Big ideas, anyone?

Information technology by itself can no longer provide a competitive edge. With enterprises having easy access to the same technologies, they need to innovate to gain an advantage. This is why there is finally an award for enterprises that make intelligent use of IT

N P Singh, director-corporate, Indian Express group gives away the Intelligent Enterprise awards to V V R Babu, CIO ITC (Top), Gopal Shukla, CIO, Dabur (Middle) and M D Agrawal, chief manager, IS Refineries, Bharat Petroleum (Bottom)

Imagine an illiterate farmer in a remote village in Madhya Pradesh sitting at a desktop linked to the Internet by means of a VSAT link powered by a generator. He downloads information about weather forecasts and sowing trends and checks the price of soya beans at the nearest government-run market, or even on an International commodities exchange. ITC’s e-choupal project covers over 15,000 villages in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh providing millions of farmers with critical information about farming. They can look up weather forecasts, order fertilizers and herbicides, or even consult an agronomist by e-mail when their crops turn yellow. At some e-choupals they can buy life insurance, apply for loans and check examination results. While much has been written about the social benefits of e-Choupal, the project was
conceptualised with a pure business focus to facilitate the sourcing of high-quality farm produce for the company’s fast growing agribusiness.

In IT parlance, e-choupal is nothing but an intelligent blend of applications such as CRM, supply-chain management and knowledge management. ITC is now planning to leverage its e-choupal infrastructure for selling third-party products, provide rural market research services and in the social sector, provide services such as health advisories and enable e-governance.

While ITC’s e-choupal project has been widely reported due to the recognition it has received abroad, there are several IT initiatives within the private and the public sector that harness the potential of technology for social and business benefits. Be it eSeva, the e-governance project undertaken by the AP government to free public services from bureaucratic intervention or CONCERT, Indian Railways’ computerised reservation and ticketing network, Indian enterprises are churning out intelligent IT initiatives that are best-in-class globally in terms of the technology used and in terms of their impact on business and society.

The intelligent enterprise

To recognise such groundbreaking IT initiatives in all walks of life, Network Magazine instituted the Intelligent Enterprise Awards last year. The objective of these awards is the belief that information technology by itself can no longer provide a competitive edge to enterprises. The Intelligent Enterprise Awards 2004 will be given away in the nine key verticals of telecom, media & entertainment, IT & ITES, energy, construction and utilities, banking, financial services and insurance, health sciences, industrial production, government and infrastructure, and retail & consumer products. Nominations are invited through multiple channels and are shortlisted by Network Magazine and Ernst & Young on the basis of pre-defined evaluation criteria. Based on the scores awarded, finalists are picked. The winners are selected from three finalists in each category. A panel of eminent personalities from diverse fields chooses them. Shortlisted entries are judged on the merits of how innovative the application is, the technology used and the value and impact of the application.

The 2004 awards will be presented in October at a special ceremony coinciding with Technology Senate 2004 which will be attended by over 200 of India’s top CTOs, CIOs and IT heads.

Highlights 2003

In its first year, the Intelligent Enterprise Awards were given out in four categories at an annual retreat for India’s leading IT heads held at Kochi. The Award for the Most Intelligent Enterprise went to V V R Babu, CIO, ITC for the e-Choupal Project.

There were three runner-up awards, one going to Gopal Shukla, CIO, Dabur for integrating its primary distribution network consisting of 20 manufacturing locations, six key warehousing facilities and 50 stocking points to its 10,000-strong secondary distribution channel that moves more than a thousand different SKUs to 1.5 million retailers.

Sanjay Govil, CIO, Eicher Motors was the second runner-up for implementing an employee self-service portal that provides a single secure window for all information and collaboration of Eicher’s employees and partners. The key objective driving the initiative was the need to enhance productivity, collaboration and knowledge management across the enterprise and its supply chain.

The final award went to M D. Agrawal, chief manager-IS Refineries, BPCL for implementing a portal aptly called the Digital Nervous system, that integrates information from various production units by means of a portal. With the portal in place, BPCL’s Quality Assurance System (QAS) can now pull data from multiple sources and print quality certificates for customers in real time.

The awards were judged by an eminent panel consisting of Dr. Manesh Shrikant, Honorary Dean, SP Jain Institute of Management & Research, L. C. Singh, President and CEO of Nihilent Technologies, Pradeep Pendse, Senior Associate Dean—Systems & E-business, Welingkar Institute of Management Studies and Sunil Chandiramani, Partner, Ernst & Young.