Profiles: Strategic IT

Indrani Ghose is an old hand at the Oberoi Group, having spent 17 long years
with the hospitality giant. Ghose started her career in 1980 when she joined
Oberoi Software, then a software company developing software for the hotel
industry, as a programmer. It was the sheer drive for doing something different
that drove this Jadavpur University student (with a diploma in programming) to
get into IT. Recalls Ghose, “The IT industry in India was nascent in the early
eighties. IBM had just been asked to leave the country and domestic
entrepreneurs were then venturing into the business.” A short training program
with MMC Digital Systems after a programming course from JU gave Ghose the break
she was looking for. Adds Ghose, “It was the dynamism of the job that
attracted me to it.”

In 1995, the Oberoi Group decided to pull down the shutters on their software
development business. It was then that Ghose moved to managing the IT
infrastructure and software systems for the Group.

Ghose has seen IT evolve over the year from a mere support function to its
much more strategic role today. Says Ghose, “The scope of work for an IT
personnel has not just changed over the years but has become a lot more
demanding.”

After a near two-decade stint in the company, Ghose feels proud of her
association with an enterprise that has always championed IT and appreciated its
business need. Says she, “Way back in 1998, we were the first hospitality
company to set up our WAN to provide centralized reservation services at a
substantial cost. This is because the company had the foresight to see the
advantages of Centralized Customer Services.” The Oberoi Group is also one of
the first hotel chains in the country to offer Wi-Fi Internet services to
guests, long before Wi-Fi became an accepted technology. What made the
association a little more exciting over the years was the opportunity to get
exposure to “in-room” technologies which are exciting and are constantly
evolving. Today the Oberoi Group hotels are equipped with a paging system that
automatically notifies the butlers when a guest checks in, and a software that
monitors the response time to any service call from a guest. An e-survey has
been commissioned recently to capture guest feedback and enhance guest
experience at the hotels. Most recently an internal call center has been set up
with the objective of improving reservation services and increasing guest
interactions.

The dynamic IT industry has always excited the lady and it did not take too
much of an effort for her to adapt to the fast pace of change in technology.
However, the only thing that worries her these days is IT Security in the
enterprise. With newer threats emerging every day, providing data accessibility
and yet maintaining secure systems continues to be a concern for this IT head.
Attrition and the availability of quality manpower in the enterprise is yet
another challenge.

A social person, Ghose enjoys catching up with friends from time to time.
Reading, music and movies helps her to relax. A holiday every year is a must.
Success to Ghose is the ability to adapt. However, her biggest support has been
her husband. It's probably time to rewrite an old adage as: Behind every
successful woman, there is a man.