Maruti's Tech Man for All Seasons

The grit and determination it takes to manage the responsibility for
designing and executing the IT strategy of a 12,000 crore corporate, especially
one that rolls out two vehicles every minute and heavily depends on IT to be
able to do that, is not something that everyone possesses. However, true to his
character, Rajesh Uppal, chief general manager (IT) at the Information
Technology Division of Maruti Udyog Limited (MUL), is unpretentious about the
aplomb with which he has successfully carried out this responsibility.

Starting his stint with the company just two years into its operations in
1985, Uppal has, in a way, handheld IT through its entire evolutionary process
at MUL. From an executive to the IT head, he has seen and understood the company's
IT and business processes from all possible perspectives-micro level
implementation to macro level strategizing. "Maruti has provided me an
end-to-end learning experience-from conceptualization to implementation of
IT," says Uppal. This experience stands him in good stead as he heads one
of the strongest internal IT departments, with a workforce of 45, mostly
application developers.

Since taking over as the IT head in 1998, Uppal has initiated some of the
most critical IT projects for the company, including the dealers and suppliers
extranets, Shop floor Production System and the Warehouse Management System. All
these systems, especially the extranets, are at the core of MUL's operations.

Stumbling into IT

For Uppal, a mechanical engineer by qualification, the induction into IT was
a matter of sheer chance-of course, it is something he has no regrets about
whatsoever. Joining BHEL as a trainee after completing his engineering, Uppal
got a chance to move into IT. He was delegated to the IT department on the basis
of his test results, wherein he did well in computers. Today, in his own words,
he's a 'hardcore IT person'. During his four year stint at BHEL, Uppal was
responsible for the HR systems and systems software for the mainframes.

BHEL was instrumental in building the foundation of his career in IT. But, it
was at MUL, that he got his real education by, as he says, "Getting my
hands dirty". It was this lure of facing challenges that got him to make
the risky move of giving up a very stable, secure and comfortable job at BHEL
for a job with a newly established company. According to Uppal, being young
there was an inherent need for working on vibrant and challenging tasks, which
was lacking at BHEL. MUL being a new company and its IT processes just beginning
to get established, provided the very opportunity that he was looking for.

Climbing the rope at MUL

In 1985, when Uppal arrived, the plant and machinery were in the process of
being set up and there were no physical IT systems existing. As a result, hiring
computer time from the outside centers did the work. Uppal was a part of the
team that started working on MUL's IT systems and strategies almost from
scratch. Not having any set standards to follow gave him the freedom for
innovation in terms of processes. This led to some unique and innovative
processes being designed and developed by the IT staff at the time. "Since
it was a greenfield area, we were given the responsibility to do everything in
the way that we thought was best," he explains. Uppal also gives credit to
his very dynamic boss at the time, Col Ram Das. Along with him, he had the other
IT staff that he was involved with in building the company's IT strategy.

Uppal started with handling the materials system, followed by
responsibilities for the systems for finance, marketing, parts etc. In fact, he
has spent a lot of time sitting with each business function, learning about
processes. The opportunity to dabble into different functions has been the
foundation for his key learning, that, and the mantra, "Unless IT
understands business, it can't deliver solutions". He always follows a
3-step process to understand any system-start the IT system by asking what
decision needs to be taken, followed by outlining what is required to make that
decision, which leads to the final step of understanding the underlying systems
needed to deliver those requirements. Uppal encourages his staff to learn the
intricacies of the business and not remain stuck in the technology part alone.

Carrying forward the culture

Apart from the establishment of robust systems, Uppal attributes the success
of IT at MUL to its intrinsic IT culture, driven from the top management level
itself. In fact, MUL is one of the very few organizations in the country where
the IT function has been reporting directly to the managing director, right from
the beginning. The top management's vision of establishing completely IT
driven processes is effectively complemented by Uppal's and his team's
efforts to build the credibility of IT within the company and spread the IT
culture across the organization as well as the business partners. However, it
took some time to initially build up the credibility of IT within the company.
That challenge being over, the onus is now on Uppal to carry forward MUL's IT
culture. One challenging task in front of him is getting and retaining the right
kind of people resources for his IT team.

It seems things are going to get busier for this man. Uppal is already
working towards the next frontier. As he says, "IT is a very dynamic area.
You are constantly looking at opportunities to improve and keep on
improving."

Team DQ

Maruti, IT and Uppal

Rajesh Uppal

Uppal has been part of all the IT initiatives at MUL-establishing the first
set system from Burroughs, purchasing its second mainframe from Unisys,
developing of applications for vehicle sales, getting production monitoring and
materials systems in the 80s, switching over to open systems and commercial
RDBMS in the 90s; introducing some of the firsts like implementing Microsoft
Exchange, setting up sophisticated systems in the areas of business partner
integration, vehicle tracking, dealer management, plant & materials
management, warehouse management etc.

But the one closest to Uppal's heart, is the setting up of dealer and
supplier extranets. "Communication with dealers and suppliers is the key to
our operations. As a result, the extranet initiative has been one of the most
significant projects executed by the IT division." It has helped the
company in overcoming the challenge of downstream visibility of dealers across
vast geographic locations. And, on the supplier front, this has enabled MUL to
successfully implement the 'just-in-time' concept of delivery. In fact, the
system is sophisticated enough to plan supply requirements on hourly basis.

Uppal has also spearheaded implementation of the IT setup-including JD
Edwards ERP system-of Suzuki Metal India Limited, an MUL subsidiary. He has
been actively involved in undertaking IT initiatives for the four new businesses
of MUL-finance, insurance, pre-owned cars and fleet management services. The
business model has been evolved around information systems leveraging Web-based
real time systems for transactions and integration with business partners.