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.

Source: Dataquest