HCC evaluating to implement ERP

MUMBAI: Hindustan Construction Company Ltd (HCC) will have an ERP in place within a year. The company has short-listed some of the top ERP vendors.

Satish Pendse, CIO, HCC said that it was currently in the evaluating process. More details would be available once it selected the vendor.

Construction sector was slow in adopting IT compared with other sectors. This was partially due to communication difficulties. Most of the units of the HCC were spread across multiple and remote locations.

Construction firms have changed their attitudes towards IT, as they felt a need to deploy tools, which would improve communication and provide greater access to information. Improvement in technologies as well as the decrease in costs encouraged many construction firms to change their approach towards IT.

The fragmented nature of the construction industry posed yet another problem to its supply chain integration.

“In terms of VSATs, we have a VSAT network connecting all our sites. The same however is used for mailing and batch mode data-transfer. As fallout of our ERP decision, we will have to revamp our entire data-communication network to cater to on-line, real-time information needs. This will also happen post the ERP decision,” Pendse said.