Awarding CIOs, unsung heroes of enterprises

It was my privilege to recognize, honor and host some of the best CIOs of our country in Mumbai at the CIOL-Dataquest EnterpriseConnect 2007 Awards at a glittering ceremony at the JW Marriot last Friday.

The CIO has virtually been the unsung hero of the enterprise. We see reports all the time about certain enterprises doing great things, and also see some of the CEOs talking about those achievements. However, people do not realize that such great things have been made possible by two things -- processes and people.

First up, it is the people who devise the processes. Without the people, there can't be a process! Within enterprises, these processes are devised by people -- read, the CIO. CIOL-Dataquest recognized some of the best CIOs of the country.

This award aims to recognize the great work that's currently being done by CIOs across the country and is unique in its kind. The questionnaire that's filled up by these CIOs is really long and laborious. And why not? First, it looks at various categories -- pioneering use of technology, innovative technology use, advocating about it, implementation, evangelizing and process discipline.

The questionnaire forces the CIO to delve into a lot of things as well -- IT projects of excellence, technological and other constraints, scenarios before and after implementation of a particular project; besides looking into pioneering and innovative use of technologies, advocating its use, role of CIO as an extended manager, and finally, process discipline.

In the "Above Rs. 1,000 crore category", the TVS Motor was the Gold CIO, while Hindalco was the Silver CIO. Larsen & Toubro took the top honor as the Champion CIO. In the “Below Rs. 1,000 crore category,” Eveready Industries, Roots Industries Ltd and Hikal Ltd were the Champion, Gold and Silver CIOs, respectively.

In the "Individual" categories: Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd was the Pioneer, SRL Ranbaxy was the Innovator, The Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd was the Extended Manager, SBI Life Insurance was the Advocate, and Bank of India won the award for the Process.

The winner of the Innovator award, SRL Ranbaxy, provides a comprehensive range of tests to over 1.5 million statisfied customers annually through 21 labs and over 550 collection centers in India and overseas. It has developed a wonderful CLIMS Centralized Laboratory Information Management System), among its several IT projects of excellence. CLIMS functions as an ERP for the organization. It includes Lab-operation, Material Management, Billing, Financial accounting, Customer Care, Sales & Marketing, Logistics, Clinical trial, Instrument Interface, Security etc. All of the modules are integrated with a logical Workflow process. Due to interfacing of instruments with CLIMS, the process further reduced the manual intervention of the scientific officers.

Bank of India, won the Process award, largely due to a symbiotic outsourced project with M/S HP with total outsourcing contract for 10 years, which was coined for centralization of the core banking activities. The Bank achieved the goal of fastest migration of 1,000 branches, one year before schedule! As-of-date number of Branches under CBS platform are 1,066 locations.

The Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd has implemented the INLIAS (Integrated Non-Life Insurance Application Software). It is a core insurance application catering to the business, re-insurance and accounting requirements at the operating office, regional office and head office level. It is an integrated menu-driven browser based solution that has been provided to operating offices with consistent user interface, and rating engines.

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services implemented the Mf connect -300, which connects all branches in remote rural and semi urban locations. It ensured the speedy service and centralized data storage and distributed data capture.

These are just some of the winners and their IT implementations. We've done video interviews with all the winners. I'll point you to those once online. Do take a look.