BANGALORE, INDIA:

The industry and sector you work in is particularly enveloped with a lot of challenges, and a strong spotlight. Accidents, cost pressures, economics et al. Can IT be a good succor here?

Well for many issues there are a lot of reasons that usually are talked of. But as for my scope of work, increasing safety and security is really paramount. It is on top of the list and with technology a lot is being attempted through standardization of processes etc that will lead to a really robust aircraft. As far as costs etc go, we are working on consolidation in a number of areas. For example – data centres.

Can you tell us more about your new IT runways? What’s your destination point with new initiatives? What kind of benefit areas are you working towards?

Good governance, high customer satisfaction, mistake-proofing with processes are some top priorities. Increased safety and security of aircrafts is being achieved through better processes and high level of mistake-controls. The kind of order book we have will keep us busy for the next two or three years while orders keep pouring from other areas like civilian market too. We have to create a good balance between increasing capacity, capability with quality and safety.

Is the new skyline similar or different from your existing IT strategy?

It will be a drastic change. IT structure is very factory centric with 20 production centres and ten design centres. Each production centre takes care of different type of helicopters and other aircrafts like Sukhoi etc. Since IT is huge it is so far working on separate divisions for each. We are working on integrating it at each level.

What new pieces will you have next?

We are planning on Business Intelligence as well as integration between vendors, customers apart from some Disaster Recovery initiatives.

Do so many goalposts keep you busy or excited?

If you look at global aviation industry, the entities there are highly automated and in comparison there is a lot of potential to do so many things back here. Once you attain a level of maturity then it is only about maintaining it. Lot of government deals are on a fresh level so a lot of action is going on. That means a lot of scope of experimentation. It gives a kick for sure to drive the journey to a higher level.