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Go for the big picture

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CIOL Bureau
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What have been the major technology investments at your enterprise?

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BSES, a major power distribution group company of R-Infra, have inculcated the ideologies and values of our visionary Leader, Late Shri Dirubhai Ambani, in conceiving the IT roadmap and implementation of the same since July 2002. To set up a technology enabled benchmark towards customer service and other functions aligned to the business we have rolled out massive IT projects and also invested time, money and manpower towards integration of the same.Some of the major technology investments are:ERP (SAP R/3 and ISU-CCS), GIS, SCADA, Automated Meter Reading (AMR), Load Forecasting and Demand side management (SAS), Power Management System, Outage Management System and IT Network, Database, Storage, Communication and Security Infrastructure

Any overhauls of significant scale or value at your enterprise?

Since last 10 years we have migrated all the manual processes, integrated different applications working in silo and bringing them under a common platform and empowering management with a single converged reporting engine. All these overhaul have added a significant value to our business functioning. Key highlights have been project scope, project cost and finishing all these before project deadline.

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Whats your strategy for the coming future?

To focus more towards customer service (both external and internal) and increasing business bottom-line we have plans to implement technologies like mobile computing, private cloud and DLP.

Areas of interest from recent tech-breakthroughs?

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In addition to the technologies mentioned above our area of interest shall be Social Media, BYOD and mobility security.

Advice to peers in terms of lessons, mistakes or challenges you experienced over past few

years?

-Thought process from IT should always be aligned to business and cost effective,

- Should have a larger picture in mind and hence plan for a holistic implementation and

integration,

-Should be proactive to provide solution to different functions and hence take the leadership role,

- Should automate all processes and try to reduce manual work to minimal,

- Should envisage the change management issues while implementation of new technologies and

hence have plans for training, educating and hand holding.

For sustainability and agility a constant process improvement drive to follow involving business and operations

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IT is as a business value centre at your organization -How?

IT driven operational excellence has become key to the success of a distribution company. IT, in our organization, has matured over the years to be the nerve center for all our business functions. Hence we categorise the same as the business value center. Currently all our business functions, end to end, have been mapped and automated as per our technology plan. Automation and integration of all the processes have brought in great value addition in the area of

- Customer Care (99.9 per cent Customer satisfaction index) - AT&C loss percentage decreased from 65 per cent to 17 per cent(striving for 15 per cent) which is very much the industry standard

Load Forecasting accuracy has reached 98.5% (way above manual forecasting values)

- Network visibility through GIS (100 per cent)

- Meter Reading accuracy through AMR (99.9 per cent)

- Supporting business with massive IT infrastructure (99.9 per cent uptime)

Anything else you feel worth sharing with us?

Information Technology implementation pertaining to power distribution sector is very critical and a challenge for generating business values and reducing losses for the organization which we have done successfully over the years through excellent leadership, thought process and educating employees.

Most of the power utility companies, in India, have been running through poor financial condition

where losses have reached all time peak(multiple reasons). This has also resulted in ineffective

performance of the distribution company. Hence it becomes highly pertinent to introduce technologies

which minimizes manual processes, estimates accurate investment and error free customer service. We

have been able to plug-in all these gaps through technology intervention and constant improvements.

ROI of a project definitely is very critical, however we should be patient, post implementation, so that

the users slowly absorb the technology and its functionality without any harsh resistance.