Not technologies, but people drive agility

BANGALORE, INDIA: Technologies drive innovations, but onus is on the people to integrate these innovations in businesses processes to make an enterprise agile.

These were the thoughts shared by participants deliberating the theme, " CIO Scorecard: How Agile are we" at the CIOL C Change 2008 here today.

Kicking off the discussion, Prince Azariah, CIO, MRF Limited, said for an enterprise to be agile, its needs to have a charismatic leader who drives change across business processes in the enterprise.

"The leader needs to be nimble-footed in his thoughts to respond and drive change across enterprises," said Azariah.

"He has to inculcate a culture in an enterprise where the only constant is change," added Azariah.

Terming CIO as the key player in this change management process, Azaraiah said that CIO being the custodian of information has a central role to drive the vision of agile enterprise.

"CIO's role is to get all the information and disseminate it quickly to the people who are at the center of decision-making process", he said.

"Agility is about responding in time. Information needs to relevant and disseminated fast," added Azariah.

Taking the discussion forward Arun Gupta, CIO, Shoppers Stop, in his address said agility should be customer-centric and this thought should be grilled through multiple tracks in the organization to make all pervasive.

"Agilty starts with customer and ends with customer. Delivery in anytime and every time is the key," Arun said.

Arun added that Supply Chain Management for an organization should be designed in innovative way so as to manage all the elements efficiently.

"Connect all the pieces to connect people such as the benefits are percolated quickly to the customer," he added.

"People at every point drive businesses. Businesses, not IT, should drive IT implementation," Gupta said.