"IT should involve all stakeholders"

Escorts has been active on the other side of engineering research and technology advancements’ fence always. How interesting is it to be on both sides of technology’s edge?

Yes, our investments into R&D are very high. Most of the backbone of R&D is IT. And this means areas like security, knowledge management, digitization of entire knowledge and innovation chain etc.

Do you consume in-house research output in any way?

Yes, but generally large-scale areas are the clincher. We prefer to align with applications already available.

Any unplugged gaps that your industry still faces?

Only one. It’s pertaining to the area of software and applications from the perspective of management of workforce, and specially from an Indian angle. There are no satisfactory ready-made solutions available for this yet.

How’s 2010 looking?

There’s for sure a lot of optimism in IT. Lot of business expansion is happening and it adds responsibility and support tasks to IT. Some projects that were held up last year are getting started now.

Any item that is long-term or big-ticket and features in your IT plans?

We are planning to revamp earlier Oracle implementation that was done six years back. With new product lines and new business changes, we need a big-ticket investment that will be spread over two years. It would have a fairly large scale and would touch other areas like sales chain automation, warehouse management, HR, CRM, Business Analytics etc.

Have you faced anyexit issues whatsoever?

It depends on application to application, and varies from technology to technology. In case of ERPs, it’s obviously different and difficult as one has to start working from scratch and re-look at entire business processes. Business and IT, both have to sit together and re-evaluate all areas concerned, because there’s cost, manpower etc that goes into such investments.

How strategic and influential has IT really been vis a vis business?

As organization expands, expectations from IT scale up. We did an entire supply chain optimization, and that was a big-ticket project. It gave us many benefits, plus visibility. Such initiatives smoothen business-IT interaction. If IT can show solutions, then it’s definitely valued a lot more. One has to involve business functions directly, and from the onset. There should be a sense of direction, and all stakeholders should be involved.