A man of perseverance

M K Mittal, Head–IT at Aegis Logistics, believes that IT is the backbone for the services industry and with an effective IT system you can address all business issues. By Nivedan Prakash

From being an M.Sc in Physics and then an MBA in Systems from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, M K Mittal, Head–IT, Aegis Logistics, carries with himself approximately 25 years of experience in his field.

Presently, Mittal is working as Head–IT with Aegis Logistics and heading the IT department of Aegis and its group companies. Aegis is in the business of providing logistics support for liquid chemicals and oil and gas products. It is also a bulk supplier of propane and LPG to the industrial users and also having a nationwide presence through retail outlets of auto LPG (being used in vehicle as a fuel) under the brand name of Aegis Gas.

Career path

Initially, Mittal had a very short stint at Computronics India and CIDCO. Thereafter, he joined Uptron India and worked at its Mumbai and Lucknow office for six years, where he got a chance to implement ‘Monitoring of Excise Collection’ system at some of the Collectorates of Excise and Customs (during 1985).

Mittal pointed out, “The Monitoring of Excise Collection system was so successful that the Excise Department could recover the total cost of its implementation with in a period of six months and the then Prime Minister of India, Late Rajiv Gandhi, made a mention of its success in the Parliament.”

After completing his stint with Uptron, Mittal joined IFCI at its Kolkata office. At his posting at Kolkata for three-and-a-half years, he found out that the acceptance of the computer systems by the users was not there as they used to think that computers would take away their jobs. During his posting, he successfully introduced a computer system and computerized the Kolkata Regional Office of IFCI.

“I worked with IFCI for 16-and-a-half years and played a significant role in implementing the in-house developed Oracle based ERP system at the head office as well as Kolkata, Delhi, and Mumbai regional offices of IFCI,” added Mittal.

On the professional front

Mittal joined Aegis Logistics during May, 2008. Soon he realized that this company did not have proper IT systems in terms of both hardware and software, for example, ERP systems and there were heterogeneous systems running on different platforms, for instance, FoxPro, MS–Access and Oracle. He also came to know that there was incomplete coverage of important functions in terms of computerization, which was resulting in a lot of duplication of work and incomplete user requirements.

Highlighting his achievements, Mittal said, “Initially, I created some interfaces between two systems to avoid duplication of work and created data flow from one system to other system using these interfaces. We have also tried to streamline the existing systems whatever was possible from our side. Thereafter, we decided to go for ERP that will cover all the functions to give an organizational view of the information. After looking at different products in the market, we finally selected the ERP product (SAP ECC 6.0) and Hardware (SUN Ultrasparc servers) and also set up our own data center at Chembur, Mumbai.”

Currently, the company is in the process of implementing SAP ERP and it expects to go live by February 1, 2010. The implementation will cover all the aspects of the company’s business—from procurement to payment and data will automatically flow from one module to another module, as it will be integrated and it will be on a single platform. The users will also get proper MIS instead of a diverse picture of the same issue.

As the Head of IT at Aegis Logis-tics, Mittal has been successful in building a highly motivated IT team that helps in improving all the IT processes and provides support to the users as per their requirement.

Noteworthy deployments

• DR site for legacy system: Earlier there was no DR site in the organization. They only had the legacy system in Oracle but there was no DR in place. Being in the field of logistics, oil and gas, wherein there is a need to maintain the temperature, pressure, etc., and if any system crashes then the whole operation that is available 24x7, will be affected. If any data loss occurs then delivery to the customer will be put on hold making them answerable to their customers. So they set up DR sites at other locations, where all the data is flowing and as soon as archival is created, the data will go to the DR server which is always in the recovery mode. So in case of any accident, the operations can be done from the other site.
• Setting up a data center: - Mittal has played a key role in setting up a data center in their office premises in Chembur, Mumbai.
• Vehicle (road tankers of oil and gas) Tracking monitoring system: Here Mittal has helped the company in creating the system using Software-as-a Service (SaaS) model, wherein they have installed tracking devices in all the tankers that uses the GPS technology. With this system, they can keep a track on the movement of each and every tanker and have full control on the vehicles and can monitor their movement as well.

Mittal further added, “Besides the above mentioned achievements, we are also under the phase I implementation of ERP product in our organization that we will be completing soon. Then we have also developed Intranet within our company.”

Meanwhile, Mittal believes that due to recession, people across the verticals are trying to reduce costs by cutting down their IT budget and looking for Open Source and SaaS/Cloud Computing models. These are the technologies which Mittal thinks is going to transform the way the job of a CIO works.

“Using a SaaS model will result in cutting down the capital expenditure. And as far as Open Source is concerned, it doesn’t involve that much of cost as compared to proprietary software. Today people have limited budgets and that is why they need such technologies to survive,” highlighted Mittal.

Going forward

According to Mittal, the year 2010 will be a very good year for the industry, as some kind of revival can be seen across all sectors. His perception is that they are coming out of recession and the IT industry will have some budgets and as a result the demand of IT will increase—be it hardware or software. And the same is true for the workforce as well.

His plan for the next year includes setting of DR site for its new systems which are under implementation. And the technology that will have a significant impact on corporate IT is SaaS offering, which Mittal believes is a very good model, as they are using for monitoring the movement of road tankers.

Besides, one technology that Mittal is evaluating for future is Voice over IP, which according to him will certainly help the company in reducing its cost of communication. With implementation of this technology, the employees do not need to travel from one location to another. As an IT decision maker, Mittal is certainly evaluating VoIP but hasn’t come to a decision yet.

Going ahead, his vision for IT at Aegis Logistics is to make Aegis a very IT savvy and competitive organization. “We are in the services industry and are working in a competitive environment and those who have good information system will only be able to survive,” he reminded.

In his message to the aspiring leaders in this industry, Mittal stated: acquire as much domain knowledge as possible in addition to technical knowledge, build a motivated team for IT, take calculated risks, delegate to the people down the line and praise them for their work.

nivedan.prakash@expressindia.com