ERP Insights >> Magazine >> February - 2016 issue
IT Influence in Business: The Bigger Picture
Author : Pratap Gharge, President and CIO at Bajaj Electricals Ltd
Friday, February 19, 2016
Bajaj Electricals Ltd (BEL) (BSE: 500031) is an Indian consumer electrical equipments manufacturing company based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. As a part of the 380 billion (US$5.7 billion) Bajaj Group, it has got 19 branch offices spread in different parts of the country with a chain of about 1000 distributors, 4000 authorized dealers, over 400,000 retail outlets and over 282 Customer Care centres.
The business segment of any company can be identified by the products it provides or the services or the geographical locations it operates in. We can say it as; business segment is a single part of the business that can be distinctly separated from the company based on customer, products, or market places. At Bajaj Electricals, we have three business segments, consumer durable, Lighting and EPC (Engineering, Projects & Construction) business. All these business segments have different IT system requirements and hence at Bajaj, we have adopted best of the breed IT solutions. We are users of Siebel CRM, Oracle EBS ERP, Oracle Business intelligence (OBI) and our custom developed Intranet and Extranet systems at Bajaj Electricals. We also use Microsoft Office 365, public cloud for all collaborative applications. Bajaj is one of those companies where desktops and servers are almost 100 percent virtualized. The extensive automation in most of the business processes, workflows, MIS reporting and accounting reporting requirements have allowed our employees to evolve as matured IT users. This has helped us to keep growing our business to any levels of scalability without worrying about IT application landscape.
IT landscape has evolved over the period and now is pretty much matured. With the technological advancements and the new digital markets that are often the key to an organization's success, it essential that the investments are made in the right IT trend. Here is a key insight on the current IT trends.
1. Internet of Things (IoT) : Digitalization of the products to make them smarter or coming out with new business models, using sensors, data accumulation and analytics around the same has made all the manufacturing companies to use the data extensively for better decision making in all the areas like product performance, servicing, feedback, cross sale and new service offering. This has certainly attracted attention of most of the manufacturing companies and people are trying to take on projects which will help them in various areas to improve productivity, new service oriented business models etc.
2. 3D Printing: This is another IT trend which manufacturing companies are exploring closely and though the technology is still costly, with the new business models and faster delivery, with one-to-one customization of the products is becoming possible due to this technology.
3. Big Data Analytics: The sudden increase in unstructured data and reduction in storage or availability of scalable cloud models has made big data analytics possible within the reach for several companies. Due to severe competition, every company is forced to innovate their products or business models and this is one more opportunity which companies are taking advantage of through pilots and select projects.
4. Mobility: Adoption of various mobile apps in all the business processes to make all users more productive, mobile and efficient is one of the key trends being observed by all.
5. Software Defined Data Centre: Due to virtualization of desktop, servers, storage using software layer, there are new innovations coming in network area, which has started appearing as bottleneck to have software defined data centre. This is another new trend which is also picking up mind share of most of the CIO's as everything is becoming software controlled.
ERP solutions have also proved to be successful to enhance the business efficiency, improving productivity and growth of the business. Believing in this notion we are using ERP, CRM, BI and other custom developed integrated solutions for automating and streamlining all business processes. At Bajaj, we have implemented service oriented architectures for integrating the various best of the breed solutions to provide well integrated but still loosely coupled services.
Words of Advice
Today, CIOs face constant challenges like ever changing technology landscapes; unavailability of skill set within team to evaluate new technology, its usefulness and implement it; never ending user expectations to enhance each and every business process area and most importantly the difficulties in quantification of every project benefits. Each of these challenges also throws new opportunity to us to find the innovative ways to handle the same. CIOs are required to focus on improving the adoption of already invested technologies, making every process automated and enhance business benefits from the same investments. Adoption of technology in the right way is the only method to achieve all the business benefits and unlock the potential. For innovation it is important to try some projects and fail faster. But most important thing is to use the learning from failed projects to drive success in the future projects. (As told to Deepshikha Singh)
IT Influence in Business: The Bigger Picture
Author : Pratap Gharge, President and CIO at Bajaj Electricals Ltd
Friday, February 19, 2016
Bajaj Electricals Ltd (BEL) (BSE: 500031) is an Indian consumer electrical equipments manufacturing company based in Mumbai, Maharashtra. As a part of the 380 billion (US$5.7 billion) Bajaj Group, it has got 19 branch offices spread in different parts of the country with a chain of about 1000 distributors, 4000 authorized dealers, over 400,000 retail outlets and over 282 Customer Care centres.
The business segment of any company can be identified by the products it provides or the services or the geographical locations it operates in. We can say it as; business segment is a single part of the business that can be distinctly separated from the company based on customer, products, or market places. At Bajaj Electricals, we have three business segments, consumer durable, Lighting and EPC (Engineering, Projects & Construction) business. All these business segments have different IT system requirements and hence at Bajaj, we have adopted best of the breed IT solutions. We are users of Siebel CRM, Oracle EBS ERP, Oracle Business intelligence (OBI) and our custom developed Intranet and Extranet systems at Bajaj Electricals. We also use Microsoft Office 365, public cloud for all collaborative applications. Bajaj is one of those companies where desktops and servers are almost 100 percent virtualized. The extensive automation in most of the business processes, workflows, MIS reporting and accounting reporting requirements have allowed our employees to evolve as matured IT users. This has helped us to keep growing our business to any levels of scalability without worrying about IT application landscape.
IT landscape has evolved over the period and now is pretty much matured. With the technological advancements and the new digital markets that are often the key to an organization's success, it essential that the investments are made in the right IT trend. Here is a key insight on the current IT trends.
1. Internet of Things (IoT) : Digitalization of the products to make them smarter or coming out with new business models, using sensors, data accumulation and analytics around the same has made all the manufacturing companies to use the data extensively for better decision making in all the areas like product performance, servicing, feedback, cross sale and new service offering. This has certainly attracted attention of most of the manufacturing companies and people are trying to take on projects which will help them in various areas to improve productivity, new service oriented business models etc.
2. 3D Printing: This is another IT trend which manufacturing companies are exploring closely and though the technology is still costly, with the new business models and faster delivery, with one-to-one customization of the products is becoming possible due to this technology.
3. Big Data Analytics: The sudden increase in unstructured data and reduction in storage or availability of scalable cloud models has made big data analytics possible within the reach for several companies. Due to severe competition, every company is forced to innovate their products or business models and this is one more opportunity which companies are taking advantage of through pilots and select projects.
4. Mobility: Adoption of various mobile apps in all the business processes to make all users more productive, mobile and efficient is one of the key trends being observed by all.
5. Software Defined Data Centre: Due to virtualization of desktop, servers, storage using software layer, there are new innovations coming in network area, which has started appearing as bottleneck to have software defined data centre. This is another new trend which is also picking up mind share of most of the CIO's as everything is becoming software controlled.
ERP solutions have also proved to be successful to enhance the business efficiency, improving productivity and growth of the business. Believing in this notion we are using ERP, CRM, BI and other custom developed integrated solutions for automating and streamlining all business processes. At Bajaj, we have implemented service oriented architectures for integrating the various best of the breed solutions to provide well integrated but still loosely coupled services.
Words of Advice
Today, CIOs face constant challenges like ever changing technology landscapes; unavailability of skill set within team to evaluate new technology, its usefulness and implement it; never ending user expectations to enhance each and every business process area and most importantly the difficulties in quantification of every project benefits. Each of these challenges also throws new opportunity to us to find the innovative ways to handle the same. CIOs are required to focus on improving the adoption of already invested technologies, making every process automated and enhance business benefits from the same investments. Adoption of technology in the right way is the only method to achieve all the business benefits and unlock the potential. For innovation it is important to try some projects and fail faster. But most important thing is to use the learning from failed projects to drive success in the future projects. (As told to Deepshikha Singh)
The business segment of any company can be identified by the products it provides or the services or the geographical locations it operates in. We can say it as; business segment is a single part of the business that can be distinctly separated from the company based on customer, products, or market places. At Bajaj Electricals, we have three business segments, consumer durable, Lighting and EPC (Engineering, Projects & Construction) business. All these business segments have different IT system requirements and hence at Bajaj, we have adopted best of the breed IT solutions. We are users of Siebel CRM, Oracle EBS ERP, Oracle Business intelligence (OBI) and our custom developed Intranet and Extranet systems at Bajaj Electricals. We also use Microsoft Office 365, public cloud for all collaborative applications. Bajaj is one of those companies where desktops and servers are almost 100 percent virtualized. The extensive automation in most of the business processes, workflows, MIS reporting and accounting reporting requirements have allowed our employees to evolve as matured IT users. This has helped us to keep growing our business to any levels of scalability without worrying about IT application landscape.
IT landscape has evolved over the period and now is pretty much matured. With the technological advancements and the new digital markets that are often the key to an organization's success, it essential that the investments are made in the right IT trend. Here is a key insight on the current IT trends.
1. Internet of Things (IoT) : Digitalization of the products to make them smarter or coming out with new business models, using sensors, data accumulation and analytics around the same has made all the manufacturing companies to use the data extensively for better decision making in all the areas like product performance, servicing, feedback, cross sale and new service offering. This has certainly attracted attention of most of the manufacturing companies and people are trying to take on projects which will help them in various areas to improve productivity, new service oriented business models etc.
2. 3D Printing: This is another IT trend which manufacturing companies are exploring closely and though the technology is still costly, with the new business models and faster delivery, with one-to-one customization of the products is becoming possible due to this technology.
3. Big Data Analytics: The sudden increase in unstructured data and reduction in storage or availability of scalable cloud models has made big data analytics possible within the reach for several companies. Due to severe competition, every company is forced to innovate their products or business models and this is one more opportunity which companies are taking advantage of through pilots and select projects.
4. Mobility: Adoption of various mobile apps in all the business processes to make all users more productive, mobile and efficient is one of the key trends being observed by all.
5. Software Defined Data Centre: Due to virtualization of desktop, servers, storage using software layer, there are new innovations coming in network area, which has started appearing as bottleneck to have software defined data centre. This is another new trend which is also picking up mind share of most of the CIO's as everything is becoming software controlled.
ERP solutions have also proved to be successful to enhance the business efficiency, improving productivity and growth of the business. Believing in this notion we are using ERP, CRM, BI and other custom developed integrated solutions for automating and streamlining all business processes. At Bajaj, we have implemented service oriented architectures for integrating the various best of the breed solutions to provide well integrated but still loosely coupled services.
Words of Advice
Today, CIOs face constant challenges like ever changing technology landscapes; unavailability of skill set within team to evaluate new technology, its usefulness and implement it; never ending user expectations to enhance each and every business process area and most importantly the difficulties in quantification of every project benefits. Each of these challenges also throws new opportunity to us to find the innovative ways to handle the same. CIOs are required to focus on improving the adoption of already invested technologies, making every process automated and enhance business benefits from the same investments. Adoption of technology in the right way is the only method to achieve all the business benefits and unlock the potential. For innovation it is important to try some projects and fail faster. But most important thing is to use the learning from failed projects to drive success in the future projects. (As told to Deepshikha Singh)
