IT for better distribution

When Redington started its operations in India, in 1993, the distribution

market was dominated by the likes of Tech Pacific and a slew of local players.

Given that, many wondered if the company could make it big. In the first year of

its operations it posted a modest turnover, and since 1994, it rode the IT boom

with fervour and grew impressively year-on-year to become a Rs 2,080 crore

entity by 2004. Over the years the company has mastered the art of IT

distribution and has become a major force in its chosen space. All along, IT has

played a key role in shaping the company to face stiff competition and tackle

the complex dynamics of the distribution industry. Engineering various IT

initiatives is Clynton Almeida, general manger, IT at Redington.

Before taking a closer look at IT in Redington, let's look into the company's

operations. Redington India is a part of the 140 years old $2 bn transnational

Kewalram Chanrai group, head quartered in Singapore. The group has a very strong

business history with operations spread over 40 countries covering the US, Asia,

Europe and Africa. The group's operations are highly diversified and cover

diverse areas like IT products and services, international trading, property

development, and textile manufacturing among others. The group has IT products

and services business in India, US, Singapore, Dubai, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia,

Jordan and Kuwait. Overall, the IT products and services business generated

revenues of $841 mn in the financial year 2003-04.

For fiscal 2003-04, Redington India was ranked number 10 in the DQ Top 20.

That's indeed a big achievement. The company's portfolio of distribution

products cuts across peripherals, systems, components, supplies, mobile phones,

and packaged software. The company has 29 branches and around 6,548 dealers. In

just a span of a decade Redington has built an enviable reputation in the IT

distribution space, and much of the success can be attributed to the strong top

management team in India that had forged strategic relations with IT vendors and

the channel community. Clearly, Redington India is one of the most thriving

business entities of the Chanrai Group.

IT in Redington



The company has taken three significant initiatives in the recent years,

says Clynton: "We went in for a CRM, it was needed to integrate our Pre

Sales activities across branches and also to enable us to assess the market

potential in terms of how we are placed against competition. We are a strong

customer-focused organization, and that called for interaction with our

customers and potential customers in the best possible way. Implementing CRM

created a synergy across the organization and made us customer centric."

The second major initiative pertains to the BI (business intelligence)

solution the company has put in place. "With the business landscape

changing at a fast pace, it is important for us to keep a close watch on ground

realities and business scenarios, to take instant decisive business calls. This

is not possible without a well-implemented BI and data mining system. The

lead-time of getting information from the IT department, in the traditional way,

is too high, resulting in lost opportunities. With BI, individuals are empowered

to analyze and extract information on the fly and take decisive, timely,

business decisions," says the CIO.

The third major IT decision was to go in for a VPN solution. The VPN network

was setup primarily to address the upcountry locations and the mobile work

force. It is also used as a connectivity backup in locations where primary level

of connection fails. Says Clynton: "The VPN technology has made a

significant impact by making business more real-time. With VPN, our mobile users

can access information and impact a transaction workflow anytime/anywhere. This

is a well known technology and, I feel, its impact is tremendous."

The Challenges



The proactive IT set up at Redington has also helped the company manage its

huge portfolio of products. Clynton has played an instrumental role as the CIO

by helping the company adopt new technologies in varying phases of its

evolution. Many challenges had to be tackled every day that commanded high

degree of technical and business sense. However, Clynton managed to come on top,

using his technical acumen and years of experience. According to him, some of

the biggest challenges he faced were-issues like managing IT Infrastructure

such as desktops, across different geographical locations; breakdowns and virus

attacks; planning and managing storage of individual users across the

organization. But the most challenging was maintaining connectivity uptime and

deploying new lines.

Redington today is a tech-savvy organization. "Agility is a prerequisite

to survival with the changing business dynamics. It is vital for organizations

to adopt various technologies that will give them a distinct competitive

advantage," quips Clynton.

Shrikanth G in

Chennai

"We measure all our IT initiatives"

Clynton Almeida, GM-IT, Redington India

How do you measure the IT investments at Redington?



IT is considered an integral aspect of business and many of our large IT

investments and initiatives are backed up with an RoI, for measuring the value

of IT. Savings on manpower, time, estimated increase in revenues, cost

reductions are all considered when measuring the value of IT. Though many

benefits cannot be quantified, we assess and identify the qualitative benefits

along with the quantitative benefits. This approach gives an overall view of the

returns on a project. Many projects have qualitative benefits, which makes

business sense even though the value cannot be entirely quantified. To

summarize, the process we follow for measuring IT is that we list the

qualitative and quantitative benefits and the business impacts. Wherever

possible, we put in some estimation on the quantitative benefits, the costs

involved, and the TCO. Based on all this the overall view of the value of IT

initiatives is assessed.

How do you manage your relationships with vendors?



We are in constant touch with all our existing and potential vendors. We

keep a close track on SLA levels and highlight deviations to our vendors. We

have a very good rapport with them and get to understand emerging technologies

and the offerings, we then establish how relevant and suitable they are to our

business. All major purchase decisions have to follow an approval process.

Users, who would be interacting with a product, are also included in discussions-for

influencing a purchase decision on a product. After establishing the value of IT

initiatives, the final call is taken on purchase of a product or solution.

Which are the vendor policies you find very oppressive?



Some of the vendors provide products that promise a slew of features but the

SLA or the sign-in document exonerates the vendor from any of these features for

not functioning. What I mean is, some vendors do not take responsibility for the

product they are offering. Moreover, in some cases, the vendors do not highlight

the hidden costs and, at the very onset, enquire about the budget. The vendor

marketing team, sometimes, becomes very aggressive and tries to push a product

down your throat, and sometimes even try indirect methods-like approaching

through individuals in senior management and the like.

With Linux emerging as a major force in enterprise, what is your take on

the same?



Linux is now a huge business, with more than 10 million installations

worldwide. Today, many organizations are relying on open source for

mission-critical apps. Growth is strongest in server-based applications, where

people are using it to run their Web infrastructure, and to do other types of

internal infrastructure. It's growing particularly quickly as well now in

enterprise applications such as ERP or CRM. The one area where Linux isn't

quite ready is the corporate desktops area, in part because personal

productivity tools-such as Office-are not yet matured or available on Linux.

What is your views on mobile applications?



The ability to conveniently access mission-critical information from the

enterprise while you are on the road, with a customer, or in a remote office

location is essential to business success and profitability. Mobile applications

extend over hand held devices including smart phones, PDAs, and two-way pagers

and access can be online, offline, wireless, and real-time. With an easy to

integrate, quick deployment, mobile workers are up and running towards greater

productivity, more sales and service calls, and higher profits. There are a slew

of success stories on mobile applications and the RoI is more tangible and

measurable. Mobile applications provide agility and swiftness to an

organization. It is a clear winner and every organization must have this on the

top of their list for future IT initiatives.