Keeping IT electrified

PUNE: Cutting edge call centers with Computer Telephony integration and IVR-based ACD call management infrastructure; extranet portals for dealers and suppliers; self-service employee infrastructure; best-of-the-breed data centers and network foundations are just some of the areas where IT is sparking bright at Bajaj Electricals Limited (BEL).

BEL, a part of the $3 billion Bajaj Group, has 19 branch offices, a chain of 600 distributors, 3000 authorized dealers, over 1,20,000 retail outlets and over 200 service franchises spread across the country. How easy is it to manage as big and deep a radius as this and how is IT helping BEL to manage various areas across its five major strategic business units that span from home appliances, fans, lighting and engineering and projects to manufacturing, erection and commissioning of Transmission Line Towers, telecom towers, mobile telecom towers and wind energy towers? Over to Pratap Gharge, vice president and CIO, BEL, who spoke to Pratima Harigunani of CyberMedia News.

What are the key challenges you face as a CIO today?

My key challenges are keeping pace with the technological advancement, delivering business benefits with minimum IT investments, change management as per business process changes, requirement changes, mindset changes and to make use of available ready technologies and improve the business process effectiveness.

How unique are the IT needs and issues for the industry that you operate in?

Though the industry vertical we operate is consumer durable, we also have business units handling industrial lighting requirements and engineering and projects requirements vis-à-vis transmission line towers, telecom towers, heavy duty lighting projects etc. Hence meeting the desperate needs of business divisions, due to different nature of the business line is a key challenge that we face. Though we are attempting to standardize business process, it is not possible to have one solution for all the requirements due to inherent differences in the business lines. Ours is a five business unit organization, and each of them are having unique business models.

Can you share the latest momentum on your data center shift strategy, network infrastructure and business process evaluation?

Recently we shifted our data center to Reliance IDC. This was done in November 2007. About network infrastructure we will be planning to shift to MPLS-based network architecture in the coming financial year 2008-09. And business process improvement study was done during last year. We will be implementing changes for improvements, along with ERP implementation during the 2008-09.

How is your CRM integration with sales service center, call centers panning out?

We have developed customized software for call center and our after sales service, and started three seats call centers last year. Recently we have upgraded infrastructure of the same to have Computer Telephony integration and IVR-based ACD call management infrastructure. We will be soon increasing our number of seats in call center and declaring 1-800 toll free telephone to all our dealer network across India to log calls for supporting after sales service. This will be also opened to our end customers, to log a call for any problems for any of our products usage, and we have rolled out integrated software to our more than 200 Service centers spread across India, to track and update the status of the calls. With the help of this infrastructure we will be able to handle efficiencies of our service centers and we will also have centralized database, giving product failure analysis.

What role does IT play in optimizing diverse stakeholder areas like employees, dealers and suppliers?

IT definitely plays the role of enablers to all the business function users, who are driving the businesses to take care of stakeholders’ interest. IT definitely plays very important role in automating all the business processes so that overall service to all employees, dealers and suppliers is made faster, transparent and also e-enabled. We do have portals for employees, where all self-service transactions, claims etc are captured and electronically money is credited in our employees’ claim bank accounts. Also we have extranet portals for dealers and suppliers for information access as well as doing online transactions. By providing such infrastructure to these stakeholders, IT is definitely playing very crucial role in optimizing all business processes.

If you were to pick the key accomplishment areas of your IT investments so far, what would they be?

Integrating most of the key suppliers, key dealers, all employees and all business processes in customized software set, with a centralized database software implementation and making sure that all the stakeholders are benefiting from the same, is the key accomplishment our IT team has done with very minimum IT investments.

We have been using these customized software solution set for all areas like ERP, Intranet, SFA, CRM, SCM, extranet dealers and suppliers and customer care centers, call centers and E-commerce-enabled website etc. And we have been using some of these components like ERP and intranet since last 12 years, and over the period we have reached to the stage where all other components are developed and implemented with in-house efforts in a well-integrated manner and with centralized setup.

And our IT budget (both capital and expenses put together) since last 12 years is consistently below 0.4 per cent of our revenue.

How do you intend to leverage your current IT infrastructure in future?

As our current IT infrastructure foundation was laid around 12 year ago, it has lived its life, and we are in the process of changing ERP, CRM and SCM components with ready products in the coming financial year.

What are the emerging technology areas that excite you for future implementations? Any immediate IT pipeline?

Yes, SOA and innovations built around the technology definitely is exciting. As mentioned earlier, we do have plans to change ERP, SCM and CRM components in the coming financial year.

What is your overall assessment of outsourcing as an IT strategy?

I feel outsourcing is very good concept, if it is used properly. We should be in position to take the benefit of the expertise available with outsourcing partner effectively. Hence strategic portion of the IT should not be outsourced. It should be planned by the internal people, but operational part of the IT services can definitely be outsourced. We have been using outsourced network monitoring, facility management, data center management services from outsourced partners since so many years and it has worked well for us.

Of the vast spectrum of IT solutions you as a CIO are probably continuously accosted with, how many fall in cutting-edge category and how many turn out to be bleeding-edge ones?

From the vast spectrum of IT solutions available in the market, we must be in position to select the most appropriate to our business. Once selected, we must be in a position to market the same internally and finally we must be able to implement and make use of features, facilities available in the IT solution.

In my opinion, if we are able to make use of the IT solution effectively, the simplest one also can be called as cutting edge or bleeding edge. But by virtue of IT solution being cutting edge or bleeding edge does not help the businesses unless they are able to make use of the same effectively.