"Building it Up with IT"

Aligning IT with business is indeed a tough task for any CIO, andfor those working for conglomerates, its even more tougher.So is the case with Balmer Lawrie & Co which has 7 business units focusing on manufacturing of greases and lubricants, industrial packaging, apart from services such as logistics, infrastructure services, and container freight stations.

As the DGM (IT) at Balmer Lawrie, Manash Mukherjees role is anunenviable one when it comes todeploying IT solutions across the 7 different business units. To provide timely and cost effective services in the current day dynamic business environment, the company is utilizing latest technologies to provide the most cost effective, and secure services to its customers.

The Set-up

All the 7 business units have been dependent on IT, and we have systems for each verticals/business units which originally started working in the distributed model in mid 90s. Each of the business units were working on Sybase platform. The logistics system was developed on the SQL server as a database. Since 2004, we started the consolidation of the servers. Initially the logistics system was also consolidated, and it started running on the servers. After our success with server consolidation,we started with the consolidation of services as well, says Mukherjee.

Currently the company is using blade servers from HP, and have CPEmostly from Cisco. The check point UTM at the data centers provides security, and control aspect. This consolidation has given the company the advantage of a centralized maintenanceof the system, and allowing consolidated reports since all the information is now on the same server. Approximately 30 servers have been deployed atall locations of the company. For the horizontals, the company has home grown ERPs for the finance and the HR department. Balmerhas already chalked out an extensive plan to set up a network of warehouses at key cargo generating regions inIndia,leveraging technology to ensure integrated facilities, and higher operational efficiencies. The focus is on palletization, binning, multi-tier racking, RFID, and material handling equipment to enable quick storage and retrieval.

Initial Challenges

One of the key challenges faced by the company was the setting up of the VPN. However, the maintenance waslater outsourcedto HCL Comnet. The other challenge was the change management. In case of a downtime at the last mile, the change management was difficult to achieve. The demand is also different as the businesses are diverse in nature. The demand of a manufacturing business unit from a service business unit varies. To meet the challenge, we had a close connect with all the business unit management, and make the systems work as per their demands. The company has developed lines of business packages. We have also deployed Lotus terminals for various prerequisites, and this has definitely given a lot of benefit as far as the usability and the satisfaction of users are concerned. We are currently using web-based systems for travel and tours, and logistics and infrastructure, adds Mukherjee.

Future Initiative

A lot of CIOs are talking about the cloud, and the virtualization model as a viable option. We will definitely go for the cloud model since we understand the benefit of it. However we will have to be clear about the security aspects, and our policy guidelines. Apart from this there is also a serious concern, and a challenge of the vendor lock-in. Cloud surely is a lucrative offer for the CIOs. CIOs role will now be as an integrator giving top results to the management. says Mukherjee.

PC Suraj
surajp@cybermedia.co.in