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