Who owns technology? Business or IT?

NEW DELHI, INDIA: ‘What-if’, ‘What next’, ‘When’ are technology industry’s pet expressions, be it the guys selling technology, or the media tribesmen covering it. Interestingly, the answers sometimes lie in another copacetic bundle of three alphabets. No, it’s not ‘why’. And why not? Well, let’s head off to Ajay Dhir, Group CIO at Lanco Infratech Limited, helps us decipher the ‘how’ about everything: ERPs, SAP suites, on-premise options, hosted options, great partnerships, joint responsibilities and a lot more.

What’s your genre of choice? On-premise, On-cloud, both or none?

At our enterprise you will find a healthy mix of both. We evaluated a lot of options and found that SAP has some really good, flexible, robust alternatives that offer great visualization. My vision is having a risk-proof environment with better governance, and a more robust system etc. We are going upstream on one now. We wanted a structured system to take care of the pace and handle some areas better like project systems. I have found that it is easy to implement a cloud-based solution. Maintenance of on-premise can be a slightly tougher and it becomes a prerogative of in-house support teams. Infrastructure investments already made or security concerns can be bottlenecks with cloud models. If one goes for a hybrid option, input, output has to be taken care of. I am seriously considering Cloud for overseas operations, divisions like finance or materials etc. Cloud is as proven as on-premise now, and it delivers better TCO. One needs a no-block, unclouded mind to embrace it though.

Elaborate on the vision part please? How have you steered the strategy since you took over at the IT helm at Lanco?

One thing I was absolutely focused on is to have IT users rather than committees for most discussions. They should have more business clarity. IT can facilitate point of contacts, but ownership is something that has to happen at the business level only. Business can not assure to run a SAP application on its own, so it co-owns. At the IT function, we are custodians of technology. But it makes a sea change when both sides assume responsibility.

How have you found SAP’s relevance with so many changes and choices mushrooming in the industry as well as within SAP’s own portfolio?

I have been working with SAP for long now and I guess every enterprise needs to know that it just never works when you think of consultants or vendors as external entities. Finger-pointing does not help anyone and it leads nowhere. Changes happen but the road doesn’t alter much. I have always had a sense of satisfaction with SAP applications. The flavours change but the essence stays the same. Clarity, agility, responsiveness, business-metric orientation, uncomplicated approach, realistic and realizable goals are important parameters for me as a CIO. SAP has been on an important evolution road for years and its impact on IT teams is beyond scalability, availability or implementation tools. SAP as a course and its knowledge has made a lot of career paths also for many people who worked with me. These SAP experts can work as independent consultants later.

So have you tried HANA and are optimistic about it too?

Not now to be honest. We are focusing on bringing in a process and structure inside our environments presently. But may be next year. BI etc are already being used at preliminary levels. Good quality data is an important factor and data cleansing is my immediate focus now. Analytics works better with good data. 

CIO’s role is as important as the vendor’s you mean?

A good solution or implementation is all about creating a win-win atmosphere. Specialists, knowledge and metrics etc is something that SAP will take good care of. But if a CIO or his team members dilute their focus in arm-twisting a vendor, the purpose is lost. Partnerships work much better than blame-games. Luckily, we have also always found it easy enough to communicate with SAP’s teams, from sales to other experts. The whole team works very hard. Results happen when a CIO and his team are equally shouldering the responsibility.