N Chandrasekaran, who spearheads the IT strategies at Ashok
Leyland, the Indian flagship of the Hinduja Group, is planning to roll out, with
the help of HP, a Score Card system based on Oracle to address performance
measurement and incentivization of dealerships. In an interview with
VOICE&DATA, Chandrasekaran, spoke about challenges from vendors and service
providers, while sharing plans relating to IT infrastructure including a
disaster recovery center at Hosur
Ashok Leyland has been investing heavily in IT infrastructure.
What are your future investments?
We have built our own ERP system-the backbone for the business. The
investment in these and related support mechanisms is to the tune of Rs 60—70
crore. This has helped us in establishing a framework that is scalable and
adaptable, in tune with business needs and technology advancements. While we
consolidated our central architecture with Compaq Alpha servers, we are now in
the process of migrating to the HP Itanium platform. We are also progressing
with our disaster recovery center at Hosur, which would be commissioned soon.
What will this IT infrastructure achieve?
Our IT plans emanate from business strategy and our IT initiatives are
designed as one of the key enablers in our accelerated journey towards market
leadership. The enterprise agility demands can only be achieved through process
refinements, measurement and management of enterprise KPIs, and enhancing skills
of people to perform their roles effectively and easily. This is key to the
transformation needed. Being a heavily knowledge-based industry in terms of the
engineering strengths required, we give utmost importance to information
integrity and confidentiality, and provide technology enablers and physical
processes that catalyze this. A careful blend of creativity and confidentiality
is the formula for success.
How unique is your ERP system?
Enterprise transaction processes cover our end-to-end needs of business,
used by over 3,000 users, with an average concurrency of 1,100 and peak
concurrency of 1,500. With multiple manufacturing units focusing on different
activities, it is a challenge to have the ERP address business and operational
needs effectively and efficiently, and this is something we have ensured in the
way we have architected and integrated. We are currently rolling out what we
have named "Customer Connect"-an initiative that provides an
integrated business solution with CRM and Dealer Management processes. The PLM
solution based on Matrix One that we are implementing is an effective aid in
providing customer value enhancements, and is integrated with the other
initiatives towards achieving this.
What is the focus of the disaster recovery back-up project? Can
it ensure real time recovery?
We are in the process of commissioning a disaster recovery center at Hosur.
The main objective is to provide business continuity to prevent total disruption
of operations. The operational switchover to a mirror infrastructure has been
created to address up to the last committed transaction before the failure of
the first data center at Ennore. In order to ensure the health of the backup
center, a planned periodic switchover has been made part of the operational
strategy
What are your innovations in order to offer better customer
experience?
The centralized Customer Connect system we have put in place is first a
customer centric solution that takes into account not just the routine
transaction processes but the interaction aspects as well. This helps us
understand customer needs better. HP is helping us in rolling out the solution
across dealerships covering vehicles, service and parts operations. The rollout
progressively planned in the next twelve months will provide our customers with
uniform experience. We are also rolling out, with the help of HP, a Score Card
system based on Oracle to address performance measurement and incentivization of
our dealerships. Also the system would provide us valuable feedback on how we
could improve our support level to our dealerships in effectively addressing
customer needs.
Ashok Leyland received BS7799 certification for its Information
Security Management System. What is the major impact?
We became the first auto manufacturer in India to receive the world-renowned
BS7799 certification for our Information Security Management System (ISMS).
Standardization Testing and Quality Certification (STQC) Directorate, a globally
recognized certifying authority of the Government of India, under the Ministry
of Information Technology, has certified our data center at Ennore (EDC), the
system headquarters of the company. Information is an asset, which like other
important business assets, adds value to an organization and consequently needs
to be suitably protected. In line with Ashok Leyland's tradition of imbibing
best practices, we went in for this certification, which is not really a
pre-requisite for a manufacturing company. Apart from identifying and minimizing
security threats, the certification brings tremendous credibility.
What are the major challenges?
While there has been an order of magnitude improvement in terms of
connectivity infrastructure, it is still a major challenges when we approach
service providers for linking every nook and corner of the country for
sustaining mandatory business operations such as in the dealership processes. We
are using both MPLS and VSAT technologies based on business volume, transaction
process needs and infrastructure availability from service providers. The other
challenge is the mobility of people and the resulting skill impact this has in
the dealerships. We are building business process as well as system user
training programs for use by dealerships, which would largely mitigate the risks
associated with the learning curve.
What are your demands?
Today, technology expertise is easier to get or supplement through
outsourcing partnerships. It is the process understanding and ability to bring
about process refinements through IT enablers important for enterprise success.
Software engineering processes and discipline are hygiene requirements in this
scenario and we should be able to take them for granted. People mobility is
another ongoing tussle even with large enterprises and this is best addressed by
proper knowledge management techniques, process orientation in approach and
continuous skill upgradation. The future need is "mobile" business
management and this has to come from both service provider and vendors. Single
view of operations across the enterprise, 24x7 availability, aligning IT with
business dynamics, resource optimization and utilization, integrated
architecture ensuring secure infrastructure, data and applications and an IT
framework that provides standardization, modularity and scalability and
consolidation to address new initiatives are business imperatives.
Have you achieved your goals?
We have improved manageability and reduced operating costs by consolidating
disparate systems and processes onto single centralized infrastructure. This has
enabled easier rollout of new initiatives, brought about resource optimization
and balanced utilization, increased productivity by automating workflow and
triggering actionable system driven tasks. Main business benefits include
increased productivity, process standardization, and transparency with suppliers
and dealerships resulting in partnership approach, optimized inventory control,
re-deployment of manpower and an infrastructure geared to support inorganic
growth. As far as achieving goals are concerned we always aim to be better than
what we are, and this is hence a continuing journey.
Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in