MUMBAI, INDIA: Henkel, a Germany headquartered brand has been servicing the needs of its customers across 125 nations and CAC (Converter Adhesives and Chemicals Pvt. Ltd) has been in the adhesives business for more than two decades and launched the solvent- free adhesives in the year 2002. The matrimony of these two esteemed entities has enriched Henkel CAC’s sticking power with its customer. Manikkam Subramaniam, AGM (IT) at Henkel CAC traces the IT journey of the company over the years in an exclusive interview with Cybermedia News. Excerpts from the interview:

CMN: How has the year that went by been for Henkel’s end?
Manikkam Subramaniam: The year 2007 was good in terms of business operations. In terms of sales we have grown, profitability has gone up and we have brought in new products and there is a new plant that is coming up.

CMN: Could you elucidate us on the strategic IT implementations that you have undertaken over the last year?
M.S: See, what we have done is brought in some strategic requirements and have migrated our operations from Outlook to Lotus Pro. It was a decision that we had taken and it was a Herculean task for us to do so on that front. Secondly, we have security policies that had to be complied and we have complied with that and there is an audit that keeps getting conducted every quarterly and we have always complied throughout. You must understand that Henkel CAC is a part of the Henkel group and we report to our headquarters on a regular basis.

CMN: If one looks at the IT implementations domain, CAC has interestingly got their ERP initiatives on the RAMCO systems. What was the rationale behind it?
M.S: Basically when we had not merged with Henkel, in 1999 we had decided on an ERP application evaluated a lot of ERP system and RAMCO was user-friendly product and the support level of RAMCO systems have been extremely good and the decision was taken at that time. Even after our merger with Henkel, we are still working on the RAMCO platform and the merger with SAP has not happened as yet but will happen in 2-3 years of time.

CMN: How do you view the scenario where the rupee is steadily appreciating against the dollar? How has it affected your business?
M.S: It has affected quite a bit in terms of export orders. What we are doing is that most of our export order conversions are being done in Euros. The realization in terms of export orders has been affected.

CMN: As a client, what are your expectations from the vendor’s end in the current year?
M.S: They should be able to integrate and understand our business operations and integrate our operations. Most of the times, I have noticed that they have not been able to understand our operations and the technical qualities required is not present. What I would suggest is that we are planning to deploy a couple of people from the vendors end in our company and this should help us in terms of migrations, updating of systems etc in the company.

CMN: Trace the journey of the IT implementations in your enterprise?
M.S: We started off as entity of CAC in 1999 and in the year 2002-03 it got merged with Henkel. As a CAC product we have been holding a stake of 60-70 per cent of market share in the adhesive market which is quite impressive. That is one of the reasons why Henkel has gone ahead and they are putting a huge plant in new Mumbai for all the requirements on exports and domestic operations. They have found that this is the right place for them to manufacture.

CMN: Could you talk a bit more on the plant that is coming up
M.S: The unit is basically for exports to all the countries and is going to be a manufacturing hub, which is catering to the domestic and international market, and going to be the world’s biggest plant.

CMN: Going forward, what are the challenges, which you foresee?
M.S: One of the challenges would be to comply with security based on Henkel standards and very recently we had to remove Nortel products and plug in Cisco products. Migrating to Henkel network is going to be a challenge wherein we are integrating to their domain. If you at the scenario this year, then we are talking of investments in infrastructure especially in data centers and in lot more technologies which are going to come up for which we already have the approval.