A Ray Of Discipline

Commodore Ray D'Souza is from the 26th NDA Course.
He entered the Defence Services with a bang.
The day he joined the National Defence Academy, the Khadakvasla Dam
burst.  The day he passed out from
the NDA, Pandit Nehru passed away. Ray D'Souza says “Having had all my
joints suitably lubricated by the Naval College of Engineering, Lonavla, I was
subsequently 'shocked into action' in 1968 in the Navy's Electrical
School, INS Valsura.” 

Ray had served tenures in the Navy as Commanding Officer
INS Tunir, GM—Technical, Naval Dockyard, Visakhapatnam.  He was also a leader of an Indian Software Design Team in Los
Angeles, USA.

In 1995, he decided to drop anchor after 34 years in white
uniform and entered the eccentric world of advertising.
He now steadfastly refuses to wear white shirts, and sports a variety of
colorful shirts and ties, at Lintas India, where he is director of systems and
technology.  His current ambition is to channelize, the few hair he has
left, into a ponytail, something that continues to be a long-term goal.

Though he left the electrical branch of the Indian Navy in
1995, Ray D'Souza continues to be fully charged. Apart from being charged for
his choicest sports, Ray also gets his creative adrenalin rush by dappling with
IT at Lowe Lintas.

Given the work environment where everything is in 'needed
it yesterday' mode, Ray has devised innovative methods to suit the
eccentricities of the advertising world. He has systems and processes in place
that allow him to not only set up systems on the fly, but also be able to meet
the simple needs such as a CD drive to be fixed optimally without causing extra
cost to the company. Especially the advertising industry where the IT spend is
not in the range of BFSIs and the manufacturing, Ray D'Souza is constantly
torn between the deliveries of top of the class IT solutions at low or no cost.

Success Stories

The agency has two applications, which are widely used in all the offices; a
customized ERP system using Oracle as the database-all users connect via
Citrix to access this application. Apart from this they have knowledge
management developed using SQL and Web based interface. Implementation of LINWIZ-the
first ERP system for an ad agency was the early success stories in Ray's cap
at Lintas.

Ray opined that being from a naval background, innovation
and cost effectiveness was the only way of life. Though there are mandates to be
followed for IT usage from the parent company he tries to innovate with existing
solutions and also look for cost effective solutions that can address other
related issues. For example, the company wanted to save cost on an e-mail client
and looked at innovating with product. For Lintas, Gajshield was a solution,
which would be cost effective and allow innovation too. Worldwide Lintas uses
Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, but Ray implemented Lowemail by using a
local vendor Gajshield for the mail client.

Ray is known to innovate and optimize on resources and
cost. The early VoIP adoption at Lintas is a legendary story, but not in the way
we know VoIP. Lintas had their STD bills running over Rs 2 crore in a year. Ray
implemented a cost effective solution-built a VoIP set up around the existing
EPBX with 250 lines. The cost came down to Rs 5 lakh.

In Control

What really surprises one while interacting with Ray is when he receives a
mail from HR-a resignation letter from an employee in the design team. On
being questioned why the resignation letter copy to you? Ray the man of
surprises he is, pulls out an excel sheet on his desk top-their Bangalore
office layout-and shares that he has the complete break up and specs of who
has what computer and what peripherals with it, and in this world when
everything is in 'we needed it yesterday terms' it allows him to avoid
unexpected costs on hardware of all kind. For example, if the IT team gets a
request for a DVD copier from an employee he reallocates the device from another
user who has resigned and will not be using it. Also it helps in avoiding
duplicating as, if there is a need for a particular device, gadget or disk etc
and if he knows an employee will soon be quitting he can reallocate or assign
the inventory in an optimum way.

Similarly, the way the printing cost is under control at
the agency is a case study in itself. Ray has the printing software running on
his desktop where at any given time he can see who is printing and how many
pages. There have been alerts created to inform Ray if the certain numbers are
crossed. So if you are under Ray's IT setup you can forget about printing
online books and all the forwards etc you like to decorate your soft boards
with.

For Ray, the profession is not without its challenges. He
has to deal with a creative lot who are indifferent to IT and the management who
only understands the cost language. IT by its nature, tends to be a back office
function and therefore not visible unless there is a problem.
If the organization is considered a human body, then IT is the nervous
system.  The only time human beings
realize they have a nervous system is when they are in pain!!  The
challenge therefore is to make IT more visible and quantify achievements in
terms, which others appreciate and understand. In the IT profession, we need to
demystify the jargon and be seen as a partner rather than an adversary.
By nature, our work is “cut and dried” in its approach, and so our
professional temperament is similar.
We need to be more tolerant of human inconsistencies in framing
specifications and actively help users in resolving ambiguities. We need to
convince our CXOs and CFOs to sanction our budgets with conviction rather than
resignation!! It is important that the top level is far sighted not only on the
business front, but also have a vision and road map for IT. For Ray the
qualities needed to succeed as a CIO is the ability to adapt to both
organizational as well technological changes.  To be able to see “the big picture” and harness
technology for the greater good and prosperity of the organization.

Minu Sirsalewala

minuvs@cybermedia.co.in