November 15 2007 by Sreekanth Sastry

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From The Editor-in-Chief

For the past two years, November always manages to put a spring in my step. This is

Season of Change New beginnings mark CIO magazine’s third year.

for a multitude of reasons and not just because winter’s getting here. Given that we launched on November 15, 2005, this month reminds me about how far CIO has come in its journey in India. It brings to mind milestones like the first ever CIO Survey on staffing, the CIO 100 Symposium and Awards event, and the Ones to Watch program. It’s been an interesting voyage, coinciding in many ways with the ongoing evolution of CIOs as not just IT helmsmen but as business strategists. What helped us stay relevant to your needs was our Editorial Advisory Board as well as the reams of feedback and suggestions that you sent our way. Assimilating those, we’re making a few fresh departures and new beginnings with this issue, which marks our second anniversary. The biggest change we’ve While we see that the core information made is in exponentially requirements of CIOs are still about increasing the number of ‘Business, Technology and Leadership, perspectives that you get we’re tweaking some of the ways by which to share in. we deliver these to you. The biggest change we’ve made is in exponentially increasing the number of CIO perspectives that you get to share in. This is not about just talking to more IT leaders within a single feature — you’ll see this philosophy at work through the magazine as we sample CIO opinion, experience and views across verticals. Given your demand for good, accurately written case studies, we decided to make this a special focus area — Case File — that will also give voice to the business imperatives behind the implementation. Just to give you an idea of what to expect, we’re showcasing six significant cases in this issue. Bearing in the demands on your time, you’ll also see shorter, crisper and more solutionsoriented features. But even as we are enhancing the magazine to serve your information needs better, we’re keeping in place sections like ‘View From The Top’, ‘Essential Technology’ and the Columns. It’s never out with the old and in with the new with us. Two years ago, I’d started on this journey by promising you that our focus was Real Problems; Real People; Real Solutions. Those three short phrases continue to define this publication. That’s never going to change. I await your thoughts on this issue. Write in and let me know. Salud.

Vijay Ramachandran Editor-in-Chief vijay_r@cio.in

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From The ediTor

one of the things about change is this: even when you recognize it — which

evolving CIo role Proactive CIOs and demanding CEOs are at the heart of this effort to redefine the duties of the CIO.

by the way, is a big thing in itself — you can’t precisely define it. This, to my mind, is what is happening to the role of the CIO in India. Most of us understand that the Indian CIO’s role is shifting but we are not quite sure how, or how much. The fact is, the CIO role is evolving, and it is you who will eventually determine the changes. Besides discussions with CIOs, and studying the career paths of many, we had interesting internal debates on the subject before putting out this issue’s cover story on what we call CIO v2.0, because it has involved a big upgrade. We thought Bharti Airtel’s Jai Menon, featured on the cover, represents many of the changes, as do other CIOs like Arun Gupta of Shopper’s Stop and Rajesh Uppal of We realize CIOs have to, or Maruti Udyog. We realize CIOs have to, or want to, want to, assume several new assume several new responsibilities responsibilities but one clearbut one clear-cut area they want to cut area they want to take control is business, specifically how control is business. technology can be tapped to increase revenues. Menon, as our cover story by chief copy editor Kunal N. Talgeri reveals, achieved this by creating new service offerings for Airtel’s customers. Many CIOs, we realize, are being proactive and are coming up with initiatives and then getting buy-in from the management. Simultaneously, several CEOs are beginning to expect more from their CIOs. At this year’s CIO 100 symposium in New Delhi, we heard two of them saying in unambiguous terms that they want their CIOs to run a business unit, alongside their technology responsibilities. Clearly, the evolving CIO role will be fashioned by both the CEO and the CIO himself. The role of the CIO has undergone similar transformation in the US and other countries. The experience, however, has been varied. What form could it take here? It is anybody’s guess. Or maybe yours.

Bala Murali Krishna Executive Editor balamurali_k@cio.in

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V The er A si ll N oN e w 2.0

novemBeR 15 2007‑ | ‑vol/3‑ | ‑issue/01

Leadership

COVER STORY 32 | Juggling roleS

Jai Menon, Director IT & Innovation, Bharti Airtel, stepped out of the traditional CIO role and opened new markets for the telecom giant.

3 2

The technology leader’s job is slowly but surely transforming. In this transition, the CIO v2.0, as we like to call him, is assuming multiple roles as he is expected to fulfill business functions, among other things. The question is: what should you be doing? Feature by kunal n. Talgeri

Case Files 42 | no Blind SpoTS Pharma companies are turning to technology to create better relationships between their medical representatives and physicians. By Shardha Subramanian 46 | Creaming The markeT Sales data flowed from Emami’s far-flung depots to HQ in squiggles. The problem needed straightening. Emami’ IT team had just the trick. By kanika goswami

COVEr: dESIgN by b IN ESh SrEEdharaN

I PhOtO by SrIVatSa ShaN dIlya

53 | harveSTing iT BeneFiTS Through the e-procurement system, IFFCO’s vendors have bypassed the inadequacies of the manual process, saving more than just time. By Balaji narasimhan

4 2

5 3

6 6

7 6

8 4

66 | Terminal veloCiTy Passengers on Kingfisher Airlines hated lines. Here’s how the IT team picked up the pace at check-in. By gunjan Trivedi 76 | pda BeaTS paper Here’s how HDFC bettered its odds of collecting from defaulters by turning to PDAs. By gunjan Trivedi

84 | Say hello To Speedy reConneCTS Inconsistenties in the format of customer names can bring down an organization. A solution like business process re-engineering can help. By gunjan Trivedi

Strategy on The road oF Change | 21 After two mergers, the CIO of logistics provider YRC Worldwide had to carefully apply change leadership techniques to blend three IT departments into one. Column by michael rapken

more » 8

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content

Essential Technology | 102 Enterprise Apps. | Spreadsheet Dinosaurs

Feature by John Edwards IT Agility | The Three Laws Of Aglity Column by Michael Hugos

From the Editor-in-Chief | 2 Season of Change By Vijay Ramachandran

From the Editor | 6 Evolving CIO Role By Bala Murali Krishna NOW ONLINE For more opinions, features, analyses and updates, log on to our companion website and discover content designed to help you and your organization deploy IT strategically. Go to www.cio.in

c o.in

Executive Expectations VIEW FROM THE TOP | 90 Sharad Sharma, the CEO of Yahoo India Research and Development, focuses on understanding customer needs while running one half of Yahoo’s global network operations. Interview by Kanika Goswami

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ID Management Identity Crisis: Pfizer’s Fix | 97 Paper gets in the way of work. At Pfizer, a new process for digitizing ID management reduced a paper mountain to a molehill and produced unexpected business benefits. Feature by Laurianne McLaughlin

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ADVISORY BOARD Management

Publisher & editor N. Bringi Dev

CEO Louis D’Mello Editor ia l Editor-IN-CHIEF Vijay Ramachandran

Executive Editor Bala Murali Krishna

assistant editor Gunjan Trivedi

Special Correspondents Balaji Narasimhan Kanika Goswami

Abnash Singh Group CIO, Mphasis Alaganandan Balaraman

Copy Editor Shardha Subramanian D es ign & Productio n

Creative Director Jayan K Narayanan

Designers Binesh Sreedharan

Unnikrishnan A.V; Girish A.V MM Shanith; Anil T PC Anoop; Jithesh C.C Suresh Nair, Prasanth T.R Vinoj K.N; Siju P

Photography Srivatsa Shandilya

Production T.K. Karunakaran

T.K. Jayadeep

Mark eti ng and Sa l es VP Sales (Print) Naveen Chand Singh VP Sales (Events) Sudhir Kamath brand Manager Alok Anand Agm (South) Mahantesh Godi Marketing Siddharth Singh Kishore Venkat Bangalore Santosh Malleswara Ashish Kumar, Chetna Mehta Delhi Nitin Walia; Anandram B; Muneet Pal Singh; Gaurav Mehta Mumbai Parul Singh, Chetan T. Rai, Rishi Kapoor,Pradeep Nair Japan Tomoko Fujikawa USA Larry Arthur; Jo Ben-Atar

Singapore Michael Mullaney

68 & 69 4&5

Alok Kumar

Canon

IBC

Global Head-Internal IT, Tata Consultancy Services

Ech Enn

Anwer Bagdadi

Emerson

Fluke

Fortinet

Senior VP & CTO, CFC International India Services Arun Gupta Customer Care Associate & CTO, Shopper’s Stop Arvind Tawde VP & CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra Ashish K. Chauhan President & CIO — IT Applications, Reliance Industries C.N. Ram Head–IT, HDFC Bank Chinar S. Deshpande CIO, Pantaloon Retail Dr. Jai Menon Director (IT & Innovation) & Group CIO, Bharti Tele-Ventures Manish Choksi Chief-Corporate Strategy & CIO, Asian Paints M.D. Agrawal Dy. GM (IS), Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited

Fujitsu

106 & 107

37, 48 & 49

78 & 79

IBM

58 - 65

Inflow

Infotrek

Intel Interface

7 55

Lenovo BC MAIA Microsoft

86 & 87 3

MIEL e-Security

Molex

VP-IT, Raymond

Novell

Rajesh Uppal

R&M

Red Hat

Rittal

Rajeev Shirodkar

Chief GM IT & Distribution, Maruti Udyog Prof. R.T. Krishnan Jamuna Raghavan Chair Professor of Entrepreneurship, IIM-Bangalore S. Gopalakrishnan CEO & Managing Director, Infosys Technologies

Events VP Rupesh Sreedharan Managers Ajay Adhikari, Chetan Acharya Pooja Chhabra

APW President

Avaya

Vikas Kapoor; Anil V.K Jinan K. Vijayan; Sani Mani

ADC Krone

Vice president, Britannia Industries

SENIOR COPY EDITOR Sunil Shah

Advertiser Index

Prof. S. Sadagopan Director, IIIT-Bangalore S.R. Balasubramnian

Samsung

SAP

IFC

SAS

Seagate Sify

105 16 & 17

Exec. VP (IT & Corp. Development), Godfrey Phillips

Sigma Byte Satish Das CSO, Cognizant Technology Solutions Sivarama Krishnan All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers, 15–16, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560 001, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company.

Printed and Published by N Bringi Dev on behalf of IDG Media Private Limited, 10th Floor, Vayudooth Chambers, 15–16, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Bangalore 560 001, India. Editor: N. Bringi Dev. Printed at Rajhans Enterprises, No. 134, 4th Main Road, Industrial Town, Rajajinagar, Bangalore 560 044, India

Executive Director, PricewaterhouseCoopers Dr. Sridhar Mitta MD & CTO, e4e

Systimax

23 & 103 30 & 31

Tyco

Vishwak

Wipro

72 - 75

S.S. Mathur GM–IT, Centre for Railway Information Systems Sunil Mehta Sr. VP & Area Systems Director (Central Asia), JWT

This index is provided as an additional service. The publisher does not assume any liabilities for errors or omissions.

V.V.R. Babu

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Group CIO, ITC

11/16/2007 9:23:52 PM

new

hot

unexpected

IllUStratIon by UnnIkrIShnan aV

And Now Laptops Powered by Cows

Technology The One Laptop Per Child

Project (OLPC) is toying with a novel source of power for its low-cost XO laptops: cows. "We plan to drive a dynamo (taken from an old Fiat) through a system of belts and pulleys using cows," wrote OLPC's Arjun Sarwal, in an e-mail posted to one of the group's discussion lists. Sarwal and others are now finalizing

the design of the cow-powered generator. The goal is to develop a low-cost energy source that can be used in Indian villages. Working in a village close to Mumbai, Sarwal says the group considered using solar energy but sunlight near Mumbai was not ‘consistently strong.’ There was not enough wind or running water nearby to use these as sources of power, and the cost of running a gas-powered motor was too high. "But the village had an abundance of cattle that were being used in the fields. So, we decided to design something around that," Sarwal writes in a subsequent e-mail. The dynamo used in the system was taken from a Fiat car that is commonly used as taxis in Mumbai and is therefore

both cheap and readily available. OLPC is close to putting its XO laptop into production, but has been beset by delays and rising costs. Originally intended to cost $100 (Rs 4,000) each, the cost has since risen to nearly $200 (Rs 8,000). And production is also moving slowly. After a trial production run in August, OLPC had hoped to start mass production in late September or early October.

—By Sumner Lemon

Quick Take on

Green IT

Q: what's the spin on green IT in India? taking care of space optimization, airconditioning and ventilation planning, driven by floor layout and flooring elevation. on the It side, virtualization contributes largely to optimization of server space. In addition, efficient power utilization by intelligent lighting also contributes to green It. at henkel, we follow all of these to a very large extent. Q: down to the brass tacks: specifically, how have you made your data center more green? Data centers are a complicated areas to design, and once they are up and it is difficult to have them modified. however, we looked at alternate solutions and found that small things help. optimizing room temperature to avoid any extra consumption is very important. In our case, we discovered that optimizing data center floor space can add nearly 17 percent to energy savings.

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Q: wow. How do you optimize server usage? We have achieved energy efficiency through silicon-based servers — Intel’s new generation Dual Core Woodcrest servers, are extremely energy efficient. In addition, virtualization can help consolidate infrastructure so that there are fewer systems to power, giving more computing capacity within existing facility. Q: And how do you handle e-waste? We are an ISo-9000 certified company and have certain processes for e-waste disposal. Every quarter we identify cartridges, ribbons and machines that are not used, and keep them separately. We have a dedicated team that takes care of disposal.

Manikkam Subramaniam Head-IT, Henkel CAC

Q: Is enough being done in India for green IT? Indian companies are realizing what green It is all about. today, energy depletion is a huge worry and the roI for green It is that a lot of money can be saved. — by kanika Goswami

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Voices

In October, SAP reached an agreement to acquire Business Objects and announced plans to combine its software offering with the French business intelligence (BI) provider, to offer customers real-time information. We asked three CIOs how the merger would impact them. Here’s what they had to say:

Voices

Anil Khopkar Trendlines

GM-MiS, Bajaj auto

It will affect me constructively because I will now be able to get better reporting facility, thanks to Crystal reports.

Vikas Gadre

cio, Tata chemicals

In the immediate future, it will not affect us. It will add value in the longer run because SaP's bI implementation does not have functions present in business objects.

nayan desai VP-iT, WnS

We use business objects, and we expect the front end to remain the same even after the takeover. We also expect better support from SaP.

—by balaji narasimhan 14

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Raising the Flag on Web 2.0 s e c u r i T y The move towards Web 2.0 technologies may well be another race between functionality and security, and for now at least, security seems to be at the tail end. Security professionals are raising the red flag on the increasing pervasiveness of Web 2.0 technologies in the enterprise, saying that while it offers the benefit of rich applications, the risks associated with Web 2.0 can no longer be overlooked. In the enterprise, for instance, a Web 2.0-enabled architecture involves applications built as Web services that provide cross-platform access and functionalities for users. "Like submitting a record to a database or changing a piece of data (for example)," says Oliver Lavery, a consultant with Toronto-based IT security firm Security Compass. "The problem is that what's being exposed there are very detailed, technical procedure calls — Web service calls — using all these new technologies that haven't really been tested and [the industry doesn't] have a lot of experience securing them," Lavery says. The increasing use of these new tools, without proper understanding of the security issues that may arise as a result, is giving attackers new avenues to explore, says Lavery. Web 2.0-enabled social networking sites present another attack vector for the bad guys. Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook have allowed people to actively interact and connect in real-time in ways they have never been able to before. On the surface, the Web 2.0 craze may seem like a consumer phenomenon. But many security experts agree that its pervasiveness is going beyond people's homes and into the workplace, as employees access these sites from their office computer. "The most dangerous part of any computer system are the people who run it," says University of Calgary professor Tom Keenan. The use of mobile devices, like laptops that typically travel back and forth between the home and office, is not helping the situation either, added Keenan, who is also the IT security spokesperson for the Canadian Information Processing Society. —By Mari-Len De Guzman

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IllUSt ratIon by anIl t

How will SAP’s Takeover of Business Objects Affect You?

Who Gets the Most for Their R&D Buck?

Opinion Poll

39%

Managing distributed IT environments through monitoring and automation

25%

9.6 percent more than it spent in 2005. Pharmaceutical-maker Pfizer was next, with Rs 30,400 crore (a 4.7 percent jump), followed by Ford, with Rs 28,800 crore (a 10 percent decline). Overall, R&D spending increased 10 percent in just a year. Among industries, computing and electronics companies spent the most (Rs 509,600 crore), followed by health care (Rs 391,200 crore) and automotive companies (Rs 296,000 crore). The companies were primarily in nine industries which make products, rather than provide services. Among all 1,000 companies, the ‘highleverage innovators’ group accounted for an estimated 84 percent of corporate R&D expenditures. Booz Allen Hamilton researchers further surveyed a subset of the 1,000 companies about their innovation strategies. They found three common profiles.

2008 Network Priorities

Automating and streamlining IT infrastructure

Here's what your peers are aiming to do for their networks in the year ahead.

22%

Optimizing infrastructure through virtualization

14%

Managing converged voice and data networks

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Trendlines - 01.indd 15

Need Seekers: These companies engage customers actively in order to be first to market with breakthrough products. Market Readers: More cautious than need seekers, these companies think of themselves as fast followers and focus on incremental product innovation. Technology Drivers: Companies which emphasize their technological skills and ability to anticipate unarticulated customer needs. No matter what model your company follows, IT plays a significant role in successful innovation efforts, Jarulzelski says. "We've seen high-leverage innovators, having rigorous, disciplined, managed and measured process no matter what strategy they're following. IT tools are relevant in all cases." —By Elana Varon

trendlines

A study by consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton finds no significant correlation between the amount of money companies spend on innovation and their financial performance. What gives companies the biggest bang for their R&D dollars? Alignment between an organization's innovation activities and its corporate strategy, along with a deep understanding of customer needs. Among ‘high-leverage innovators’ the annual Global Innovation 1000 study suggests that relying on emerging technology to fuel innovation is riskier than applying proven technologies to an identifiable customer need. The top innovators still spend plenty. And they're mostly spending more than they did a year ago. The study examined 1,000 public companies globally who spent the most on R&D in 2006. Toyota took the top slot, with Rs 30,800 crore; that's

St u d y

The Cost of Data Most travelers carry little or no business information on their laptops, but the ones who do store an average of Rs 210 lakh worth of sensitive data, according to a survey contracted by iBahn, a provider of secure broadband services to some 2,100 hotels and conference centers in 22 countries. Some other findings that are noteworthy include: The average value of personal information on travelers' laptop computers is Rs 132 lakh. Forty percent of respondents access the Web via an open, or unsecured Wi-Fi connection in any given month, be it public or another person's personal network Thirty-nine percent of respondents have experienced some form of computer malware, virus, theft, etcetera in a business setting O nly thirty-two percent of study participants said the Wi-Fi connections they employ to access the Internet in hotels or conference centers are ‘somewhat’ or ‘highly secure.’ —By Al Sacco Research

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end uSerS More STreSSful Than hackerS It managers are more concerned about end-user abuse of It systems than attacks from hackers and other threats, says new research. the 2007 State of Security report, surveyed 158 employees and 159 It managers from australian companies with staff numbering more than 50. Managing end-user online activity is the most frustrating part of the It manager role, according to the survey. 59 percent of surveyed companies do not block peer-to-peer file sharing, while 47 percent do not enforce Internet usage policies through filtering applications. budget constraints were the second highest concern reported by 48 percent of It managers, followed by lax attention to security (25 percent) and ease of deployment (18 percent). Most organizations (87 percent) deployed multiple Url filters, with phishing scams listed as the biggest threat (58 percent), followed by spyware (56 percent ) and instant messaging (51 percent). lost banking details (30 percent) and credit card numbers (20 percent) are considered worse than having company data stolen (17 percent), according to end-user responses. Up to 117 (74 percent) of the non-It staff surveyed thought they could be sacked for leaking secret company documents or viewing pornography, while 100 (63 percent) considered introducing spyware and viruses a dismissible offense. Employees would be axed if they leaked sensitive documents according to 90 (56 percent) of It managers, letting viruses loose (52 percent), and downing pornography (34 percent). It staff claimed non-It users spend 1.5 hours a day visiting banking sites (46 percent), reading news (39 percent), personal e-mail accounts (29 percent) and job sites (18 percent). however users argued the figure is closer to 45 minutes per day, and they spend about 85 minutes surfing the Web as part of their job. â&#x20AC;&#x201D;by Darren Pauli research

Trendlines

Data Centers Lack Tools for Efficiency Almost half of organizations lack basic management information and processes to ensure the efficient running of their data centers, according to a survey of 100 data center organizations across a range of industries, conducted by Aperture Research Institute. The research revealed 49 percent of those surveyed are not able to track physical changes in their data center including space, power and cooling. Data center managers admitted to using between three to five different systems to store configuration information, making it difficult to aggregate information onto a single view. Only 6 percent of those surveyed use a single system to document everything. Aperture Research Institute, which specializes in data center research, said one reason for this lack of basic management information was the slow implementation of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library. "ITIL grabbed a lot of traction within IT groups, but it stopped at the server," said Steven Yellen, vice president of product and market strategies at Aperture. Yellen said just 29 percent of organizations were implementing ITIL in the data center. Data centers confess to poor configuration management with less than a third implementing ITIL, he added. Yellen said that the pressure to reduce the environmental impact of the data center is going to encourage data center managers to look at ITIL. "The move to a green data center is going to force people to bring that on. Power usage is just as important as storage. The push to go green, whether it be decommissioning old equipment to analyzing power consumption, will push organizations to have an added level of detail around change management processes, and look more closely at ITIL." â&#x20AC;&#x201D;By CIO Canada Staff

Il lUStrat Ion by MM Shan It h

sTorage

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Trendlines

neTworking University of Washington researchers have developed software designed to let those who can't work with a handheld mouse use their voice instead to navigate the Web. "There are many people who have perfect use of their voice who don't have use of their hands and arms," said Jeffrey Bilmes, an associate professor of electrical engineering, in a statement. "I think there are several reasons why a 'Vocal Joystick' might be a better approach, or at least a viable alternative, to brain-computer interfaces." The Vocal Joystick detects sounds 100 times a second, relying on vowel sounds to move in one direction or another and moving faster or slower depending on voice volume. ‘K’ and ‘ch’ sounds are used for mouse clicks and releases. Some wonder why speech recognition technology might not be better, but the University of Washington researchers say it would be too slow since it would rely on drawn-out, discrete commands.

The tool can be used for Web browsing, as well as for playing video games and even drawing on a screen. Other tools — eye trackers, sipand-puff devices and head-tracking systems — also exist for enabling the disabled to take advantage of computers and the Internet. But University of Washington researchers say such offerings have limitations, whereas Vocal Joystick is easier to use. It requires only a microphone, a computer sound card and a user who can make sounds. A group of people with spinal-cord injuries have been testing the tool, which is being discussed in Tempe, Arizona, at the Assets Conference on Computers and Accessibility. Among companies active in developing Internet access technologies for the disabled is IBM. —By Network World Staff

Globalization: a Major threat M a n a g e M e n T Globalization is posing major risks that enterprises simply aren't prepared to handle. More than 60 percent of enterprises with at least rs 20,000 crore in revenue suffered from a major risk event in the past three years. a large number were not prepared to deal with the consequences, according to an IbM study. "a a surprising number of enterprises are not well prepared to handle the impact of a major risk event to their organization," IbM stated, after completing the study with help from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "Globalization opens up significant opportunities for companies but exposes more risks for the enterprise." More than 1,200 chief financial officers and senior finance executives from 79 countries participated in face-to-face interviews or on online survey about risk

n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

major risk events, be they strategic, operational or geopolitical. about 62 percent of enterprises with rs 20,000 crore in revenue suffered a major risk event in the past three years — and 42 percent of those suffering a major risk event were not well prepared, the study found. Strategic risks were the most commonly reported, but major risk events also fell under the categories of geopolitical, environmental and health, financial, operational, and legal and compliance. CFos have the task of leading risk management more often than any other executives, but too many finance organizations don't have an optimal organizational structure, IbM says. only 52 percent have a formalized riskmanagement program, and fewer than half do historic comparisons to avoid risk. "the world is shifting toward a new

definition of globalization, but a majority of companies are still maintaining the old worldview," Stephen lukens, Global Financial Management leader, IbM Global business Services, said in a press release. "Enterprises need to transform their financial-management models. they need to integrate their finance operations to take advantage of this new perspective on globalization." IbM recommends forming what it calls an Integrated Finance organization, which requires enterprisewide standards with a chart of accounts, common data definitions and standard common processes. Fewer than one in seven enterprises take this approach, even though it would make them more likely to proactively manage risk, IbM says.

—by Jon brodkin Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

IllUStratIon by anIl t

Goodbye Mouse, hello Voice Commands

alternate views B Y k a n i k a G o s wa m i

CIOs & management degrees: Aye or Nay? “If you're in senior management, you need a grasp of business accounting and management reporting.

A management degree helps in both.” Sanjeev Goel CIO , Hindalco

P hotos by Srivatsa Shan di lya

is useful for CIOs. If a CIO is an engineer with a specialization in management, he or she will be much more effective. This is because there are two parts to IT: technology and business — and the role of a CIO is to integrate the two. Technology is used in each and every aspect of business. Therefore, what CIOs need is a good grasp of business processes. They need to know how to set up key performance indicators for each of those processes, and work continuously towards improving them. If a CIO has to be effective, he needs a firm understanding of accounting. One of the primary needs of someone in senior management is to have a very good grasp of business accounting and management reporting. A management degree helps in both. Whenever we use a technology-based solution — whatever it may be used for — in the end it gets accounted. A management degree will also allow CIOs to present a package to management that will really help them understand and appreciate how much business sense a technology applications makes. I have a computer engineering degree. I also have a management and systems degree from IIT Delhi, so I — have a mix of both qualifications — management as well as technical. Nowadays, for a CIO position, even CA’s are taking the management route. Most people who could be my peers have gone in for a management qualification. Actually, I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t have one.

Trendlines - 01.indd 22

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much better CIOs, even without B School aids.” K B Singh BSES

I don’t think a B-school qualification is required to be a CIO; here more emphasis is on the IT aspect. It is important to realize that by the time a person comes to the level of CIO he has lived through the actual management processes. The crux in being a CIO is technology and its implementation. After pursuing a technical education, a person becomes a technocrat and starts implementing technology for his company. A CIO needs management qualifications only if he is a business manager or branch manager. Even then, most of the time he or she will apply their own management skills. That said, a management qualification is a definitive advantage. Their requirements of an IT professional in the IT industry, however, may be different. As important as learning on the job is, I think it might be a better idea to chose a management degree after working for five or six years. Today, the IT business is transforming. Earlier it was all about EDP, the role was different. Then IT became about computer systems and then MIS, as a part of systems. Now that a CIO’s role is more defined, CIOs have a better grip on business than IT. So we will have much better CIOs in the days to come, even without B School aids. I do look forward to CIOs playing a greater role in strategic decisions, with or without an MBA.

trendlines

I think a management degree

“Today, a CIO’s role is more defined and CIOs have a better grip on business. In the days to come, we will have

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11/16/2007 9:20:57 PM

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11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

Michael Rapkenâ&#x20AC;&#x201A;

Strategy

On the Road of Change After two mergers, the CIO of logistics provider YRC Worldwide had to carefully apply change leadership techniques to blend three IT departments into one.

Illustration by pc a noo p

lthough I was hired by YRC Worldwide (among the largest transportation and logistics providers in the US) nearly two years ago to create a strategy to drive innovation, I quickly realized that there was more work to do within IT than just creating a strategy. In the wake of the merger of Yellow Freight, Roadway and USF, the IT groups from our three companies operating in multiple locations had been merged into one unit but had yet to jell into a cohesive team. Adding to the stress from its change of identity, the group had to develop an application road map for the merged organization that would modernize and simplify the application portfolio. Only then would we be able to free up the resources needed to focus on innovation and driving growth. The IT transformation is the biggest change effort ever seen within IT, ultimately involving hundreds of people. The size and scope of such a task requires change leadership from the CIO. I have to be actively involved, and it's a tough balancing act. I've been spending between 20 and 30 percent of my time as the hands-on manager of our change initiatives while at the same time fulfilling my strategic role. Fortunately, change leadership is one of the C-level competencies that seems to be native to the IT profession, even in the middle-management ranks. There aren't many disciplines that have experienced as much change during the past 20 years as IT. People who have worked in IT over time have benefited from rolling with a series of technology changes. That experience makes us less resistant to change. When we become corporate executives, we quickly realize that we are not working in a dictatorship. We learn that we have to take time to understand the needs of our constituents and stakeholders 24

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Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

11/16/2007 8:55:34 PM

Michael Rapken

Strategy

and help them along with technology changes. Without these basic change leadership skills, no IT leader is going to get far.

ranging from the more traditional all-hands meetings and employee roundtables to holding Web chats.

Creating a Corporate Identity

Everyone Needs a Stake

After the mergers, we had multiple technologies used for similar functions, and this creates a level of complexity that is difficult to manage. It's taken a year and a half to evaluate our portfolio and to decide which of the applications and technologies we want going forward as well as how to manage the migration to our target state. Our target state represents a 40 percent reduction in applications and a 30 percent reduction in total technologies by the end of 2010. Regardless of the technology challenges, however, change leadership is still about people. My IT department is a blend of cultures. We have mixed together employees who were accustomed to supporting one operating company in one geographic location but now must support multiple operating

Along with the new identity and structures, we needed to motivate people to embrace change as individuals. I believe people enjoy a challenge. But they need to believe the challenge is achievable or you'll have failed before you even get started. On the other hand, if it's not a big enough challenge, then you won't get them in the game; they'll think of it as just the initiative of the day. There's also the question of, "What's in it for me?" This one is tricky because the answer will vary from person to person and location to location. When you speak to mixed groups you can't always know how to personalize the benefit for each individual. But you can speak generally to the benefits of change to the company, which will in turn benefit employees who are shareholders. Or you can take the opposite approach and talk about how, if we don't change, we risk underperforming our competitors. And underperforming the competition is dangerous because it puts jobs at risk. But I prefer to stay positive and motivate people around positive messages. You can also tailor your message when you are talking to specific groups. For example, we have some legacy technologies that we're moving away from. The people working in those technologies are concerned about their relevance. To get them on board, I explain to them that as long as they are willing to learn the technologies we are moving to, we will make the investments needed to retrain them.

People enjoy a challenge. But they need to believe the challenge is achievable. But if the challenge is not big enough, then you won't get them in the game; they'll think of it as just the initiative of the day. companies across three different geographic locations: Chicago, Kansas City and Akron. We began a campaign to divorce people from their parochial thinking, to emphasize that as a new corporate entity we needed to begin acting and thinking together. We chose the name YRC Worldwide Technologies because we support all the brands in the corporation. It's not a sexy name, but it's significant because there's nothing about Yellow, Roadway or USF in that name. We also created a tag line for the organization — 'Smart People, Powerful Technology' — that helped to establish a new identity. New names, of course, aren't enough to change behaviors. So we went on a ‘change binge’ starting with our staffing structure. We created an architecture and strategy group that also had responsibility for standards and IT processes. Through this group, we implemented common processes for development, change, release, workforce and project management. Our managers also created a ‘Guiding Council’, which is a group of managers that comes up with practical ways to help implement change and serves as a ‘voice of reason’ for the organization. It points out flaws in our change initiatives and offers suggestions for how they can be implemented. The council also has been very helpful in suggesting the amount of change the organization can absorb over a period of time. To get our message out, the leadership team used a variety of communication tools 26

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Leaders Need to Change, Too One thing that helps us to develop strong change leadership skills is our ability to create change for ourselves. Everyone gets comfortable in a role after a while and complacency can set in without you even knowing it. So you always need to find new ways to learn and to challenge yourself. For me, that means I don't sit in one place too long. I've been in several industries: manufacturing, consulting, telecom and now transportation. Some of the career moves I've made were lateral for the sake of going into a new area and continuing to learn. Having to adapt to new cultures and structures, develop new relationships and comprehend new business models and markets makes you sensitive to how individuals react to change and what makes change harder or easier. Up and coming IT leaders should make sure they are moving around within their companies and making selective, intelligent choices to move to other companies. You'll see that type of activity in the background of people who excel at change leadership. In the end, to inspire change in others, you have to embrace change in yourself. CIO Michael Rapken is executive vice president and CIO of YRC Worldwide. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

11/16/2007 8:55:34 PM

Esther Derby

Leadership

Stop Demotivating Me! Organizational systems, policies and management actions actively demotivate people. How many of these business practices are you foisting on your own staff?

t never fails. Every time I give a talk on management, someone asks, "How can I motivate my staff?" Managers hold pizza parties, deliver pep talks and hand out trinkets to boost motivation. And it's all for naught. Most people show up for a new job with high motivation. They're excited and they want to do a good job. But as the weeks pass, motivation dribbles away. It's not because managers are failing to motivate these once-enthusiastic people. It's because organizational systems, policies-and yes, management actionsactively demotivate people. How can a manager demotivate employees? Let me count the ways.

The Demotivator's Hall of Shame

Illust ration by anil t

Surprises at the annual employee review. Most people believe that annual reviews and evaluations improve performance. But people need to know where they stand and what they can do to improve all year, not just at review time. When managers wait until the review cycle to communicate the need to improve, staffers feel set up. When the manager says he wants them to succeed, they wonder if he really means it. Not very motivating. Micromanagement. Most people desire some measure of autonomy at work. Micromanagement — dictating each detail of how a task should be done — deprives people of autonomy. It communicates that the manager believes people are incompetent and incapable of making judgments. The worst form of micromanagement is telling people how to do a task without telling them why the task matters. Public criticism. If you must criticize, do it in private. ‘ A public dressing-down is a sure demotivator. And it doesn't affect just the individual; it affects everyone who witnesses the event. 28

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Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

11/16/2007 7:27:03 PM

Esther Derby

Leadership

When reducing costs means cutting employees, the message is that people aren't an asset to invest in; people are ‘labor costs’. Asking for one behavior and rewarding another. One of my early managers proclaimed that a stable production environment was our first priority when we made changes to the software we worked on. But I soon noticed that the people who received praise and promotions were not the ones who were methodical about testing their code. The rewards went to the developers who found and fixed crash bugs in the middle of the night — usually crash bugs that they themselves had created. Unachievable deadlines. Many managers seem to believe that without a deadline, people will dilly-dally and waste time. Most people will bust their butts to meet a challenging deadline-as long as they believe there's a reasonable chance of making it. But give them a deadline they believe is impossible, and motivation drains away. Asking for input and then ignoring it. A manager asked the developers on his team to estimate how long it would take to complete a project. The manager didn't like the estimate the team produced. "I've met rookie programmers who could work faster than this," the manager declared as he slashed the estimate by half. "Why did he waste our time?" one developer wondered. This team had a triple whammy: an unachievable timeline, a manager who dismissed their professional judgment, and a manager who berated them in public. They weren't motivated to meet the manager's aggressive timeline (but they were motivated to prove his timeline wrong). Preferential treatment. Managers don't need to treat everyone equally; they do need to treat everyone equitably. Singling out employees for differential treatment (good or bad) telegraphs that honest hard work isn't the path to recognition. A few people may be motivated to ‘brown nose’; the rest will be turned off. Empty phrases. Just do it! Failure is not an option! Think outside the box! There may be situations where these phrases actually help, though I'm challenged to think of any. When managers meet legitimate concerns with empty phrases, it communicates that the manager a) doesn't understand the issue and/or b) doesn't have a clue what to do. People are expendable. When reducing costs means cutting employees, the message is that people aren't an asset to invest in; people are ‘labor costs’. Some people are more valued than others. Forced ranking and rating on a curve are supposed to help improve performance. But the message is clear: the company values the people at the top of the ranking, and the people on the bottom know they are candidates for the next layoff. The people in the middle may stay on, in undesirable assignments, as the demotivated majority.

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Employees are not trustworthy. I once worked for a company where two people in a department of 800 abused the company policy on cab fare reimbursement. After the incident was discovered, the VP decreed that she had to personally approve all reimbursement requests over Rs 200. Her policy effectively communicated her belief that no one in the organization was trustworthy. Employees aren't capable of making good decisions. Layers of signatures, long lead times for standard items, and lag times for signatures and approvals not only slow down work and frustrate people — they communicate that people aren't capable of making reasonable decisions.

Creating an Environment for Success Here are six things every manager can do to create a local climate that supports natural motivation: Articulate the group's mission. Make sure people know the purpose of their work and how it fits into the overall mission of the company. Knowing the big picture enables people to make better decisions, and means you, as manager, don't need to be the decision bottleneck. Recognize and appreciate contributions. Notice that I didn't say 'Implement a rewards and recognition program.' I'm talking about direct conversations with individuals that show that you, as a manager, notice and appreciate the contributions people make. Provide clear, congruent feedback. People want to do a good job, and sometimes they need information to fine-tune performance. Rather than evaluate, describe behavior, or results, explain the impact and engage in problem solving. Providing information that helps people improve also helps them know you want them to succeed. Deal firmly and respectfully with performance issues. Most people want to do a good job, and sometimes people don't have the skills to be successful. Don't let the situation drag on and on or protect one person at the expense of the group. Eliminate obstacles and be an advocate for the group. When your organization throws up roadblocks, help knock them down-or at least find a way around them for the group. Nothing is more demotivating than a manager who insists that employees meet deadlines. Share company data. Disclose as much as you can about company financial results, decisions and strategies. Even saying you don't know is preferable to saying nothing, especially during times of upheaval. Spreading knowledge spreads power. Pep talks, speakers, posters, forced fun, and prizes are the stock and trade of companies that specialize in employee motivation. Although they may provide a temporary bump in morale, they won't overcome the underlying problems. Real motivation comes from pride in work, fair treatment and trust. CIO

Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

11/16/2007 7:27:04 PM

Cover Story | Leadership

g jU gLING

Reader ROI:

Looking beyond IT operations Building strategic partnerships Monetizing technology 32

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roles The technology leaderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s job is slowly but surely transforming. In this transition, the CIO v2.0, as we like to call him, is assuming multiple roles as he is expected to fulfill business functions, among other things. The question is: what should you be doing?

n o v e mb e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

11/16/2007 7:30:35 PM

By Kunal N. Talgeri

It began four years ago with a few

IMAG ING BY ANIL T Photo by Srivatsa Shandilya

phone calls and e-mails from Jai Menon’s office in Gurgaon, which ended up in Waterloo, Ontario, at the headquarters of Research in Motion (RIM) — the Canadian company best known for its BlackBerrys. It was an uncommon assignment for Menon, the director for IT & innovation at Bharti Airtel, or for that matter, most other CIOs. Nobody had assigned Menon to the job. He had just assumed it in a bid to power the Rs 17,795-crore telecom services enterprise. In doing so, he played a business role — something alien to more traditional CIOs but one that is increasingly expected of IT heads. Menon’s initiative eventually led to Airtel’s launch in October 2004 of BlackBerrys in India. Why or how did Menon get around to expanding his role, rather than merely minding his technology responsibilities?

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Jai Menon stepped out of the traditional CIO role and opened new markets for Bharti Airtel.

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Cover Story | Leadership “It was important for me to recognize the role of IT in a product/service to morph it into a bigger offering for the future,” he recalls. like it or not, the Indian CIo is making the not-so-subtle shift to business development, as technology plays an increasingly greater role in business. Businesses increasingly turn to their CIos in a bid to leverage their technical skills and business knowledge, and fashion new products or services. such expectations require that CIos learn and hone a number of skills outside the realm of IT, and juggle with new responsibilities such as that of a leader, a globe-trotting global CIo, a negotiator or a strategist. “strategic orientation is a C-level competency. It is the ability to think long term, strategically, and beyond one’s

Do YoU HAve

Market Knowledge? CIos wishing to improve their performance in this competency need to examine their organization's readiness, and then assess their own. Some questions to ask include: Organizational Does the organization have an articulated strategy that it follows? To what extent is the organization market-driven versus technology-driven? Is the business simple, or does it include a wide variety of products, customers and business models? Is the direction of the business coherent? Individual Do you understand what drives the business and its market? Do you see your role as formulating direction? Can you see a situation from others' perspective rather than just your own? Can you identify patterns in people and their behavior as well as in systems or processes? Based on the answers to these questions, you can decide how to develop your market knowledge and use it to benefit yourself and your company. Reynold lewke is Egon Zehnder's North American CIo practice leader. Steve Kelner is global knowledge leader of Egon Zehnder's talent management and management appraisal practice group. —By Reynold lewke & Steve Kelner

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own area to plan against larger issues,” observe reynold lewke and steve Kelner of egon Zehnder International, a talent recruitment and management firm. “It depends on complex thinking abilities, both analytical and conceptual.… The emphasis is on business strategies that must incorporate specific business issues, and in many cases propose action,” they write. In the new equation, all of a sudden, IT becomes a subset of business, once again raising the question: how exactly can a CIo go beyond tech responsibilities? or should he at all? Globally, CIos’ responses to this changing environment have been mixed, notes Chris Potts, director of Dominic Barrow, a london-based consultancy specializing in corporate strategies for tapping IT. “some have continued with an orthodox IT strategy. others have abandoned having a strategy for IT, which is a reasonable proposition if the company is an expert consumer of IT and can bend the de facto strategies that its IT vendors and partners will attempt to impose,” he explains. Potts also points to a third approach: CIos collaborating with their executive colleagues to formulate, ratify and execute a corporate strategy for exploiting IT. In Menon’s case, part of the change in CIo expectations arose from Bharti Airtel’s decision in mid-2004 to completely outsource its networks and IT infrastructure. This freed up Menon’s time, if not responsibilities. still, even though this made the shift to business development easier, it would be silly to underestimate the challenges of managing vendors — especially when the stakes are as large as Airtel’s. let’s not forget: even the mere suggestion of outsourcing can often be enough for IT heads to cry, “Who Moved My Cheese?!” By most accounts, technology heads continue to grapple with IT issues, leaving precious little time and energy for business strategy. Consequently, the decision to outsource could be seen as a way for CIos to step away from day-to-day operations and focus, instead, on business strategy. earlier this year, Arun Gupta created a similar role for himself at the rs 865-crore retail chain shopper’s stop. “I am a co-owner of the (company’s) e-commerce business,” says Gupta, referring to an online shopping portal planned to be launched in December. “The Web business is not just about getting people to visit your online stores. It is about making money,” he asserts. As a result, the shopper’s stop CTo is now not just enabling the online shopping site but also determining processes and logistics, and thinking of customer care. “We are treating this as another (brick and mortar) shopper’s stop store, rather than another business altogether,” Gupta says. At Maruti, rajesh Uppal also looks after the car manufacturer’s sales and distribution arm in addition to being the GM of IT. learning different processes took time and Uppal credits his grasp of the company to the years he put in at Maruti. He has been CIo for eight years and has spent the last year-and-a-half as head of sales and distribution. “It

Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

Cover Story | Leadership

ToDAY's

Here’s the stark truth: most people do not leave their companies — they leave their leaders. Building and retaining a champion team is about how skilled you are at leading and growing each of your team members. By improving how you coach, your culture, leadership effectiveness and overall results will improve. Coach Bill Hart from Building Champions calls this your UlP, or Unique leadership Proposition. Here are easy-to-implement steps that will set you apart and make being a ‘coaching leader’ your UlP.

Coach ToMorroW's Leader

2 4

Step One: Complete the Team Assessment and Development Tool (available at xxxxxxx) for those who directly report to you and whom you want to coach. Don’t start off with more than eight direct reports.

Step Two: Create your coaching model. How often will you meet with your teammates one on one? How long will these sessions last? By starting off with one 60-minute coaching session a month, you can really begin to add value. Most ‘coaching leaders’ have their sessions on the same days every month. They are also more focused if they conduct the sessions in one block of time. Your model should include an action plan follow-up and should always end with an action plan recap.

Step Three: Share how your coaching model is going to work with those you want to coach and ask them if they want to try it on for six months. Tell them you will only discuss their goals, plans, opportunities and challenges. Remember, it's all about them!

took me three or four months to adapt. It is not possible to run IT in today’s scenario without domain expertise,” he says. For CIos, a realization of the worlds beyond enterprise IT is significant, as is the attendant mindset. Today, Menon thinks about the new products and services that Airtel can provide, rather than on internal technology issues. In his case, technology convergence forecast by the coming together of Tv, v, Internet and the mobile offers exciting v new possibilities that Menon, more than others at Airtel, might be able to recognize. The rationale is: who better than the CIo to fashion a technology strategy that would open new business possibilities.

Bringing Vision Menon, who was educated in the Us and worked there for several years before returning to India, is among the CIos who are making the transition early. Menon is not new to the business side. As Bellsouth’s executive vP for applications, strategy and product innovation, he was exposed to nontraditional IT roles. In his 16 years in the Us, Menon also established a network that he can tap for business deals. But it still takes work to step out of his traditional role. “It takes a long time to forge alliances with partners — apart 36

N o v e M B e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

Step Four: Complete the Team Assessment (available at xxxxxxx) and have all of them do the same for themselves. Meet with them individually to map out areas to focus on. This initial coaching session should include ground rules like being prompt, how action plans are to be created and followed up on, etcetera.

Step Five: Take notes during each session and highlight all action plans and due dates. Then schedule your own follow-up reminders so you can encourage and hold your teammate accountable to their action plans. This step is key and needs to be a priority for the coaching to really make a difference. —By Daniel Harkavy

from constantly keeping your management in tune with the opportunities in market and the technology products it demands,” says Menon. He walks the talk, and can speak the language of business with comfort. You’ll find his lexicon features buzzwords such as ‘prosumers’ — proactive consumers, a segment including the youth and other new consumers. Menon is also able to articulate his vision, one such being the ‘digital lifestyle enablement’ — a term Airtel is beginning to use to characterize newer features available on the mobile phone. This ability to see the world from a business perspective helps Menon engage both management and potential business partners. “A CIo can be involved in building innovative alliances and bringing innovations,” says Menon. “That is a fundamental shift in how a CIo must think. I am now looking into business development deals and building cases. I am negotiating, building the business models around the deals — advertising streams, subscriber stream, etcetera,” he explains. Menon’s vision of a digital lifestyle has led to alliances with Microsoft for Windows Mobile, apart from deals with research r in Motion and, most recently, Google search capabilities on BlackBerry and mobile WAP-search. The digital-lifestyle pie contains voice, data, collaboration through unified messaging, rich media content, broadcast, besides a host of computing,

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Cover Story | Leadership document processing, and commerce applications. “From being a communications services enterprise, Airtel is now a digital lifestyle company,” he states. The branding strategy lends new potential to the telecom sector’s favorite acronym: ArPU (average revenue per user). “A CIo who has typically been seen building just back-office systems can now build product-oriented systems like portal services and content services,” says Menon. This transition, however, is not only about strategic alliances. It calls for a sure-shot mechanism to deal with internal IT. The strategic CIo must have his house in order before he can venture into other areas.

Within i.t., Without i.t. Menon did this in two ways. First, he refined Bharti Airtel’s relationship with its outsourcing partners, based on a model he calls the ‘s1 outsourcing Model,’ or the selective onePlayer outsourcing Model. The objective is to get one throat to choke — maybe two — to fulfill the IT functions, easing the pain of managing outsourcing partners. “This brings in single accountability,” Menon says. “The model is selective in that it would allow me to select the end-

HoW To

Negotiate lIKe A CHAMPIoN

To be a successful negotiator, you need to train, practice and have a game plan. "You just can’t go into a negotiation on the seat of your pants," says Gerard Nierenberg, author of several books on negotiation. "You have to put yourself in the other person’s shoes to get what you want." Preparation is the key to successful negotiation, says Steven Cohen, president of The Negotiation Skill, a consultancy in Massachusetts. It’s also important to barter with things besides money, he says. "You want to cover a range of bargaining chips. The greater the flexibility, the greater the chance of a successful negotiation." Cohen’s definition of a good negotiation: when both parties depart from committed agreements. But it’s critical to know when to just walk away. "If you don’t know when to take a walk, you can’t make a decision that makes common sense," he says. A game plan is important in negotiation, but gamesmanship will kill the deal. "Be totally honest," says Guy Batista, CIo of First Data Corp. in Atlanta. "Put the facts on the table and don’t play games." When these don’t work or when you find yourself talking to people who won’t listen, go above them. Talking to top execs can cut through the sales babble and help a negotiation get down to real deal-making. Says Barea, "Sometimes you just don’t have time for blab." —By Joe Kendall 38

N o v e M B e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

beTween e id iv d e Th gy and a T o l o n h c Te duc ore pro r c 's y n a o comp easing. F r c e d is ing line T on mov e n e T in s h cio siness', T u b e h ‘T inTo ow. Time is n to-end architecture. And, s1 makes our model a business outcome-oriented system.” To put the latter advantage in perspective, IBM’s outsourcing agreement with Airtel reportedly doubled in value to $1.6 billion (rs 6,400 crore) earlier this year. And because of the revenue-sharing arrangement, Menon is assured of the quality of service. Further, while IBM has 50 other technology providers in its fold, Airtel’s contact center technology partner has another 10 additional providers under it. This is the extent to which Menon has been able to free himself of traditional duties. outsourcing apart, the internal IT team of India’s largest private telecom player comprises 200 people, all of whom are business users. This is the second front, whose functions range from managing accounts and projects to operations management. “Governance is critical,” says Menon. The outsourcing partners and internal IT team at Bharti Airtel are effectively the hands that rock its IT cradle, freeing up Menon for opportunities on the business-technology front. It is an approach that has had champions worldwide, including Carl Wilson, executive vP and CIo of the hotel chain Marriott International and a member of the CIO executive Council in the Us. “CIos need to be the general thought leaders and coordinators of business technology. But some of the accountability for IT strategy will be shared with business peers,” he says. In the same breath, Wilson believes that CIos of tomorrow must create new ways of sourcing, developing and retaining top talent if they are to support their expanded business roles. sourcing constitutes one eminent challenge, managing the diverse talent forms another. Though Menon prefers a handsoff approach to traditional duties, he must still oversee a large group of professionals — internally and across, at IBM and Nortel Networks. Under the circumstances, Menon says he needs to ensure that everyone is working toward the same set of goals. That aim led Menon to establish the IT and Innovation Community of Practice (ITI CoP) that unites the outsourcing partners and internal IT for regular offsite meets.

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Cover Story | Leadership As lewke and Kelner of egon Zehnder International put it, “Collaboration and influence competency is in part about giving up sole ownership of an idea or decision.”

Content Vs. teChnology

NeW rUles For

New Markets

Having his house in order, Menon says, provides him more time for innovations, and directing When you’re in a new city, the way you wear your hat can give you product offerings to untapped segments of the away. If you are a CIo whose company is moving business to an emergingmarket. Far from viewing it as a bonus, he asserts market, you need to get your game together - or it won’t be your hat that that it is a necessity for a CIo. “The IT leader in will give away your foreignness, it will be those missed project deadlines. Here are five ways to tweak your project methodologies to fit emerging a telco, in particular, has to think about not just technology, but about a business model around market culture. cost. This is where a lot of IT expenses happen — and, more importantly, the focus should be on One: Budget more time to understand how to get things done in each triggering new revenues and building alliances new emerging market. Two: Budget less time for installations because the cost of labor is less in your ecosystem,” he explains. Martha Heller, managing director of the IT in many emerging markets, and the supply ample. leadership Practice at executive recruiting Three: Budget more time for business process training. firm ZrG, concurs: “In nearly every industry, Four: Budget less time for engagement and buy-in by IT staff and the divide between technology and a company's users. Because many emerging market countries have a hierarchical core product line is decreasing by the minute. culture, they are less likely to challenge leadership direction; they are The time is now for CIos intent on moving into also less likely to offer suggestions to improve the use of systems. ‘the business’ to capitalize on this shift and start Five: And lastly, budget more time for application development due to language translation. producing revenue.” Menon focused on content for converging —Andrew Rowsell-Jones technologies — a key business issue for his enterprise. on the technology front, he emphasized on the need for content and its delivery through subscriber base. It is a business opportunity, albeit one at a automatic right-sizing of content to the screen and the nascent stage. And the learnings will be invaluable by the network. “The content — video, audio, rich media — is sized time more players increase their stakes. for the device in question, be it a mobile connected over a wireless network or a PC connected over broadband or Tv or an IP network,” he explains, adding that revenue streams for each media are critical. Why are CIos expected to act more as strategic business sivarama Krishnan, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ executive partners — and why is it happening now? v veteran CIos in director for business solutions, concurs: “The revenue the Us, louis ehrlich and Marc West, recently explored the sharing capability of deals with content service providers is trend. “First, IT is more and more pervasive in everything crucial. This is the big challenge for both the telecom operator we do, and this drives a strong relationship between and the content provider.” business goals and the IT that will help achieve those goals,” With Google, Menon sought to leverage the growing mobile the duo observed. “Therefore, the CIo must be effective at Internet market in India — a country in which PC penetration understanding strategy, and working in a structured way is notoriously low, especially in its Tier II cities. Apart from to translate that strategy into opportunities and sound IT the mobile search service with Google, Airtel now seeks to investments,” they explain. leverage its broadband pie by providing its content through a The road has been less traveled; nevertheless, it is one that dedicated portal. It is expected to be launched later this month. augurs well for CIos. The shift to business development isn’t An sMs search function is also on the cards. so much about abandoning your experiences in technology, but creating opportunities for yourself and the enterprise. “In general, new product offerings have the potential of As we cited at the start, it can begin easily — with just a few contributing between five and 25 percent of a telco’s revenue phone calls or e-mails. CIO base,” he says. And with prosumers constituting a significant portion of urban India, Airtel expects the alliance to yield good profits. Also, sources say BlackBerry’s penetration is Kunal n. Talgeri is chief copy editor of CIo India. He can be reached at rising and on course toward the goal of one-eighth of Airtel’s kunal_t@cio.in.

Why noW? What noW?

N o v e M B e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

No Bli BliN Nd SpotS Spot By Shardha SuBramaNiaN

Pharmaceutical companies eying better traction with doctors are using innovative technologies to create better relationships between their medical representatives and physicians. 42

n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

01 Case Study - Allergan.indd 42

Reader ROI:

Why PDAs make sense for a mobile workforce The importance of explaining that handhelds arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tracking devices The cost benefits of using handhelds

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Case File

‘Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse,’ said Winston Churchill. When Allergan India, the Bangalore-headquartered arm of the global specialty pharmaceutical company took Churchill’s advice, it carried innovation beyond art. very limited. We need to able to get into their minds quickly and stay there for a long time,” says Rajan. On another front, pharma companies like Allergan have to fight for good representatives. “Ophthalmic is a niche market and the number

Photo by SrIVAtSA Sh AnDI lyA

Allergan meant business. It needed to take on a problem that was slowing down its eyes and ears on the street: its medical representatives. “A medical representative only gets a five-minute window with a doctor,” says K.T. Rajan director operations IS and projects for Allergan India. This a problem medical representatives, Allergan’s sales force, faces everyday. With about nine calls a day, each medical representative only has 45 minutes a day with doctors. It is three-quarters of an hour they have to make count, Rajan says, especially because they travel seven hours out of every eight to get to those doctors. Busy doctors, however, aren’t likely to give them time if they sense that medical representative are wasting their time with old questions or aren’t giving them data they need. Typically, medical representatives work off spiral pads to stay updated with a doctors needs: what he normally prescribes, his remarks about a new product, etcetera. The paper approach invariably resulted in a loss of data. And starting every conversation from scratch, because they don’t have data or their notes ready, makes them unpopular with doctors. Rajan wanted to put that information in the hands of his representatives and — over time — better sales turnover.

Im AgIn g by P C An oo P

HObbLED by GROWtH According to a recent Mckinsey report, the Indian pharmaceutical industry is worth Rs 25,200 crore and is likely to triple by 2015, making it one of the world’s top 10 markets. (It’s growth rate is expected to be the world’s third fastest.) This growth is reflected by the large number of companies and products available in the market. “If you want soap you can get hundreds of them. It’s similar with drugs. It’s a consumer market. That’s how the market is growing, it thrives on competition,” says Rajan. Caught in the heat of growth are the doctors. “Doctors are bombarded with information. The mind share of a doctor is getting

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“IT Is Well-Proven ThAT A 10% IncreAse In DocTors cAlls (from nIne To 10 A DAy), DA AmounTs To A 10% IncreAse In busIness.” — K. K.t t. rajan t. Director ops., IS & Projects, Allergan India

Case File “The interaction between a doctor and a of representatives is limited,” says Rajan. “With between representative is very important because 12,000 and 13,000 ophthalmic doctors across the country, everything from marketing to the the sales force has to cover large territories.” rePorTIng meThoD development of a new product is driven Facing the brunt of all these factors are too few Manual Online by it,” says Rajan. “It has to be captured medical representatives, trying to cover too much ground in all its intensity and quality.” with doctors who are too busy to give them more than a TIme To submIT A rePorT And that’s what they did. “Postfew minutes. 7-10 days Daily PDA, capturing the doctor’s needs and It didn’t help that they worked with paper and pencil QuAlITy of DATA remarks about our product in a palm has and needed to rely on their memories to accurately pen Poor Better saved time considerably and has made their reports at the end of a day. DocTors meT everyDAy* us more organized. It has also made pre“It used to be a tedious affair,” says Surya Prasad a 9 10 call analysis easier. And we don’t have to sales executive at Allergan. “Information was scattered rely on slips of paper,” says R.S. Raghav because we had a target of nine calls a day. Meeting each TIme To WrITe rePorTs* an area sales officer at Allergan. doctor and storing information was a task in itself.” 12 hours 8 hours The tedium introduced sluggishness into the chain AmounT sPenT courIerIng* of command from representative to their managers and Rs 2,400 Rs 0 then to Allergan’s HQ. It took up to a week just for insights doctors shared with representatives made their way their What was harder was putting together *per medical representative managers — too much time in a competitive market. such user-friendly system. The Rs Giving them PDAs made sense. “We are not a large 50-lakh project, which was started in company; we have around 150 reps, which means we can’t afford February 2006 and completed in June 2006 was plagued with to spend too much. This is why we chose a low-tech solution,” challenges — some which threatened the project. says Rajan. With medical representatives traveling often to remote Allergan gave its representatives palm tops (Tungsten E2), which locations, connectivity was chief among these problems. The were attached to mobile phones. Using Reliance’s network and PDAs were attached mobile phones, which wrote to a server. Allergan’s own wireless (LAN/WAN) network, medical representatives Marrying the three different technologies took time says Rajan. could transmit intelligence to headquarters every day. Arming the PDAs themselves against an inherently unfriendly The elegant solution, christened ‘Envision’, would keep medical environment was also a challenge. “The devices tended to fail. They representatives in a real time loop with new information from needed to be rugged because they are exposed to sweat, grease, Allergan and feed them brief histories of the doctors they would water, etcetera. They also had to withstand the shock of falling,” meet. It would also keep area sales officers (ASOs) more informed says Rajan. of the medical representatives who reported to them. Finally it While connectivity improved over time, says Rajan, designing the also gave analysts at Allergan an open-window view into the PDAs to withstand all climatic conditions took work. Along the way needs of a doctor. they also learnt the importance of adding battery back ups.

Before

After

tHERE’ssOmEtHInG In my EyE

In fogrAPhICS by VIkAS kAPo or

Never Out Of Sight

Med reps increase their access to a doctor by staying updated: what drugs he normally prescribes, data he wants on a medicine’s side effects, etcetera. 44

This data is relayed to central server within four minutes of a meeting.

n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

When a supervisor transfers a med rep, a new rep can now take over within 2 days — down from 30 days.

Since they are updated, doctors make reps wait less. Reps now meet one doctor more a day — a 10% increase in business. Vol/3 | ISSUE/01

Case File Today, with the palm, Prasad says he spends the time waiting for doctors more judiciously. Raghav agrees. “I come out of the doctor’s chamber and upload my PDA immediately with data I gathered from the doctor and send it to my manager via Bluetooth. All that in just four minutes.” It took a lot more than four mintues to educate users to adopt the system. With the GPRS chip, the device could have been looked like it was meant to track medical representatives. “We had to make sure that the reps didn’t feel threatened. We had to do a lot of convincing. The user needed to see a benefit for himself, before he bought into it,” recalls Rajan. It was time well spent. The solution created more time for medical representatives — enough to meet one more doctor a day. “It is well-proven industry logic that an increase in doctor calls leads to an increase in prescriptions and therefore an increase in business. A 10 percent increase in doctors calls (from nine to 10), amounts to a 10 percent increase in business,” says Rajan. It adds upto about Rs 1.6 crore a year, he adds. And because the solution saves medical representatives time (they write their reports while waiting for doctors) the solution has made medical representatives more productive, he says. Put a figure to that productivity and add it to the amount spent on couriering reports and the solution saves the company Rs 96 lakh a year. But, Prasad points out that there is an aspect that goes

01 Case Study - Allergan.indd 45

beyond sales figures. “[The system] is also about building a relationship with your customer. Sometimes doctors ask for proof regarding the authenticity of a product, which I can get over the palm,” says Prasad. “It shows authenticity and doctors tend to remember you when you clear their doubts quickly.” Which works well for Allergan. “Today, when a doctor gives feedback to representative, it is immediately relayed across the organization,” says S. Ganesan a manager of retail business. The palmtop boasts of 95 percent sync rates and Rajan plans to introduce flash cards to facilitate a faster transfer of data. “CIOs should stop talking technology. Only then they will be able to fight this battle from the other side. Most CIOs are doing away with the mundane work of networking. You have to see how the organization can benefit and how you can make the business of doing business easier,” says Rajan. He’s certainly made the business of doing business easier if feedback from medical representatives is anything to go by: compared to their paper-wielding counterparts, Raghav says “we have an upper palm.” CIO

send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

11/16/2007 7:38:59 PM

Case files

THe MarkeT By KANIKA GOSWAMI

Squiggles. That’s how sales data flowed from Emami’s far-flung depots to HQ. The problem needed straightening because it was slowing down every part of the supply chain. Emami’s IT team had just the trick. Reader ROI:

Why connecting all the dots in your supply chain boosts efficiencies How increased control over data improves forecasting How data consolidation can exponentially grow your business

n o v e M b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

rom the cold months between October and January, if you are in the personal care space, you’re probably breaking out into a sweat. As winter approaches, the Indian market for personal care products undergoes an unmistakable surge. What is harder to say is how big that surge is, how fast it will come and how slowly it will recede. But with increased competition that data is exactly what sales and marketing decision-makers need — and they need quickly if the are going to make a difference. “[During winter], our fastest selling products are Emami Boroplus and Chyavanprash. Their demand goes up almost 10 times,” says Vimal Pandey, VP of sales and marketing for Emami. Almost is the operative word. With sales of over Rs 515 crore, a little bit here or there adds up to a lot. If decision-makers don’t know what and where the demand is exactly, they can’t tell how much more — or less — to produce — or where to move goods. The potential result is every FMCG man’s worst nightmare: a market in full demand that cannot be supplied.

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71% % Growth of

Emami in the

last year compared to the industry average of 30

Hot, WHite Hot According to some media reports Emami started to produce fairness cream for men after a survey showed that 30 percent of the whitening cream produced for women was being used by men. Their investment seems to be a well-hedged. The amount men spend on grooming products is expected to rise 24 percent over the next five years to Rs 1,280 crore. And that’s just what the men are spending. “In the last two years the market has grown 35 percent and 25 percent respectively. On an average it’s been growing at 30 percent, says Pandey. In a market this hot, Saxena felt the SAP project was imperative if Emami wanted to ensure that it had an edge over its competitors, and especially if it wanted to respond quickly to what is viewed as an extremely dynamic and competitive market.

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It wasn’t as if Emami did not posses an ERP system. It just was not in real time. Emami, says Saxena had implemented an Oracle/D2K based mini-ERP legacy system. It was never updated online, so there wasn’t sufficient information at a centralized level. “Information was consolidated at the central database through EDI (electronic data interchange) in batches, via email. Someone at the depot level had to generate reports on an MS Office format and then send it by mail. At the corporate office, the file was downloaded and the data was fed into the server using another program. It was only then that we would get a status report. There were periods when depots heads didn’t know what was happening at the head office and HQ didn’t know what was happening at the depot,” says Saxena. On a lucky day, it 24 hours took for data to be collated, transferred and made into useable reports. The 24-hour delay, while it seemed small, caused ripples of inefficiency across the supply chain, he says. It affected the scheduling of every department from marketing and branding — which needed lead time to get promotional activities in place — and sales and logistics who needed to re-route shipments to priority zones. It also affected finance and purchasing, which needed as much time as it could get to get raw material and keep low inventories.

Imag Ing by mm SHan ITH

At Emami, Vikram Saxena, GM-IT, saw a way to tackle the problem. He planned a dynamic SAP implementation that would connect six Emami plants and 25 depots to the company’s headquaters in Kolkata and keep decision-makers informed continuously. “Any modern FMCG company that wants to keep abreast of the various market dynamics to remain competitive, needs IT systems that match business needs, says Saxena.

REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e M b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

Case File

modules, he needed to connect the plants and the depots to HQ using a combination of VSAT and leased lines. The IT department rolled out their SAP modules in one swift move. Six plants and 25 depots spread across remote locations like Solan (population 35,000) in Himachal were plugged in and the switch thrown. “The implementation was seamless and smooth,” says Pandey. “Today, every depot and every branch is configured to SAP. All master data is created directly at the corporate office, other locations cannot do anything on their own. This gives us tremendous control over sales data, and provides crucial information to enable production and supply planning,” says Saxena. “Earlier, the sales and field staff would record sales data on paper and then notch up their figures to show how they had performed. Now, there is no hitch in maintaining real time records. We can also plan on our inventories more accurately,” says Pandey. The big bang rollout, however, wasn’t appreciated The decision to implement SAP everywhere. One depot head, for instance, feels that ECC 5.0 was taken in August the company could have started with a soft launch and of 2005, before Saxena’s time. then slowly moved across their markets. The big bang However, it would be left up created a large front that was hard to watch over and to him to see it through the in the process some areas were overlooked, he says. For last, most-crucial months of example, depot owners have different modes of payment, completion. It wouldn’t be easy. but this variety is not reflected well in the system. The “You should take a look at my technology, he adds, needs more work. register, I haven’t taken a day Saxena, however, had his own set of challenges. A off in months,” he says. quarter of his team quit during the course of the project. The Rs 5-crore project “In a project like this, you need to have the same people kicked off in January 2006. running from beginning to end,” says Saxena. “The loss The project was named Udaan, gave us a hard time.” which translates to ‘soaring to Among the primary challenges Saxena and his new heights’ and reflects, says team faced was changing the minds of members of the Saxena, the spirit of Emami. management cadre, he says. They needed to convince “In terms of growth, we aspire to everyone that the new solution would make life easier. touch the sky,” he says. To do this, Rajan’s team took a two-pronged approach. For a solid nine months Saxena The first was an internal publicity campaign. “We and his team of 16 readied the handled the challenge with email campaigns, posters organization with the help of Wipro. and presentations. We ensured that everyone understood Apart from setting up the SAP that there was a clear definition of user activities according to their SAP role. Getting top management involved in driving the project and resolving business issues helped to a large extent,” says Saxena. He backed up the campaign with training. “We organized two-day training sprints that started at 10 am and finished at 9 pm. And we got great feedback,” he say. The first round covered 36 people after which the organization defined an induction program for newcomers. “When — Vikram Saxena General Manager IT. emami

“It used to take a lot of time for information to flow into HQ.” says Pandey. “This meant that we had very little time on our hands to plan a season and we are in the business of seasonally purchased products.” And then there were other problems that the manual, multi-layered system introduced. The impact, for instance, an absent employee at HQ who consolidated the data caused disproportionate delays in creating reports. Information at the depot level was sometimes emailed twice, resulting in duplicate work at HQ — or worse causing flawed reports. Correcting faulty data anywhere in the chain was also time-consuming and required manual intervention at multiple levels.

“Today, master data is created directly at HQ. This provides us with crucial data to enable production

and supply planning.”

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02 Case Study - Emami.indd 50

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PHoTo by Sr IVaTSa SHan dIlya

Laying a Data Foun FounDation

Why emami needs Data constantly...

someone joins at a defined position and function, we have an authorization matrix for him or her and they undergo formal SAP training,” says Saxena. However, some feel that despite the ‘great exercise in data consolidation’ there are still people in the field, handling sales, who feel that the training for actual operators has not been adequate.

By enabling far-flung depots and branches to write their reports directly in a server in HQ (Kolkata), information flows faster throughout the organization, helping create efficiencies and reduce inventory costs.

gLoWing WitH WeaLtH Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

Benaras, Uttar Pradesh

sales & logistics

Branding Ad campaigns take time to plan. Before a season ends, brand managers need to know if there has been a dip in sales that an ad campaign can fix.

Marketing In a pricewar, marketing people either join in or stay away. They have to decide quickly and their decision is based on how well their product is already doing.

In order to move excess inventory during a short season, logistics needs to know which areas are selling well.

Finance & Purchasing No one wants to be responsible for being short of raw material — or bearing the cost of high inventory. Being informed helps find that sweet spot.

InfograPHIcS by VIkaS k aPo or

Solan, Himachal Pradesh

In the meanwhile however, project Udaan has added tremendous value to the company’s global marketing and sales functions. The decision makers now have sales statistics available instantly, which results in improved sales planning. In addition, there are better controls on pricing, the timing of new schemes, the level of discounts, credit checks and customer outstanding. Quantifying these benefits is harder. Saxena says that, “it is very difficult to quantify ROI during the first and second year of an ERP implementation. The processes take time to stabilize and the organization is also in a learning mode as it adapts to the new system.” However apart from the ‘oneness of information’, which include stock availability across the company and online profit and loss statements, the project has contributed to the company’s growth. In an industry that grows an average of 30 percent a year, Emami grew a whopping 71 percent. Success isn’t slowing down Saxena. “Phase I, did not covered the 1,000 dealers in our network,” says Saxena. “We will integrate SAP ECC 5.0 with bar code/RFID, mobile/wireless devices for sales force automation and make the information available at the click of button. It will take time, but I’ll get it done,” says Saxena. CIO

kanika Goswami is special correspondent. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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02 Case Study - Emami.indd 52

Case File By Balaji Narasimhan

Using an e-procurement system, IFFCOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vendors bypassed the inadequacies of a manual process â&#x20AC;&#x201D; saving more than just time.

Harvesting IT Benefits Established in 1967,

IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertilizer Co-operative Ltd) is among the largest manufacturers of nitrogenous and phosphatic fertilizers in the world. IFFCO is primarily engaged in the production and distribution of fertilizers and is registered as a multistate cooperative society. In the early part of this decade, S.C. Mittal, ED (Management Services & IT) of IFFCO had a manual procurement system. A system that was plagued by problems of inefficiency.

Reader ROI: Imaging by MM Sh an ith

How to address security issues around e-procurement How to bring people closer to technology How to handle change management problems

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03 Case Study - IFFCO.indd 53

REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

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Case File

For starters, the traditional procurement cycle was lengthy and time consuming. “The interaction between IFFCO and the vendor was by post, fax and at times by e-mail,” recalls Mittal. These vendors are IFFCO’s registered suppliers who supply the cooperative with items like plant spares, IT equipment, instrumentation equipment, etcetera. They are also engaged in service agreements like facility management, network management, computer breakdown maintenance and the like. Vendors from distant locations were finding it difficult to contact IFFCO, collect bid documents and submit quotes on time. Many a time, local vendors like transport contractors or local service vendors, material handling contractors and local service vendors formed a cartel and did not allow other vendors to collect tender document, submit quotes or participate in the bid opening and finalization process. To tackle this problem, Mittal decided to put together an e-procurement system for IFFCO’s procurement activities in 2003-04.

studied, but no software was found to meet IFFCO’s requirement of online tendering and bid submission,” he says. Undaunted, Mittal decided to develop the software in-house. He recalls, “the technology used was ASP with Oracle as the backend database. PKI, encryption technology and digital certificate issued by licensed certifying agency (CA) recognized by the Controller of Certifying Authority (CCA), were used to address the security and legal compliance issues.” Technology was just one of the hurdles; IFFCO also had to address workforce’s apprehensions. The whole process of e-procurement was new to vendors, partners and even internal users, says Mittal. “Many of them were not computer savvy and some have not even used computers earlier. The whole legality of the process was under a cloud,” he recalls. In order to get vendors on his side, Mittal organized vendor meets in major Indian cities. However, vendors were still worried about the security of the process. “We informed them that we were using class 3b digital certificates, which integrate the vendor’s identity with his digital signature for the highest level of security, and that it has been recognized by courts in India,” says Mittal. The vendor can submit his bids in parts and can revise his bid till the allowed submission date and time. The last valid bid submitted is taken into consideration while opening the bid. The bids can be opened only when all the committee members enter their digital keys jointly.

The number

The hurdles The first roadblock before Mittal was security. “We wanted to address security issues like authentication, confidentiality, authorization and non-repudiation for purchases using the Internet. Solutions available at that time in this space were

Enriching the

BEfORE

Bidding Process

AftER

More Vendors

Just as most people don’t trust the postal system with money, smaller vendors stayed away from bidding because they couldn’t access it online. With e-procurement, the size of IFFCO’s vendor-base has grown and with it so has competition.

n o V E M B E r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

Increased Transparency To manipulate a tender for, say plant spares, a cartel of vendors ensured that only its bids are seen. Some vendors have been known to hold up postmen to stop competing bids in transit. With e-procurement this is no longer a problem.

Faster Turnaround

Because bidding takes place in real time, bids close in 14 days — from 21 days. Today, it is also possible to have a 2-day bid – unimaginable before. Now, employees don’t have to wait two weeks for spares. VO l/3 | ISSUE/01

InFOgrapHICS By VIkaS kapOOr

of days it now takes for a bid to close — from 21 days.

Case File

Fielding Security Concerns

“The objective of the system was to improve the overall efficiency of procurement, bring transparency, and break the cartels.” — S.C. Mittal ED (Management Services & IT), IFFCO

Mittal explained the entire process to the management, and told them about digital certificates, encryption and decryption of bids, time stamping of bids and the provisions of the IT Act. The management agreed, but added a clause stating that the system should be audited by an internal audit, the finance department, and by IFFCO’s legal expert dealing with cyber crimes before roll out. “The purchase and finance departments from all units at IFFCO were associated in various project phases, like redefining the procurement process, defining scope of the project, and implementation strategies,” he says. He goes on to add that the concerned department heads were also sent on training for e-commerce programs and associated technologies like digital certificates. He decided that the best way to build confidence in the system was to ensure a quick rollout. He zeroed in on Microsoft’s ASP technology. IFFCO’s developers were trained to use digital certificates and encryption and decryption technologies. A certifying agency was also hired to develop the encryption and decryption component for the e-procurement system. The first version was implemented using ASP technology. But the ASP rollout was just the first part of the e-procurement story for Mittal, who wanted to move the system to Microsoft’s .Net technology — and this meant that he had to convince Microsoft. “Microsoft partnered with us under their ‘Enterprise-GO’ program and arranged necessary training on Visual Studio .Net for developers,” he says. Rather than merely converting the system from ASP to .Net, Mittal decided that this would be a good time to seek inputs from internal and external users about various components of the system. Thanks to proper planning, Mittal was able to keep costs low. “The entire system cost us Rs 50 lakh, which included Rs 10 lakh for the blade servers, Rs 4 lakh for the systems software and the encryption component, and Rs 36 lakh for the applications development,” says Mittal. 56

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03 Case Study - IFFCO.indd 56

The Way Ahead Mittal says that it is difficult to define savings on tendering in terms of direct monetary benefits because the tenders are being floated by six units of IFFCO. However, IFFCO saves on cost of printing, dispatch, human resource, and filing, while vendors save on cost of traveling, preparation of bid, and dispatch. More than this, he stresses that one should look at ROI from a non-monetary angle too. “The objective of e-procurement system was to improve the overall efficiency of procurement, bring transparency, a secure safe and non-repudiated system and break cartels,” he says. Through e-procurement these vendors can see the tender document on the Internet, submit their bids online, can check the status online and get the purchase order also online. But Mittal is not resting on his laurels. “As of now, there is one application server with a number of database servers as per the manufacturing unit’s requirements. We are working on consolidation of database at a central place that is close to the application server so that data travels on the LAN rather than on the WAN,” he says. Other plans on the anvil include registration of vendors online and updating of the vendors’ database in the e-procurement system simultaneously. Mittal is also working on modules for open enquiries as well as reverse auction. Today, IFFCO is wholly owned by 37,000 farmer cooperative societies. It is among the first in India to develop and successfully implement a digital signature and PKI encrypted e-procurement system, paving way for a rich harvest for a long time to come. CIO

Photo by Srivatsa Shandilya

For the smooth rollout of the e-procurement system, Mittal setup help desks at IFFCO’s corporate office, plants and major marketing offices to address the queries of vendors. IFFCO was not ready to implement e-commerce applications because internal users were uncertain about the confidentiality and security of the whole process. “The procurement department also had reservations about providing full transparency to vendors,” says Mittal. Even the management was not sure if e-procurement was the right way forward. “The major issues raised by the management were about confidentiality and security of the process,” points out Mittal.

Balaji Narasimhan is special correspondent. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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Trendline_Nov11.indd 19

11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

Reader ROI:

Termin a

Veloci t

What to watch out when implementing a PDA solution at Indian airports The importance of choosing technology that is people-friendly

n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7 | REAL CIO WORLD

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Case File

By Gunjan Trivedi

People hate lines. It’s simple. Passengers on Kingfisher Airlines are no different. So, the IT team picked up the pace at check-in. Now all the king’s ladies and all the king’s men, never need to queue up again.

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business. Kingfisher, for example, shares check-in terminals with Indian Airlines particularly at the New Delhi and Mumbai airports. We face a total lack of space for counters at almost all the stations we operate in. And as the number of guests traveling on Kingfisher grew, queues got longer,” he says. So Nene turned to IT to bust the queue problem innovatively. “If we can’t get guests to the check-in counter on time, we thought ‘let’s take the counter to the passengers’,” he says.

Mobile Takes Flight

esearch identified that about forty percent of the passengers flying with Kingfisher fall in a class that only carry the hand-baggage. “These include busy business travelers who want to quickly get in and out of an airport. They don’t want to wait at conveyor belts for their baggage,” Nene says. Using technology and working with the limited resources given to airliners, he created the ‘Roving Agent.’ The Roving Agent is a Kingfisher staffer carrying a handheld that is connected to the main reservation and check-in system wirelessly using Wi-fi, and a portable

REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

Imaging by unnikrishnan AV

n al

veryone’s perpetually in a rush; we live in a 24x7 world and being in a hurry comes with the territory. How many times have you rushed to the airport after an extended brainstorming session, only to find a long, serpentine queue at your check-in counter? Hoping against hope and good sense you join the line. Every passing 30 seconds increases your frustration exponentially. Precious minutes tick by. You get the idea, right? You’re going to miss your flight. You’ve been there before. Chandrashekhar Nene, vice president of IT at Kingfisher Airlines identified frustration stemming from standing in a line as one of the top reasons airlines get a bad rap. It spills, logically or not, into what passengers think about all the other services an airline provides. People hate queues. If you have queues, they hate you. Period. Airlines know this but there isn’t very much they can do: there simply isn’t enough space for more check-in counters at the airports. “The government doesn’t really plan keeping in mind the number of airline companies that have joined the

11/16/2007 9:16:17 PM

Case File ticket’s PNR number, a Roving thermal printer, attached to the Agent can help guests choose a seat staff’s belt, that links with the PDA on their plane, print a boarding using Bluetooth. The project cost Rs pass from the printer on the Rover’s 25 lakh. the number of Kingfisher belt and send passengers straight to While checking-in a passenger, security check. a signal from the PDA travels over passengers that travel with “We have figured that on a typical Wi-fi to the airport router that is hand luggage only. day, at a busy airport like Mumbai connected to a Reliance datacenter or New Delhi, we can help save a on a leased line (either 512Kbps or passenger seven or eight minutes. 1Mbps). The datacenter is connected the amount of time the It might not sound like much, but to Sabre’s datacenter in Oklahoma, roving agent saves for a business traveler pressed for US. The signal is processed and time and catching a flight at the last makes the return journey to the passengers on an average. moment, eight minutes can come PDA. The round trip takes all of very handy,” Nene points out. three seconds, says Nene, adding The Roving Agent, which was that Kingfisher Airlines is the first the number of passengers deployed a little over a year ago in Asia to deploy a mobile check-in across 15 airports that started checking-in about 300 for its passengers. Kingfisher sweeps into the travelers everyday across seven Studying the flow of passengers major airports. Today, the solution at different airports showed Nene roving agent’s fast lane is used across 15 airports and that as passengers move from everyday. checks-in about 3,000 passengers the entrance of the airport to the a day. check-in counter and then to the security gate they formed an arc of varying degrees. Depending on how far Kingfisher’s ConneCTiviTy PoCkeTs counter was from the security gate, passengers navigated he Roving Agent piggybacks on the Wi-fi infrastructure longer or shorter arcs. Nene wanted to create a short-cut available at airports. Access-points have been installed with the Roving Agent. at different locations to Wi-fi enable typical check-in areas. Guests flying with Kingfisher carrying only hand Staffers carry PDAs (MC-70 from Symbol Technologies) luggage can be intercepted near the entrance. Using a that run a client application connected to the host system. The PDA is also connected to a portable thermal printer (Cameo-3 from Zebra Technologies) via Bluetooth. “What’s critical in all these is the battery’s life. We don’t want our 40 percent of Kingfisher’s passengers travel only with hand luggage. staff to be leaving their post

40%

8 minutes

INfogrAPhI cS by VIKAS KAPoor

3,000

JEt, sEt, GO

MInutEs PDA CHECK-IN

sAvED Using PDAs linked to their main check-in software, Kingfisher checks in more passengers, faster. This shortens check-in lines at the counter, one of the primary reasons passengers defect to other airliners. 70

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FlighT over PlighT

ealigning and deploying more access-points did a lot to give better coverage. Later, as better coordination between airport and telecom authorities took place ensuring more planned construction activities at airports - Kingfisher was able to build a robust communication network to run the Roving Agent. But that wasn’t the end of Nene’s connectivity problems. Thanks to airport regulations, Kingfisher was only allowed to connect to Sabre’s WAN using the government PTT operators like MTNL and BSNL. “This was a major impediment because neither were we provided desired levels of service nor were we able

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“The competition is literally begging passengers to use the kiosks and incentives like offering 500 frequent-flier miles per use.”

to take on a secondary line — Chandrashekhar nene from another service provider,” vP-IT, Kingfisher Airlines says Nene. Their ISDN backup to the main leased line blacked out several times. Fortunately, regulations were later relaxed and Nene built bandwidth redundancy by introducing Reliance at major airports like Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore. Kingfisher’s competition has been just as busy, but not as smart. According to Nene, competing airliners have taken the kiosk route. “The competition is literally begging their guests to use the kiosks and using incentives like offering 500 frequent-flier miles per use,” he says. “Our decision to choose the Roving Agent is vindicated. We were saving hundreds of man-hours for our guests and significantly improving their impression of our services.” But the competition is catching up, says Nene: they’re finally going the rover way. The question is: who’s at the head of the queue? CIO PhoTo by Sr IVATSA ShANDIlyA

continuously to charge their batteries,” says Nene. The thermal printer ensures lower power consumption and plenty of spare batteries were bought so that while one set was in use the other was being charged. The battery’s life was also the driving force behind the choice of connecting the printer to the PDA via Bluetooth and not Wi-fi. “Wi-fi consumes more power to run,” says Nene. No one had ever attempted to use Bluetooth-enabled printers for this purpose before, adds Nene. The PDA approach, however, wasn’t the only technology in the running when Kingfisher decided to increase the number of counters – in fact it wasn’t even the recommended one. Sabre Holdings, which provided Kingfisher with the reservation and check-in systems, had also offered a kiosk approach. “Sabre was keen on us taking the Kiosk route,” says Nene. Nene zeroed in on the Roving Agent against the advice of Sabre who feared that technology, which required robust communication infrastructure, wouldn’t find a home in India, where communication infrastructure, especially at airports, is still an area of concern. Sabre was concerned that fluctuations in Wi-fi connectivity (which the Rover ran on) would force staffers to restart the process of checking-in a guest. “I did not agree with them because I felt that Indians are used to being serviced – not self-service. I believed that Roving Agent is going to make the difference, as it is a servicing component,” says Nene. It’s a decision he has had to live with. Ensuring a robust Wi-fi network at various airports was a bumpy ride. Nene surveyed all the airports where Kingfisher operated in, to figure out the best way to ensure good coverage. “None of the airports were built with Wi-fi in mind,” he says. “You’ll always find some nook or corner where Wi-fi doesn’t work. At the Goa airport, for example, the access-points were not functioning properly. Either there were obstructions or somebody was accidentally cutting the wires connecting the Wi-fi access points to the main routers during airport maintenance work,” he recalls.

Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

Reader ROI:

Why PDAs can help speed up the pace of your business How handhelds can create incentives for a reporting field force How to get around a PDAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s small screen

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Case File

PDA BeAts AAts ts PPAP PAPer APer Financing houses is a rocky business. To even out the odds, loaning agencies use recovery agents, but the amount of paper they carried began choking their efficiency. Paper beats rock, what beats paper? PDAs.

By Gunjan Trivedi

IllUStrat Io n by P C an ooP

here no such thing as a risk-taker. It’s true. Take banking. It’s about as risky as business gets. But after studying the banking industry for 14 years, Brian Wu of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Anne Marie Knott, assistant professor of strategy at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, say that banking isn’t any riskier than other businesses. In their paper Entrepreneurial Risk and Market Entry, they say that banking has a turnover rate of 3 percent on average compared with 10 percent in the rest of the American economy There are no risk-takers, just folk who hedge their bets well. In 2006-2007, HDFC, the 5,900-crore housing finance institution, exposed itself to plenty of risk: Rs 26,178 crore worth.

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But HDFC had put a process in place to ensure that it could collect on its loans: a team of loan recovery agents and tele-callers. The problem was their agents — a large part of the reason they remained solvent — were being bogged down by paper.

Persistence Power Gets sPeed For companies in the loan business, large, on-field teams who chase down unrecovered installments from defaulters is a fact of life. Despite the bad press they have received lately, reliable recovery teams are critical for financial services organizations if they want to stay in business. HDFC has among the best teams and has been able to maintain less than 1 percent of defaults across its portfolios. But even the best have problems. Rocovery agents weren’t covering enough ground because paper was slowing them.

The solution came from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.” But speed wasn’t what characterized the structured process HDFC created to keep track of its money. The way they were organized was built for process — not speed. Recovery exercises typically begin by identifying defaulters at the start of each month. Defaulters are categorized in soft (those who fail to make payments up to 60 days) or chronic buckets (those whose dues extend beyond 60 days). Those in the soft bucket are assigned to tele-calling teams and chronic cases are given to field executives who visit defaulters. The financing agency’s methodical approach begins to lose steam once field staffers step outside HQ. On an average executives visit between eight and 12 customers a day. With them they carry a load REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e m b e r 1 5 , 2 0 0 7

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of information including fact sheets that hold a customer’s financial details, other files that contain payment histories and yet another sheets of paper that have the outcomes of previous recovery efforts, and multiple address details of customers and their guarantors. There was paper everywhere. They were choking on the stuff. The paper-system slowly began suffocating the entire system. At the end of each day, agents are expected to return to HQ and begin the tedious task of updating HDFC’s core system — from scattered pieces of paper and their memories. Asking people to make payments is a hard job and at the end of a day, agents tend to be tired, irritated and in a hurry to get home. Because the paper system required keying in inputs, it slowed them down and they

vicinity, making it easier for often postponed reporting agents to plan their day. work for the next day. “The PDA has increased Sometimes, agents spend the efficiency of executives by a few days in the field as they enabling faster information work through their list of SNAPSHOT transfer and reducing nondefaulters. On those days there HDFC value work. This reduces were no updates. Cost: Rs50 lakh turnaround time and These delays had operational costs. It has repercussions. The periodic ROI: Rs 30 lakh a year made executives more self collation and updating created sufficient and enabling faster latency in the system. This Users: 160 on the spot decision-making,” made it hard to get a clear idea says Suresh Kumar, head of of how much risk the company recovery, HDFC. was exposed to, which didn’t reflect well on Once back at any of HDFC’s 250-odd its key executives. And since tele-calling offices, the handheld could be docked and teams were not updated everyday, they didn’t data synchronized with the core system know which defaulter to follow up with, swiftly. Since they could choose to go to the which caused them to slow down. nearest branch office and just dock their “There was a need for tele-callers to be PDAs, executives were more eager to return in sync in executives. We saw to work at the end of the day. PDAs as the right solution,” “Now, since they update information on recalls Arivazhagan, GM IT for the main system using the PDA, both the HDFC. [tele-calling and the field] teams are on The Mobile Enablement the same page with right-sync data,” says project, which went live in Arivazhagan. “This ensures that the same July-August 2006, replaced information is available — consistently — sheets of paper with PDAs. In with any executive or tele-caller. We rolled a world where persistence out the project fully about 18-20 months and doggedness counts, the ago. Over 150 recovery executives across the handhelds empowered country use it today.” executives with more And the executives love it. Some thought information of more defaulters went into the making of the interface so that in an easy to read, sort, select and information was fed into the PDA using navigate format. It prompted drop down boxes or checklists to ensure that them for data they forgot to a much wider range data could be captured ask. It allowed observations — quicker. This information typically covers and reminders, which might whether the executive met a customer or have normally been forgotten not; what is his or her observation about the at the end of a day, to be entered default were; and his or her next course of immediately into the device. It action was. With information available with also grouped defaulters with them in their machine, it has become far similar profiles in the same

Photo by Srivatsa Shandilya

Case File

“Since [agents] update information on the main systemusing the PDA, both the tele-calling and the field teams are on the same page” — Arivazhagan General Manager IT, HDFC

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Case File team used up about seven million sheets of easier for them to do further analysis. In fact, at their devices while they were talking paper a year — about 500 hundred trees with the updated data, they are able to plan to customers and made both agents and worth of paper. Helping the environment their visits and actions in more structured customers uncomfortable. To get around was just a happy coincidence. Arivazhagan way and well in advance. the problem, executives started carrying wanted to empower HDFC’s loan recovery The system was so successful that both their PDAs and their papers, a move agents and IT proactively went about the HDFC rolled it out to another set of users: that defied the logic of the solution and implementation. Strangely enough, the move technical appraisers. This group evaluates challenged it. wasn’t embraced immediately. different properties that HDFC has agreed Arivazhagan ensured some of the That is because, similar to any other to finance. Technical appraisers ensure that navigation problems were eased by field force automation project, the task a property’s paperwork — like having a nonre-working the interface. Certain regular of enabling HDFC with mobile devices agricultural zone permit — is in order before inputs were standardized and codified so was not free from inherent technical giving HDFC the go ahead. that executives could work faster. and business challenges. The technical Crucially, appraisers also need to scope out “Soon executives learnt to look up all the challenge came in the form potential properties to check whether a piece relevant information before knocking at of land has the same dimensions as a customer’s door,” says Arivazhagan. what local sub registrars have on “This enabled them to refer to their Lakhs PDAs selectively and converse their records. The amount HDFC has saved per For this appraisers need with customers more naturally,” year on paper and printing after Offices the move to PDAs. to be onsite and carry he says. The number of offices recovery route maps, cost estimates, HDFC also trained its agents agents can now information related to to handle the devices carefully file their reports in a property’s completion because with its stylus and LED thanks to the status, etcetera. The PDA screen, handhelds are delicate PDA solution. comes handy here and also machines and damage easily. while appraisers take down HDFC has plans for the Complete observations or recommendations system “We are using Thanks to the PDA prompting them, HDFC’s recovery agents about a property’s worth. this as a platform for get all the necessary data to Under the paper-regime, later developments,” keep a case file moving. appraisers could only says Kumar. “This will Updated turn in their reports include behavioral Armed with PDAs, agents now upload their reports on a daily after they returned study of defaulters.” basis. This means tele-calling to HQ. Their inputs In the shorter term, teams can follow up faster with defaulters. are vital for the Arivazhagan plans to get disbursement process rid of the 12-hour delay that to get underway. But the batch update at the end of the from a customer’s day introduces. They plan to add GPRS perspective, this takes too connectivity to the PDAs and allow agents much time. Sometimes an to update HDFC’s core systems in real appraiser’s opinion was needed to time. Arivazhagan also wants to enable process a loan overnight. tele-callers to push details of customer So, Arivazhagan and his team enabled interactions directly to PDAs. an appraiser’s observations to be sent to “Apart from the monetary savings of HDFC’s system using SMS, enabled by a about Rs 30 lakh per annum, this project GPRS connection. “In the next phase, any has reduced the burden of carrying loads new request entered into the system shall be of papers, and turn around time drastically. of synchronizing data on the handheld pushed into the PDA,” he adds. The platform is definitely a leap-forward device with the core system. “Some towards customer and internal-user amount of codification was required to satisfaction,” says Arivazhagan. enable the core system to share the data It’s making more than just the with the PDAs and accept updates from Within its first year, the handheld solution environment green. CIO it,” says Arivazhagan. saved HDFC Rs 30 lakh — just in paper and Due to the 2.2 inch screen size of printing costs. Nifty for a project that cost Rs PDAs, the amount of information that 50 lakh and wasn’t really aimed at making could be displayed without scrolling HDFC more environment-friendly. Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on was restricted. This forced agents to look Arivazhagan calculated that HDFC’s recovery this feature to editor@cio.in

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Rock, Paper, PDA

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o t o l l e H y a S

Speedy Reco nnec ts By Gunjan Trivedi

Reader ROI:

How a BPM solution checks data discrepancy Why getting into the customerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s shoes is important

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hat is it that you, as a giant organization working in a dynamically evolving telecom sector, would like to avoid on your way to a whopping 100 million-customer base? Data discrepancy. Tata Teleservices, in their quest to grow from the existing base of 18 million customers to 100 million by 2011, realized that they faced the monster of data discrepancies and process inconsistencies in their core IT systems. The solution was straightforward: enterprise-wide IT and business process reengineering. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Over a period of time, as our subscriber base and complexities of business grew, we observed hundreds of our systems and multiple business functions performing

Imaging by pc ano op

Even inconsistenties in the format of customer names across multiple systems can bring down a growing organization. But a clear-cut solution like business process re-engineering can help an organization to raise efficiencies.

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Case File

numerous business processes, we witnessed a lot of data discrepancies creeping in the systems,” recalls Navin Chadha, CIO of Tata Teleservices (TTSL). The systems had become very bulky and any changes that were introduced into the system proved highly expensive to the organization. More importantly, it was impeding their time to market in terms of acquiring new subscribers on board. It was also hindering the agility of their IT system, says Shanky Viswanathan, chief architect at TTSL.

photo By SrIVatSa ShandIlya

connecting looSe endS Once they activate a customer, he uses a lot of enterprise’s offerings, calls the call center to regularly change or add a plethora of features. All these customer interactions have a large number of systems in the backend to talk to. Here, data integration between key business systems turned out to be the primary pain area. Earlier, these data discrepancies were solved with manual workarounds. On realizing a mismatch of data fields in, say, system A and system B, the process was to take a printout and forcefully make the changes in system B because A happened to be the master of data. “After a customer requested for something, we could not keep a track of it and know what happened to the end customer order, because it kept on changing hands while being shuffled among teams interfacing with multiple systems. Moreover, in Indian telecom context, the business keeps on changing. With every change I cannot keep changing my IT application,” says Viswanathan. A need was identified to have an effective business process management layer that enables not only automation of operations, but also improves efficiency and performance. Instead of hard-coding things, a Tibco middleware was deployed to define business rules irrespective of the business processes and translate information while talking to different systems above or below it. “At any point in time, if there is a data requirement of, say, a customer profile, systems would access only the CRM application. If the data in the CRM doesn’t match the data in the order management or billing app, a process would automatically kick in to take care of data reconciliation,” explains Viswanathan. The programme to deploy an effective Business Process Management (BPM) solution based on SOA principles was started in late 2005. Each process was migrated onto the BPM platform allowing end-toend visibility, reusability across channels and robust exception management.

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“We start ed seeing its results in terms of data consistency across various systems by the middle of 2006. BPM-SOA project has become a critical part of our IT systems, I am convinced that it is a very powerful tool if used properly,” says Chadha. There is an extreme clarity on who drives what, which department owns what business process and who owns what data, says Viswanathan. Their IT agility is greatly enhanced, which means they can change processes a lot faster than ever before. This increases customer satisfaction, he adds. The solution deployed had to cater to the explosive growth in transaction volumes without impacting customer experience. Currently an average of 50,000 service requests are raised daily. With the projected subscriber base, this would raise to 2,50,000 quite soon. Viswanathan points out that more than 80 percent of telecom customers in the country pay their bills only after their services get barred. Timely restoration of services is critical. Viswanathan explains the entire process workflow: “first we need to understand whether the account of the customer is

“I deliberately barred my telephone services to experience the efficiency of the processes and involved myself as a customer.” — Navin Chadha, CIO, Tata Teleservices

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Case File

97%

proper. We need to apply business is despite the interaction required with rules to ensure that the payment around seven legacy heterogeneous reaches our billing system properly.” applications on an average. Following this, he says, the Data discrepancy has been organization needs to inform the reduced by over 97 percent since collections management system so implementation, with more than that it does not send anyone from the 300 data integration issues collections agency to the person to since addressed. collect payment. Then, business needs to create an order in the order management system BPM and SOA is a good concept to Source: Tata Teleservices to restore the customer’s services. implement. But the moment one After the restoration happens, the CRM starts to interlink system-to-system is informed that all the payments have and system-to-human processes, the been received and the services have been restored. Finally, number of open human-to-system processes a BPM the customer is informed that his or her service has deployment can handle is always a technical limitation. been restored. Chadha and his team identified 10 critical business The average turn-around cycle time for this process processes to test the BPM implementation architecture used to be around one-and-a-half hours. Post the BPM and integration framework upon, to begin with. implementation, the process has an average turn-around “BPM is good in top-down approach; SOA is good in cycle time of mere 27 seconds. “In fact, I deliberately bottom-top approach. The biggest challenge we faced barred my telephone services to experience the efficiency was how to marry both?” adds Viswanthan. of the processes and involved myself as a customer,” However, Chadha and his team felt that the trickiest smiles Chadha. part was exception management. Despite being born of The system’s performance has been greatly impacted the intrinsic data issue, the business can very likely attrias 87 percent of the service requests are processed endbute problems arising from exception management to to-end within one minute, where almost 40 percent of the BPM-SOA implementation. the requests are processed within 15 seconds itself. This “Rather than solving a pain point, we focused on building a framework to automatically address various problems. Otherwise it No Errors In Connection becomes an operational implementation rather than a straChannel Integ Application Information Process Partner tegic implementation,” points Services Services Services Services Services out Chadha. • Web portal • Order Entry • Common Info • Process • Franchise “There is a remarkable • IVR/CTI • Create Cust Model Orchestraion services reduction in the number of • eMail • Metadata • Order Details • Process Metrics • Dealer Services complaints that we get from • SMS • Prod Catalog definition • Business rules • Distributor our business users. There is • Activation services consistency in the customer experience across the country, says Chadha. Now, TTSL’s customers would not be on the other side of the line, listening Enterprise Service Bus/EAI layer to a pre-recorded message that goes ‘This number is temporarliy disconnected.’ CIO

Reduction in

DIal ‘C’ For Caution

Infographics BY Vinoj K.N

data discrepancy post BPM implementation

Application Access Services Order Mgmt

CRM

Billing

Data Access Services

ODS

Other DBs

Network Acess Services SAS/ HLR

SAS/ PSA/VAS

Gunjan Trivedi is assistant editor. Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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User Driven

By Kanika Goswami

View from the top is a series of interviews with CEOs and other C-level executives about the role of IT in their companies and what they expect from their CIOs.

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Sharad Sharma: Our strategy is to create products around consumer insights. So, we keep our research on the alert. Since our business is based on searches — for data, information, images, video and audio — we have to make our search algorithms better. What therefore

keeps us ahead in terms of technology is actually driven by insights on consumer behavior and requirements as well as better research. By studying the preferences and demographic attributes of each new user, we learn how to keep them satisfied. We are also tying up with local newspapers like Dainik Jagaran for news feeds, since our audience is increasingly coming from smaller towns and is getting younger.

You’re working on a number of new products for Yahoo’s emerging markets. The Internet

CIO: Technology clearly plays a role in Yahoo maintaining an edge. How do you keep on top of cutting-edge technology for the various innovative features Yahoo is planning?

Imagin g by Binesh Sreedharan

Sharad Sharma, CEO and VP of Yahoo India Research and Development, is a man in search of answers — an odd position to be in for someone near the top of a company that provides answers to much of the world. With over 500 million users of Yahoo mail alone, he cannot stress more on the need for research on customer preferences and anticipating the next set of demands from a rapidly expanding user base.

Photo by Srivatsa Shandilya

Sharad Sharma, the CEO of Yahoo India Research and Development, focuses on understanding customer needs while running one half of Yahoo’s global network operations.

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View from the Top

Sharad Sharma expects I.T. to: Cater to Yahoo usersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; needs Help innovation on Internet and mobile platforms Foster open source

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preferences of users are changing faster than ever. How is Yahoo meeting this challenge? Yahoo is among the first wave of companies to see emerging markets very differently from traditional ones. Earlier this year, we carved out a new geography called emerging markets. For engineering and products, Bangalore was named the hub for this geography. The rationale behind the move was to focus on collaboration and build templates that could be replicated in these markets faster than could be done for a traditional set of products.

What do you expect from your CIO? In our context, the CIO’s role is a little broader than those of most CIOs. A typical CIO will focus on catering to the needs of employees, or perhaps go a step more and cater to the needs of their partners and suppliers. But, in our case, we need an infrastructure that caters to the needs of our consumers, who are the whole reason for our existence. Therefore things like service engineering and production operations management become very critical. Not only does the CIO create and manage the IT infrastructure needed for our own employees and partners but also manages the production infrastructure — one that runs Yahoo.com or Yahoo. In. Our CIO makes sure that this is always available without any performance issues. In that context our expectations from our CIO are significant. The CIO has to be very technology savvy and also good at managing an organization that is continuously improving, especially since the bar on our service level agreement internally is being raised all the time. That requires knowledge about improvement programs about how to manage teams on globally. And because 92

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“Our ROI is based more on creating and fostering a community around which a technology can be built. ” — Sharad Sharma our CIO runs a specific production system, very often he has to get involved in its design to make sure that it doesn’t break down. The CIO’s role within Yahoo has high serviceability and reliability. The India role is particularly important. We have essentially consolidated our production operations, between two operations across the world — India and Sunnyvale (California). Our CIO is responsible not only for India-based work but also (for) that 12X7 shift that runs in the US. If anything goes wrong anywhere on the Yahoo platform, our India network center is responsible for the whole world. That’s a big responsibility. He works to get the best performance out of our applications. The CIO is not just an internally facing function; it is also a business function at Yahoo.

When the CIO of Yahoo India chooses technology applications, what role do you play? How much freedom does he have?

The selection of a technology for what goes on the portal is really made by the teams that produce the portal. As I mentioned earlier, the CIO has a voice on the table that also ensures high serviceability and high uptime. It is a collective decision, not any one person’s.

So, what is the role of your CTO? And has he ever been instrumental in a strategic business decision? In our case, the technology inside the company is headed by a CTO, followed by the CIO. The purpose of having separate positions is that the CIO is involved in taking all the decisions regarding our employees and suppliers. But when it comes to customers, we have a separate team that develops our products. The technology head of those product teams is the CTO. Does the CTO have an instrumental role? You bet. It’s a very critical set of decisions. The CIO’s presence is important but the person who orchestrates those decisions is really the CTO.

How does your system of return-on-investment work and how does your CIO justify investments at Yahoo India? The Internet is not only a dynamic phenomenon, it is also very collaborative. One strand of Yahoo’s DNA that has been very active is open source. Every so often Yahoo likes to encourage the community to orchestrate where this technology will go. For example, the India team plays a significant role in driving the Hadoop OS community worldwide. Our ROI is creating an ecosystem of interested people. Our ROI is based less on the clinical analysis of return on investment and based more on creating and fostering a community around which a technology can be built.

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View from the Top

What is Yahoo’s perspective on OSS? How much is hype? Is it the way forward? Yahoo’s history is littered with active support of open source. We started off with it and all along we have been a big champion of open source. I think Yahoo’s view is that OSS is not hyped up. It is a significant part of the system and will remain so for a long time to come. Yahoo views OS as a platform where innovations happen, and it is time to focus on that innovation rather than be consumed by monetizing it. If you focus on monetization, it slows down the innovation process.

How does developing applications on an open source platform compare to development on proprietary software, from an ROI standpoint? Over time we have used more and more OSS. Whenever there is a chance, we use open source. We also have what we call internal open source. That this exists illustrates the power or ROI of OSS in a way. Let us say you are developing a platform and there are 50 countries that could be using that platform. Let us say, the platform is suitable for five of those countries. Now one of a few things could happen. The remaining 45 may patiently wait for a better platform to be developed for them. Or they will go ahead and develop their own, adding on whatever was done. If you have internal OS developing skills then you don’t have a motivation to duplicate. You simply build out the remaining 20 per cent that did not exist and add it back to the common pool. It is a win-win situation for everyone. The ROI is that it ends up benefiting the community but also benefits the people who contributed. This works very powerfully within Yahoo and externally as well. Actually, we are well past the stage of evaluating whether we should choose OS or not. There is a natural institutional bias when 94

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we look at open source. Unless we find a reason not to do it, we always fall back on it.

SNAPSHOT

to neutralize our impact on the environment while motivating our community of more than Revenue: 500 million users to follow US $6.4 billion our lead. Initiatives include Yahoo runs a Employees in India: purchasing ‘green power’ to large number 1,000 the tune of 1,608 megawattof localization Offices in India: hours near our headquarters. 6 applications. What This is comparable to planting CIO: kind of market do 534 acres of trees or removing Viswanathan Krishnamurthy 139 cars from the road for a you see shaping up year. Yahoo utilizes controls in India? that turn off non-essential lighting and other energy usage, India still has only 25 helping to reduce energy consumption by 6 million internet users. The next 25 million percent. We also use servers that have a low are going to be different. For example, energy footprint. For servers there are only one of the reasons we’ve been successful two choices. We are running on a variant with Yahoo Answers is because it is very of OS–Unix and the underlying servers are powerful in those communities where either Intel or AMD. there is insufficient Internet content and people cannot use a search paradigm to find content. (Yahoo! Answers is communityYou have a long history driven knowledge website that allows of technology companies users to ask questions of other users.) In behind you. How do you order to find utility for the Internet, the find Yahoo different in its best paradigm is to have users provide the manner of functioning? content. Yahoo Answers started in Korea and Taiwan and then went global. We expect I think Yahoo is much more vertically that momentum to carry to India. integrated than most companies I have worked It is also about treating the Internet and for. If I were to draw a parallel, it would be with mobiles as hybrid media. We will always the early days of AT&T. It makes consumerhave more mobile users. People will carry facing applications but goes back all the way a phone with them all the time. And we see to product platforms, to the infrastructure very interesting markets shaping up. platforms and to the infrastructure itself. That The other market is the SMB sector, is one parallel. What is also different about which India has a very large portion of. We Yahoo is that it is one company - the only I’ve believe that their pattern of IT use will be worked for — which has fun in its values. based on online IT services (SaaS), because And it takes fun seriously. There is a different they won’t want to waste money on costly formula behind building Yahoo. And that is: software. Cost of ownership is much less can we get the passion of people combined expensive this way. with their competence to match the need of the organization? Yahoo’s ability to draw out passion is much stronger than in any company Yahoo has huge data I know. Ultimately, you are trying to engage centers. Are they green? the people’s hearts and minds, not just their hands, which is a big differentiator. CIO Yahoo strives to conduct its business in an environmentally-sensitive manner as part of our commitment to corporate citizenship. Kanika Goswami is special correspondent. Send We believe in doing our part as a company feedback on this interview to kanika_g@cio.in

Yahoo!

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ID Management

Identity Crisis: Pfizerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fix By Laurianne McLaughlin

By 2003,

Paper gets in the way of work. At Pfizer, a new process for digitizing ID management reduced a paper mountain to a molehill and produced unexpected business benefits.

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pharmaceutical giant Pfizer found itself with a costly business problem: paper. Any drug research project generates mounds of the stuff, including documentation that must be signed and tracked for legal and patent-protection reasons. "In the past, it's been an intensely paper-filled process. Literally, you can fill a tractor trailer. A digital signature is a tremendous driver in a pharmaceutical environment," says Leslie Holbrook, Pfizer's director of worldwide business technology. The firm was also grappling with a second problem: whenever Pfizer acquired a new company, it also acquired its building access-control systems, which are both expensive and difficult to change. "Your CIO isn't going to be excited about swapping out a control system," Holbrook says, because of the cost. But the mishmash of access systems made IT management chores complex and it frustrated the many Pfizer employees who constantly move among sites, she says. Pfizer's business-facing IT group saw the need to address both issues, for cost reasons. Could they kill two birds with one smart card system?

Reader ROI:

How digital signatures can save time and money Lessons learned from a smart card project The future benefits of digitized ID management

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Enterprise Architecture

Lessons Learned While Making a Smarter Card Yes, they decided, and using the cost arguments, they won support from the business side for a smart cardbased ID management system that would enable digital signatures, standardize building access and handle PC network logons. While theoretical work began in 2002, Pfizer IT began getting the project resources together in 2003. "It was definitely an IT-driven project," says Scott Potter, Pfizer's senior director of worldwide business technology. What's more, it was bleeding-edge technology. So the pressure was on. First lesson learned: if you're doing an ID management overhaul, don’t expect to find pretty, pre-wrapped packages. Pfizer's IT group could not find an off-the-shelf smart card product that offered enough power and flexibility: "We wanted to be able to support other uses going forward," Potter says. For example, the Pfizer IT team wanted as much memory on the smart card as was practical. The IT team decided it would need to create its own card. "We

card needed. "We had a real question about durability and thickness," he says, noting no one else had developed a card like this one, with its three chips and two antennae. What did Pfizer's IT people learn during this part of the project? "You've got to work with them like partners not vendors," Holbrook says, and avoid the temptation to tell the vendor that the manufacturing problems are their headache. Also, she says, Pfizer learned to not go crazy customizing every piece. "As much as you can, try to stick to out of the box," she says, noting that too many tweaks will only make it harder to get the badges, badge readers, desktop PC client software and other pieces to integrate. "Make sure you have a primary subcontractor," Potter says. Who was going to be the ‘alpha dog’ became a bit of a challenge, he says. "We eventually put that on Gemalto," he says, with instructions to make sure the Gemalto and HID pieces fit together. Pfizer rolled out the finished smart card badges across its research and development staff globally: that's 20,000 to 30,000 employees, plus a roughly equal number of contractors, Holbrook says.

Smarter Cards, Smarter Results

Pfizer is using mobile smart card readers at training classrooms to track who attends. At offsites, the cards guard against corporate espionage. And employees can use the cards for cashless vending machines at the company cafeteria. basically designed this platform ourselves," Potter says, noting Pfizer brought together two vendors, Gemalto and HID Global, to provide parts of the smart cards. The card itself has a 64KB Gemalto Java Module chip that houses the PKI (public key infrastructure) credentials and certificate information for digital signatures, and two HID chips, one of which houses the physical access control information, and one that supports add-on applets, for applications like biometric security. Because the cards are based on a Java OS, Pfizer can change or add Java applets after the cards are issued. HID did the manufacturing, as a subcontractor to Gemalto. Pfizer's IT people soon found themselves caught up in quandaries that are usually the realm of physical engineering experts. The plastic for the cards proved tricky, Potter says. It was hard to pack everything into the size 98

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Then Pfizer IT got an unexpected result: "We were somewhat surprised by how much of a benefit cross-site access was," Holbrook says. Pfizer employees work among many sites quite commonly; under the old system, they had to physically register at a visitor center before getting down to work. The smart cards let them simply use an online system to register to work at an alternate site. "Once people heard about that capability, they asked for the badge outside of R&D," she says. There was a tipping point of such requests last fall, and IT decided to roll out the smart cards across the corporation, to roughly 90,000 to 100,000 users, Holbrook says. The project is never going to be 'done', Holbrook says, because Pfizer is constantly acquiring new groups and bringing them into the ID management system. Also, the project's reach continues to expand, because people are finding uses for the cards that Pfizer didn’t foresee, Holbrook says. For example, Pfizer employees are using mobile smart card readers at the door of training classrooms to keep track of who attends classes. Training records are a big deal in the pharmaceutical industry since some training is mandated, Holbrook says. Employees also use the cards and readers for what Potter calls "access control in a box." For sensitive offsite meetings, he says, a meeting leader can use the cards and reader to better control and track who attends. Within Pfizer's research groups, digital signatures are transforming lab notebooks, every page of which have to be signed and witnessed, to the tune of about 14,000

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for ROI metrics, Holbrook says that they're hard to pin down precisely on a project like this. Pfizer IT has worked with its vendors to drive down the cost of the badges, from about Rs 1,200 at the start, to about Rs 520 now, Holbrook says. At the start of the project, no one knew how to price the card because it didn’t exist, she says. Also, some R&D costs were loaded into pricing at the beginning and the vendors didn’t know what to expect in Pfizer’s move to digital signatures and smart cards came with more terms of future volume. than a few hard-on lessons Pfizer pegs the cost of one ‘wet signature’ at Rs 1,200 (including time to track down the signer, plus storage and Understand your business case, cold. "This is the only bleeding-edge technology scanning costs, Holbrook says, though project [that I've worked on] that I felt had an iron-clad business case," Holbrook says. "We some analysts estimate the cost as high had a hard business reason to push this." as Rs 5,000.) Today, one smart card (and its unlimited number of digital Build "as flexible a platform as you can afford," Holbrook says. Don’t skimp signatures) costs Rs 520 plus Rs 2,800 on memory or chips. Pfizer is seeing the ability to add Java applets to its cards pay off — for for a three-year license for the highexample, with a new biometrics application, she says. "Blow it out," she says, meaning leave assurance PKI credential (Pfizer uses room on the smart cards for unanticipated uses. You don’t want to have to go out and redeploy a Microsoft digital certificate authority cards after a short time. for some in-house signatures, but for signatures subject to outside scrutiny, Leave plenty of time to craft your policies around certificates and it partners with Citibank to license the passwords. Pfizer had to deal with a multitude of questions around passwords, reset times SAFE high-assurance PKI credential; and the like. The technology was ready before the policy. "Our digital signature policy had about SAFE — ‘signatures and access for 100 authors," Holbrook says. "I'm not sure how long it is but it's a sure cure for insomnia." You'll also everyone’ — is a pharmaceutical have to decide who'll own the policy when it's done, and it may not have a natural home, she adds. industry consortium.) Anecdotally, At Pfizer, human resources, risk management and internal audit groups own the policy. Pfizer's use of FedEx to ship documents for signatures has also dropped, Potter Strike "a tight partnership with legal from the start," Holbrook says. says. "It's really crucial." Also, bring in outside help to give your IT and legal staff advice on the What's next? The company plans bleeding-edge issues. "We were able to tap into some consulting resources," Holbrook says, to to take the technology to new places, gain people with experience with the financial and legal issues relating to digital credentials. In Potter says, including biometric one example, Pfizer had to confirm precisely what kinds of digital signature policies need to be applications recently installed at attached to its lab research notebooks. some Pfizer facilities. The smart card stores the user's thumbprint, which is Make sure the IT people on the project are flexible. "Being on the bleeding matched by a reader at the door. One edge always hurts a little," Holbrook says. "You need a team that can roll with the punches. benefit of this system is that Pfizer There's no solution for this. There's no standard API. It's just not standard development work." doesn’t need to maintain a big database — L.M. of the thumbprints, Holbrook notes, which presents privacy concerns, especially in Europe, where governmental privacy signatures a month, Holbrook says. "Previously, we were regulations are more strict than in the United States. unable to fully automate lab notebooks," she says. For patent "There's plenty of room to innovate on this platform," protection, Pfizer employees need to sign, date and stamp Potter says. CIO these entries, on which Pfizer wants the earliest possible date in case of patent questions. People used to wait to date the entries, she says; now the digital signature technology makes it easier to keep a digital notebook and sign and date the entry immediately. Pfizer employees can even use Laurianne McLaughlin is technology editor for CIO US. Send feedback on the cards for cashless vending at company cafeterias. As this feature to editor@cio.in

Quick Tips for Integrated ID Management

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Essential

technology Want to trade in your company's ancient spreadsheets for more nimble business intelligence applications? We talk to CIOs who've done it.

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From Inception to Implementation â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I.T. That Matters

Spreadsheet Dinosaurs By John Edwards Enterprise apps | Janis O'Bryan views traditional spreadsheet applications in the same light as floppy drives, dial-up modems and other dusty IT relics. "In many respects, it's simply time to move on," says the CIO for Hudson Advisors, a global commercial mortgage brokerage and real estate asset management firm headquartered in Dallas. By shifting her company's IT and global corporate accounting departments to a business intelligence (BI) application, O'Bryan is like many other CIOs who have transitioned employees away from traditional spreadsheets and toward sophisticated tools produced by vendors such as Oracle, Applix, Business Objects, Cognos, SAS and iDashboards. CIOs who have made the switch frequently cite benefits such as faster and more detailed analysis, better planning capabilities, consistent views between users, automated data inputs from multiple sources and increased data source accuracy. Of course, no organization wants to get rid of its spreadsheet application just because it's an old technology. Most adopters turn to BI for help with solving strategic business problems, like digging out the hidden meanings buried inside sales statistics or spotting

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essential technology

production bottlenecks. But there are other advantages to BI tools, such as how they help users make sense of data. "BI has a nice way of standardizing how people perform calculations," says David O'Connell, a senior analyst at Nucleus Research. "It allows you to get to work, not to work the data."

The Analysis Problem For O'Bryan, the decision to jump from Microsoft Excel to Oracle's Hyperion Planning was motivated mostly by a desire to bring consistency to her unit's budgeting and planning operations. "There was no workflow and we were juggling disparate spreadsheet information," she says. That's a big problem when you have a staff that's highly mobile and distributed across several countries. The software's spreadsheetlike, Web-based interface was another important factor leading to its adoption, O'Bryan says. "The familiar Excel format meant we didn't have to waste time and resources on end-user training," she notes. "We have centralized budgeting and forecasting, and the fact that it's Web-based means that users in all of the regions can access it remotely in exactly the same way." O'Bryan feels that Hyperion Planning provides a wider and deeper array of analysis tools than Excel, such as a module that automates the planning of capital assets and capital asset-related expenses. This capability allows the IT group to analyze spending down to much finer levels of detail than would be possible with a spreadsheet. "We can now, for instance, determine whether we need to consolidate hardware purchases by region," she says. Hyperion Planning has enabled O'Bryan to recast her IT group's role within the company from that of a mere service provider to a strategic player. The application links to multiple reporting applications, giving Hudson executives a better view of IT investments, the

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essential technology

department's cash flow and tax reporting issues. "Internally, it has helped us to understand the expenses contained in monthly forecasts while making us more sensitive to what's being spent," she says.

Smarter Reporting Jim Burger, director of information systems at AET Films, based in New Castle, Delaware, one of the nation's largest suppliers of plastic packaging films, moved to a business intelligence dashboard by Troy, Michigan-based iDashboards about a year ago. Five executives and 50 manufacturing and sales managers are now using iDashboards, along with an internally developed dashboard application. Burger notes that the dashboard, with its visually oriented interface, gives managers the ability to spot critical data at a glance, rather than forcing them to pore through pages of spreadsheet

Burger says. "Now these folks are off doing their normal functions of selling, planning and so on." Helping ease the transition was iDashboard's ability to lift programming out of existing Excel spreadsheets. "We literally copied queries out of the Excel spreadsheets and pasted them into iDashboard," says Burger. Burger says the changeover has allowed manufacturing executives to act much faster on issues such as halting a production trial run. Spreadsheets are still used in finance for daily output performance analyses, Burger notes.

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A BI dashboard, with its visually oriented interface, gives managers the ability to spot critical data at a glance. data. "It's much more convenient and far less time-consuming," he says. The iDashboards application pulls in data from AET's enterprise data warehouse, which is integrated with the company's Infor enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite. The continuous information flow means that AET's manufacturing executives no longer have to wait for spreadsheets, prepared by subordinates, containing already outdated information. Burger notes that one reporting process, which used to require up to 15 employees each morning to create spreadsheets manually, has been replaced by a manufacturing performance dashboard that's instantly available and up to date. "We took a lot of the underlying energy that was being consumed each day by key people in the organization just to put data together for senior managers,"

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essential technology

allows managers to throttle production schedules to match customer demands as closely as possible. By coordinating production schedules and delivery dates, the application helps Alltech deliver products just in time, further slashing inventory costs and improving operating efficiency. The company also uses the software to track the shelf life of products and adjust resources, when necessary, to avoid expiration deadlines.

Before You Swap Dumping spreadsheets and switching to BI, with its powerful analysis capabilities, can breathe new life into stagnant employees, says Greg Todd, senior executive of information management services at Accenture. "You would be amazed at how many companies have dozens of people who do nothing but collect and aggregate information," he says. "BI can redirect those people into leveraging information rather than collecting it." One caution: Although business intelligence tools generally provide more powerful analysis and planning capabilities than spreadsheets, they also require more preparation and finetuning. O'Bryan says she needed to deploy Hyperion Planning twice to get it to meet her expectations. "We set it up once, but we really didn't think it through properly," she notes. "We went back and redid the initial setup, and we got what we wanted the second time because by that point we really understood how the tool worked and its full potential." "This isn't the sort of deployment you can hurry along," she says. Piersol notes that BI helped Alltech break its managers' reliance on printed spreadsheets and reports. "Getting people to think digitally was a cultural shift for them, but once they got used to it they were fine," he says. Interestingly, neither Piersol nor the other IT execs interviewed for this article reported any significant user pushback about switching from Excel to BI, though

Error-checking Our Lives You know that curvy red line that some programs (like Word) draw under the words it thinks you have misspelled? Imagine how cool it would be to have that for spreadsheets. Recently a group of computer scientists at Oregon State University found an ingenious and possibly quite generalizable approach to the problem. While the program (called GoalDebug; for "Goal Directed Debugging of Spreadsheets") cannot pick up raw errors — we still need humans to do that — it optimizes correction of those errors. GoalDebug is what is called an inference system — in this case you flag an entry as an error and it infers how the error was made and therefore what the right value probably is. More specifically, suppose you spot an entry in a spreadsheet you think looks weird. You feed the entry to GoalDebug and enter the kind of value you would have expected to see. The program then lists the kinds of human errors that would have yielded this particular mistake (not the corrections, the categories of errors). You pick the category of error that you suspect might have been made. The program then calculates what the right value should have been if that error was indeed the one made, and (in some cases) points out other values that might have been generated by the same error. "This approach allows people with comparatively little training in computer programming to identify and repair errors," says Martin Erwig, one of the developers, "by looking at a short list of possible problems instead of combing through hundreds or thousands of cells." — By Fred Hapgood

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all advise serious prep work. "You have to ask yourself how users are going to adopt the solution," Piersol says. CIO

Send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

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11/16/2007 9:45:38 PM

Pundit

essential technology

The Three Laws of Agility And three great arguments for agility that will get your boss nodding. By michael hugos

| There seem to be three laws that govern the practice of business and IT agility. The first one defines why we need to be agile, the second one identifies how to best achieve agility, and the third one shows where agility can yield the greatest results. To begin with, agility is no longer just a good idea. It’s now backed by law, the law of probability. This law says if a company can’t keep up with rapid rates of change in the world then its probability of success is getting smaller and smaller every day. And since companies need IT infrastructure and applications to operate just as our bodies need nervous systems and

IT agility

The second law states that the best way to be agile is to use simple solutions. Agility requires simplicity because you have to reduce the number of things that can go wrong if you want to get stuff done quickly. Otherwise Murphy’s Law soon bogs down your best laid but complex plans. How many times have you watched or participated as complex projects struggled to overcome one problem after another with no end in sight no matter how hard people worked? This means practitioners of agile IT learn to size up what at first seem to be complex situations; they get good at understanding what business people

much value as using agility to do brand new things. This law rewards business people who see new opportunities. It also rewards IT people who find new (yet still simple) ways to deliver what business people need to exploit those opportunities. Where other companies and IT groups use complex and expensive technology, the practitioner of agile IT doesn't always follow the crowd and their supposed 'best practices'. The practitioner of agile IT isn’t afraid to question conventional wisdom and try different approaches. So, the next time people question whether your company really needs to be agile ask

The next time experts tell you their best practices are the way you should be doing things, ask them how their trodden paths will help you deal with the law of diminishing returns. muscles to move, IT agility is required in order to achieve business agility. Effective support of business agility is the main reason these days for a company to have an internal IT group (versus outsourcing it all). When companies want to avoid problems or seize opportunities, IT groups need to figure out how to quickly deliver systems to make that happen. If internal IT groups cannot do this; if all they can do is explain why things can’t be done or why stuff will take 18 months and cost a million dollars, then, as Nick Carr said, “IT doesn’t matter.” 108

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need and they find simple ways to deliver the most important capabilities quickly (often in 30 days or less). Then they stay close to the business as situations unfold and they keep building on the systems already delivered to provide people with new capabilities in a timely manner. The third law of agility is the law of diminishing returns; it says doing the same things everybody else is doing is going to yield less and less benefit as time goes on. This law greatly affects where agility can best be used. Doing the same old things in an agile way will not provide nearly as

them how they plan to respond to the law of probability. The next time people downplay your simple IT solutions and propose complex systems instead, ask them how they are going to cope with Murphy’s Law. And when experts tell you their best practices are the way you should be doing things, ask them how that will help you deal with the law of diminishing returns. CIO

Mike Hugos is CIO of Network Services and the author of Building the Real-Time Enterprise. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

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11/16/2007 8:45:40 PM