The CIO Oscars

Indias leading industry conglomeratesLarsen & Toubro,

TVS Motors and Hindalco Industriesbagged the Champion, Gold and Silver CIO

awards in the Above Rs 1,000 crore category for IT implementations at the CIOL-Dataquest

EnterpriseConnect Awards 2007

In the Below Rs 1,000 crore category, manufacturing companies

continued the good show with Eveready Industries India, Roots Industries and

Hikal winning the top three honorsas the Champion, Gold and Silver CIOs,

respectively.

In the Individual categories, there was an interesting mix of

winners, with insurance and financial services companies bagging majority of the

awards.

Whos Who

A Pioneer: Adopts cutting edge/emerging technologies ahead of time

An Innovator: Innovates on a existing technology/application for use originally not intended for

An Advocate: Contributes towards acceptance of IT within the organizationtop management and end users

An Extended Manager: Creates value for the business by connecting strategic external stakeholders

A Processer CIO: Positively impacts business processes through successful use of IT

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services won the Pioneer

award, and SRL Ranbaxy took home the Innovator award. The BFSI segments

growing strength was evident in the other individual categories as The Oriental

Insurance won the Extended Manager award, SBI Life Insurance took the honors as

the Advocate, and Bank of India grabbed the Process award.

Commenting on the winners, Vivek Kulkarni, former Karnataka IT

Secretary and CEO of Brickwork India said: "The winners have all

implemented complicated IT solutions and it has been a tough decision to choose

the winners. However, ultimately, the jury came to a consensus decision and

elected the top slots." He added that the manufacturing companies

implemented most of the latest IT solutions and hence, they emerged as the

winners.

The Unsung Heroes



The CIO has virtually been the unsung hero of the enterprise. It is common
to see reports about certain enterprises doing brilliant IT implementations.

However, what people do not realize is that such IT implementations have been

made possible by processes and people. Within enterprises, people devise these

processesread, the CIO.

Delivering the opening address at the event, Anil Kumar, senior

vice president, CIOL said "As leaders of technology, CIOs have, for a long

time, been unsung heroes. So, the theme for this years event is CIO Oscars.

CIOs have been instrumental in delivering technology to all, without many

knowing it. There has been a heterogeneous mix of verticals in the nominations

received by CIOL. In quite a few places, there were close calls, some ending in

photo finishes, in terms of points."

He cited an instance of Ashok Soota, a jury chairman in the

first award event of this series, who said that he would like to implement the

EnterpriseConnect Awards questionnaire as the KRA for his CIO.

Stellar Performances



In his address, Abraham Matthew, president, CIOL, and CEO, Cybermedia Dice,
said that since CIOs were drivers for innovation and growth of the IT sector,

they deserved due recognition.

CIOL, along with Dataquest, conceived and developed the

Enterprise Connect Awards in 2004 around a framework that recognizes a CIOs

leadership qualities, business-technology understanding, people orientation and

performance through pioneering and innovating efforts. Thus, the CIOs Oscar

spawned in the IT firmament with the glitter that can add further sheen to the

shining stars, who are known by the designation chief information officer,"

said Matthew.

He added that the EnterpriseConnect Awards recognized and

rewarded excellence among CIOs in enabling their organizations to become more

efficient and competitive, and that the awards had become the standard and a

synonym for excellence and merit among Indian CIOs.

"My expectation from you, the super CIOs is for you to work

on the aspect of getting exposure for managing business globalization. How many

of you are global CIOs? From your own workplace, do you see yourself as a Global

CIO? It is all about practices and processes that would be accepted. Perhaps,

CIOL and Dataquest need to think of a category for awarding this as

well," he concluded.

Attributes of a Leader



Speaking on leadership attributes Sandeep Arora, head of Accenture Delivery
Centers for Technology, India, cited a book titled The Innovators Dilemma.

"We are one of the few companies closest to proving that wrong, and are on

the verge of overcoming that," he said.

He drew attention to a study conducted some time ago by Nasscom,

which said that India would face a shortage of workers by half a million by

2010. "That is a quantity problem. There is a problem around the middle

layer as we aspire to go up the value chain. India will need leadership not only

at the top but at the middle level as well," he noted.

A flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group, this

metals company efficiently used IT to achieve its business goals. Some

months back, the company entered into an agreement to acquire the Canadian

company Novelis for $6 bn, making the combined entity the worlds

largest rolled-aluminium producer. With commendable use of analytics,

Hindalco leveraged IT across all of its business processes to garner

measurable benefits. Some projects of excellence were: a robust CRM, which

includes a customer self-service portal and CRM analytics; an advanced

pricing/online credit check implementation; a high availability system

with disaster recovery for zero downtime; and integration of the sales and

distribution systems.

Contenders: Titan

Industries, Larsen & Toubro, Tata Power, Hindalco Industries, TVS

Motor and UTI Bank

Eveready is Indias

leading manufacturer of dry cell batteries and flashlights, and the worlds

third largest carbon-zinc battery manufacturer. The company strategically

used IT to enhance the business performance of its stakeholders. It

achieved major business benefits by fine-tuning forecast accuracy and

tracking inventory status using Linux. Some of its projects of merit

include: balanced scorecard to measure organizational and individual

performance, Web-based field reporting tool integrated to mobile devices,

and the unified business systeman integrated e-business solution that

connects manufacturing units, sales offices, warehouse and sales force.

"Using technology to

manage over 15 sales branches and 9 manufacturing plants, plus an

additional mobile distribution operation in rural sectors, is an extremely

formidable task. Our legacy environment was disparate, built on a

heterogeneous demand-based architecture. This created a need for

establishing a single point of contact. Red Hat Enterprise Linux has

greatly simplified management and given us complete freedom to scale up

using low cost commodity hardware, with absolutely no compromise in

performance or reliability. Migration from our legacy environment was

seamless, and all applications have been shifted to Oracle E-business

Suite on Enterprise Linux successfully," explained Choudhury.

Arora gave an example of the instituteCenter for Creative

Leadership. It listed about a 100 leadership attributes like: managing effective

teams; building relationships; valuing diversity; communications; managing

change; decision making; managing politics; taking risks and innovations;

managing strategy; being adaptable; managing yourself; global perspective;

multiple cultures.

Arora talked about the framework, that he had come to adapt,

which was like the leadership diamond. The diamond has four tips, "One is

visionit is hard to imagine a leader without having the ability to set a

vision, set a direction. You could have a vision, but if you dont have the

vision to execute, then it is not worth a lot. The second tip of the leadership

diamond is the ability to execute. If you dont have the courage to execute,

that doesnt get you very far. The ability to execute can get in the way. As

they say, it is 10% vision and 90% perspiration."

Hikal is a leading manufacturer of chemicals. Besides

automating its key processes effectively, the chemical manufacturer

implemented a control system to connect all of its manufacturing units to

a centralized server. Hikal also used wireless/RF-based system for WAN/LAN

connectivity to enable audio and video communication. With offices and

centers in different cities in India, the company also brought about

process efficiency by using four different communication platforms for

cost-effective system configuration and usage of multi-task programming

technique for multi-product manufacturing.

Contenders: Otis

Elevator, Roots Industries, Hikal, JK Paper, Eveready Industries and

Geojit Financial Services

"If you have the vision and you have the ability to

execute, but you dont have the courage to execute, that doesnt get you

very far, either. Thats the third tip of the diamond. It requires having to

deal with ambiguity, having the confidence.

He gave Hitlers example as a leader having the first three

qualities, but missing the fourth. It is said that before he died, Hitler said

he was too kind. "Thats the fourth tiphaving integrity, ethics,

stewardship, developing others, and how to handle power," Arora added.

This non-banking finance company, focused on the rural

and semi-urban sector, won the award for having used mobile devices over a

Linux platform to reach remote locations. The company provides finance for

utility vehicles, tractors and cars, and has a large network of branches

spread across the length and breadth of India. To be able to link all these

branches with the head office, the IT department fashioned applications

based on the mobile platform. Mainly used for collection purposes, the

Internet-enabled device enhanced customer service and productivity of field

staff to a great extent.

Contenders: Punjab

National Bank, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, Mahindra & Mahindra Financial

Services, SBI Life Insurance and Fortis Healthcare

Advocate Award







Individual Category

SBI Life, a JV between State Bank of India and Cardif

SA of France, best showcased advocating the use of IT. SBI Life Insurance

is registered with an authorized capital of Rs 1,000 crore and a paid up

capital of Rs 500 crore. To aid the business, Muralis team set about

bringing in change, namely in areas like scanning proposals, data entry,

online policy issuance and printing. SBI Life also involved delivery

coordination using multi-disciplinary teams and third-party service

providers. With an effective combination of centralized and de-centralized

processing, and the strategic use of an outsourcing partner, the company

made optimum usage of the branch staff, reducing infrastructure and

manpower requirements. "We did not want to re-create the IT solutions

that other insurance companies were already having. That is where we

designed our overall strategy. We took both a reactive as well as

proactive strategy that would fit short-term and long-term at the same

time. Today we are selling insurance policies from SBI branches across

India with a faster market speed. From the seventh largest insurance

player, we have climbed up to the third largest player who is profitable

too. A great portion of this growth came from IT," said Murali.

Contenders: The

Oriental Insurance, SBI Life Insurance, Punjab National Bank, Philips

Lighting and Development Credit Bank

There are aspects of being a leader that can be taught in a

business school. However, a business school is not going to teach you courage.

The ethics part is perhaps something people can work on over time. Finally,

vision is something like when sometimes you wake up and realize "thats

what I want to do."

A good leadership diamond would create someone with a visionforward

thinking and creative; executionwell informed, result oriented; attention to

detail; courageability to stand alone; free and responsible; and ethicssomebody

who values people, team player, principled, a good communicator, and a moral

compass.

The recipient of the Innovator award is a market leader

in the field of lab medicine, corporate health checkup and clinical trials

in India and Southeast Asia. SRL Ranbaxy automated its equipment testing

process by bi-directionally interfacing testing equipment with the

centralized lab information management system (CLIMS) to reduce manual

intervention. This resulted in tremendous improvement in turnaround time,

productivity and accuracy of testing at the pre- and post-analytical

stages.

Contenders: Punjab

National Bank, SRL Ranbaxy, SBI Life Insurance and BSES Power

Established at the turn of the twentieth century, Bank of

India (BoI) is Indias leading bank with headquarters in Mumbai. BoI has

about 2,645 branches including 24 branches outside India. It enhanced its

process efficiency by centralizing the core banking activities using the

outsourcing model. The challenges faced by Kalyanasundar were many,

especially how to ensure a smooth transition to a core banking application

from disparate systems without affecting day-to-day functioning. The IT team

lead by Kalyanasundar worked in close tandem with partners for the same, and

achieved the goal of the fastest migration to 1,000 branches, a year before

schedule. Aptly, Kalyanasundar gave credit of the award to his team and

lauded their efforts.

Contenders: Bank

of India, Vardhman Textiles, Geojit Financial Services, Titan Industries and

JK Paper

Extended

Manager Award







Individual Category

Incorporated in the same year of Indias independence,

The Oriental Insurance Company will is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary.

The company won the award for its evangelistic efforts by extending the

organizations network to agents and brokers to underwrite policies at

their own locations, which earlier had to be done manually. With its head

office in New Delhi, Oriental has 21 regional offices and nearly 900

operating offices in various cities of the country. The intranet-based

system developed by Chananas team allowed agents and brokers to enter

data using customized screens and restricted login accounts. This speeded up

the whole process quite drastically, leading to higher revenues earned.

Contenders: SRL

Ranbaxy, Arvind Mills, Oriental Insurance, Development Credit Bank and SBI

Life Insurance

Accenture was the Presenting sponsor at the EnterpriseConnect

Awards 2007. HP was the Platinum Sponsor, while Seagate and NetCore were the

Associate sponsors.

About the Awards



The CIOL-Dataquest EnterpriseConnect Awards has been a program that has
assisted CIOs from large enterprises with information with regard to

implementation of various technologies in their respective organizations. CIOL

instituted the Awards in association with Dataquest in 2004 to recognize

the pioneering works done by CIOs in large and medium enterprises.

In the last three years, a total of 400 large enterprises have

participated in the CIOL-Dataquest EnterpriseConnect Awards and sent in their

nominations. Some of the earlier winners include: Tata Motors, Reliance

Industries, CESC, ICICI Bank, North Delhi Power, Reliance Infocomm, Bharti Tele

Ventures, TVS Motor, State Bank of India, Gati, and Fortis Healthcare.

Pradeep Chakraborty



maildqindia@cybermedia.com