Bottlenecks for CIOs

The role of the CIO is one of the most challenging with the face of IT being disruptive in nature apart from the bigger challenge of leading various projects. Many CIOs believe that the main challenges that a CIO faces are no longer different from those in any other areas.

Challenges Galore.

According to Sharat Airani, chief, IT, systems & security, Forbes Marshall, in one of the projects he had to walk a thin line between walking ahead and with users to convince them to go virtual. At that time, technology was still in nascent stages. Airani adds, "I realized that we needed some time to understand and get accustomed to the technology before I promise the management an RoI. We also needed to run trials. It is important for CIOs to convince themselves before convincing others, especially about an initiative which is bound to bring change. With the promising results of the trial run, even if the management was convinced, our battle was only half done."

The next challenge was user resistance as the acid test is in relation to end-user adaptability. Solutions to technical problems are available, but the trust people place in a CIO and the solutions cannot be bought, they need to be earned. It was upto IT to make end users understand that the solution would ensure business continuity and faster performance. It takes a lot to ensure that stakeholders knew that we were actually trying to find a better solution.

GIPCL is currently engaged in the business of generating electrical power with 2 plants of 145 MW and 160 MW capacity using gas at Baroda and 500 MW lignite based power plant at Surat. GIPCL is only in the generation business and follows norms and procedures of a public sector enterprise. Any technology implementation faces numerous challenges in public/government organization in comparison to private sector organizations. Such was the scenario when ERP implementation was done at GIPCL, which is known as the mother of all IT projects as it is highly complex and spans across all business processes and integrates them. Its success depends upon the active involvement of all employees and all external stakeholders, making it highly challenging.

GIPCL implemented SAP ERP more than 10 years back and was the first company to do so in generation utility in India. It started with limited implementation of few modules and subsequently enhanced it with 2 more upgrade and enhancement projects over these years till now and covers almost all business processes. "All stakeholders keep very high expectations and feel that decisions will be made by ERP and all problems will be resolved at the click of mouse. Many times the ERP vendor or implementation partner promises a very rosy picture to sell their products or services. Even the power sector is strictly regulated and public sector has many complex and stringent process and mapping into an ERP product to meet all expectations becomes really challenging proposition," informs Lt Col (Retd) Shankar Gurkha, CIO, GIPCL.

While in the case of SKS Microfinance, reaching the customers in a short span of time is a big challenge. Tracking and serving millions of loans without error and efficiently where business runs in deep remote villages across India and overcome infrastructure problems like power and connectivity as these are 2 main ingredients for IT computing.

The challenge was to connect all more than 1,500 branches of SKS, more than 25 regional and head offices through a secured channel and automate business transactions centrally at head office, with minimal IT infrastructure meeting challenges of rural issues like power and connectivity problems.

The CIO's role here was to create a smart technology integrated platform addressing this issue. Srikanth Appana, vice president, IT, SKS Microfinance, addressed this with 2 strategic initiatives, first by connecting to all SKS branches and regional offices to head office and secondly by developing core loan information systems.

Resolving Issues

"If handling users was tough, convincing vendors was tougher. Finally we need to end up in having a better understanding with our partners and support team. Bring the confidence within top management team and get the instructions flow from top. That would have been easier to enforce the users to adopt the new technology.

There will be users, who are familiar with some standard interfaces. Configuring these clients becomes the major challenge," informs Airani.

Explaining on how to tackle things better, Airani states that all the requirements need to be gathered, and evaluation of different services needs to be done. For first few days/weeks, within IT, users need to be updated on the best practice along with the features available to use effectively. Later for another 2 months, weekly updates need to be sent. This helps to bring the comfort level to high degree and assures users that the CIOs are present to handhold them.

For the implementation at GIPCL, proper detailed planning was the key before embarking on ERP projects. Estimating realistic time to implement ERP project is a critical key success factor. Similar to the challenge faced by Airani was the challenge faced by Lt Col (Retd) Gurkha.

The technical challenges of implementation are simple as compared with the human challenges. He describes that where implementations have failed, 70% of the reasons stem from neglect of the human side of the equation, as per the Gartner group reports and it aptly fits in any organization. Hence success lies in focusing on the real challenges - people and process - from the start.

In the case of SKS Microfinance, it built an integrated communication network which will help in improving the agility, profitability, and productivity of its business, establish end-to-end solution connecting all regional and branch offices, and boost collaboration by integrating data over a hybrid network. The connectivity model is a hybrid solution with a mix bag of modem and data card connectivity.

All the regional offices were connected on MPLS connectivity, but for the branches, the initial set-up SKS tried connecting using RF technology, where an antenna is erected and connected using radio frequency, but it could connect only few branches, soon SKS realized the operational rollout challenges. As its branches were quite remote, SKS couldn't carry the infrastructure to the last mile, the local clearance took much time, and more over after the antenna tower is connected - the device demanded a decent power than anticipated and couldn't resist power fluctuation problems - it was a big learning.

The strategy was reworked and switched to data card connectivity to overcome the problems like infrastructure transport and power fluctuation problems. Data card mobility helped the project to move faster and the rollout was pretty smooth.

And through a VPN secured channel, the data packet travels in a secured tunnel and reaches head office with encryption. This solution endeavors to provide efficient WAN infrastructure providing complete end-to-end communication services with data traveling through VPN security tunnel connected to the SKS head office and data center.

Talking of the lessons he learnt, Appana says, "Always take a holistic approach, divide the problem and attempt on 3 factors - people, process, and technology. Out-of-the-box thinking is essential, and during solution design always stick to the basics and debate for what and for whom the solution is developed.

The big learning is, keep change management simple and suggest injecting changes phase wise than taking a big bang approach. And also always keep training as high priority and need to have enough budget for the training during application rollout.

In regular intervals, keep buying business interest till the final product is ready for the rollout. Always have change control board in place - depending on nature of your business, it is advisable to seek representation from different departments and make them part of strategy discussions. Lastly, always measure the success of change management."

On a Final Note

There will always be solutions for any technical issue by means of one or the other product. Choosing the right product considering the issue is the main aspect. While getting the budget approved for this technology is little bit tricky. It is strongly recommended to talk in terms of business benefits out of it and avoid technical jargons anywhere. Another important aspect of it would be to consider RoI only with a time reference. By that means, every technology solution will bear the RoI over period of time, but not from the day one.