IT and Enterprise Pheno-Menon

It takes strong foundations to build great buildings upon. Dr Jai Menon, an

erstwhile geek, is someone who understands technology from the ground up: from

the programming, the processors, all the way to the top, where he manages and

leads the entire organization in IT deployment. Dr Jai Menon has managed his

twin roles of CIO and joint president remarkably well. As he says in his own

words "I am able to look at IT both ways: as a CIO, IT that is inward

focused, and as a joint president, enterprise solutions where IT is outwardly

focused."

Dr Jai Menon, Corporate director, IT and technology Joint president, enterprise business, Bharti Tele-Ventures

His stint at IBM showed him the need to market his ideas well to get the

required funding. It was in the course of this period that he discovered that he

enjoyed making presentations and simplifying complicated technical concepts to

people. "When the Internet boom came, and I was very near to forming my own

startup, what with having a venture capitalist as a neighbor: that brought out

the businessman in me. I have been alternating between technology and business

roles ever since and this is what always excites me".

Dr Menon says, "When I joined Bharti two years back, there were six or

seven different billing systems, too much fragmented IT. Everything was

literally falling apart." It's darkest before the dawn, they say and then

came Menon with his infallible plans to change the way the Indian telecom sector

would see IT. He put Bharti on a five-year strategic roadmap and built the

roadmap around three steps - foundation, transformation and conversion.

Foundation meant putting the fragmented IT infrastructure of the company

under one umbrella, a single IT department with specific focus on a department
called solutions engagement, which interfaced with the business on one side and

with technology on the other. Menon says, "Today we have one billing

system, one CRM for the entire country. Clearly there are more than a dozen

telcos across the globe who are looking at how we work."

As the foundation was being put into place, he was preparing the company for

the next stage, that of transformation. And then came the Big Bang. The IBM-Bharti
$750 mn deal literally knocked the socks off the entire IT industry, and set a

new milestone in India. Dr Menon says, "I was focused on building a telecom

differentiator for India through the power of alliances and what we have done

with Bharti and IBM is truly innovative."

Bharti needed a huge and complex IT infrastructure, which should work

seamlessly, and this required joining hands with a strategic partner, who would
do it for Bharti. Dr Menon zeroed in on IBM, given his good understanding with

the work culture of the company, and was able to pull together the right

executive sponsorship for crafting this outsourcing deal.






"We pioneered a revenue sharing model with IBM, who would get a percentage
of revenues and deliver to Bharti all its IT needs. They would unburden Bharti

by taking care of all changes, the mergers, acquisitions and regulatory

adaptations all managed very strategically with the economies of scale built

into the model. Even for IBM, the Bharti implementation is a marquee account,

not only for India, but for the entire telecom sector."

Conversion is the next logical step, which would see Bharti bringing IT,

networks and value-added services together. The foundation was established in
2003; transformation began in 2004 with the IBM deal, and groundwork on

convergence has already begun - this is the strategy till 2007.

Menon says, "The IT department had to go through a cultural change as it

was all about internal customer orientation and generating a high level of
customer satisfaction. The interfacing to all the departments was done through a

discipline of solutions engagements, which sit under the CIOs."

For a person who spent 18 years of his life in America, coming to India was

the decision of a lifetime. He came back despite the fact that he had already
made it big in America and in terms of IT deployment he had handled much bigger

accounts, and there was no dearth of opportunity for him to grow even bigger.

So, now that his time in India has only a year left to it, will he call it a day

at Bharti to go back to the US? He answers modestly " I have not made that

decision as yet. My perception over the past years has drastically changed, and

things are really very exciting now. My commitment to India and Bharti is very

deep." Here is a person who is giving back his due to the country. This,

you could say, is the "Call of the roots".