I don't want an IT product, but a doctor

MUMBAI, INDIA: What does a CIO look for, a doctor or a mother, as he seeks solutions for his organizations. Anwer Bagdadi, the senior VP and CTO, CFC India Services has some interesting answers. CFC India Services is a subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corporation, and basically provides financial and analytical processing and IT services to Countrywide in the mortgage and related financial services industry. In a freewheeling chat with CyberMedia News, he touches the bigger canvas of a CIO's role as he has seen and lived it all through these years. Read on…

CyberMedia News: Has the job of a CIO changed substantially since the title came into full life in India?

Anwer Bagdadi: Working for almost 12 to 13 years with four to five years of specific IT responsibilities, I have almost been around since the term was coined. I can make two major observations as I look back and take a stock. First, verticals still drive the extent of staffing and budgeting. Technology spend, as a percentage and as a thumb rule, becomes automatically high in certain verticals. Retail, logistics, entertainment and IteS are some examples. Manufacturing on the other hand still lags behind the services industry. Secondly, there is still a palpable gap in the way controlled industries spend and the way competitive industries spend on technology. Even in today's context, PSUs and MNC banks or insurance companies function in this regard. Some industries, because of this fundamental difference, would rather follow than lead and tech spending is more of tokenism, growing linearly over the years but not practically.

CMN: How about IT vendors? Have they made your job more complex or easier?

A.B: Both. We have excellent relationships with some of our vendors but there are some who come and speak to me from a product perspective and not from a solution-approach. A vendor has to be the doctor and mother, at respective times. A doctor understands your patient history, your pain areas and suggests the treatment accordingly. While a mother, continuously nourishes you and spurs you for growth.

CMN: There is a lot of noise being made about IT spending and breakthrough implementations? How much of this is mere tom-tomming and how much of this makes an impact on the ground?

A.B: Yes, you are right. In fact, many large-sized budgets were announced around 1996-97. But the price or size of a budget is not as relevant as the fact that how is it going to be used. Most organizations have put in place an ERP. But the reasons better. Some do it because their peers or neighbours are doing it. And then, it's an as-is implementation. When it is a necessary evil, the budgeting parameters are different. It can then result as a mere cheap and inward-looking implementation.

CMN: But has IT moved to a strategic rung in Indian organizations?

A.B: Yes, very much, specially in the larger tier of organizations. The level of maturity, however may vary. Some have fully imbibed it, while some have done it in parts.

CMN: What's your take in outsourcing IT to a third-party service?

A.B: Ideally, outsourcing should be the first choice as most of the times; it's hard to manage large teams, their expectations, skills etc. But it again depends on the degree of internal security and control desired by the organization.

CMN: How significant are people in the stack of a CIO's challenges?

A.B: They comprise for a majority portion of the challenges. They too have three dimensions. First, your own people. Second, the offshore team and third, the people on the interface side. I mean pressure groups, CFOs, marketing heads, HR heads etc.

CMN: With the home loan defaults throwing the financial giants in the US out of gear, and recession threats looming large, what role, if any, can IT play in areas like bad debt management, risk management or NPA control?

A.B: As far as defaults go, it's a different and bigger story altogether. It methods are already in place. It's not the question of absence of methods. The market has become too aggressive. On the side of Rupee-Dollar changes, there is an increased thrust that comes on productivity. Here IT can come into play.

CMN: So productivity is not entirely an HR domain?

A.B: It cannot just improve efficiency but can also impact cycle times and thus help HR in managing productivity. With better recruitment and selection systems, the cost of hiring can be reduced.

CMN: Can you cite any specific areas where IT has come up as an accomplishment in your stint as a CIO?

A.B: As an India-based service provider, infrastructure is key to our operations. Resilient, secure, fast infrastructure, which is also within the budget, is very vital. So that any applications for the parent company can be done smoothly, fast and securely. We have been able to create such an architecture that is scalable, compliant to all organization standards, flexible and helps in fulfilling all requirements. The first project took us 150 days, we converted it later to a cookie-cutter format and the time cycle has come down to 90 days.

CMN: What next is on the anvil?

A.B: We are working on a dynamic balance mechanism for taking care of routing as we have four centers spread in India. There are multiple routes between them and also to and fro the destination. The system will help re-routing and management in fraction of seconds.

CMN: So what excites the CIO in you ahead?

A.B: Complexity, scale and managing growth on an ongoing basis in alignment with cost management, vendor management, driving best SLAs and contracts are some areas.