic bins), segregate and dispatch products. The IT team looked at this workflow picture and decided two things: any garment carrying the Wills Lifestyle brand needed to be RFID tagged at a ITC Lifestyle Retailing factory (before they got to the warehouse) or at an outsourced manufacturer. Second, they needed to create two RFID tunnels at each warehouse: one for incoming goods and another for those leaving the warehouse. Like other RFID implementations, the IT team at ITC Lifestyle Retailing bumped into challenges of read accuracy, read speed and tag orientation. That's when they turned to solutions such as PLC-based RFID tunnels for the warehouse and smart, customized point-of-sale software (POS) for the stores. "During the pilot, we tested a variety of RFID tags and RFID readers and antennas. Various systems — the RFID tunnel was one of them — were conceptualized and fabricated to achieve our goals," recalls Bansal. Meanwhile, at the stores, the RFID program was meeting its own challenges. Since each store has two counters for customer billing, store managers decided to
Photo by Sr IVatSa ShandIlya
n the fashion retail business, speed is what separates the chumps from the Valentinos. How fast an organization can respond to new customer demand is key. And when creatives and seamstresses are all driven to turn around ideas quickly, frittering the time gained makes a mockery of the system. But like a fast moving stream entering a broad plateau, garments destined for Wills Lifestyle Retail slowed down when they got to warehouses. It was like the warehouses were thumbing their noses at the system. And it wasn't funny. Everyday that a box of clothing stayed shelved in the warehouse, was a day less on display and 12 hours worth less of opportunities to make a sale. That, however, was a fact at the Rs 300-crore fashion house that belongs to the ITC Group. As truckloads of boxes waited outside warehouses, workmen couldn't inventory them fast enough. "The challenge was to deal with large volumes because people have been doing it manually," says O.P. Bansal, CIO, ITC Lifestyle Retailing. A lean supply-chain could help. But with traditional and manual practices, there was only so much that the company could crunch its time-to-market cycles. Looking to streamline their operations, ITC Lifestyle Retailing, conducted a detailed study to assess their overall supply chain process. After their huddle, they returned a solution they had probably guessed before the study: RFID was the solution that could best increase the company's responsiveness. "A business case was put forth to implement RFID at an item level. The aim was to speed up existing processes, reduce time-to-market, handle material efficiently, and bring more accuracy of books versus physical stock," says Bansal. But the company knew they were shopping in the unknown. Few companies have invested in RFID, shying away from the technology because of its price and inaccuracy. Fewer still have attempted in India's retail scene. So, the core team decided to start with a pilot, and follow it up with phased implementations. The first phase would last a year starting from September 2006.
"Saving time means a garment gets more time at the store. That makes more business sense to me than saving labor costs." — O.P. Bansal
CIO, ITC Lifestyle Retailing
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case file
use a similar approach to that at the factory: Rs 15 lakh will get the bean counters they placed RFID antennas in drawers behind whistling, but Bansal is focused on another, the counters. more important benefit. "I am not looking But for all its potential, RFID is still far at this as a labor saving activity. If we can SNAPSHOT from a plug-and-play solution and possesses save time in the warehouse that means every technological challenges when it's being garment is getting about seven days earlier ITC Wills deployed in a live environment. ITC Lifestyle to the store. And that makes more business Lifestyle Retailing had to take on radical changes in sense to me," says Bansal. Retail processes, face problems with integrating the Since the implementation, the extra time Revenue: Rs 300 crore technology with existing systems and deal every garment spends in the store is affecting with an unavailability of a standard program the company's bottomline positively. With IT Staff: 40 interface for RFID hardware. some garments getting as much as extra 10 The high price of RFID tags, too, has to 15-day window, ITC Lifestyle Retailing has CIO: O.P. Bansal traditionally been a stumbling block for the seen a 1 to 2 percent uptick in sales. technology, and Bansal couldn't get away Another advantage is a huge reduction from it. "Earlier, we used tags that were worth Rs 6 or Rs in the return of non-saleable goods from the showroom. 7. That's almost 1 percent of my product cost and that is As a direct result of mishandling in the warehouse, an significant," he says. astonishing 20 percent of garments were returned from the To mitigate the high costs of the tags, other organizations stores. Now that boxes don't have to be opened, the fewer normally reuse them. But that solution would not cut ice at number of non-saleable goods is saving the company about ITC Lifestyle Retailing . Bansal says that it was not feasible Rs 15 lakh a year. Also, the percentage of manual errors has to reuse the tags since the logistics of retrieving the tags been reduced greatly because each tag has a unique identity and reprinting information on them — on repetitive basis and reconciliation is more accurate. Assuming a 0.1 percent — was a sizeable task. error rate across three lakh products every month, Bansal However, there was good news. Over a single season, estimates saving worth Rs 60 lakh a year. the company saw the prices of the tags fall by over 30 Like a stone in a pond, the benefits of the RFID percent. But given that ITC Lifestyle Retailing is currently implementation are sending ripples that will be felt years tagging 1.6 million garments a year, price is still a challenge, from today. Because the company can ship inventory says Bansal. in and out of its warehouses faster, it can make do with But what really worries Bansal is the changing nature of less warehouse space, creating savings in real estate. the technology. Every investment the company makes today Bansal estimates that over a period of three years the could be outdated tomorrow — or worse worthless. "We implementation will save the company about Rs 10 lakh are still experimenting. Whatever we may have done so far in real estate costs. may become obsolete. That is one of our biggest challenges," Sanjeev Khanna, who is in charge of logistics, says, "The says Bansal. operational benefits that we're deriving post the RFID implementation can be summed-up in two important words: efficiency and accuracy." And at the store, the RFID implementation has created In the cutthroat retail business, higher efficiencies are time for service executives. Time-consuming jobs like not a luxury, they are a must. RFID has brought that taking physical stock counts and back room management advantage to ITC Lifestyle Retailing. Under their old are now non-existent. "This gives a store's staff more time to barcode system, each carton had to be manually opened, converse with customers about products and promotions, every piece scanned and entries made. And that was only which in turn increase customer satisfaction," says Bansal. when it entered the warehouse. The process had to be "Plus it has opened the door for future-looking applications repeated when garments left the warehouse. like trial room experience, smart shelves, contact-less With the RFID tags, entire cartons can be scanned. payment, etcetera." Gone are the days, when boxes had to be opened by legions The project has already been rolled out across two major of workers, today, boxes are simply pushed through the warehouses in Delhi and Bangalore and across all Wills RFID tunnel. It now takes 20-30 seconds to inventory Lifestyle Retail stores in the National Capital Region. In its 30-35 garments (about one boxes worth) — from between second phase, RFID will taken to other stores across the five and eight minutes. Currently, on any given day, each country. RFID could be coming to a store near you. CIO worker can handle between 2,000 and 3,000 garments — from by 300 to 400 — an incredible efficiency jump, Kanika Goswami is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to which translates to savings of about Rs 15 lakh a year. email@example.com
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from the TOP
Manoj Kohli, CEO, Bharti Airtel, wants IT to help his company cope with the complexity of serving almost 125 million customers by 2010, and make Airtel the country's most admired brand.
Activating IT Leadership
View from the top is a series of interviews with CEOs and other C-level executives about the role of IT in their companies and what they expect from their CIOs.
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By Pankaj Mishra Bharti Airtel, India's largest telecom firm by subscriber, has never been good at following the rules — which is probably why — in it's space — it is also one of the most profitable companies in the world. Thumbing its nose at entrenched paradigms has moved it from a onecircle mobile operator to the world's third largest telecom company — if it can meet its 125-million-by-2010 deadline. Look at how it buried the ARPU model (average revenue per user) because it realized that as it moved further into the Indian hinterland, the model would hold the company back. In this interview with CIO, Manoj Kohli, CEO, Bharti Airtel, elaborates on Airtel's other game-changing move: when it completely outsourced IT. The idea took outsourcing to a new level and left many industry watchers bugged eyed in shock. But it worked and gave Airtel a platform to grow by leaps and bounds. In fact, in the last four years, Airtel's revenues have tripled — from Rs 8,003 crore in 2004 to Rs 26,436 crore in 2007-08. What Kohli makes a point of is that Airtel's CIO led the ground-breaking move to outsource IT. It's an example of a business-centric outlook, he feels, more CIOs ought to have. He says CIOs evolve as strategic leaders by listening to the business and end customers.
CIO: Although it's been a few years now, the scope of your outsourcing contract still makes it a landmark deal. What
drove it and how has that relationship evolved? Manoj Kohli: Our outsourcing strategy had three objectives: giving our operations more scalability, gathering best practices from the world, and
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Manoj Kohli expects I.T. to: Help in product and services innovation Manage exponential growth Play a strategic role in business
gaining telecom domain knowledge from across the world. We started with a few million customers, and the relationship addresses scalability up to 125 million customers by 2010. The objective was not cost savings, but building the future of our company by listening more closely to our customers. The relationship with IBM has been very helpful. What started as a deal to outsource our network has today expanded to IT, BPO and several other areas with six partners. While the growth
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of our business is handled by experts, our leadership team is focused on customers. Our experiences with outsourcing in the telecom business are now serving as a blueprint for structuring similar relationships in the new businesses Bharti Group is venturing into.
What role has IT played in Airtel's evolution? IT has to play a revolutionary role at Airtel. Our CIO, Jai Menon, is not
merely an IT leader — he is playing an instrumental role in transforming our company. From almost 64 different platforms, we now have one integrated platform across our businesses. Our new products in the areas of DTH have also been successfully integrated with the front end. We now have an almost paperless office as well. Jai has spearheaded IT's strategic role at our company, right from the time he was involved with structuring the transformation deal with IBM.
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View from the Top
In a highly competitive environment, how do you ensure constant differentiation? In our industry, tariffs are now vanilla — you cannot differentiate on that factor. In the coming years, you will see us innovate around new products and customer services. These are the two areas where Airtel, as a brand, is innovating continuously. Differentiation is key to our ethos, and we will ensure that we enhance the service and product experience of our customers through innovation.
You've gained leadership in the urban and semiurban markets, but what's your plan to address the rural markets? There are almost 700 million potential customers in rural India — it's the single largest market anywhere in the world. We have covered around 3.6 lakh villages so far, and should be able to cross the five lakh villages mark very soon. IT will play an instrumental role in addressing this market through innovative solutions and products. We are working with handset makers and other partners to ensure that we serve this segment well. We would like to be the most admired brand in rural India as well.
As CEO, what is your involvement in making IT decisions and driving IT initiatives at Airtel? It is very important for me as the CEO to get involved with IT, especially in big investment decisions. I also need to back new IT initiatives, because a top-down approach helps make the best use of any new deployment. This is also because other functions might not be able to appreciate IT as much as is required, and therefore, I 172
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several innovative solutions we've placed in our supply chain to help us foresee and address potential problems.
"It is important for me as the CEO to get involved in IT, especially in big investment decisions. I need to back new IT initiatives because a top-down approach helps." — Manoj Kohli need to make them understand the value of technology. I have to act as a catalyst between IT and other businesses to ensure that both are tightly integrated.
What are some of the business challenges you face, and how can IT help in addressing them? Balancing long-term and short-term business goals is one of the key challenges CEOs face, apart from several operational issues, as we continue to add over 2.7 million customers every month. We need to take tomorrow's decisions today, and this is where IT helps by providing almost on-demand information and data. Managing the supply chain also poses several challenges, however there are
In your opinion, what are the attributes of bold leadership, and how can CIOs become strategic leaders? Leadership involves putting together basic characteristics and core values of an organization or a team. Building this character across a team or a company is one of the important attributes. Boldness also requires developing a vision for the business — both long-term and shortterm, and then making decisions in line with that vision. Some of these decisions might not be popular, but could take the company a long way in evolving as a successful enterprise. Another area, where even CIOs can develop their skills as strategic leaders, is sensitivity towards employees, customers and partners. Leaders should be able to smell market needs and opportunities before anybody else does.
What's your advice to CIOs? As reflected in our case, CIOs must have a long-term architecture in mind even as they address short-term business priorities. My message for CIOs is to empathize with their businesses apart from keeping in mind the needs of the final customers. In fact, CIOs need to be a lot more customercentric and even help business address the unarticulated needs of its customers. This is how IT can help business innovate and launch new products. CIOs need to think of technology in the context of business. They need to keep figuring out areas where business has challenges and address them with appropriate technology solution. CIO
Pankaj Mishra is executive editor. Send feedback on this interview to email@example.com
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Harsh Mariwala, CMD, Marico Industries, says in the fiercelycompetitive FMCG industry, IT-led innovation can make a huge difference.
Innovation Keeps Them Smiling By Sneha Jha When they made the customer king, they forgot how capricious he was. Customer choice: it's a thought that reverberates everyday at FMCG major, Marico Industries. In its attempt to meet the expectations of its customers, the Rs 1,910-crore Marico has trodden uncharted territories. Harsh Mariwala places a high premium on innovation. He says it is a key differentiator in the intensely competitive FMCG industry. Marico has done plenty to nurture innovation, not just within the organization, but to spark it in other companies too. Marico's association with innovation does not end at product innovation; they have used IT to define their entire growth trajectory. IT has helped address the needs of a constantly evolving market and register a sustainable growth rate besides providing a competitive edge.
CIO: What is the importance of product innovation at Marico?
View from the top is a series of interviews with CEOs and other C-level executives about the role of IT in their companies and what they expect from their CIOs.
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At Marico, we Harsh Mariwala: recognize that product innovation is a key differentiator in a competitive world. Innovation and thought leadership are the fundamental building blocks of our organization. The spirit of innovation in Marico is demonstrated in its unique product designs. Look at the Saffola range of functional foods or Parachute Therapie (hair oil that promises to reduce hair fall). Then we have new 'sensorials' like Parachute Advansed Night Repair Crème and the Kaya product range. Examples for innovative packaging include a hair oil spray, a bottle heater for Parachute Hot Champi.
We've also innovated in product delivery with Parachute Advansed (aimed at young adults), Starz (aimed at children), etcetera.
Is IT key in product development? Today, one cannot imagine product development without IT support. Starting with collecting literature, to running various equipment, data analysis, studying sensorial and clinical research, etcetera, — IT enables all of this. It also provides a platform for the R&D team to store and share knowledge with knowledge management portals.
Since its inception, what has the Marico Innovation Foundation achieved?
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View from the Top
Harsh Mariwala expects I.T. to: Create innovative opportunities for the business Help get a better grip on information Simplify business processes
The Marico Innovation Foundation was founded to fuel innovation in India. It's focus areas are business and social innovation with special attention to knowledge building — essential for innovation. The last five years have seen the Marico India Foundation lead several successful initiatives. It has propagated its findings through several large-scale, high-impact platforms. These findings have also been shared on an international platform. One of these initiatives is the 'Innovation for India Awards', which recognizes those
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who had the courage to attempt to innovate, both in business and the social arena. In its second year, response to the Awards has been tremendous with over 340 entries. Then there is the Challenger Study. This project drew insights from Indian organizations that challenged conventions and achieved quantum growth through innovation. The foundation studied several companies to define a 'challenger organization'. The objective is to showcase them and inspire other potential challengers. Their findings were presented to institutes like IIM-
Bangalore, ISB, Indian Merchants Chamber, CII and the Aditya Birla Group. The foundation has also produced research around product innovation with Altair and Erehwon (a provider of innovative technology and an innovation consultancy, respectfully). Their research uncovered the mindsets that enable or disable product innovation in India. They also aim to provide a platform on which the experiences of successful organizations can be gathered and be used as reference.
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View from the Top
Is Marico a premium or a volume player? Marico's consumers are from across the country, both in terms of geographic spread and from towns across the population strata. In terms of urban and rural markets, approximately 75 percent of our revenues come from the urban markets. However, in urban markets, we do not focus only on the affluent consumer. Urban markets in India have sections of not-so affluent consumers who form a large consumer base. A brand like Parachute cuts across income groups because it is available in both a modest price-point pack and in large sizes. While Saffola may go primarily into higher income households, consumers of some of our other brands such as Shanti and Mediker belong to a cross-section of income groups. Rather than shifting to premium-priced brands, our strategy is to improve the overall margin profile of our portfolio. We continue to introduce new products to the market. As long as they serve a consumer need and their attributes are effectively communicated, they will contribute to our growth.
Do you extend this long-term ROI focus to IT investments? Marico's 'uncommon sense' plays an important role here. The CTO does not identify the ROI to convince management of IT investments. For the most part, this is done by the businesses and IT helps them make the right decision. IT investments are judged on the basis of some parameters. These include whether they aid better management, speed up response time to the market, or deliver results faster to stakeholders. We take up projects that will lead to sustainable profitable growth.
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"Technology must understand that consumers are always looking for new things." — Harsh Mariwala Marketing is key to the success of any FMCG company. However, implementing a marketing strategy needs the support of technology and at Marico, marketing and technology work closely to ensure this. Today, technology has to understand and balance three things to develop products and technologies for a marketing strategy. First, technology must understand that consumers are always looking for new things. Second, science and technology are also changing with the development of new and more efficacious active ingredients, eco-friendly actives, delivery mechanisms, and nano technology. Last is the changing regulatory scene. The technology team in any FMCG company needs to understand these elements, and develop new skills to deliver a value-for-money proposition in line with their marketing strategy — in compliance with the law. Protecting IP, patenting technologies and processes are also important aspects of technical support. At Marico, technology is also responsible for tracking and ensuring the quality of a product from development to manufacturing to distribution.
How else is IT leveraged? The IT function has played an imperative role in Marico's success. Our IT initiatives
include tools like MINET & MIDAS, which have helped us gain visibility of secondary markets (critical for any FMCG business). Sales and distribution is an acknowledged Marico competitive strength and IT has provided a strong platform to that function. Through tools like, MINET, MIDAS, SAP R3, APO and BIW, IT has enabled a shift to secondary-based sales, way ahead of the competition. Marico, for example, is one of the few companies whose distributors do not place an order for goods. The system checks their stocks, and according to a pre-fixed minimum stock level, creates an order. MIDAS (Marico Industries Distributor Automation Software/System) helps us capture the sales, stocks and other relevant data pertaining to the distributor. The system is in use at 400 sites, which account for more than 85 percent of our business in value terms. MINET is a portal for distributors to upload and download data with the MIDAS System. The MINET portal aggregates data and feeds into the SAP APO system, which generates orders for distributors. MINET is also used as a reporting tool since it aggregates and consolidates data from all the distributors.
What are the direct benefits of MIDAS and MINET? Implementing MIDAS and MINET resulted in a reduction in loss of sale (due to distributor stock out) by 38 percent. We can ensure that only required stocks are dispatched and this has improved logistics and planning. It has also reduced sales skew. The sales skew once stood at 10 percent in the first 10 days in the month, 28 percent in the next 10 days and 62 percent in the last 10 days. Post MIDAS and MINET, sales skew is 24 percent, 34 percent and 42 percent respectively. Excess inventory at the distributor level has come down by 49 percent. Other benefits include transparency of data across sales channels, our ability to track competitors across the
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country, and more control of the sales force and partner claim disbursements. IT has not only helped us keep pace with the rapid growth in our business but has also helped us beat the competition.
What business insights do your CIO contribute? At Marico, the CIO is a business leader first and then a technology expert. The CIO ensures that resources are not wasted on initiatives that do not deliver real benefits. This calls for a CIO to be a shrewd business leader and a technology expert. In fact, our CIOs have come from functions other than IT. As a result, despite our investments in IT being considerably smaller than similar companies, we get many more benefits. The IT function at Marico, led by the CIO, acts as
a business enabler. IT plays a pivotal role in simplifying business processes through e-enabled workflows. For example, it e-enabled workflows and transactions and it has simplified the capital expenditure approvals process. Using IT as a tool, we turned the entire buying process on its head. By e-enabling our purchases, our vendors can come to our portal and bid. This has simplified the process of procurement and has allowed us to drive process and savings.
IT has given us an edge. We will continue to maintain this edge with the help of IT. To sustain profitable growth, we Headquarters: plan to invest in IT solutions Mumbai that strengthen corporate Revenue: performance management. As Rs 1,907 crore a result, the process of strategy Employees: dissemination, budgeting, 2,211 planning and reporting IT Team: will become much stronger 40 leading to better allocation of CIOs: resources and better financial Girish Rao and Udayraj Prabhu performance. We also plan to experiment with technologies such as Web 2.0 to enable collaboration and innovation. CIO
Marico Industries
How will Marico use IT to maintain its position?
Sneha Jha is correspondent. Send feedback on this interview to firstname.lastname@example.com
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For More Information Contact: North - Pankaj Jain 9971706668, East - Bishwajit Sutradhar 9748780073, Mumbai - Cyril Fernandes 9322332665, Pune - Rohan Bichpuriya 9890899188, Gujarat & MP - Dipesh Shah 9925011328, Karnataka - Prasanna Kumar 9880345671, Andhra Pradesh - Anand Ragavendra 9701483312, Tamil Nadu- Preet Kumar 9176663222
from the TOP
In a market that confounds most investors, Kshitij Jain, MD and CEO, ING Life India, wants simplicity to differentiate his company. It's a bold proposition — and he's counting on IT to back him.
The Boldness of
Simplicity By Kanika Goswami When leaders in your industry are driving their employees up the wall looking for the next big insurance scheme, it takes a bold man to step back and call for change. Kshitij Jain wants to take a new road: by simplifying things — not for himself or his company but — for his customers. The move is also part of ING Group's worldwide position to make customers choose its businesses because they are 'easier' to work with — it's their differentiator in a cluttered and commoditized market. It requires a certain boldness to believe in a new direction. And Jain is banking on IT to help him find new innovative ways to get potential customers choose ING Life India.
CIO: How do you simplify in an industry that is becoming too complex for the average investor to comprehend?
View from the top is a series of interviews with CEOs and other C-level executives about the role of IT in their companies and what they expect from their CIOs.
s e p t e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD
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Kshitij Jain: You're right, with such a multitude of services available, it becomes very difficult even for the educated to figure out which products are right for them. We need to advise them depending on which stage of life they are in. The key is communication. It could be technological communication or personal communication. As is evident from our website, I think we've been able to communicate in a very simple manner; whether we're talking about life products or about a specific 'life stage'.
Our attempt to communicate transparently is now internal to the organization. We are also automating and simplifying our internal business processes with the help of IT. In our business, constant product innovation is important. IT has made a great difference in that: it has reduced the product-design to market-launch time to 90 days.
How can IT help a company like yours innovate? IT must design systems that provide operational flexibility. Only then can innovative ideas translate quickly to changes in products and services for customers. At ING Vysya Life, we are able to launch a new product within two
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Kshitij Jain expects I.T. to: Facilitate rapid growth Improve customer service Help make it a customerfriendly company
to three months from the day we finalize a product's specifications. Our existing IT system has been customized to automate the underwriting process so that over 60 percent of proposals are issued without the need for manual underwriting. Such success gives us the confidence to venture into other cutting-edge technologies to improve overall flexibility and the efficiency of our operations. We are also constantly looking to leverage ING's worldwide expertise to acquire new technologies and improve our systems.
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View from the Top - Kshitij Jain - LIFE INSURANCE.indd 181
In what way has the ING Group influenced your IT investments? One of the greatest contributions that ING made for us was to set up our mother system at the start. We work on a system called Life Asia, which ING has been using for over 15 years. It's a proven system and two of its biggest advantages are reliability and stability. From day one, we've had complete stability as far as our main operating systems are concerned.
In IT — as in our implementations — all our applications in India are benchmarked against other global units. There is a lot of networking between the IT teams of different countries. And this experience helps us prepare for every successive stage.
In a highly commoditized industry, how do you ensure that you are different?
REAL CIO WORLD | s e p t e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 8
View from the Top
Technology may not play a leading role in differentiating us. But, it can facilitate implementing our overall market approach. Globally, ING has decided that its positioning will be centered around the concept of 'easier'. IT can ensure that at any customer touch point, we shall be a company that is easier to deal with. Right now, we are more reliant on customer acquisition. But, in the future, we are going to be in a business where profitability will be found in managing a very large group of customers, where the critical differentiator will be the ease with which a customer can interact with the organization.
How can CIOs become bold business leaders? I don't think it is fair to say that CIOs aren't business leaders already. Our head of technology is very much a part of our decision-making team. We have a COO who heads both our operations and IT. We also have a head of IT. We are perhaps the first company that has implemented straight proof-processing. Today, if a customer buys a policy in New Delhi, it can be issued to him or her on the same day in Bangalore — even if it is being issued from a centralized office. This is possible because we have implemented a straight through processing (STP) and a workflow solution, which has completely changed the way we do business. I think IT — and the CIO — can make a huge difference. In our company, CIOs are business people, not IT people. About being bold, I think in an industry of this nature, we need more the mark of being reliable, than being bold. Our industry is different from others because we are talking about a business relationship that lasts 15 to 20 years.
As chief executive, what do you expect IT to deliver for your business? 182
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"IT can ensure that at any customer touch point, we shall be the company that is easier to deal with." — Kshitij Jain I view technology as an enabler. It facilitates rapid growth while enhancing the service experience to our customers. I expect IT to deliver on all the project initiatives that help meet this objective in a timely and costeffective manner.
How does IT get the green signal to invest at your company? We have a strong governance structure in the form of an IT steering committee, which I chair. This committee decides on all major investments that we need to make in upgrading or adopting new technologies and systems.
How do you blend traditional relationshipbased interactions with Internet-powered transaction channels? In the first few years, we invested significant resources in building a solid transaction-processing platform. These systems are capable of handling significant
increases in volumes and are flexible enough to allow a reasonably quick launch of new products. About three years ago, we made another major investment in a world-class business process management system. This has improved efficiency. We are going to implement an operational data store to provide the entire organization with a single view of our customers. At ING, we have a customer initiative that we call Click-Call Face. A customer can contact us via the Net, call us on our toll free number — where they can talk to us in eight major languages. Customers can meet our representatives face to face. But, I've noticed that customers are increasingly comfortable with the Net and phone options. Though, in towns with populations below five lakh, people are still more comfortable with the face-toface option. I think most people are better with click and call. The advantage in our business is that while Internet penetration is an issue, it is not a burning one.
Do you think e-commerce can play an effective role in insurance sales? In fact, for both insurance and banking, ING is world leader. ING Direct is the world's largest Internet bank; it is the growth engine of the ING business worldwide. Using e-commerce and the Internet as the only distribution channel is something that our group understands well. Having said that, e-commerce is restricted in India; we are in a tightly regulated industry. There are limitations on how much you can do over the Net; pen and ink still need to be used before we can issue a policy. Going forward, I do think that e-commerce is not only going to be a viable plan, but also a very important plan for distribution. Given that regulation keeps pace with the market. CIO Kanika Goswami is assistant editor. Send feedback on this interview to firstname.lastname@example.com
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EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 34
CIO 100 Special EVENT REPORT
A Royal Affair PARTNERS
On-Demand Penetration Testing
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 35
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
DiGNiTARiES SEEN AT Cio 100 From Left to Right, Top Row: Louis D'meLLo President & CEO iDG iNDiA DAvi A D NishbALL Avi President, Enterprise Services AiRTeL Deep DeepAN shu shARmA General Manager Marketing AmD boRis ivAN v vAN cic Director - Asia Pacific A ATTA chmATe hARihARAN GANesAN Managing Director compuwAR ompuw ompuwAR e iNDiA shAmsheeR AhmeD Managing Director GeNesys iNDiA KAmAL DuTTA Director hp soFTwAR w wAR e shAiLeNDRA beNiwAL iw iwAL Head of Sales, PSG Commercial hp psG RAhuL bhALLA Country Executive - Strategy and Marketing, ibm biKAsh bARAi Founder & CEO iviz TechNosoLuTioNs mARTiN LAm Director - Sales & Marketing KeNGsiNGToN compuTeR pANKAj KAy KAyAT yAThwAL hw Assistant General Manager LG eLecTRoNics Ashish mAThuR Head- Business development & Marketing mAhiNDRA woRLD ciTy eDGAR DiAs Leader - Data Solutions NoRTeL AsiA AmuLiK bijRAL Country Manager RsA RANA GupTA Business Head - India & SAARC sAFeNeT L .coL. h.s.beDi LT CMD TuLip RAmAchANDRA muRThy Head Marketing wipRo iNFoTech vijAy A RAmAchANDRAN Ay Editor-in-Chief iDG iNDiA
an ode To T
dIT Leadership A hundred bold leaders; one glitzy awards ceremony; and an evening to cherish for a lifetime.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 37
he third CIO 100 symposium at Jaipur was a royal ode to an attribute of Indian IT leadership called boldness. An exquisite awards ceremony in the city had it all — genius, power and some magic to enthuse the spirits of all the winners and partners. Even as performers such as Vasundhara Das brought the much needed glitz and glamour to the evening, it was the combined zeal and excellence of India's top hundred IT leaders, which made the entire show a memorable one. With some of the most innovative and bold leaders present at the ceremony, one only hoped that the achievements of CIO 100 winners is able to inspire hundreds of other IT leaders to transform their organizations by leveraging IT as a strategic and bold tool. We have captured the moments of elation, joy and gaiety in the following pages to provide you a glimpse of India's most coveted and cherished enterprise IT awards for excellence: the CIO 100.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 38
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
ChoC-A-bloCk : Over 250 guests assembled to witness the CIO Bold 100 Awards ceremony on September 6, 2008
ThE WElComE: Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-in-Chief, IDG India, greeting the guests on the occasion.
iT'S ThE TimE To DiSCo : The melodious Vasundhara Das livening up the proceedings.
ThE lAuGh RioT: Ace comedian Surender Sharma entertaining the guests with his rib-tickling acts.
hiGh oN fuN: The delegates seen having a good time.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 39
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
The storage pioneers
sanjay jaIn, Wns gLoBaL servIces PROJECT HIGHLIGHT- The storage solution manages the requirements of corporate information systems, applications, databases and over 150 customer-specific business operations and has helped manage approximately 75 TB of information.
SToRAGE AWARDS FROM L-R: Sanjay Jain, Hitesh Arora, Laxman Badiga, Alok Ohrie, EMC, Arun Gupta and Manish Choksi Laxman BadIga, WIpro TechnoLogIes PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS- The storage solution protects and encrypts data at storage layer and all the changes are audited, increasing compliance and improving efficiency.
bollyWooD mASAlA: Suzie Q performing her foot-tapping hits.
arun gupTa, shoppers sTop PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: a unified storage solution with 15.3 TB capacity providing one-view of all enterprise data, allocation of storage ondemand for new application.
hITesh K. arora, max neW yorK LIfe Insurance PROJECT HIGHLIGHTSThe SAN storage infrastructure enables multi-pathing to cater any failover scenario of LUNS assigned to servers hence improving performance. manIsh choKsI, asIan paInTs PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: A SAN-based redundant, scalable and user-friendly storage system, which also brought the advance features of virtualization.
ThE VENuE: The Jaigarh Fort provided the ideal setting for the special awards ceremony
EMC congratulates the winners of the Storage Awards 2008
Storage awardS 2008 Presented by
The infrastructure champs
ThE folk-TAlE: An artist performing the elegant Kachchi dance. corporate headquarters, provide securityenhanced Internet access from branch offices, and utilize limited bandwidth more efficiently. AmD SmART iNfRASTRuCTuRE AWARDS FROM LEFT: Hariharan Sankaran, Navin Chadha, Arvind Chandrashekar from AMD, Bihag Lalaji, Alok Kumar and K.B. Singh aLoK Kumar, TaTa consuLTancy servIces PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS- The endto-end single vendor managed, SLA driven, application aware network based on MPLS-MEN technology divides the entire network into 11 regions and reduces provisioning and administrative costs across it 80 locations. BIhag LaLajI, amBuja cemenTs PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS- Connects about 215 locations to the centralized server at Mumbai with fully reliable, redundant and adequate (B/W) WAN. navIn chadha, TaTa TeLeservIces PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Microsoft System Center Configuration
Management (SCCM) 2007 has been implemented across TTSL datacenter and 20 telecom circles covering 12,000 desktops resulting in a comprehensive solution for change and configuration management for the Microsoft platform in TTSL.
aLoK Kumar, Tcs PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: a new MPLS-enabled network with built-in redundancy at each step, reduced TCS' communication costs by 20-30 percent.
K. B. sIngh, Bses poWer PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Project BUN (BSES Unified-Network) connects and automates hundreds of BSES offices. It addressed the business need to connect remoteThE WElComE PARTy: Senior IDG executives site branch offices to welcoming their guests at the fort's entrance
AMD offers its best wishes to the honorees of the Smart Infrastructure Awards 2008
Smart InfraStructure awardS 2008 Presented by
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
masters of Novelty
a rules engine for computing incentives and contests. Can now design a new incentive scheme within a week. TImoThy d. KasBe, reLIance reTaIL PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS- The first of its kind project in the world to own the entire supply-chain from the farm to the store shelves has reduced dependencies on suppliers and distributors. (On an average they are within 20c US reach of their sales goal within 15 months of the launch.)
iNNoVATioN AWARDS 2008 FROM LEFT: Timothy Kasbe, Ravishankar Subramanian, Anand Shankaran from Wipro, Rajesh Uppal, K.T. Rajan and O.P Bansal rajesh uppaL, maruTI suzuKI PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS- The bold use of GPS/GPRS for providing visibility for the entire out-bound logistics to the transporters and the OEM led to route optimization.
DARE DEVilS: il Artists seen performing ilS: the tight rope act.
o.p. BansaL, ITc LIfesTyLe reTaILIng PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: RFID implementation (item level) increased revenues of the company by almost 2 percent apart from saving almost a crore every year by reducing billing time, material handling and increased labor efficiency.
K T rajan, aLLergan IndIa PROJECT HIGHLIGHTSA business intelligence solution introducing major step-changes and leading to enhanced supply chain control, cost and data load reduction besides quick performance review via live charts. ravIshanKar suBramanIan, Ing vysya LIfe Insurance PROJECT HIGHLIGHTSFirst insurance company in India to attempt the use of
ThE RoyA oy l STAGE: CIO 100 Special Awards stage at oyA the Jaigarh Fort.
Wipro expresses a hearty congratulation to all winners of theInnovation Awards 2008
InnovatIon awardS 2008 Presented by
The Green brigade
folk GAloRE: The Rajastani dancers mesmerized the guests with their acts.
Cio GREEN EDGE AWARDS 2008 FROM LEFT: R.I.S. Sidhu, Suresh A. Shanmugam, Jyothi Satyanathan from IBM, P..A. Kalyanasundar, H. Krishnan and Vijay Sethi r.I.s. sIdhu, punjaB naTIonaL BanK PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: One of the major IT initiatives taken by the bank is implementing bank's own mail messaging system where we can develop e-culture and slowly and smoothly shift to paper less working. An initiative towards a green data centre has been launched by adopting virtualization and consolidating servers and hardware has been launched. suresh a. shanmugam, mahIndra and mahIndra fInancIaL servIces PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Introduction of mobile vehicle branch which runs on solar energy for remote business and rural collections. Through this they are
moving towards lean, mean and clean IT which keeps the environment green.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Technologies like virtualization with a focus on environment protection / energy saving helped save tremendous amount of money and power. It reduced paper printouts and has helped create a genuine awareness about environment in the organization. p.a, KaLyanasundar, BanK of IndIa PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Solar power used to run the IT systems in remote, rural areas, thereby ensuring eco-friendliness.
h.KrIshnan, IndIan rayon PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Internal processes were changed to enable material indent and material issue slip to make it available online. Accounts ledger printing was stopped since it was made available online. This reduces paper and printer consumption. vIjay seThI, hero honda moTors
ThE foRT ComES AliVE: The occasion saw over 250 guests come to attend the special awards ceremony.
IBM congratulates the honorees of the CIO Green Edge Awards 2008
cIo green edge awardS 2008 Presenting Partner
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
The security enterprisers
Portal (PMP) which increased Intelenet's security by eliminating users writing passwords and sharing passwords over phone. This ensures achieving compliance through innovative secured mechanisms. T.p. ananThesWaran, mumBaI InTernaTIonaL aIrporT PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Since it is very critical that all airlines including international airlines get very secure network access, the network topology was designed to give layer-2 VPN technology with mac-binding to allow extremely secure VPN for each customer.
SECuRiTy y AWARDS 2008 FROM LEFT: T.P. Anantheswaran, Sunil Rawlani, Bikash Barai from iViz, Jai Menon, Amit Gupta and Rajendra Deshpande dr. jaI menon, BharTI aIrTeL PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: BSS stack rollout has been implemented which ensures an enterprise level of AAA security control & ID management. This supports user access, user provisioning and authentication.
flAmE oN: Fire eating artists keep the guests on the edge of their seats.
amIT gupTa, fIdeLITy BusIness servIces IndIa Project Highlights: Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) from AirDefense was integrated within our wireless LAN to provide complete protection against wireless threats, compliance monitoring, and location tracking. The IPS sensors have in-built mechanism to monitor all wireless traffic on real time basis using collaborative intelligence rajendra deshpande, InTeLeneT gLoBaL servIces PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: Intelenet's security initiative is Password Management
sunIL raWLanI, hdfc sTandard LIfe KEy BUSINESS DRIVERS: high cost of operation, complexity in managing security and stringent compliance needs. PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS: The first insurer in India to deploy an SOA-enabled identity and access management solution, with RoI of almost 116 percent in the first year itself.
ENGRoSSED: Guests seen immersed in the proceedings.
CIO congratulates the winners of the Security Awards 2008
SecurIty awardS 2008 Presented by
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
CIO and its partners congratulate the winners of the CIO 100 special awards 2008 SToRAGE AWARDS 2008
Cio GREEN EDGE AWARDS 2008
SECuRiTy AWARDS 2008
SmART iNfRASTRuCTuRE AWARDS 2008 BIHAG LALAJI AMBUJA CEMENTS KARAN B. SINGH BSES
iNNoVATioN AWARDS 2008 K.T. RAJAN ALLERGAN INDIA RAVISHANKAR SUBRAMANIAN ING VYSYA LIFE INSURANCE
CIO 100 Special EVENT REPORT
The Change Artist
The Keynote: Noted industry analyst and author Cheryl Currid delivered her keynote address at the CIO 100 symposium.
he challenge of sustaining a higher growth trajectory nudges organizations to relentlessly pursue transformation. In today's scorching business climate, the most enduring method of obtaining a healthy topline growth is to deliver change. "Competition, globalization, need for speed, encroachment and technological advancement are the factors impelling companies to effect change," stated Cheryl Currid, the noted industry analyst. Companies need to get smarter, faster. Driving transformation across the enterprise addresses this compelling business need. But engineering a process-oriented remodeling is a formidable challenge.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 46
"Resistance from the workforce is a key issue companies grapple with. Corporate politics is another concern that dogs such changes," Currid revealed. Equipped with the capacity to operate across the organization, IT can play a strategic role in spearheading change. A CIO being the head of IT can act as a catalyst. "He should lay hands on a winnable project. He should also build a team of people who are a maven in their field. After all, it's all about people, business and technology working together to effect change," she said. IT's involvement becomes crucial because it is the information bank of the company. "It's a fast business world and information is critical. People must know their facts, and be right.," she concluded.
CIO 100 SpeCIal eVeNT RepORT
ThE WElComE: David Nishball, Airtel introduced Cheryl Currid and welcomed her to the stage.
"A CIO's team should have go-getters who can beaver away for making the company competitive. People who have a dazzling track record and are instilled with the 'why DoN'T we Do iT beFo F Re Fo ANyoNe eLse' L Lse' spiRiT should find a place in this winning team." —ChERyl ERyl CuRRiD ER
P kED Room: Over 100 leading CIOs attended the session and showed keen interest. PAC
book SiGNiNG: CIOs queued up to get an autographed copy of The Game Changer.
fEliCiTATioN: Christopher Tobit, Airtel presented Cheryl Currid with a memento.
Cheryl Currid's keynote session at CIO 100, 2008 was presented by Airtel
CIO 100 Special EVENT REPORT
Mr Fixit at CIO 100
Be Bold: Carsten Larsen delivers his presentation at CIO 100.
arsten Larsen, Australia's "Mr Fixit" spoke at the CIO 100 Symposium held at Jaipur earlier this month. He presented three case studies from his experiences at different organizations. Larsen, whose role transcends beyond a CIO, says one of his strongest beliefs is that a small organization can take on the big guys if its leaders dare to be bold. Larsen outlined the need for today's CIO's to take a holistic triple line approach
which entails keeping the society, the environment and the economy in mind. Speaking on his most ambitious project, Canberra Technology City, Larsen stressed on the need for communication while comparing it to the Tata Nano Project at home. He also noted that Green IT had to be adopted as it made good business sense apart from being environment friendly. He signs of by saying, "CIO's need to stop being technologists and start being leaders."
Peer-to-Peer: CIOs engaging in animated discussion with Larsen.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 48
CIO 100 Special EVENT REPORT
The Competitive Strategist
Management Speak: Prof. N Ravichandran, IIM-A delivers his session at CIO 100 symposium
rofessor Ravichandran delivered a power packed session on competitive strategy to the CIOs at the Symposium hosted in Jaipur sharing his perspectives on competitive strategy indeed with a spice of his witty remarks. Already popular among the IIM-A students for his one-liners, Prof. impressed CIOs with his punch lines. Spanning his talks from the basic need for a competitive strategy to its direct implications on CIOs, prof had a interactive session with the
audience. Beginning the talk by simply suggesting how complex the perception of strategy was. His opening remarks of gifting a book on strategy making to their respective CEOs instantly got the audience in the listening mode and just not in hearing mode. The discussion spanned across various dimensions of competitive strategy making right from what is the basic need to draw a competitive strategy plan in the first place. He delved in detail on the various aspects of strategy grid and their
Q&A: CIOs seen sharing and clarifying issues with Prof. Ravichandran.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 49
implications on the CIOs. Explaining how critical role of technology would be he added that the onus of the technology should in simplifying the business process. It would be obviously difficult for a technocrat CIO to reduce the complexity of the technology. In the end the strategy has to be to leverage technology to simplify.
CIO 100 Special EVENT REPORT
Roundtable Discussions at CIO 100
Peer Exchanges: CIO 100 also witnessed roundtable discussions with focused groups of CIOs. They went back and forth and shared their views on green IT and on project management.
Power Networking Sharing Notes: CIOs seen networking with each other during the symposium. A large number of new CIOs were present at the CIO 100 Awards for the first time, which led to plenty of enthusiastic exchanges.
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 50
CIO 100 Special EVENT REPORT Courtesy
Spouses' Day Out: Jaipur City Tour
A Good Time Together: The spouses of the delegates were treated with a city tour and shopping session courtesy our partner EMC
Praises Galore For CIO 100 Attending the CIO 100 event at Jaipur was a great experience. It was intellectually stimulating, with the right mix of business and leisure. The presence of my wife made it even better."
— Ajay Kumar Dhir
Jindal Stainless Limited
"The idea of inviting the spouses was really great, many of us
could spend good time with our spouses which otherwise is rare."
— P C Jain, Wipro
"I will cherish the memories for quite some time. The event provided an excellent networking opportunity and arrangements made by CIO magazine were exceptionally good"
—Vijay Sethi, Hero Honda
"…To be acknowledged and feted by an international organization for something one is passionate about (green IT) amongst one's peers is really so
satisfying and energizing."
— H Krishnan, Indian Rayon
"It is always satisfying when the IT team delivers value to our business …I am honored to accept and share the CIO 100 award with our team. — David Briskman, Ranbaxy
EVENT REPORT - 02.indd 51
fIND YOUR WINNER BY CompanY
undreds of organizations filled out the nomination form for the CIO 100 Award as well as the five special awards. To be a CIO 100 award winner this year, companies and their IT leaders had to demonstrate that they were able to create new value using IT and execute their project well while successfully negotiating the risks involved. Each application was reviewed by a jury of CIO editors, who evaluated them according to three criteria: technology usage, business impact and the corporate risk involved. The awards jury looked for unique practices and substantial results; examined how each organization stacked up against the others in the pool; and sought to honor the most interesting initiatives for the CIO 100 honor. The organizations that we selected for this year's CIO 100 Award cut across a range of organizations — both in terms of revenue and industry.
s e p t e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD
Ajuba Solutions
i-flex Solutions
Indian Oil
Ambuja Cements
Indian Rayon
Asian Paints
Infosys Technologies
Aurobindo Pharma
Infotech Enterprises
Bangalore International Airport
ING Vysya Life Insurance
Bank of India
Intelenet Global Services
Bharat Petroleum
Intergraph Consulting
Bharatiya Janata Party
Bharti Airtel
ITC Lifestyle Division
Jindal Stainless
JK Tyre
Care India
Carzonrent India
Kuoni Travel
Cognizant India
Larsen & Toubro
Consilium Software
LG Electronics
Lifestyle International
e4e Business Solutions
Mafatlal Industries
Electrosteel Castings
Mahindra & Mahindra
Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services
Maruti Suzuki
Family Credit India
Max New York Life Insurance
Fidelity Business Services
Mindtree Consulting
MIRC Electronics
Globus Stores
GMR Group
Mudra Communications
Mumbai International Airport
HDFC Standard Life Insurance
New Holland Tractors
Hero Honda Motors
Orissa Electricity Regulatory Commission 101
Hindustan Construction
Otis Elevators
Hindustan Petroleum
Philips Electronics India
Hypercity Retail
Polaris Software Lab
Hyundai Motor
Power Grid Corporation
ICICI Bank
Pune Municipal Corporation
IFFCO-TOKIO General Insurance
Punjab National Bank
Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
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Ranbaxy Laboratories
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Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group
Reliance Communications
Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure
Reliance General Insurance
Reliance Industries
Reliance Infosolutions
Reliance Life Insurance
Reliance Life Sciences
Reliance Retail
Repco Bank
Samsung India Electronics
Shopper's Stop
State Bank of India
Sterlite Technologies
T V Sundram Iyengar & Sons
Tata Consultancy Services
Tata Refractories
Tata Teleservices
The Calcutta Medical Research Institute
Torrent Pharmaceuticals
Tractors & Farm Equipment
TVS Motors
Wipro BPO
Wipro Technologies
WNS Global Service
Yes Bank
Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
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Quick Index 01.indd 203
fIND YOUR WINNER BY Name Ajay Kumar Dhir
M. Suresh
Sanjeev Kumar
Saradindu Paul
Alok Kumar
Manas Ranjan Padhi
Alok Kumar
Manish Choksi
Satish Das
Amit Gupta
Manoj Arora
Satish Pendse
Anibandha Mukhopadhyay
Md. Jawed Ahmed
Sebastian Joseph
Meheriar Patel
S.K. Seighal
Arvind G. Tawde
Navin Chadha
Sivashankar J.
Arvind Saksena
Nikhil Gujar
Srikanth P. Gathoo
Ashish Chauhan
Nishi Vasudeva
Sriram Naganathan
O.P. Bansal
Sudesh Agarwal
Sudhir K. Reddy
Arun Gupta
Aswani Kumar Akella
Atul Luthra
P.A. Kalyanasundar
Avinash Arora
P.C. Jain
Sumit Chowdhury
Sunil Rawlani
53 80
B.L.V. Rao
P. Shobhna Ravi
Bihag Lalaji
P.V. Ramadas
Suresh Kumar
Chandrasekaran Mohan
Pravir Vohra
Suresh R Shenoy
David Briskman
Prodyut Bora
Suvanjay Kumar Sharma
Daya Prakash
R. Rajagopalan
T.G. Dhandapani
Deepak Ganju
Rajeev Batra
T. Jaganathan
Dhiren Savla
Rajendra Deshpande
T.P. Anantheswaran
Tamal Chakravorty
Rajesh Chopra
Dr. Sridhar Mitta
Rajesh Munjal
Timothy D Kasbe
Gopal Rangaraj
Rajesh Uppal
U.C. Dubey
Umesh Vashishta
V. Subbramaniam
103 133
Dr. Anupam Saraph
H. Krishnan
Ratnakar Nemani
Harcharan Singh
Ravishankar Subramanian
Hitesh Arora
R.I.S. Sidhu
J. Ramesh
S. Anantha Sayana
V. Sundar
Jai Menon
S. Bahuguna
V .V.R. Babu
Johnny Paramian
S. Francis Rajan
Veneeth Purushotham
70 108
Jyoti S Bandopadhyay
S. Hariharan
Vijay Sethi
Jyotish Chandra Mohanty
S.S. Sharma
Vikram Saxena
K.T. Rajan
S.S. Soni
Virender Pal
Karan B. Singh
Vishnu Gupta
Laxman Badiga
M.K. Pinnamaneni 204
s e p t e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 8 | REAL CIO WORLD
Samir Choudhary
Sanjay Jain
Vol/3 | ISSUE/21
Technology, Business, Leadership
Published on Sep 14, 2008
Technology, Business, Leadership