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Meet the Super CIOs

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CIOL Bureau
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The Jury meeting held on August 4, 2007,  to decide on CIOL-Dataquest EnterpriseConnect Awards, threw up a lot of close contenders for the various awards categories. The individual awards had five categories - Pioneer, Innovator, Advocate, Extended Manager and Process.

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In the Pioneer category, the contenders were: Punjab National Bank, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services Ltd, SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd and Fortis Healthcare.

Suresh A. Shanmugam, National Head, Information Systems and Technology, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services, was bestowed the Pioneer award.

This non-banking finance company won the award for having used mobile devices over a Linux platform to reach remote locations. Mainly used for collection purposes, the Internet-enabled device enhanced customer service and productivity of field staff to a great extent.

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In the Innovator category, the contenders were: Punjab National Bank, SRL Ranbaxy Ltd, SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd and BSES Power Ltd.

G. Radhakrishna Pillai, CIO, SRL Ranbaxy was presented with the Innovator award.

The recipient of the Innovator award is a market leader in the field of lab medicine, corporate health checkup and clinical trials in India and Southeast Asia. SRL Ranbaxy automated its equipment testing process by bi-directionally interfacing testing equipment with the centralized lab information management system (CLIMS) to reduce manual intervention. This resulted in tremendous improvement in turnaround time, productivity and accuracy of testing at the pre- and post-analytical stages.

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In the Advocate category, the contenders were: The Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd, SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd, Punjab National Bank, Philips Lighting and Development Credit Bank.

Murali. G, Senior Vice President-Head IT, SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd won the Advocate award.

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Advocating the use of IT was best showcased by this life insurance company, where user buy-in was needed to support change management in the areas of scanning proposals, data entry, online policy issuance and printing. It also involved delivery co-ordination using multi-disciplinary teams and third-party service providers. With an effective combination of centralised and de-centralised processing, and the strategic use of an outsourcing partner, the company made optimum usage of the branch staff, reducing infrastructure and manpower requirements.

In the Extended Manager category, the contenders were: SRL Ranbaxy, The Arvind Mills, The Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd, Development Credit Bank and SBI Life Insurance Co. Ltd.

Insurance companies were on a roll as Sanjeev Kumar Chanana, Director & GM-IT, The Oriental Insurance Co. Ltd, was bestowed the Extended Manager award.

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This company won the award for its evangelistic efforts by extending the organization's network to agents and brokers to underwrite policies at their own locations, which earlier had to be done manually. The intranet-based system allowed agents and brokers to enter data using customized screens and restricted login accounts.

In the Process category, the contenders were: Bank of India, Vardhman Textiles, Geojit Financial Services Ltd, Titan Industries and JK Paper.

P.A. Kalyanasundar, GM IT &CIO, Bank of India, was declared winner of the Process CIO award.

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Bank of India enhanced its process efficiency by centralizing the core banking activities using the outsourcing model. This bank achieved the goal of the fastest migration to 1,000 branches, one year before schedule.

In the Below Rs. 1,000 crores category, the contenders were: Otis Elevator Co., Roots Industries Ltd, Hikal Ltd, JK Paper, Eveready Industries and Geojit Financial Services Ltd. This category had three awards - Silver, Gold and Champion CIOs.

Falgun Shukla, Senior GM-IT, Hikal Ltd, won the Silver CIO award in the Below Rs. 1,000 crores category.

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Hikal is a leading manufacturer of chemicals. Besides automating its key processes effectively, it has implemented a control system to connect all of its manufacturing units to a centralized server. Hikal also used wireless/RF-based system for WAN/LAN connectivity to enable audio and video communication. It also brought about process efficiency by using four different communication platforms for cost-effective system configuration and usage of multi-task programming technique for multi-product manufacturing.

O.A. Balasubramaniam, VP-IT, Roots Industries Ltd, won the Gold CIO award.

Roots is a light engineering company with varied product services. Its core business is exporting electric horns to leading automobile manufacturers. The company achieved high impact for its business operations with key implementations such as EDI integration with SAP, supplies portal integration, CRM for dealers and distributors, and MRP and product costing solution. Its robust metrics system to measure RoI was a clincher.

Arup Choudhury, Senior GM-IT, Eveready Industries Ltd, won the Champion CIO award in the Below Rs. 1,000 crores category.

This enterprise strategically used IT to enhance the business performance of its stakeholders. It achieved major business benefits by fine-tuning forecast accuracy and tracking inventory status using Linux. Some of its projects of merit include: balanced scorecard to measure organizational and individual performance, Web-based field reporting tool integrated to mobile devices, and the unified business system - an integrated e-business solution that connects manufacturing units, sales offices, warehouse and sales force.

 

In the Above Rs. 1,000 crores category, the contenders were: Titan Industries, Larsen & Toubro Ltd, Tata Power, Hindalco Industries Ltd, TVS Motor Co. and UTI Bank Ltd. This category also had three awards - Silver, Gold and Champion CIOs.

Sanjeev Goel, CIO, Hindalco Industries Ltd, won the Silver CIO award in the Above Rs. 1,000 crores category.

A flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group, this metals company efficiently used IT to achieve its business goals. With commendable use of analytics, the company leveraged IT across all of its business processes to garner measurable benefits. Some projects of excellence were: a robust CRM, which includes a customer self-service portal and CRM analytics; an advanced pricing/online credit check implementation; a high availability system with disaster recovery for zero downtime; and integration of the sales and distribution systems.

T.G. Dhandapani, CIO, TVS Motors, won the Gold CIO award.

This popular two-wheeler manufacturer leveraged IT to streamline its business, such as sales, manufacturing, purchasing, new product development, and spare parts warehouse, an efficient metric system and product lifecycle management solution. An efficient dealer management system monitors retail, sales and stock levels online. Its manufacturing system has enhanced productivity, transparency and data accuracy. A product lifecycle management solution has integrated design and manufacturing to reduce lead-time by six months. Some of its key projects included an online business model for outsourced manufacturing and mobile computing.

Anantha Sayana, Head Corporate IT, Larsen and Toubro, was the recipient of the Champion CIO award in the Above Rs. 1,000 crores category.

With IT as its backbone, this engineering and construction company is one of the largest enterprises in India's private sector. L&T effectively used IT to achieve its business goals, especially in the areas of procurement order cycles, project management, order fulfillment, engineering and development of new products - thanks to its IT governance structure. Some of its key projects were: an automated disaster recovery management system for business continuity; software-as-a-service (SaaS) for financial product training: RFID-enabled stores management system; a Web service integration tool; and an e-learning portal for employees.