Lighting Up Lives

Current turnover: Rs 17,000 crore and current power generation is 3,000 MW.
2017 targets: turnover of Rs 85,000 crore and generation of 25,000 MW. With
targets like these, no one can doubt that there are a lot of strategy meets
happening in Tata Power. And, one of the key components of all strategy measures
is aligning IT strategy closely with business goals.

Tata Power has its primary data center in Mumbai where all its servers are
hosted. There are disaster recovery systems as per different seismic zones. They
also run SAP ECC 6.0 which is complimented by a large number of non SAP
applications specific to the utility business.

Ujjal Kumar Ghatak, CIO, corporate IT, Tata Power thinks that more often than
not, finding specific solutions for the utility business is a challenge.
"Customized solutions are a problem. For instance, SAP CRM is mostly designed
for the FMGC sector," he explains. However, Tata Power shares an umbrella with
IT giants like TCS. Thus, this particular issue is taken care of by TCS who
customizes solutions for Tata Power.

Mapping IT Up!

One of the crucial things in any utility business is the geographical
information system (GIS). It is this system that is consuming a lot of energy of
the IT department. Tata Power is currently in the process of implementing GIS
for Mumbai. This system will be integrated with their SAP, Outage Management and
SCADA.

We have flagged off a massive training project to make SAP a way of life	Ujjal Kumar Ghatak, CIO, corporate IT, Tata Power

Ghatak says that once this project goes live, their connectivity with the
users is going to increase manifold. Also, they shall be able to generate exact
upturn times and immediate reports. GIS implementation began for the company in
2010 only, and they intend to complete Phase I by September 2010, Phase II by
May 2011 and the final phase by September next year.

The other key area for Ghatak is generation billing and customer security. He
says that this is of paramount importance since they deal with the customers
directly; and metering and billing are highly sensitive processes. Ghatak is now
beefing up his systems to ensure tighter security.

The company has also set up e-billing kiosks at various places, and
introduced the payment feature through their mobile junction.

People Make IT

Ghatak holds the view that for any tech function to be successful, you have to
make people embrace it. And this he thinks needs constant usage monitoring and
sincere training efforts. Tata Power implemented SAP back in 2002. When they
engaged a consultant to gauge the level of usage in the year 2009, the results
were disappointing. So now, the company has flagged off a massive training
project to make SAP a way of life.

"We have prepared role based manuals and have undertaken mass scale training
programs. We shall engage in a similar survey after three years and hopefully,
our efforts will show then," remarks Ghatak.

Mehak Chawla

mehakc@cybermedia.co.in