CIOs Night Out

Recognizing the impressive achievers among the CIO community and thereby rewarding excellence among CIOs of enterprise companies, Dataquest and CIOL announced the winners of the highly awaited Enterprise Awards 2010 across different categories.

Into its seventh year of awarding excellence, the Enterprise Awards were instituted by Cyber Media Group companiesDataquest and CIOL way back in 2004. The companies considered for the awards had a broad turnover classification of above `1,000 crore and below `1,000 crore across verticals.

The CIO awards reckon excellence of CIOs in enabling their organizations become efficient and competitive. It closely examines the leadership qualities, business-technology understanding, people orientation, and performance through pioneering and innovative efforts.

Rajiv Jain, VP, IT strategy and enterprise solutions, Tata Sky won the Champion CIO Award in the above `1,000 crore category; while P Shobhana Ravi, chief information and learning officer, Tractors and Farm Equipment was adjudged the Gold CIO. Anil Jaggia, CIO, HDFC Bank claimed the Silver CIO in this category.

In the below `1,000 crore category, Nilesh Sangoi, technology head, Meru Cab Company was declared the Champion CIO. ICICI Securities technology head, Joydeep Dutta and Globus Stores technology head, Meheriar Patel won Gold and Silver awards, respectively in the category.

The winners were selected after a rigorous examination process by an eminent panel of judges comprising Prasanto Kumar Roy, president and chief editor, ICT Publishing Group, Cyber Media Publications; Ashwin Vellody, director, IT, KPMG; GS Ravi Kumar, CIO, Gati; KB Singh, CIO, BSES Power; Dr Sandhya Shekhar, chief executive officer, IIT Madras Research Park and Ibrahim Ahmad, group editor, Cyber Media Publications.

The jury felt that innovation and scale of all the projects submitted by the winners for the awards were worth recognition. About Meru Cabs, the winner in the below `1,000 crore category, Prasanto Kumar Roy who led the panel said, Though the company is functioning in an unorganized sector, the innovation they brought about could help really organize its functioning. They are using technology to differentiate themselves in the market. With the implementation, they have empowered drivers as well to a great extent.

According to the jury, Tata Sky, the winner in the above `1,000 crore category, has leveraged technology to ensure customer satisfaction. For the award, the company had submitted a project that helped it achieve better outreach.

Above `1,000 crore Category

Rajiv Jain, Tata Sky, CIO was adjudged the Champion CIO in this category. Faced with the challenge to reduce the reminder outbound calls to subscribers for making the payments on time, Tata Sky launched the Experience Zone concepta decentralized approach of customer service.

The implementation has made the customer sales and services possible at an affordable cost and has also reduced the de-active days by 13%; calls to call center by 40%, and win back 32% of subscribers as well as create 75% of accounts through a simple application (EZ). The jury felt that the company has leveraged technology extremely well to ensure customer satisfaction.

The Gold CIO winner was P Shobhana Ravi, CIO, Tractors and Farm Equipment, who embarked on two projectsNewGen Connect@TAFE and Knowledge Management Portalto tackle issues like productivity improvement, reduction of communication cost, ensuring real-time information, etc. The NewGen Connect aimed to establish SMS/Mobile applications and integrate them with SAP for better decision making while the Knowledge Management Portal was a platform to facilitate employees to share knowledge.

These implementations have helped the company increase internal customer satisfaction. The jury felt that the company has achieved process excellence by improving productivity and customer comfort.

Anil Jaggia, CIO, HDFC Bank, was declared the Silver CIO winner for his projectConsolidation of Rural Branch Resources centrallyusing Virtualization technologies (VMWare Vsphere 4.0 foundation Edition) for server, networking and storage space. The project was conceived during recession when the bank faced the pressure to open a large number of new HDFC bank branches and deploy IT infrastructure in them. With this, HDFC saved 209 physical servers, 418 switch ports, 140 U of usable rack space, 40 KW of power, 25 KW of power and more than 200 Windows licenses. The jury felt that the companys project has a pioneering focus on e-governance and has leveraged technology in an excellent manner.

Below `1,000 crore Category

As the champion CIO, Nilesh Sangoi, Meru Cabs undertook the project to integrate the various in-house systems (build to solve specific business problems) which were working in silos. Multiple data entries by different departments had caused mismatches in the master data between different systems. There were issues pertaining to governance, controls, and audits. Meru, therefore, implemented Oracle E-Business Suite and Siebel CRM to tackle these issues.

Utilization of the cabs thus increased by 1%, resulting in an overall increase in revenues by `12 mn. The company also expects a saving of `6 mn in human capital cost. The jury felt that the company, functioning in an unorganized sector, has implemented an innovative project to greatly organize its functioning.

The Gold CIO award went to Joydeep Dutta, ICICI Securities, for implementing an upgrade of its existing CRM solution Sales Relationship Management System (SRM) for deepening the companys relationships with customers, standardizing SRM to manage the sales process, identifying and retaining revenue generating customers and improving productivity of sales force.

The upgrade included an integrated Financial Planner, integration of SRM with DNC registry, automation of lead servicing etc. The implementation provided the company with a 360 degree view of its customer, increased overall employee productivity by about 15% and sales by more than 24%, and reduced its employee costs. The jury felt that the scale of the implementations including SRM and CRM was commendable.

Globus Stores implemented product lifecycle management (PLM) system to track and converge production processes. The project fetched a Silver CIO award for Meheriar Patel, CIO, Globus. Inter-departmental conflict was the main source behind the project.

Prior to implementing PLM, every production merchandiser used to spend at least 30% of his time and energy on generating reports. Now, all the required reports are available on the click of a button resulting in a 30% increase in on-time delivery of merchandise. This also helped production department activities to be streamlined with proper process flow. Zero cost implementation of PLM with in-house development helped the company save `60 lakh. The jury felt that PLM helped the company resolve inter-departmental conflicts to a great extent.

Individual Awards

Apart from the above, individual awards were declared in four categories Best Innovator, Best Delivery Execution, Best Operational Excellence, and Best Green IT.

Girish Rao, IT head, Marico won the Best Innovator Award while Sudhir Bahuguna, CIO and senior VP, Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure received the award for Best Delivery Execution.

Suresh A Shanmugam, head, Business Information Technology Solutions, Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services, collected the Best Green IT Award, while the Best Operational Excellence Award went to Kishore Raveendranathan, associate vice president Information System, Aditya Birla Minacs. The Operational Excellence Award, incorporated from this year onwards is meant only for CIO representing a captive BPO/KPO/IPO center or non-captive center.

Three companies received special mentionRural Electrification Corporation (in Delivery Execution category), Yes Bank and ING Vysya (both in Innovator category).

The award for Best Innovator was awarded to Girish Rao, CIO, Marico for his project on innovative use of mobile cameras to collect real-time information on kardi seeds market to increase contract farming acreage and productivity. Implementing a contract management system helped Marico to bring down dropouts (contracting to sowing) from 36% (2008-09) to 28% (2009-10). Timely information about crop inputs has helped increase yield, thus putting `4 crore extra in the hands of the farmers.

To address the issue of availability of power in rural areas, Marico deployed solar battery chargers so that the mobile batteries could be charged. The jury felt the overall strategy of the company with different strands was very innovative. They used technology to ensure that they generate real-time information, which in turn helped in improving their business.

The Best Delivery Execution award went to Sudhir Bahuguna, Reliance Gas Transportation Infrastructure (RGTIL) which implemented Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system along a 1,400 km pipeline to monitor and control the pipeline remotely from operation centers. The system provided excellent efficiency in pipeline operation and business functionalities in terms of data reliability achieved by real-time data mining.

Thanks to end-to-end automation, the entire business operations could be managed by four resources compared to 10-12 resources, thus helping improve fortnightly revenue collections worth `850 crore. The jury felt the scale of the implementation was amazing. The company has managed to achieve a very complex program without compromising on deadline.

Mahindra and Mahindra implemented green solutions which were energy efficient drawing less power resulting in Suresh Shanmugam, CIO, Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services, bagging the Best Green IT award. The company also implemented thermal paper and scanners, which helped it reduce approximately 10 mn copies of papers used for documentary proofs. The jury felt the company has a great overall strategy and drive in using IT as an enabler in its programs.

For operational excellence, the award was given to Kishore Raveendranathan of Aditya Birla Minacs for developing MaxView, a Business Intelligence (BI) application, to provide graphical dashboards, scorecards, and analytical capabilities. Adoption of this application helped clients have a clearer visibility of the real-time snapshot and compare the performance of previous weeks, months, and years. It also helped focus on standardization and consistencies across numerous sites and business functions which further enabled the company to reduce the reporting setup for new clients by approximately 40%.

With a defined governance model around the framework, this execution was compiled with a savings of 15% resource utilization and 11% cost. It also helped reduce manual reporting by 25%, resulting in a reduction of manual reporting operating costs. The jury felt with MaxView, the company achieved a significant process improvement and the company reduced many complex processes with this BI application.

TeamDQ
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in