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| Khatry
says
success in an IT implementation is not dependent on mere
systems, but rather on user participation |
For
the Rs 6 billion Modi Group, consisting of Modi Revlon, Win-Medicare,
Modi-Mundipharma, Modi Senator, Modi Lines and HM Tubes—totalling
a turnover of Rs 214 crore, IT has been a key differentiator
in its business operations. As most other companies, the group’s
IT initiatives were driven by a need for achieving greater
efficiency in business operations and brand recall. Shipra
Arora reports
The
group’s IT sojourn began in 1993 with the IT-fication
of Win-Medicare, which was followed by a phased implementation
across other companies. Says B N Khatry, senior manager-systems,
“Our requirements were growing and the old set-up could
not satisfy them and also keep ahead of the competition. The
only solution that could pull us out of this predicament was
the setting up of efficient and automated systems. This, coupled
with the fact that the Indian industry was warming to the
concept that usage of IT in business operations could boost
productivity and also increase efficiency, only made us move
faster on the IT path.”
Laying the foundation
The organisation’s IT department had relatively humble
beginnings with just 2-3 personnel catering to its needs.
Most of the applications and systems were outsourced to Orange
Technologies. However, in the 21st century, it is contemplating
self-sufficiency on the IT front. Khatry adds that the department
which now consists of 12 people, is now planning on developing
and upgrading most of the its systems in-house.
The initial systems deployed by the company comprised of diskless
286/386/486 systems in terms of hardware and FoxPro Database
Management System (DBMS) as the back-end in terms of software.
The applications being implemented covered most of the functional
areas in order enable conduction of its day-to-day functioning
more effectively. These areas included sales, purchase and
financial accounting, which were the core of its operations.
Over the next few years, various other areas like production
and manufacturing, inventory, Human Resource Development (HRD)
were added into the ambit of automation. The software, which
has been developed in-house, is online, menu driven and user
friendly. It ensures database accuracy during data entry itself
(at the point of origination) by providing various in-built
validation checks. The packages provide a codeless environment
as all menus are alphabetical. The user does not need to memorise
any code, neither during data entry nor during report generation.
 However,
as Khatry points out, merely adding applications was not the
end of the task. What was required was moving these existing
applications up the value chain beyond the scope of basic
stereotype features. This is an area on which the IT team
has been concentrating its energies on for some time now.
“We realised the fact that the IT department should work
on providing value addition to existing applications through
intelligent MIS rather than waste its energies on working
on upgrading clerical aspects of these applications,”
adds Khatry. The objective behind creating MIS was to build
a good decision support system for the management of the company.
Some key applications running within the organisation are:
Purchase MIS: Developed in October 2001, the Purchase
MIS package allows senior purchase executives to review various
MIS reports at the click of a mouse. Production as well as
inventory database received from the plant through e-mail
form the basic ingredient of these analyses. This application
is operational at two production units.
Sales and marketing MIS: The online transfer of data
as well as reports through e-messaging is the finest feature
of this package. Various zone, state, region, district and
area-wise analyses helps users take timely decisions. For
instance as Khatry points out, the package helps them analyse
what is the sales for a particular product both area-wise
and deployment-wise, what percentage of procurement has increased
and why, whether procurement is happening along with sales
etc. This helps the marketing team pinpoint what are the grey
areas that need to be looked at and what are the potential
areas that need to be tapped.
Stores and Inventory MIS: For stores and inventory
application, the IT team has developed an MIS report on fast
moving, slow moving and non-moving goods. Based on certain
criteria, the report classifies the good under any of the
three above mentioned categories. For instance, if a good
is issued within a period of one month then it can be termed
as fast moving and if not issued even within a year, then
it is non-moving. According to Khatry, the information on
movement of goods is very crucial for the management in terms
of planning inventory hold. For example, if a good is a non-moving
item then it can be laid off for lesser value.
The IT team will be further developing MIS reports for other
departments and functional areas of the group as well. Other
enhancements have also been made to various applications such
as:
Attendance Monitoring System: A sub system of the payroll
package, it provides various analyses and reports including
computerised attendance recording to the personnel and administration
departments. Provisions are being made to transfer this data
to payroll users.
Smart Filing System: This package enables HRD users
to locate employees and other physical files easily and efficiently
by providing their information bade on criteria such as location,
department, joining date, designation etc.
One of the key factors driving enhancements in these applications
is a regular feedback from users. With a very pro-active approach,
the IT department has made it a point to regularly meet up
with them, whether at the factory, sales offices or head office
and take up their queries and requirements.
Even as it was upgrading its applications based on user feedback,
the IT team began building a robust back-end system to ensure
that these apps work better. This involved upgrading its back-end
system from FoxPro to Oracle. The organisation is currently
undergoing a phased process of upgradation and migration depending
on requirements (it is first upgrading those applications
with larger volumes). In fact, the primary need driving these
upgradation plans were a growing database. “We chose
Oracle due to its high security features, physical and logical
data independence and ability to handle large databases,”
explains Khatry. “This, apart from the fact that it is
platform independent and works on Unix, NT, DOS and Windows,
helped us zero in on Oracle.” As a result of this initiative,
the organisation has visualised benefits in terms of reducing
database redundancy and increasing database integrity. On
the operating system front, it has been upgraded from Novell
to NT with number of nodes increasing to 249, printers to
116 and servers to 14.
Future plans
Sales force automation is top on the company’s agenda
for its future IT initiatives. Says Khatry, “For monitoring
performance and market trends, we are planning on developing
a Web based Sales Force Automation package.” Under this
application, the sales force spread across the country will
be required to enter their day-to-day call reports on the
website (www.modigroup.com). This will include number of sales
visits, its outcome and other important marketing aspects.
This information will be available to the management, which
will allow them to monitor sales performance online. Currently,
reports are being made available on a weekly basis, which
allows the management to keep a tab on sales and marketing
details, in addition to foreseeing and predicting market trends.
As the organisation moves from outsourcing to attaining self-sufficiency,
the road in between has been one of constant learning and
increasing IT awareness among users within the organisation.
Khatry envisages building IT awareness through learning. The
IT department will be starting training sessions for users,
wherein they will be familiarised with the features and nuances
of various applications running. All the learning material
has been devised by the department itself. “Having built
up the systems is not enough. The success factor of our endeavours
lie in inducing users to make optimum utilisation of these
resources created and inculcating IT as the basic culture
within their mindsets to improve their comfort levels with
these systems,” he adds.
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