IT as a business OEM

CHENNAI, INDIA:

How crucial and fresh are your IT plans for the next few months? For your industry?

We are basically an auto-components industry. Our focus area for one is cost-reduction to meet our business targets of growth both in domestic market-share and overall turnover goals. The intent of IT is to make cost areas as efficient as possible. So we are focusing on those cost-efficiency projects that will propel us for the next five to six years of maturity rather than the usual big bang CRM or ERP initiatives.

How?

Three initiatives are major in our strategy. First one is planning systems to make the environment as robust as possible. We are actually revamping the whole planning system so that next year’s growth happens smoothly in the light of our new targets.

Then, second area is machine interface. Automation is being explored for the entire production process — for figures around productivity, waste time reduction, downtime monitoring etc. All machines are hooked on to a system and data is gathered on a real-time basis this way. We are also looking at systems for addressing defects, manual errors etc next year. Then there is a knowledge portal being envisaged. We have to harness knowledge and not reinvent the wheel everytime people move. So recording, standardization and proper management of information will happen.

Have you experienced a change in the role of a CIO?

Yes, to a huge extent. Five to six years back, the CIO would do his job by developing applications and giving them to the users. He was not to be concerned for what happens after the delivery, but today is part of the business at a deeper level. He not only has to bring in new technologies but also go inside the business and be part of the entire cycle. His responsibility does not end at IT. For instance- an area like submission of compliance documents or returns was under a CFO’s purview only but today it is part of CIO’s scope too. Or PF processing- he has to make the systems ready with proper check-points.