IT panacea for data management ills

Torrent is a 3000 crore group that has implemented an ERP software package in

the last two years. The processes are now fairly automated and the company is

compliant to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). Speaking on the challenges and

and IT at work, Jyoti Bandopadhya, reveals their plans and processes.

IT and Research



After implementing an ERP solution from SAP, we found that change management

was a major challenge- people had the legacy experience of doing things in a

certain way. Now, suddenly, it was a different work environment.

R&D plays a vital role in pharmaceutical companies. Supporting that is a key

task for the IT department. We have 200 plus instruments in our laboratory and

around 500 scientists work in the labs. These instruments generate a lot of data

while analyzing a particular molecule and its effects. After analysis, a

regulatory document is prepared, which is submitted in the form of a dossier to

regulatory authorities. Once we get the nod for them, we go ahead with drug

development. In the whole process, IT is playing a vital role in terms of data

management-handling the millions of terra bytes of information created.

On the challenges



IT also pays a vital role in security, which is our biggest challenge. Drug

discovery is a major endeavor and has to be protected. We need to have a defined

security policy-we are getting the BS777 certification.

On outsourcing



Our entire maintenance of infrastructure including WAN, LAN and hardware are

outsourced. In software, we have developed some critical internal systems like

CRM. The core design, again, is ours and we have outsourced only the

development.