Turn to Page 6 to meet these Ones To Watch. MEET

RISING STARSRISING STARSRISING STARSRISING STARSThey’ve been trained, mentored and measured, and now they’re ready to take charge.Our special coverage begins on Page 24 and includes:

HOW TO DEVELOP LEADERSSmart CIOs know that nurturing IT leaders is good for organizations — and for them.

PROFILES IN LEADERSHIPThe qualities CIOs should be on the lookout for.

From The ediTor

What is Cio india doing featuring people on the cover who aren’t Cios?

The answer is simple, we’re looking for the next generation of standout IT leaders. And we thought the New Year was the best time to do so.

I’m very pleased to announce Ones to Watch. It’s an exercise that identifies the rising stars in IT: Senior staff who are destined to become the CIOs of the future. To be recognized, these future CIOs must have demonstrated leadership, driven innovation and delivered value to the business; in short, they will soon be able to head up their own IT organization. All honorees were nominated by their CIOs and are currently their top IT lieutenants.

There are three basic reasons for Ones to Watch. For one, we believe that developing the next generation of IT leaders is essential to IT’s ability to add real and sustained value to the enterprise. Through this, we also honor those CIOs who foster leaders and showcase how they do it. Second, this ensures that we stay in touch with the people who are leading the profession as they advance in their careers. Finally, it is a way for us to serve our readers by helping them recognize their key staff in a positive and public way.

I believe that one of the most important responsibilities of a CIO is developing future IT leaders. Yet our research shows that many CIOs do not spend enough time and attention on this. Somewhere between the pressures of budgets and deadlines and the need to ensure business buy-in, the best of intentions amount to nothing.

All CIOs contacted for our special report were firm in their belief that the ROI from leadership development is really good. After all, would you turn down an opportunity to gain a team that knows how to align technology and business and is able to increase your sphere of influence in the organisation?

The writing is on the wall — If you want to nurture your best and brightest, you need to invest in their growth.

I’d like to know your opinion on our Ones to Watch initiative. Please direct your thoughts to vijay_r@cio.in. Here’s wishing you a year filled with good fortune and talent.

Would you turn down an opportunity to gain a team that is able to increase your sphere of influence in the organization?

Bringing up TalentIf you want to nurture your brightest, you need to invest in their growth.

Vijay Ramachandran, Editor vijay_r@cio.in

� J a n u a R y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

Leadership development | 24

With the Ones to Watch initiative, we honor a stellar group of future CIOs.

How Stars are MadeA guide to developing your future leaders.

Feature by Rahul Neel Mani

What Leadership Looks Like Our 30 Ones to Watch honorees possess vision, the ability to influence others and a talent for getting things done.

Feature by Balaji Narasimhan

30 Rising Stars The 30 Ones to Watch honorees come from a wide range of back-grounds, but all share a passion and a talent for leadership.

Profiles by Team CIOmore »

32

Neeraj Bhargava, Group CEO andAtul Dawda, Senior VP & CTO, WNS Global Services

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� J a n u a R y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

2SPECIaL REPORTNeeraj Bhargava, Group CEO and

Atul Dawda, Senior VP & CTO, WNS Global Services Atul Dawda, Senior VP & CTO, WNS Global Services

ONES TOONES TOWATCH

Debashish Chakraborty, Honda siel S.P. Giridhar,

Godfrey Philips

Jitendra Sarode,PantaloonShiv Shankar Singh,

Bse

Suren Shetty,Yes Bank

Dheeraj Sinha, Apollo Tyres

Veena Vasanth,

Biocon

GovernMINDsET MANIFEsTO | 60Dr. G. D. Gautama, Principal Secretary IT department, West Bengal, has done much to change perceptions and re-invent the way citizens interact with the government.Interview by T. Radhakrishna

sAvINgs UP FOR AUCTION | 56We take a look at how three governments across India and Scotland have pioneered a way to hasten tenders, create transparency, and save the tax-payers crores.Feature by T. Radhakrishna

Executive ExpectationsvIEW FROM ThE TOP | 44Kwang-Ro Kim, Managing Director, LGEIL, reveals how LG uses IT to empower employees and the company. Interview by Rahul Neel Mani

Software and SystemsFIxINg ThE REqUIREMENTs MEss | 50The requirements process is destroying projects in ways that aren’t evident until too late. Some CIOs are stepping in to rewrite the rules.Feature by Christopher Lindquist

60

content (cont.)

Trendlines | 13

Research | Rs 1,09,000 Crore and Counting Input Devices | No Shortchange for ShorthandBook Review | Work SmarterErgonomics | Of Displays and HeadachesInstant Messaging | Answers at Your FingertipsBy the Numbers | Stressed, but HappyMobile Technology | New Breed of Batteries Executive Moments | Scaling the Heights

Essential Technology | 64

security | New Locks, New Keys By Galen GrumanUnder Development | General Purpose Grids? Pundit | Looking Out; Looking In By Eric Knorr

From the Editor | 4

Bringing up Talent | If you want to nurture your brightest, you need to invest in their growth.By Vijay Ramachandran

Inbox | 12

22

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Dr. SrIDHAr MITTA

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reader feedback

Inbox

Analyze ThisThe article on air deccan (Low-Cost Takes Off, Dec. 1, 2005) made for a wonderful read. Organizations have begun to realize the importance of the Net and its capacity to attract clients, cut costs and reach out to a larger base of customers. Of course, they also build good Internet sites.

But building a site is just not enough. The big question is getting into the minds of customers logging onto the site. Analyzing how much time they spend on the site, their point of entry and where they go from there, which pages are read the most and what leads customers to shy away from buying are questions to which CIOs need answers from their web initiatives. I would really like you to carry an article on Web analytics.

Venu GopAl peruriMD, MetaInfotech

empower readersSince cIO India is published every fortnight, I honestly can’t do justice to

every issue, but I appreciate the fact that we finally have a magazine which puts CIOs on its cover. Its people-centric approach is a welcome change.

Readers have high expectations of the magazine and the CIO team has to be vigilant to live up to this. If this can be done, CIO will be able to play a leading role in educating its readers. Today a CIO needs to step out of his or her safety zone - network infrastructure, hardware and software. As businesses grow dynamically and so must CIOs. They are no longer technology-only persons. In fact, technology is barely 20 percent of a CIO’s responsibility now. We have to think business efficiency, profitability and change management. A CIO is also the right-hand of the CEO in most companies today.

CIO has to empower its readers in order for CIOs to live up to their responsibilities. CIO, as a resource, should look into these issues to be able to address our challenges.

Consider these suggestions, I am sure they will result in top-of-the-mind recall articles from among my peer group.

GopAl ShuklA, VP - Business Systems GroupCoca Cola India

While, the look and feel of the magazine is good, some of the stories could be shorter. I really like View From the Top. Ideally the magazine should be a little more focused on the future, keep a pulse on trends and watch for strategies

for success in a competitive world. As an operations person, I expect that from CIO.

TAmAl ChAkrAborTyIT Head, Ericsson India

The past few issues have covered good topics. I particularly liked the cover story on the Business Continuity strategy of WNS Global Services (Keep Business Afloat, Dec 15, 2005) and the View From the Top section. Please continue to keep the mix of articles as it is.

r. p. DumASiAGM - I T, The Great Eastern Shipping Company

cIO India is impressive. You’ve also maintained an international look and feel. I really liked its simplicity but high quality and rich content. It carries good best management ideas which can be easily followed and implemented and is a valuable learning asset for CIOs. The contents were very well structured, focused, and well thought through. I particularly liked the Patricia Wallington column ‘The Off Switch’ (Nov. 15), and View From the Top. I’m passionate about reading articles on leadership, management and spirituality.

V. SubrAmAniAmCIO, Otis Elevator Company

“Today a CIO needs to step

out of his or her safety zone. As businesses grow dynamically, so

must CIOs.”

What Do You Think?

We welcome your feedback on our articles, apart from your thoughts and suggestions. Write in to editor@cio.in. Letters may be edited for length or clarity.

editor@c o.in

1 2 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

R E S E A R C H Indian enter-prise IT spending — hardware, software, telecom and IT services — is expected to reach an eye-pop-ping Rs 1,09,300 crore in 2006, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8 per-cent from 4 to 9 percent, accord-ing to research firm Gartner.

India can expect to see an annual enterprise ICT spending growth rate (AGR) of 23 percent in 2006, with Rs 73,900 crore being spent on telecom services and equipment (a 27 percent rise over 2005), Rs 17,200 crore spent on hardware (up by 13 percent), Rs 14,100 crore on IT services (a 22 percent increase) and Rs 4,100 crore on software (growing by 17 percent).(growing by 17 percent).

Announcing its trends for the year, Gartner says the impact of consumer technologies on enter-prise IT will continue to spread rapidly, despite attempts to slow them down or policies designed to discourage their use. Gartner predicts that between 2006 and 2012 the majority of new infor-mation technologies adopted by enterprises will have their roots in the consumer market.

Many technologies have in the past been introduced and have found acceptance in consumer markets, only to be ignored by enterprises,” says Dion Wiggins, vice president and research direc-tor at Gartner.

Gartner sees Asia lag in the development of enterprise applications. The rapid matur-ing of IT development in China and India will see trade between the two explode, it predicts. With open source software adoption rising rapidly, par-ticularly in China and India, the research firm believes that by 2010 it will account for 20 percent of the global software market.

Gartner has identified a rising requirement for Enter-prise Information Management (EIM), driven both by the need for process simplification and operational efficiency, and by enterprise agility and competitive differentiation.

The research firm also believes organizations that implement an effective incident response plan will experience an 80 percent increase in the speed at which they recover from malicious attacks.

I N P U T D E V I C E S Those who crib that technology soon makes systems obsolete have apparently not bet on the ability of the old to piggyback on the new and redefine itself. A case in point being the new shorthand software system developed by the Chennai branch of The Stenographers Guild.

The system revolves around a software tool based on .NET archi-tecture, which allows data input using shorthand symbols. The tool is compatible with applications like MS Office and involves special stickers being placed over a standard keyboard’s keys. All a user then needs to do is type out in shorthand and the tool converts it to standard text.

According to SV Ramaswamy, President of The Stenographers Guild, the software will be given to people who take a course in the new system called ‘Newrite,’ which has been developed jointly by The

Steno Trust, Washington, and The Stenographers Guild, Chennai.The Stenographers Guild is making the software available free of

cost to people who take the course. In fact, the Guild has actually taken the concept a step further by giving stipends to deserving students. So, not only do you get the software free, you also get paid for learning it!

The only drawback is the time taken to master the system — in order to attain a speed of 150 words per minute, one needs to train for around

six months.Plans for the future are equally interesting. The Guild is

already working on software for handhelds. Voice recogni-tion is also one of the features that is under contemplation. Clearly, shorthand, far from being cowed down by modern technology, is actually using it to gain the upper hand.

—By Balaji Narasimhan

No Shortchange for Shorthand

Rs 1,09,000 Crore and Counting!

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n e w * h o t * u n e x p e c t e dtrendlines

Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Perfor-mance and Results from Knowledge WorkersBy Thomas H. DavenportHarvard Business School Press, 2005, Rs 1,475.00

b o o k R E V I E w In the pref-ace to his latest book, knowl-edge management (KM) guru Thomas Davenport admits that he’s not breaking new ground. His thesis — that organiza-tions can and should improve the performance of knowledge workers — is an idea that Dav-enport (who holds the Pres-ident’s Chair in Information Technology and Management at Babson College) has been pondering for nearly a decade. He decided to write the book now in part because of the

pressure that globalization is exerting on the American workforce.

Much of the content will ring familiar to anyone who follows KM. Knowledge workers — those who earn their keep primarily by applying, creating and distribut-ing knowledge — resist meddling by management in how they do their jobs. Many don’t like shar-ing their knowledge, especially when outsourcing looms on the horizon.

But the real quandary whenit comes to improving performance

is: Many of the outputs of knowl-edge workers can’t be quantified or easily measured. Organiza-tions are often at a loss trying to improve something that defies measurement.

Davenport does a good job establishing the challenges of improving knowledge work in today’s business environment. He delves into how different kinds of knowledge work require different strategies. For example, people who work collaboratively tend to improvise, seeking expertise for their teams as their situation warrants. Hence any attempt to improve their work by establish-ing formal processes will fail.

Davenport admits that making meaningful strides to improve knowledge work is difficult. The most practical advice he imparts has to do with how individuals can become better personal infor-mation managers. Among the tips in a list of best practices: Limit the number of information devices, and don’t entirely abandon paper.

If nothing else, reading this book may help a knowledge worker improve her personal performance. And as Davenport points out, making improvements on an individual basis is typically overlooked by organizations, yet is nevertheless valuable.

—By Megan Santosus

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E R G o N o M I C S Headaches. Tired eyes. Neck and shoulder pain. Sure, you’ve been logging lots of time at the office lately, and you figure you’re feeling the stresses and strains associated with all that hard work. But if you spend hours each day staring at a computer screen, you might wind up suffer-ing from computer vision syndrome (CVS).

The above symptoms “result from how our eyes focus — or more accurately don’t focus — on a computer screen,” says Jon Tor-rey, an entrepreneur. In the ‘80s, Torrey was doing some product development work with engineers who were heavy computer users; they often complained about eyestrain and headaches. Their gripes got Torrey think-ing about what happens when people spend hours each day looking at computer screens. He applied his curiosity to research by team-ing up with an optometrist to create a diag-nostic tool that simulates how eyes focus on

a computer screen. Today, Torrey is presi-dent and CEO of Prio, a small company that he founded to develop and market tools to diagnose CVS.

As Torrey explains, the lens in the human cornea focuses on objects by changing shape, a process that is essentially made easier when objects have distinct, defined edges. On computer screens, the pixels used to create images, whether it’s text, photos or graph-ics, have fuzzy, ill-defined edges. Therefore, says Torrey, computer users are constantly

yet imperceptibly focusing and refocusing their eyes; such ongoing efforts cause eye-strain and ultimately CVS. The discomforts of CVS, says Torrey, invariably end up tak-ing a toll on employee productivity.

To solve the problem of CVS, computer users often need corrective lenses specifi-cally prescribed for computer viewing, and that’s where Torrey sees a promising busi-ness opportunity. In 1993, Prio launched its first CVS testing device and began selling it to optometrists. The test takes about three minutes to administer and usually costs an extra Rs 450 ($10). To date, says Torrey, Prio has sold its tool to 10 percent of the optom-etry market. Also, Prio recently joined other lens manufacturers by jumping into the market of selling frames and lenses just for computer users.

—By MS

That Headache May come from Your Screen

1 4 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 0 6 | REAL CIO WORLD

Work Smarter Different jobs demand different knowledge management strategies

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I N S T A N T M E S S A G I N G Like many large organi-zations, Cox Communications grapples with two con-flicting goals for customer support: Improving it while keeping costs down.

The need to harmonize these clanging principles led Cox to implement a system on its website that uses an instant messaging-like interface to field customer ques-tions via an automated text chat. The system, dubbed Instant Answers and deployed last November, costs Cox much less than having customer service representatives answer questions.

Cox provides high-speed Internet, cable TV and telephone services. When customers visit the support section of Cox’s website, they have the option to ask questions of Instant Answers’ “virtual customer service representative.” Those who choose it are taken to the Instant Answers interface. Customers then ask in plain English how to set up their e-mail application or inquire about digital cable service. Instant Answers helps cus-tomers refine their queries. In addition to returning answers, it also provides links to other relevant parts of the Cox website.

Through surveys during the months after the roll-out, Cox found that between 9 percent and 11 percent of Instant Answers users decided not to call customer support because the chat system answered their ques-tion, says Suzanne Foy, the company’s director of cus-tomer care strategy and support. The system would pay for itself with a call avoidance rate of only 2 per-cent to 3 percent, so the results are exceeding expecta-tions, Foy says.

Automated service agent technology has been around for several years, but adoption has been timid, says ana-lyst Michael Osterman of Osterman Research. However, he says, its popularity is rising, thanks to increasing familiarity with IM and the need for lower cost cus-tomer service.

Agents can also be used with an enterprise IM system to help employees find information in back-end appli-cations and databases. This is the plan at IntelliCare, which operates health-related call centers.

Agents will make it easier and faster for nurses to find the information they need to help patients, says Intel-liCare CIO Jeff Forbes.

—By Juan Carlos Perez

Answers at Your Fingertips

by the numbers

SoUrCE: hudson Employment Index, march 2005

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B y J o n S u R M Ac Z

Even though IT jobs are stressful, IT workers are happier now than they were a year ago. Accord-ing to the March 2005 Hudson Employment Index, compiled by independent research firm Ras-mussen Reports, 77 percent of IT workers say they are happy with their jobs. In May 2004, only 66 percent of IT workers said they were happy at work.

Kevin Knaul, executive vice president of IT and telecommu-nications practice for Hudson

North America, says increas-ing optimism about hiring and the related prospect of a return to normal workloads has con-tributed to the increased job satisfaction scores. More than one-third of IT workers surveyed said that their companies were hiring. “There’s a return to nor-malcy,” says Knaul. “IT workers aren’t just happy to have a job anymore.”

In fact, the data shows that IT workers may be the happiest of

all work-ers. Com-

pared with e m p l o y e e s

in other industries surveyed by Hudson (a divi-sion of the staffing and execu-tive search company Hudson Highland Group), IT workers generated the highest positive response rate to the job satis-faction question. Health-care workers were a close second at 76 percent.

Knaul cautions, however, that CIOs should continue to monitor staff morale because, now that the job market is pick-ing up, some workers could be

tempted to leave. “Turnover kills the productivity of an IT department,” Knaul notes.

A recent survey by CIO shows that IT executives are indeed concerned about morale. Among the top staff-ing challenges for this group surveyed by CIO: Preventing burnout (83 percent) and low morale (60 percent). The sur-vey also cited stress as a major contributor to low morale. A whopping 76 percent of IT executives said that stress among IT staff was high or very high.

Stressed, but HappyJob satisfaction of IT workers is rising, but CIOs worry about burnout.

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S 1. Monitor morale. Use 360-degree management surveys and employee satisfaction surveys to formally gauge morale. Informally, managers who spend time working next to employees will have a better read on morale than those who don’t.

2. provide training. IT workers want to keep their skills in step with current technology trends. If it’s not possible to give time off for training, try lunch-time or after-hours training sessions to satisfy their needs.

3. compete on salary. Even though IT workers aren’t likely to be wooed away by a few extra dollars if they’re well-trained and happy, Knaul says that com-panies must be in the ballpark in order to keep their best and brightest.

In Spite of High Stress Levels...HOw wOUld yOU dEsCrIbE THE StreSS LeveL In yOUr COmpany's IT dEparTmEnT?

... It Workers Are the Happiest...wOrKErs wHO saId THEy arE HAppy wITH THEIr JObs

...And Getting HappierIt WorkerS wHO saId THEy arE HAppy wITH THEIr JObs

may 2004 66%

March 2005 77%

Very High: 19%

low: 3%

normal: 21%

High: 57%

SoUrCE: hudson Employment IndexCIO rESEarCH

accounting and finance

accounting and finance64%

71%

76%

77%

Health Care

IT

Vikram SenSpecial Secretary, IT Department,

Government of West Bengal

Sen succeeds ravi Kumar. Sen was earlier Spe-

cial Secretary, Backward Class and Social Wel-

fare. In his new assignment, Sen will function

as nodal officer, driving IT industry and IT in

the government.

Lokesh Jha,Principal Secretary, IT department

Government of J&K

Jha succeeds arun K Mehta. He is an IaS officer

of the 1986 batch. Jha plans to drive the comput-

erization of various directories in J&K – including

treasury, transport, and the chief minister’s office.

among other priorities , he plans to implement to a

State Wide area network.

Dr. Jerry SmithCTO, Symphony Services

Dr. Smith comes on board at Symphony Services,

as its first CTO. He brings to the table a reputation

for the successful executions of innovative ideas

and new technologies. He packs years of experi-

ence as an IT strategist and offers expertise in

world-class technologies and r&D processes.

In previous roles, Dr. Smith was vice-president of

engineering and acting Chief CIO for IPr Interna-

tional. under Dr. Smith’s watch, IPr International

was awarded the Ben Franklin Technology Partners

Best Management Team 2004 peer award and the

Gartner Midsize Enterprise Innovation award.

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Powering up a New Breed of BatteriesM o b I l E T E C H N o l o G Y No matter how portable gadgets become there’s a time when they all must come back to earth: Recharging time.

As a result, the quest for longer battery life still occupies much develop-ment time. Much of the work is focused on making batteries based on current technologies such as lithium ion last longer, and an increasing amount of time is being spent looking into new technologies such as fuel cells.

“Lithium ion has been improving at a rate of about 9 percent per year since a decade ago when Sony introduced the first battery based on this tech-

nology,” says Ric Fulop, co-founder of A123 Systems, a start-up that’s developed a high-power battery.

Fulop says lithium ion capacities have increased from around 2.2Ah (ampere hours) a few years ago to about 2.6Ah, and there’s room for continued improvement.

However, there are limits to the technology, Fulop says.

“You are reaching the limits and it’s not going to

get much better,” he says. Making a better battery means messing with mate-rials and that’s a battle against nature.

Companies are also working on speedier recharging so devices are up and running again faster. Toshiba Corp. has developed a prototype lithium ion battery that can absorb about 80 percent of the battery’s total power capac-ity in about one minute. That’s much faster than the typical charging rate of 2 percent to 3 percent of total capacity per minute. The new battery could make it possible to quickly bring a dead laptop back to life.

Although lithium ion remains the king in portable gadgets, one of the most talked-about new technologies is the fuel cell. These create electricity from a simple reaction, typically that of a methanol and water mixture and air. They’re generating interest because they can provide a relatively large amount of power from a small amount of inexpensive fuel and are environ-mentally friendlier than other batteries.

Both Toshiba and NEC Corp. have demonstrated direct methanol fuel cells (DMFC) for use with laptop computers. A prototype unveiled by Toshiba at this year’s Cebit show in Germany could power a small laptop for 10 hours before it required a recharge in the form of a squirt of methanol, similar to the way a cigarette lighter is refueled. The Toshiba DMFC can provide about 20 watts of power, as can a similar prototype from NEC.

But no matter what happens with battery technology, perhaps the life of a laptop will never move much beyond eight hours. “The notebook guys don’t want to give you more than eight hours,” says Fulop.

—By Martyn Williams

Contract Sadness Too many CIOs cut enterprise software deals that look fabulous to the CEO and CFO but commit the people who do the real work to a nightmare of unrealistic expectations.

A close friend who works for a global marketing company serves on the executive committee that oversees the design and rollout of an enterprise personnel system. The deployment, which will affect scores of the company’s subsidiaries, is

running late and over budget. Everyone is frustrated, and the situation is getting worse. Surprise.

My friend and I mull over the corporation’s ulterior motive for the system: To consolidate and centralize all of the company’s HR functions. A couple of cheap but clever technical fixes suggest themselves. The best thing about the fixes — besides the price

— is that they’ll be easy to test. My friend presents the ideas to her committee. She expects sighs of relief and a welcoming reception.

Doesn’t happen. To the contrary, the vendor throws a fit. Cheap and clever technical fixes are seen as diabolical and subversive threats. What’s more, the vendor insists that those kinds of technical fixes violate the terms of the contract. Although vendor

“consultants” grudgingly acknowledge that they can’t possibly deliver anything near what they’ve promised anywhere close to on time or on budget, the contract ostensibly forbids this non-source-code-touching intervention.

My friend is incredulous; I’m merely disgusted. I’ve seen this before. So what’s happened? The CIO, in cahoots with the CFO, has negotiated a contract that is all about cost savings and service-level agreements (SLAs) and completely disrespectful of what it takes — and what it means — to implement a working system enterprisewide. The CIO has cheated and betrayed his people by committing his company to a contract that treats implementation as essentially irrelevant to how the system

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ultimately performs. That’s unprofessional and contemptible. It’s also shockingly common.

Surely you aren’t one of those oh-so-Olympian CIOs who view implementation as something that the little people may have to worry about but that is far too tactical to occupy the time and negotiating savvy of a C-level executive? Surely you aren’t a business leader who believes that implementation is simply the “black box” means to the end of accomplishing cost savings and SLAs? After all, we’re not negotiating these multimillion-dollar global contracts for the purpose of promoting happy implementations but for the goal of satisfactory results.

CIO Eyes Wide ShutThe reality is that too many CIOs cut enterprise deals that

may look absolutely fabulous to the CEO, CFO and all the other C-creatures, but commit the people who do the real work

to a nightmare of unrealistic expectations and milestones. The contract undermines the ability, ingenuity, creativity and initiative of people to do good work. The contract focuses on ultimate results at the expense of the healthy and coherent processes necessary to achieve them.

In short, too many CIOs and CFOs negotiate IT contracts with vendors as if the process of implementation is completely disconnected from the quality of the system that is actually deployed. This is particularly acute in outsourcing deals that trumpet cost reductions and so-called airtight SLAs. These CIOs and their colleagues believe that, so long as the vendor and the system comply with the SLA, everything will be hunky-dory. Who cares if the negotiated contract gets in the way of clever innovations that can slash time from schedules or money from budgets? If you’re a professional, you should.

One financial services company I know builds into its contract the provision that if it is experiencing the risk of a delay, it has the right to force the vendor to bring in a senior partner from one of the systems integrators for two weeks or until the problem is resolved—whichever comes first. For obvious reasons, the systems integrators and their senior partners take great pains to make sure that this option need never be exercised.

By contrast, a pharmaceutical CIO who negotiates hundreds of millions of contracts with outside vendors has put himself in the position where, by contract, his vendors don’t have to perform timely upgrades if their software touches open-source systems.

The vendor rationale? They insist that since open source isn’t formally tested, they’re entitled to wait and see how it

works with their software before they help the onsite team do an upgrade. In other words, the presence of open source dilutes the SLA. Needless to say, the pharmaceutical IT employees who actually make the systems run are sick and tired of this arbitrary constraint.

To be fair, the SLA focus is understandable. In the first and final analysis, organizations want measurable and repeatable results. But for mature adults to actually negotiate contracts in which process quality is divorced from quality results is simply delusional. It flies in the face of everything we know about human behavior and systems deployment. Valuing good outcomes over good process guarantees that you’ll get neither.

To my disgust, I’ve observed CIOs who have grown so divorced from the implementation process in their own organizations that they don’t think twice about the implementation implications of the IT contracts they’re negotiating. Implementation? Not their job, man.

Sadly, the CFOs and CEOs typically understand (and appreciate) so little about what software design, testing and deploy-ment mean operationally that they can’t tell (and don’t care) how a contract can undermine what they say they’re trying to do.

Yes, many contracts have milestones, which serve as metrics surrogates for good process and good implementation, and these milestones must be met. But, frankly, they’re cop-outs for lazy CIOs. CIOs who truly care about leadership (and their people) will seek to negotiate contracts that explicitly empower their people (and their vendors) to be more creative and innovative.

CIOs have an affirmative obligation to prevent IT contracts from becoming straitjackets for the people who have to implement the technology.

I’d like to see more CIOs circulating their next-to-final-draft vendor contracts with their implementation and project leaders. The goal would be to solicit useful comments and actionable ideas on what impact the agreement would have on the ability to implement a system that delivers the desired SLAs. This “implementation impact statement” could — and should — be both a powerful tool for savvy negotiators and, just as important, a document that gives the organization real insight into its implementation strengths and weaknesses.

If your organization consistently confronts implementation impediments with its IT vendors, the real source of the problem may not be the quality of your people or your processes but the quality of the contract you negotiate. Involving your implementers in your negotiations may turn out to be the smartest kind of delegating you can do . CIO

Michael Schrage is codirector of MIT Media Lab’s eMarketing Initiative. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

CIOs should share next-to-final-draft vendor contracts with their project leaders.

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How to Become a Change Agent If you want people to follow you, take a walk in their shoes.

I have always been fascinated by how information technol-ogy can be used to make an organization more competitive. And so I redesign existing business processes and design new processes and then try to get people to buy into these ideas.

In short, I am a change agent.Sometimes I am welcomed like a new coach who the players

believe can turn around a losing team. Other times I am received like a government tax auditor at a shareholders’ meeting. Leading change is a delicate business. We all agree that companies need to innovate and become more agile to compete in today’s global economy. But on the road between this general agreement and any new way of doing something, there are many pitfalls awaiting the change leader. Change stirs up a lot of resistance in people. As Mark Twain put it, “I’m all for progress. It’s change I don’t like.”

A leader has to get past this resistance and convince others to embrace new ways of doing things. But first, he needs to get people to listen to what he has to say.

Leading by DoingSome years ago I was hired to be a director of systems development

at a company that distributed electric wire and cable and electronic communication systems. After I had been with the company for a few months, the COO called me to his office. He told me that the four regional sales vice presidents wanted to streamline the sales process, but that IT had saddled them with clunky, hard-to-use systems. So they had requested money to hire consultants to build the new sys-tems they wanted. “They are not getting their own IT budget,” the COO told me. “Your job is to figure out what they want.”

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Mike Hugos ToTal leadersHIp When you don’t know what people want, you need to ask them. So I decided to spend time in the field. One day I was visiting a regional headquarters, talking with a salesperson about his job. He was telling me about the difficulties he was having with the existing computer system. I noticed the sales vice president watching me from his corner office.

After about 15 minutes he walked up to the cubicle where we were sitting and said, “Move over, Steve. Let Mike take your calls and see for himself what it’s like.” I looked up at him and I knew he could see the fear in my eyes. He said, “Don’t worry if you screw up. We screw up too.” Then he went back to his office.

It was clear to me that if I was to get anywhere with this project, I had to take his dare. I sat down in Steve’s chair and started taking calls. The afternoon’s customers were primarily building contractors who needed some cable or electronic gear in a hurry. My task was to sell them what I had at the greatest profit and at the same time be helpful and make them feel as if they had received a good deal.

The callers were busy, and they talked fast. I had to look up the products they wanted and see if I had them in stock. If something wasn’t in stock, I had to find something else that would fit their needs. At the same time, I was also supposed to quote a price based on the prices other salespeople had recently gotten for the same items, factoring in such variables as how much the customer wanted to buy and whether he would pick up his purchase himself.

What I Learned in the TrenchesIt was too difficult to get all the information I really needed

to make the best decisions. Navigating from one screen to the next was hopelessly complex, requiring me to remember cryp-tic commands and to know which function keys to press — and in which order — to find what I was looking for. Sometimes I quoted too high a price and people said they’d get back to me later (which they never did). Other times I was intimidated into quoting a price that didn’t have much profit in it at all.

In a stroke of beginner’s luck, I managed to make the company some money that day, but more important for my purposes, I understood what type of system would help the salespeople become more profitable. I realized that their job was somewhat like that of a stockbroker. Prices were always fluctuating based on many factors, including supply and demand. The salespeople needed different information at dif-ferent times to get a good feel for the best price to offer a cus-tomer. The most important data had to be displayed on just a handful of easy-to-access screens. And navigation among screens had to be fast so that you could retrieve information while you were talking on the phone.

Call Me Mr. CredibleThe story traveled over the grapevine: An IT guy had taken

sales calls. An IT guy might actually have a clue. After that, the salespeople knew who I was. They opened up to me. They wanted me to know about ideas they had for this or that fea-ture of a new system. I fit these suggestions into the overall design for a new sales support system.

People liked the designs I showed them. They could see their own ideas reflected in them. I was able to create a consensus for changing and improving the sales process among a broad audience that included regional vice presidents, branch man-agers and individual salespeople. So how did I, an IT guy, get buy-in and support from a group of end users who had been threatening to go their own way? I got them to trust me.

Here’s the take-away: In order to be a leader, you must first be seen as a leader in the eyes of those you would lead. This means people need to see that you understand them and care about them. They need to believe that you are open to their ideas and that you will do what it takes to get things done. In other words, you need to have credibility.

If you are currently (or soon will be) in the role of change leader, ask yourself this: “Am I credible in the eyes of the peo-ple I will lead?” If you are not — as I was not — ask yourself how you will earn that credibility. My advice is to spend time with the people you want to lead, listen more than you talk, and when they test you to see what you are made of, take the challenge. It hardly matters what happens. People just want to see if you can walk a mile in their shoes before they decide to follow you. CIO

Mike Hugos is CIO of network Services, a distributor of housekeeping supplies, janitorial products, packaging and paper goods. He is the author of Building the real-Time Enterprise: An Executive Briefing. Send feedback on this column to editor@cio.in

Mike Hugos ToTal leadersHIp

spend time with the people you want to lead, listen more than you talk, and when they test you to see what you are made of, take the challenge.

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SPECIAL REPORT

ONES TOONES TOONES TOONES TOWATCH

With our With our Ones to Watch initiative, we honor a stellar initiative, we honor a stellar

group of future CIOs.group of future CIOs.

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WATCH

A CIO’s job is never easy. He has to persuade management to invest in technology, keep abreast of endless developments and business objectives, stay a step ahead of hackers, re-define his role as organizations attempt to consolidateresponsibilities and drive his team to perform new miracles. Then, he has to choose and groom a suc-cessor. When it’s time to pass the baton on, it is his or her duty to have cultivated someone capable of standing in their shoes.

Of all the leadership tasks that CIOs face, one of the most important is developing future IT leaders. It’s one of the many duties that CIOs perform as part of their role in running IT, a means of ensuring the long-term success of the enterprise and an important aspect of managerial responsibility toward employees. In today’s demanding environment, CIOs can’t possibly do it all themselves. But when talented people leave, the bench has to be stocked with others ready to step up.

Leadership development isn’t formulaic; what works for one CIO can fall flat in the hands of an-other, or within a different corporate culture. In “How Stars Are Made”(page 28), we detail cur-rent trends in leadership development, such as ex-ecutive coaching and “action learning programs,” and report on the experiences of a few IT executives with leadership development programs in place. At Godfrey Philips India for instance, Senior VP (IT and Corporate Development) Alagu Balaraman doesn’t believe in a ‘10-Easy-Steps’ approach to developing leadership. His way ranges from individual mentor-ing to getting the chosen ones to perform under stretch to visits to other companies for a perspective change to even getting them to debate business issues and lay down a technology vision for the organization.

It’s in appreciation of CIOs who get leadership de-velopment right that we created Ones to Watch. This program identifies the rising stars in IT — staff who have what it takes to become the CIOs of the future.

We approached a few proactive organizations, seek-ing future IT leaders not older than 40 years of age.

To put together this special report, CIO’s editorial team also drew on discussion with scores of IT ex-ecutives and other business leaders and experts to identify the top strategic imperatives for success as a CIO today.

Ones to Watch honorees had to demonstrate ex-pertise in a wide range of areas. They needed to have a list of on-the-job accomplishments in their back-grounds, such as leading a large project or conceiving a new business product. They needed to be risk takers, team builders, and change agents. After a final due-diligence review by CIO’s editorial team, 30 honorees rose to the top — Our “30 Rising Stars” (page 40).

We then stepped back for a look at what our hono-rees had in common. We found three overarching characteristics:

Vision — an ability to see solutions in often cha-otic situations.Influence — the capability to engage business users and other stakeholders in IT programs in a way that doesn’t depend on the power of their po-sition.Execution — the bottom-line ability to deliver, time and again.

Each of our honorees demonstrated all of these traits. In doing so (“What Leadership Looks Like”, page 34), they benefited their companies, made their CIOs look good and served as testaments to the importance of leadership development. CIO

ONES TOONES TOWATCH

Godfrey Philips India CIO Alagu Balaraman is

in high spirits. Not only is the majority of IT in his organization

outsourced, but he also has a small yet strong IT team with

self motivated leaders. Balaraman doesn’t hesitate for a minute

to say that S.P. Giridhar, his senior manager for IT Infrastructure,

is passionate about ‘wandering’ into

new technologies and aligning them with

business. “As a leader, one must not be afraid of

trying anything. From an infrastructure point

of view that’s very important,” says Balaraman.

While Giridhar’s IT skills have reached a certain

Reader ROI:

The fundamentals of successful

leadership development

CIOs’ experience with various

leadership development programs

How to keep your rising stars

from leaving

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StarsStarsStarsHowHowHowStarsHowStarsStarsHowStarsStarsHowStarsAre MadeAre MadeAre Made

A Guide To Developing A Guide To Developing A Guide To Developing Your Future LeadersYour Future Leaders

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If star employees aren’t challenged, says ALAGU BALARAMAN, CIO of Godfrey Philips India , they will waste away. He works hard to get his high-potentials to ponder business issues and formulate technology vision.

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perfection, Balaraman focuses on grooming him for business acumen and leadership skills.

If you aren’t blessed with IT managers such as Giridhar — up-and-comers who are doing great things for IT in the here and now — where do you find them? The answer might be right outside your office door. Future leaders in information technology aren’t born like that; they are made. By you. Giridhar’s abilities didn’t develop in a vacuum; he’s the beneficiary of Godfrey Philips’s and Balaraman’s emphasis on leadership development.

The honorees of our inaugural Ones to Watch report, including Giridhar and others whom we feature in “What Leadership Looks Like” (Page 34), have spent many years developing and honing their skills. Often, they were identified early on. They were challenged relentlessly, their weaknesses targeted for improvement, and only then were they promoted. Most likely, a great boss or two has shown them plenty of attention — mentoring, guiding and pushing. Hilal Khan, Head of IT at auto major Honda Siel Cars India, firmly believes that IT leaders are certainly not born that way. “Identify a person who’s the best among the good and help them realize their potential. Once you as a CIO are able to do that, it then becomes your duty not to let that asset go waste,” says Khan.

The elements of leadership development plans vary by company and CIO. Some CIOs rely on mentoring programs or classroom courses; others challenge their high-potential employees with cross-departmental assignments or fast-tracking through the ranks. In a larger sense, though, the differences between the programs are inconsequential. What matters most is that CIOs make talent-building a top priority.

“As a CIO, I’m evaluated on how I groom my successor. If tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, the successor should be able to take over without causing much disruption,” says Arindam Bose, General Manager IT LG Electronics India Limited (LGEIL). “That’s a good philosophy which all companies should follow. It keeps business operating seamlessly and is a most practical approach,” adds Bose.

All CIOs contacted for this story unanimously agreed that leadership development should be a core part of a CIO’s activity. The degree of activity and involvement may vary, but there is unanimity of thought that any person who aspires to be a leader needs to be good at technology, skillful at aligning it with business and be able to manage people adroitly.

Leadership development programs are demonstrably worth the effort, say CIOs who have implemented them. They end up with a staff of highly skilled employees who are steeped in the inner workings of both IT and the business. These IT managers extend the influence of the CIO, as they go about getting buy-in from the business side of the organization. And because they know what the

business needs, these up-and-comers are poised to churn out the next killer application or product.

For CIOs, a leadership development program takes time, flexibility, forethought and patience. In short, it takes leadership from you. Even Godfrey Philips’ Giridhar isn’t perfect, which is why leadership development never stops. “He still needs grooming on dealing with business users,” says CIO Balaraman.

The Building Blocks of Successful Leadership Development

There are certain foundation stones for any leadership development program. You can’t have leadership development without support from the Board Room. If your CEO or CFO thinks leadership development is a waste of time and money, chances are your plans will be sunk. When the support is

there, leadership development is infectious, spreading out into the

Leadership develop-ment for staffers with spark can’t be done half-heartedly says YES Bank CIO ADITYA MENON. It takes active, thoughtful participa-tion from

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halls, cubes and conference rooms of the organization. Godfrey Philips, for instance, has a standard leadership development program in which IT leaders also participate. Critically, only if the content of these development initiatives is centered on the actual business needs of a company will your Board see the business imperative for creating such a program.

At the same time, the CIOs must have just as much skin in the game as their CEOs. CIOs need to be the role models, affirming that participating in leadership development is the only way to move ahead. Bose feels that expecting “miracles” from potential leaders without adequate leadership development initiatives will be unjust. “If they need either leadership training or the development of interpersonal skills, they ought to be allowed access to it,” he maintains.

It’s very important to first assess business need before you choose the people for the leadership development. As part of Honda’s worldwide people development initiative, Khan has to conduct workshops and training sessions for his teams in which the discussions center on mapping the business needs of the company. “We work on a three-year business landscape in which one year is the actual target and rest is projected. Each of my leaders has to contribute to it,” he says.

Godfrey Philips’ Balaraman doesn’t believe in a ‘10-Easy-Steps’ approach. “If there was, we would have wonderful leaders all around us,” he says. It is not easy to know the mechanism as well as the potential of people. Leaders are nothing but one class of people. Balaraman emphasizes the need for selecting the right person. The chosen person should have the ability to adapt to each situation and also the right mental framework. When an IT professional joins a company he gets accolades for his technical skills; but as he grows, he needs to be rewarded for his skills to influence things and understand complex issues.

When Dheeraj Sinha joined Apollo Tyres as head of information services, he demonstrated the capability to comprehend the business needs of the company before deciding on IT solutions. “Sinha has been an asset from a very critical juncture of our growth process. He is responsible for putting systems in place in a seamless fashion, while convincing the management about his decisions,” observes COO Neeraj R.S. Kanwar.

A person’s ability to stand out — first on his own, then among the peers — is one of the ways that Honda Siel Cars spots future leaders. Its IT team is divided into four groups headed by team leaders, with the CIO sharing corporate responsibilities along with IT. “A leader can only be the one who can conceive, present, get budgetary approvals, put together a team of professionals and implement and sustain a project on his own. If that’s not the case, we are living with mediocrity,” feels Khan, the auto major’s head of IT. When you see talented persons all you need to do is to watch them from a distance and assist or train in only those areas about which they are not confident.

YES Bank is probably the newest entry among Indian private sector banks. And that’s why the bank didn’t want to own most of its IT infrastructure. CIO Aditya Menon feels that, though outsourcing offers flexibility and the openness to chose technologies and solutions, it also means managing a bunch of vendors, which at times is more difficult than managing technology. Suren Shetty, Vice President IT has not only prepared the blue print of YES Bank’s IT architecture but also manages the team of workers both internal and external and maintains vendor SLAs. “This is guaranteed to drive anyone up the wall, but Shetty has a flair for doing this amicably,” says Menon.

1 Mentoring Relationships – essential to developing leaders in a company, whether the relationships are formal or informal. The people who grow in any organization and aspire to higher positions generally have had mentoring relationships throughout their careers.

2 Cross Organizational Assign-ments – experiences that go on outside of a person’s spe-cific job role. IT staffers need to appreciate the importance of networking with people

across and outside IT, because you never know what the next assignment will be.

3 Outside Associations – with any number of organizations, whether industry-related, research groups or educational groups or educational associa-tions. What’s importance is that employees are getting an ap-preciation of the outside world.

4 Enterprise View – broaden-ing employees’ perspectives as they go up the ranks. Incentives for establishing an

enterprise view are important for job effectiveness.

5 Committee or Governance Board – participation broad-ens IT staffers’ enterprise views and shows them the dynamics of governance and how things get done inside a company.

6 Job Rotation – crucial because an employee in a job for a long time tends not to develop as effectively as someone who moves across different roles and responsibilities.

Ways to Develop Highly Successful People MetLife CIO Steve Sheinheit’s keys for cultivating talent

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Choosing the Right Leadership Development Program

Here are more options for leadership development than any one CIO could ever need. Therefore, it’s critical that CIOs choose carefully and implement programs that are best suited to fill the gaps in their staff ’s skill sets and the overall company direction.

Stretch Assignments. One of the top leadership development tools found common across the Ones to Watch Honorees is stretch assignments — when an up-and-comer’s mettle is tested in a task beyond his abilities. For instance, Abhrajit De, Head of Infrastructure at Haldia Petrochemicals, was informed by his CIO that he needed to replace an ATM-based LAN with a Gigabit LAN with limited resources and time. He was also stretched to the extent that his team’s head count remained unchanged. But De wasn’t deterred and his confidence paid off. “He has repeatedly proved his leadership skills in the company and has a deep understanding of the company’s business processes and resource limitation,” says CIO Anjan Bose.

Godfrey Philips’ Balaraman feels it is essential to stretch a leader, but not to the point where he fails. In some CIOs’ opinion, the target should be set so that at least 70 percent can be achieved. “Stretching is a very subjective thing but in order to stretch, you better know how far something can go. That’s something you sit down and discuss with the leader,” says Balaraman.

At insurance major Aviva Life India, the business targets are already high because the company needs to catch up with the existing players. To support these goals it’s essential to have equally gutsy IT support. Abir Basak, IT Infrastructure head, was quick to figure this and in short order architected a Disaster Recovery plan. The initiative was achieved through consolidation of enterprise storage with its own replication logic, without going in for cumbersome server-based replication using third party software. The solution highlights innovation, skills and resource savings — all qualities a leader must have.

LGEIL, for instance, has two types of goals for the leaders. One is the normal one and the other is the “stretch goal” — based on the evaluation of the person who is projected as a leader. “Anyone who is not able to stretch or adapt to conditions of stretch is unfit to become a leader,” says GM – IT Bose.

Cross Training. At Honda Siel Cars, Head of IT Khan makes sure that each leader has the ability to handle crucial basic functions at all points

in time. He’s divided his IT department across Infrastructure, People Management, Application Development and Customer Services. Despite having leaders for each domain, Khan makes sure that all leaders can cross function to prevent disruption in work. “Although no one person is expected to excel in each domain, they must be ready to take up any challenge at short notice. This requires constantly training those designated as leaders,” he says. Similarly, it’s ensured that each future leader understands the business logic of the company.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer India also emphasizes cross training. For a couple of years now, Shiva Nair, Senior Manager Business Technology, has been managing multiple portfolios. Since he put the company’s IT infrastructure in order, he was asked to look at the technology risk management portfolio and manage the security of both electronic and physical data across every division at Pfizer. “A leader must know a little bit of everything. If a leader has to replace a CIO in any given organization, his ability to handle

It’s a CIO’s duty to not only identify brilliant team members but also to help them realize their potential, says HILAL KHAN, Head of IT at Honda Siel Cars. He does so with a firm belief in cross training.

LEAdERSHIP dEvELOPMEnT

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multiple portfolios is the best criterion to judge his leadership skills,” says Arun Gupta, Senior Director Business Technology at Pfizer. The power of cross-training lies in the multiple perspectives that are gained from it. Action-learning Programs. Combine the classroom with cross-functional teams that take on a demanding project and use it as a learning vehicle and you get action-learning programs. Since IT in Godfrey Philips is heavily outsourced, the key resources have started getting into a vendor-buyer kind of relationship. CIO Balaraman decided to start a concept dubbed the ‘conference’. Leaders invited there mull over business issues and lay down a technology vision for the organization. “The technology vision that is articulated in such sessions is purposefully kept very high. Based on that, each person starts thinking what he can do to achieve it in both short and long terms. It keeps the action alive,” says Balaraman. Direct Application – Other recent trends in leadership development include seminars in networking, presentation skills and expanding the influence of the IT leaders. “In LG we have business needs coming up from all sorts of users. It’s therefore essential to equip leaders with options where they can have an immediate tutorial on anything they lack expertise in,” says GM IT Bose. While LGEIL sends its leaders for higher training to South Korea – the worldwide headquarters – to both share their knowledge and best practices, Honda has a high-tech center within its campus, which caters to training through class room sessions, online and other means. The company makes sure that any training which is helpful in enhancing leadership skills is made available wherever possible.

Another factor that has helped Godfrey Philips significantly is learning through one-on-one visits with other companies. “We fix these visits in advance with a concrete agenda and share information. It shows people new avenues. In most cases, it’s targeted to change perspective. The leaders then try to up the ante and do better than what they have seen,” says Balaraman.

Sustaining the Enthusiasm

Once CIOs have decided on a leadership development direction, they need to actively manage the program to make sure that the right people are getting into it and that it fulfills their intentions. Bose strongly feels that leadership development is not just about training and

nurturing. You have to regularly check enthusiasm levels and interest. It’s also wise to collect ongoing evaluations of the program to build up evidence that it is delivering value. Otherwise, training

funds can disappear when times are tough or a major emergency project can take away staffers.

Elements that prove value include: Peers and subordinates view program participants as more effective leaders; a majority of the leaders for high-level positions are internal promotions; and ROI calculations can prove the link between leaders and better business results. CIOs need to track how much money and time they have invested, and then see what changes people who have been through the program make when they go back to the workplace.

Not all rising stars stick around, waiting for that high-level job, of course. Inevitably, some leave for richer pastures or personal reasons. There’s not much CIOs can do to stop an employee who is determined to depart. There are, however, practical and crucial ways to lessen the exodus. Research shows that an employee’s boss is the single best determinant of whether a person will stay or leave. So you have to assign your high-potential leaders to the best bosses.

The potential leader has to be shown a succession path so that he lets go of what he is doing and moves on to a bigger challenge with better enthusiasm. “If they don’t see their CIO demonstrating that kind of confidence, they will either hang on with the routine job or leave for better opportunities outside the company,” feels Balaraman.

This also holds true for letting leaders learn from errors. A couple of errors must be forgiven in the larger interests of both the individual and organization. It’s part of a CIO’s role to pinpoint errors and put the leader on the right path. “When it comes to blatant errors, I take responsibility for them and don’t allow the management to bother my team leaders. All success is theirs and all failures mine. It’s my duty to understand why an error occurred and how can it be rectified before I let the management take any drastic decision. Otherwise, it can kill all enthusiasm to innovate,” explains Khan.

Above all, CIOs who have embraced leadership development say their programs aren’t just an IT thing; they are an outgrowth of company philosophies that are aligned with IT department priorities.

And when leadership development works, the S.P. Giridhars and other next-generation leaders of the world will give all that investment back to their companies with new systems and new ways of thinking that will make their CIOs very happy. CIO

Bureau Head north rahul neel Mani can be reached at rahul_ mani@cio.in

“As a CIO, I am evaluated on how I groom my successor. If tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, “As a CIO, I am evaluated on how I groom my successor. Iftomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, “As a CIO, I am evaluated on how I groom my successor. If“As a CIO, I am evaluated on how I groom my successor. Iftomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, “As a CIO, I am evaluated on how I groom my successor. If

the successor should be able to take over from me without causing the successor should be able to take over from me without causing tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, the successor should be able to take over from me without causing tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company, the successor should be able to take over from me without causing tomorrow, I am assigned to a new responsibility in the company,

much disruption.” Arindam Bose, General Manager IT, LG Electronics India

ONES TOONES TOWATCH

What Leadership Looks LikeOur 30 Ones to Watch honorees possess vision, the ability to influence others and a talent for getting things done

Lekha Bajpai,AFL

Abir Basak, Aviva

Bharat Dave,Torrent

G. K. Dattaraj, Alstom

Abhijit Ghatak,

Ericsson

Aashish Kshetry,Aashish Kshetry,Asian Paints

Shiva Nair,Pfizer India

Daya Prakash,LG Electronics

Anish Shah, Reliance

Subbalakshmi Shirali,Shamrao Vithal Co-op Bank

Prasad Sohoni,Thomas Cook

N. Srinivas,N. Srinivas,Novo Nordisk

Venkat Jagaduri,Polaris

Umesh Mehta,

New Holland

Photos By srivatsa shandilya, FotocorP, sujith, chandroo, surEsh

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What Leadership Looks Like honorees possess vision, the ability to influence others and a talent for getting things done

Reader ROI:

How to find a future CIO on

your staff

The winning traits exhibited by

these leaders

Their character-forming

experiences

B y B a l a j I N a R a S I M h a N

Pravin Bhosle,

UTI BankK. Annapurna Devi,

A P Technology ServicesCharles Padmakumar,

Flextronics Software

Debashish Chakraborty, Honda Siel S.P. Giridhar,

Godfrey Philips

Jitendra Sarode,PantaloonShiv Shankar Singh,

BSE

Suren Shetty,YES Bank

Dheeraj Sinha, Apollo Tyres

Veena Vasanth,

Biocon

Arun Shakya, Britannia

Ravinder Sharma, Fortis

C. Thangavel,

NICAlok Verma,

ITC

NoT PT PT ICTUREd: aBhrajit dE, haldia PEtrochEmicals, mahEsh Kumar PinnamanEni, auroBindo Pharma

3 6 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

ONES TOONES TOWATCH

for an international project. The potential savings when the plan is implemented will be in excess of Rs 9 crore ($2 million).

“Shah is very good at managing large and complex projects where deliverables are not just the applications, hardware and software. At Reliance, deliverables for the IT systems mean providing easy to use process automation executed within the time for the overall project to be success-ful,” says Ashish Kumar Chauhan, Advi-

sor, Reliance Industries.What is it then that keeps a person like

Shah ticking? An important factor is that he has a flexible agenda. He is not wedded to a par-

ticular technology or a platform and encourages his colleagues to work on multiple platforms that suit the business requirements. At the same time, Shah teaches them to understand the big picture by keeping the enterprise systems architecture in

mind. He has been involved in multiple roles starting from support to setting up new projects to rationalizing systems. He has supported the organization very well, besides playing a key role during the company’s infor-

mation systems organization restructuring. Big moves, indeed.

Keeping the big picture in mind is crucial for a CIO. Rajeev Seoni, Assistant Vice President and Head - IT, Flextronics Software Systems, states: “There are two major aspects of a CIO’s role — man-

aging existing IT infrastructure and systems, and ensuring that IT strategy is in line with business objectives. Therefore, a CIO’s vision has to be in line with the company’s vision. He has to look forward and visualize the future requirements, plan for them and get them up and running in time — ideally, even before the users raise a request!”

This means that, if you want to become a CIO, it is more im-portant to be proactive than merely reactive to the organization’s needs. The potential CIO should learn to anticipate where the com-pany plans to go, and then prepare the IT infrastructure and en-sure that it is capable of bearing the load. “To be effective, a poten-tial CIO should understand the pain points and challenges that the organization faces on its path to achieving its vision, mission and objectives. Awareness of technology and its impact on the opera-tions and strategy also contribute to success. So, if organizational effectiveness is a pain area for the business that is constrained by legacy processes, the potential CIO, with assistance from the CIO and the IT team, must provide the organization with tools that pro-vide fast execution capabilities,” says Arun Gupta, Senior Director, Business Technology, Pfizer India

Much of the credibility of a CIO actually rests on the shoulders of these almost CIOs. They are responsible for the success or failure of multicrore-rupee, enterprisewide initiatives. They manage your most critical employees. They act as your surrogate when you’re out of the office. And the best thing is, they do it all very, very well.

Potential CIOs start working under existing CIOs, and the more senior ones, namely the deputy CIOs, have to understand what their bosses are doing and manage operations effectively so that their bosses develop confidence in them and start grooming them for the role. Of course, in the interim period, they still have to man-age the operational issues of the IT systems. The challenge before them is to perform their roles effectively, while also, at the same time, understanding the skill sets that they require in order to one day sit in the CIO’s chair.

HOnOREES

ummed up in just two words, the role of a CIO is to

“Think Big.” Of course, when you are working with

an organization like Reliance Industries, which has a an organization like Reliance Industries, which has a

market capitalization of Rs 1,12,500 crore and offices market capitalization of Rs 1,12,500 crore and offices

all around the world, one doesn’t have any option but

to do so. Take the case of Anish Shah, a member of the

IT team at RIL. While implementing a large IT project

recently, he provided leadership to plan and implement

a cost reduction of more than 50 percent in the IT Budget

ANISH SHAH, a member of the It team at Reliance Industries, came up with a plan to reduce costs by 50 percent and thereby save Rs 9 crore.

Vol/1 | ISSUE/4

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This effectively means managing the low while understand-ing the high. As V Balakrishnan, CIO, Polaris Software Lab puts it: “An effective CIO has the ability to register a case for changes in processes and structures as well as for technology invest-ments at the board level, with a knack to avoid the trivia that always gets thrown at the CIO as proof of non-functionality. And then they should have the ability to tackle and solve or bypass the micro-level problem at the code or connectivity levels, which invariably bewilders the mostly inexperienced teams in execut-ing the grand plans of the CIO.”

There are some telltale signs that an IT leader is — or should be — headed for the top. Our 30 Ones to Watch honorees, recognized for their rising-star status in the IT world, display three overarch-ing characteristics the wise CIO will watch out for. They have vi-sion, often taking creative approaches to solving business prob-lems. They exhibit influence, with superior communication skills and the ability to build consensus. And they get things done, executing enterprisewide projects success-fully time and time again.

What to Watch For: VISION

Vision as a core competency is the kind of trait CIOs just know when they see it. It comes in many forms, from the ability to envision an executable plan to figuring out

how to enable a new business product. But the qualities that lead IT up-and-comers to creative approaches to solving business problems are easier to boil down. They need a thorough understanding of the down-and-dirty details of both technology capabilities and business needs, the flexibility to adjust to changing conditions in either or both, and the ability to bring the two together into a very high-level strategic plan.

“The success of a CIO depends on how he is able to visualize, plan and implement technology trends, evaluate the adoption of various technologies in his own industry and provide speedy, cost effective, flexible solutions to his users,” observes Reliance’s Chau-han. The potential CIO cannot afford to ever mis-judge the requirements of the users, and needs to always be synchronized with ground reality.

In some cases, the path to vision could be merely an innate ability to fill in the gaps at the right time. For in-stance, check out Ravinder Sharma, Assistant Manager (IT), Fortis Healthcare. Sharma joined the company over

half a decade ago as a programmer in Mohali, managing the Hospi-tal Information System (HIS) at Fortis. The existing IS Manager quit suddenly, and Sharma was immersed in tasks which were out of his caliber. However, he was able to scale up his skill sets, and as a result, could take charge of both the HIS and the other IT projects. Today, he has shifted to Delhi to manage HIS from a strategic perspective. Under his command, HIS has already been rolled out in four locations, with more to follow. Even as a programmer, Sharma had the vision to understand HIS from a comprehensive strategic viewpoint, and as a result, he is today in charge of developing, deploying, and innovating the HIS rollout. Commending him, Sunil Kapoor, CIO, Fortis Healthcare Ltd. says, “Sharma has shown great depth in whatever he is asked to do.”

Vision doesn’t mean just looking at top-level issues. It also effec-tively encompasses marrying the strategy of the board with the day-to-day needs of the company. “He [the potential CIO] should be able

to understand business from the user’s perspective or customers’ perspective and then help them with technology which will sup-port data analytics and processing, which will improve efficiency of day to day operations,” TS Purushottam, Corporate Manager, IT & Systems, Britannia Industries, points out.

But, how does a wannabe CIO show the board that he pos-sesses vision? One way could be using IT effectively in or-

der to cut costs. After all, the board — especially the CFO — is always willing to recognize vision that directly im-pacts savings positively.

And this is exactly what Abhijit Ghatak, Site IT Man-ager, Ericsson India, did. Ghatak, who has a keen eye for numbers, calculated that the company, which has a sizeable presence in India, was spending around Rs 13 crore per annum on national and interna-

tional flights. He then suggested video conferenc-ing, which bought down costs considerably, and

earned him the respect of the board. This paved the way for his vision on the applications run-ning the enterprise. When he suggested a new process, the company enthusiastically agreed,

and burden came down by 50 percent. Tamal Chakravorty, IT head of Ericsson India, who re-

fers to Ghatak as “Mr. Dependable”, says that “he will be ripe to be a CIO in a couple of years.”

The potential CIO can also depict his vision by pushing through large projects, as did Arun Shakya, Manager SAP Development, Britannia Industries Ltd. Shakya managed a complex SAP implementation and also acted as a catalyst for

a project involving MRP purchases. According to Britannia’s Purushottaman, “Shakya also

has great communication skills, some-thing that potential CIOs must have.” Clearly, communicating their vision is as important as possessing one in the first place.

Starting as a programmer, RAVINDER SHARMA, as-sistant Manager (It), Fortis healthcare, ramped up to reveal business acumen and people management skills.

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ONES TOONES TOWATCH

What to Watch For: INFLUENCE

Of course, giving business users innovative new technology tools is one thing; getting them to use these tools is quite another. That’s where influ-ence comes in. All of our Ones to Watch honorees must call upon a whole host of skills to get busi-ness buy-in for, and usage of, IT-enabled change

— from being willing to learn more about what the business needs are to gaining the trust of key stakeholders to marketing big, enter-prisewide changes to building relationships with various (often very different) constituencies.

Influence is particularly difficult but necessary when one is aim-ing for an enterprisewide impact. Take for instance the case of Venkat Jagaduri, Systems Manager, Polaris Software India Ltd. The software company was staring losses in the face because invoices to clients, which were sent over fax and mail, could get lost. Jagaduri came up with a system that synchronized systems at all 15 delivery and billing

centers, thereby impacting 6,000 employees. He also created a front-end for managing revenue projections, invoicing, and accruals and connected this effectively with the backend systems. While technol-ogy skills are important, Jagaduri’s ability to influence internal users ensured that the project saw the light of day. His boss, V. Balakrishnan, CIO, Polaris Software India Ltd., says: “I see tremendous potential in him for achieving business goals by exploiting technology.”

However, according to Balakrishnan, CIOs and those with the potential to be one should go beyond influence to become effec-tive. “Influencing through logic and business benefits is a vital skill. However, influence is a poor substitute for authority. A CIO should be empowered to make vital business process changes to exploit technology investments for quantifiable business results,” he points out. This is not something that can be done overnight. The almost CIO has to “…interact, be receptive, and be knowledgeable and approachable,” says CR Narayanan, CIO, Alstom Projects In-dia. This builds confidence in his ideas, and slowly, one can turn approachability into influence and influence into authority.

This was effectively demonstrated by Umesh Mehta, DGM IT, New Holland Tractors. Mehta got his first opportunity when he helped manage BaaN in India with a set of process improvement procedures. When he succeeded, he was recognized for his prow-ess, and soon helped parent company Chase New Holland to effec-tively implement BaaN in its China office. Avinash Arora, Direc-tor IS, New Holland Tractors states: “Mehta is best at reducing the turnaround time for IT projects and that’s an appreciable quality when you have small IT teams and tight timelines.” Mehta has thus managed to enhance his circle of influence by providing the right skills when required.

Influence in some cases is also tied to initiative, as in the case of G. K Duttaraj, Project Manager SAP, Alstom Projects India. Datta-raj realized that the SAP implementation could not succeed with-out user authorization, and so he put in place well-defined proc-esses to enable the same. In order to influence users, he performed a comprehensive risk-benefit analysis. His people management skills were critical to getting the project through, and his boss, Narayanan, calls him a “manager of captains.”

In some cases, when systems are heavily entrenched in an estab-lished and venerable company, one can build influence by tackling new projects with IT. For instance, Alok Verma, now CIO of ITC’s FMGC Division used IT extensively to manage the Wills Lifestyle brand, and utilized technology to create sophisticated tools to man-

age merchandizing. More importantly, he was involved with a project to forecast future fashion trends. He also leveraged IT to ensure the creation of a Just-In-Time manufacturing environment. This naturally enhanced his ability to influ-ence decisions, and now he manages the technology end of ITC’s FMCG division. As VVR Babu, group IT Head, put it: “Verma has the ability to get the buy-in of business manag-ers for the most crucial IT projects.” This ability, more than technology know-how, will define an IT executive’s ability to become a CIO one day.

HOnOREES

G. K DUTTARAJ, Project Manager SaP, alstom Projects India and LEKHA BAJPAI,Senior Man-ager, Software & Services, aFl

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What to Watch For: EXECUTION

The final ingredient that makes an IT leader one for the CIO to watch is the capa-bility to stand and deliver. Yes, vision and influence are essential qualities for future CIOs. But without solid execution, great ideas and successful marketing campaigns quickly fall apart.

In a way, execution tests the true mettle of the potential CIO because it concerns the strategy of operations. Most potential CIOs manage the lower end of the IT spectrum, so the know-how aspect is bound to dominate. This desire to manage the nitty-gritty de-tails of a project should be balanced by the ability to delegate. According to Rajeev Seo-ni, Assistant Vice President and Head - IT, Flextronics Software Systems, “One person will generally not have the bandwidth to get into micro details. He has to manage the big picture and learn to delegate.”

Of course, the potential CIO should avoid the pitfall at the other extreme — a complete-ly hands-off approach, which means that he doesn’t have any fingers in the pie. An ideal way of approaching the problem is perhaps to do what K. Annapurna Devi, Senior Sys-tems Analyst, Andhra Pradesh Technology Services, did. While establishing a system for digital certificates in Andhra Pradesh, she relied upon her deep domain expertise in security management to implement the project successfully. The result — the project has the potential to indirectly affect the en-tire state’s population of about eight crore.

While execution may be perceived as a low-end function, an IT executive has to re-alize that successful implementation can also make him an agent for change. However, for this to happen, they must take care to bring the benefits of what has been achieved to the notice of the CEO. As Jacob Victor, GM, Andhra Pradesh Tech-nology Services says, “change cannot come about without the influ-ence of the CEO.”

A potential CIO also needs to understand that successful imple-mentation could be the stepping stone for gaining influence and acquiring vision. As was demonstrated by Charles Padmakumar, Head IT, Bangalore Center, Flextronics Software. Padmakumar managed to use technology to uncouple Hughes Software Services India from Hughes Network Systems and integrate it with Flex-tronics. He also integrated three of the company’s offices into one facility, again gaining accolades in the process. Seoni, his boss, says

that “Padmakumar gets us the best technol-ogy at a very affordable price.” One day, this ability will surely propel him into the CIO’s chair because CFOs love such people.

Execution skills are particularly notice-able when the company one works for is un-dergoing a major IT upheaval. This kind of an opportunity presented itself to Lekha Ba-jpai, Senior Manager, Software & Services, AFL, when her company moved from a de-centralized architecture to a centralized one. This necessitated the creation of three cus-tomized ERPs for different divisions of AFL, which Bajpai delivered admirably. Based upon this successful execution, she won the confidence of her superiors, who handed her a project involving a J2EE-based three-tiered ERP architecture with a rollout in 120 locations across the country. With one suc-cessful implementation after another, she is now actively participating in the compa-ny’s B2B integration and the internal help-desk. “Based on her excellent track record, we have now involved her in formulating and implementing IT security policies and lead the business towards BS7799 certifica-tion,” says AFL CIO SR Mallela. With more such implementations under her belt, she is bound to get a 360-degree view of the or-ganization’s IT requirements, a major asset for the future.

One of the finest things about execution is that it teaches potential CIOs a crucial les-son in integration, which is something that needs to be effectively managed to keep the life blood of any company flowing. Bharat Dave, AGM – IT, Torrent Pharmaceuticals, faced this when he was asked to integrate SAP with a CRM solution that had been

developed in-house. He showed his execu-tion skills by going live in just seven months, and wired it to 2,000 employees. Such actions enable an IT executive to build influence, besides also providing him with the vision needed for the future. Successful implementation also enables the potential CIO to win the admiration of his bosses.

And like all of our Ones to Watch honorees, it likely won’t be the last chance Dave gets to test his hard-won leadership skills, either in his current position or someday soon as a CIO. CIO

Special Correspondent Balaji narasimhan can be reached at balaji_n@cio.in

Traits of a True IT LeaderOnes to Watch honorees — those likely to become the CIOs of tomorrow — need to be good at many things. Critical skills include: 1. Fluency in both technology

and the business 2. Ability to work at tactical and

strategic levels simultaneously 3. Foresight to connect disparate

pieces into cohesive solutions 4. Flexibility 5. Commitment to lifelong learn-

ing, with a readiness to stretch beyond core competencies

6. Marketing competence 7. Consummate communication

skills 8. Ability to find and manage

top talent 9. vendor management

expertise 10. Project management

excellence 11. Willingness to delegate

—Stephanie Overby

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ONES TOONES TOWATCH

Rising Stars

Our 30 Ones to Watch honorees come from a wide range of back-grounds, but all share a passion and a talent

for leadership.

Lekha Bajpai, 39,Senior Manager - Software & Services, AFL

Bajpai heads a team of 15 developers who work on j2EE and Web-based applications. When aFl needed three

ErPs for different divisions, she was entrusted with developing them and other Web-based applications. Bajpai’s closely involved in B2B integration with suppliers, vendors and customers using Edi/Xmlwhich has improved delivery time and provided transparency to customers. she also manages an internal helpdesk. “We have now involved her in formulating and implementing it security policies and leading the business towards Bs7799 certification,” says cior. mallela.

Abir Basak, 36,Head IT Infrastructure,Aviva Life Insurance

in 2002, Basak tacked down a blueprint and rolled out a hybrid network connecting 36 offices from

scratch for aviva life insur-

he’s developed policies to outsource it support to vendors, enabling the company to focus on its core competencies. he followed it up with formulating, executing and monitoring slas and maintain-ing uptime.

mong his other achievements, Basak put together aviva’s disaster recovery initiative that is remark-able for the simplicity of its design. t consolidates enterprise storage

with a unique replication logic, bypassing cumbersome server-based replication using third-party software.

Pravin Bhosle, 35,Assistant VP – IT,UTI Bank

Encouraging innovation and taking initia-tive are the two qualities that make Bhosle an asset to uti.

amani, President – it observes, “he focuses on technol-ogy but, unlike others, prioritizes implementation according to business requirements.”

mong his more creative cost-cutting ideas was to streamline and optimize the organization’s back office. customers of other banks that use uti’s atm network

HOnOREES

Senior Manager - Software &

Bajpai heads a team of 15 developers who

2EE and Web-based ap-plications. When

needed three Ps for different divisions, she was

entrusted with developing them and other Web-based applications. Bajpai’s closely involved in B2B integration with suppliers, vendors

ml, which has improved delivery time

he also manages an internal helpdesk. “We have now involved her in formulating and

security policies and leading the business towards

cio s.

n 2002, Basak tacked down a blueprint and

hybrid network connecting 36

ance. houtsource enabling the company to focus on its core competencies. it up with formulating, executing and monitoring ing uptime.

among his other achievements, Basak put together recovery initiative that is remarkable for the simplicity of its design. it consolidates enterprise storage with a unique replication logic, bypassing cumbersome server-based replication using third-party software.

Pravin Bhosle,Assistant VP – IT,UTI Bank

v. K. robserves, “ogy but, unlike others, prioritizes implementation according to business requirements.”

among his more creative cost-cutting ideas was to streamline and optimize the organization’s back office. banks that use

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account for only 13 percent of transactions. “however, we have pruned costs to make that percentage cover the expenditure on the atm network’s back office,” says ramani.

Debashish Chakraborty,Senior Executive IT, Honda Siel Cars India

When chakraborty joined honda, almost half the it team was on its way out, with the dealer

management software scheduled for rollout. Business sensitive applications, network infrastructure and messaging services — needed attention. he proved his mettle by tackling the crisis and is now part of the core it team that creates three-year plans for the company. head it hilal Khan points out, “chakraborty is a self-starter, who likes to see a job done. to me, he is to me, he is ta bright spot in honda india”.

Bharat Dave, 39,Assistant General Manager IT,Torrent Pharmaceuticals

When managers at tortort -rent Pharma demanded that a homebrewed crm solution be integrated with saP, dave

achieved the objective in seven months. his work connected 2,000 field officers who previously had no access to ErP data. this increased productivity by over 100 percent. Within a year, the company doubled its turnover, thanks mainly to the integration. “he is an excellent team leader and hits that fine balance between it users and managers,” says vice President jyoti Bandopadhyay.

Abhrajit De, 40,Senior Manager IS & Head IT Infrastructure, Haldia Petrochemicals

managing itpetrochemical giant is a tough job, but de handles it with grace. cio anjan Bose says that de has

repeatedly proved his leadership skills and has an understanding of the company’s business. dleads from the front and brings his experience to bear in problem solving. he recently migrated a

atm-based campus lana Gigabit lan and showed quick results in terms of reduced tco

K. Annapurna Devi, 38,Senior Systems Analyst,Andhra Pradesh Technology Services

on the sorting table of future cios, stands out. list of achievements, including establishing dig

ital certificates for andhra Pradesh, demonstrates her understanding of both end-users and developers, a quality essential in an it leader.

he digital certificates project, which affects eight crore people, dug deeply into her knowledge of information security management.

evi has a reputation for keeping herself schooled in new tech-nologies and as lead auditor, she is responsible for ensuring that her department’s business objectives

it are met.

G. K. Dattaraj, 40,Project Manager (SAP), Alstom Projects India

attaraj was among the first to figure that unless user authorizations were put in place, alstom’s

P implementation would be at

risk. he took it upon himself to create a process and template defining user authorization and its associ

ated risk-benefit analysis. he then managed saP enhancements and oversaw the proper deployment of a newer version. cio c

arayanan says, “i have many captains on my teams, but dattaraj is a manager who takes care of all my captains.”

Abhijit Ghatak, 34,Site IT Manager, Ericsson India

this telecom equipment behemoth, with a sizable operation in india, has travel bills that totaled rs 13 crore a

year. Ghatak suggested a video conferencing solution, which reduced travel costs by 10 percent. Ericsson also has over 70 applications whose maintenance cost falls in the region

s 3 crore to 4 crore annually. ince the maintenance sla did not

take into account the usage of these applications, Ghatak developed a matrix to map the level of maintenance versus usage and helped slash expenses by 50 percent.

S.P. Giridhar, 40,Sr. Manager IT Infrastructure

esign & Management)Godfrey Philips India

When Godfrey Philips india chose to Web-enable critical it applications as part of its roadmap for

growth, Giridhar had to ensure that the applications were secure for hosting. as the information security point man, Giridhar led Godfrey

Philips’ evolution from a client-server information architecture to a web-enabled one. “Giridhar doesn’t believe in plain vanilla deployments and has the ability to exploit what’s new and integrate it with what ex-ists,” says senior vice President (it

orporate development) alagu Balaraman.

Venkat Jagaduri, 28,Systems Manager,Polaris Software India

the use of faxes and snail mail to deliver client invoices left Po-laris risking loss of documents. re-engineer-

ing the communication process meant synchronizing systems at 30 delivery and billing centers world-

jagaduri handled the job with aplomb, creating a system that con-nected 6,000 employees. his task also included ‘selling’ the system to internal users. cio v. Balakrishnan

many projects never go live even after 99 percent completion.

agaduri has the ability to push them through to the finish line.”

Aashish Kshetry, 37,System development Manager,Asian Paints

an mBa and BE in computer engineer-ing, Khsetry straddles both technology and business

with ease. “With an understanding of both business processes and customer requirements, he is able to map out technological solutions for business,” says vice President

trategic Planning and it) manish hoksi. coming up with innovative

and cost-effective solutions is his forte. For instance, to expand the home solution business of asian Paints, the company developed an

owever, we have pruned costs to make that percentage cover the expenditure

network’s back office,”

Debashish Chakraborty, 32,

hakraborty onda,

almost half the team was

on its way out, with the dealer

management software scheduled for rollout. Business sensitive ap-plications, network infrastructure and messaging services — needed

e proved his mettle by tackling the crisis and is now part

team that creates three-year plans for the company.

hakraborty is a self-starter, who o me, he is

Assistant General Manager IT,

When manag-

rent Pharma demanded that a homebrewed

solution be integrated

ave achieved the objective in seven

is work connected 2,000 field officers who previously had no

his increased productivity by over 100 percent. Within a year, the company dou-bled its turnover, thanks mainly to

e is an excellent

users and itice President

Senior Manager IS & Head IT Infrastructure, Haldia Petrochemicals

repeatedly proved his leadership skills and has an understanding of the company’s business. leads from the front and brings his experience to bear in problem solving. large atma Gigabit results in terms of reduced

K. Annapurna Devi, Senior Systems Analyst,Andhra Pradesh Technology Services

ital certificates for demonstrates her understanding of both end-users and developers, a quality essential in an the digital certificates project, which affects eight crore people, dug deeply into her knowledge of information security management. devi has a reputation for keeping herself schooled in new technologies and as lead auditor, she is responsible for ensuring that her department’s business objectives from it

G. K. Dattaraj,Project Manager (SAP), Alstom Projects Indiadattaraj was among the first to figure that unless user authorizations were put in place, saP implementation would be at

Senior Manager IS & Head IT

it for a petrochemical gi-ant is a tough job,

e handles it with grace.

njan Bose e has

repeatedly proved his leadership skills and has an understanding

e leads from the front and brings his experience to bear in problem

e recently migrated a lan to

and showed quick tco.

38,

Andhra Pradesh Technology

-

s, devi stands out. her list of achieve-ments, including establishing dig-

ndhra Pradesh, demonstrates her understanding of both end-users and developers,

leader. he digital certificates project,

which affects eight crore people, dug deeply into her knowledge of information security management.

evi has a reputation for keeping

nologies and as lead auditor, she is responsible for ensuring that her department’s business objectives

attaraj was among the first to figure that unless user authoriza-

lstom’s P implementation would be at

ated risk-benefit analysis. managed and oversaw the proper deployment of a newer version. narayanan says, “captains on my teams, but is a manager who takes care of all my captains.”

Abhijit Ghatak,Site IT Manager, Ericsson India

year. Ghatak suggested a video conferencing solution, which reduced travel costs by 10 percent. Ericsson also has over 70 applications whose maintenance cost falls in the region of rs 3 crore to 4 crore annually. since the maintenance take into account the usage of these applications, Ghatak developed a matrix to map the level of maintenance versus usage and helped slash expenses by 50 percent.

S.P. Giridhar, Sr. Manager IT Infrastructure (design & Management)Godfrey Philips India

growth, Giridhar had to ensure that the applications were secure for hosting. point man, Giridhar led Godfrey

e took it upon himself to create a process and template defining user authorization and its associ-

e then

and oversaw the proper deploy-c.r.

attaraj is a manager who takes care of all

his telecom equipment be-hemoth, with a sizable operation

ndia, has travel bills that totaled

s 13 crore a year. Ghatak suggested a video con-ferencing solution, which reduced travel costs by 10 percent. Ericsson also has over 70 applications whose maintenance cost falls in the region

s 3 crore to 4 crore annually. did not

take into account the usage of these applications, Ghatak developed a matrix to map the level of main-tenance versus usage and helped

Sr. Manager IT Infrastructure

When Godfrey ndia

chose to Web-enable critical

applications as part of its roadmap for

growth, Giridhar had to ensure that the applications were secure for

s the information security point man, Giridhar led Godfrey

Philips’ evolution from a client-server information architecture to a web-enabled one. “Giridhar doesn’t believe in plain vanilla deployments and has the ability to exploit what’s new and integrate it with what exists,” says and corporate Balaraman.

Venkat Jagaduri,Systems Manager,Polaris Software India

ing the communication process meant synchronizing systems at 30 delivery and billing centers worldwide. japlomb, creating a system that connected 6,000 employees. also included ‘selling’ the system to internal users. says, “even after 99 percent completion. jagaduri has the ability to push them through to the finish line.”

Aashish KshetrySystem Asian Paints

with ease. “With an understanding of both business processes and customer requirements, he is able to map out technological solutions for business,” says (strategic Planning and choksi. and cost-effective solutions is his forte. For instance, to expand the home solution business of Paints, the company developed an Ph

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indigenous application running on saP, much of which was Kshetry’s brainchild. he is currently tending to an international rollout as asian Paints expands into 23 countries.

Umesh Mehta, 39,dGM IT,New Holland Tractors

new holland tractors tractors t india faced an uphill climb trying to optimize its system running on Baan Er

(now ssa Global) to meet business demands. mehta diligently worked on process improvement and optimization, enabling the company to sustain increasing workload. has an acute sense of business and an impressive amount of technical know-how. director is avinash arora, says, “he’s your man if you want to reduce turnaround time for it projects, an appreciable quality when you have a small it teams and smaller timelines.”

Shiva Nair, 34,Senior Manager Business Technology, Pfizer India

When nair took apart Pfizer’s rs 50 lakh Wide area network (Wan), the company didn’t know what was

coming. he replaced the Wan with an on-demand service and provided a virtual Private network, effectively bringing down costs by 80 percent. nair manages multiple portfolios. Ever since he put the company infrastructure in order, he has been asked to look at technology risk management and oversee management of electronic and physical data at Pfizer’s various divisions. “his good at cost rationalization and resource optimization,” says senior director it arun Gupta.

Charles Padmakumar, Head IT, Bangalore Center,Flextronics Software

a year-and-a-half ago, Flextronics software bought a part of hughes software services india. the challenge

of integrating the infrastructure of what was hughes’ with Flextronics’ (and six other companies that

ughes owned) fell on the shoulders of Padmakumar. later, he handled an integration of three smaller offices in Bangalore with zero downtime — 850 employees walked into their new offices and went straight to work. When Flextronics’ board went over the nomination

nes to Watch, Padmakumar was the unanimous choice. “hthe most appreciated it executive within Flextronics,” observes r

eoni, vP it.

Mahesh K. Pinnamaneni, Head IT, Aurobindo Pharma

Pinnamaneni’s score card, as penned by chittu Babu, is fit for a plaque. as head italready has a

foot in his cio’s world, a fact that’s responsible for one worry-line lesser on Babu’s forehead. his analytical and technical skills distinguish him from the pack. it’s a mix that his feels keeps Pinnamaneni on top of his responsibilities and still looking ahead. one of his most important strengths is an ability to never let a situation get the better of him, says

Daya Prakash, 38,Software Project Manager, LG Electronics IndiaPrakash is one of four domain experts at lG Electronics india.

G recently went live with oracle

Business suite, which involved a roll-out of almost all applications. it took seven months of work and impacted

thousands of users at over 220 locations. Prakash successfully led a team of 150, including the vendor and the system integrators, through many rough patches. “he is one of a small group that both looks into the future and aligns it with business goals. he is my next star,” says G

rindam Bose.

Jitendra Sarode, 37,Head – IT Infrastructure,Pantaloon Retail

cio chinar deshpande maintains that sarode scores a 9 out of 10 on punctual project execution, meet

ing the punishing timelines of the retail business. deshpande recalls that when the person heading the appdev project for Food Bazaar

sarode was asked to fill in. “spent two days with Food Bazaar staff at different warehouses and stores, getting clued into their expectations and requirements. project demanded 30 days. sarode got it done in 15,” says deshpande.

Anish Shah, 37,Member, IT Team,Reliance Industries Limited

cutting operational costs is a priority at rance industries, and shah has come up with a plan to reduce

more than 50 percent of the cost for an international project. once the plan is implemented, the potential savings are estimated in excess of

s 9 crore ($2 million).

Flexibility is one of his hallmark at-tributes and he encourages his team to work with multiple platforms.

umming up shah’s capabilities, dvisor, reliance industries ashish

Kumar chauhan says, “his under-standing of business processes is immaculate.”

Arun Shakya, 30,Manger SAP development, Britannia Industries

corporate manag-er (it & it & it systems), t. s. Purushot-taman feels that shakya has great communication skills. an engineer

with an mBa from a from a iit, shakya’s dedication to detail and background work has paid off more than once. aproject involving mrP purchases was pushed through thanks to his under-standing of the context. he recently led his team through a complex saP implementation. his strength lies in workflow improvement, a knack he’s honed from his days at tcs.

e is also Britannia’s soX compli-ance officer.

Shiv Shankar Singh, 34,Assistant General Manager IT,Bombay Stock Exchange

With india’s premier bourse connected to 450 offices and over 10,000 traders daily, singh’s role requires constant

innovation. his expertise came to the fore when BsE set up its disaster recovery site. singh implemented a data extractor and replicator and was responsible for setting up most of the recovery site. his work has made

ingh a critical resource for BsE’s itteam. “it’s all the way up for him from

he’s a champion at delivering path-breaking it projects ahead of it projects ahead of ittime,” says head it s.B. Patankar.

indigenous application running on P, much of which was Kshetry’s

e is currently tending sian

Paints expands into 23 countries.

olland ndia

faced an uphill climb trying to optimize its system running

rP Global) to meet business

ehta diligently worked

optimization, enabling the company to sustain increasing workload. he has an acute sense of business and an impressive amount of techni-

vinash e’s your man if you

want to reduce turnaround time for projects, an appreciable quality

teams and

Senior Manager Business Tech-

air took apart Pfizer’s

s 50 lakh Wide etwork

company didn’t know what was

with an on-demand service and provided

etwork, effectively bringing down costs by 80 percent.

air manages multiple portfolios. Ever since he put the company itinfrastructure in order, he has been asked to look at technology risk management and oversee manage-ment of electronic and physical data

he is good at cost rationalization and

enior

Charles Padmakumar,Head IT, Bangalore Center,Flextronics Software

of integrating the infrastructure of what was ics’ (and six other companies that hughes owned) fell on the shoulders of Padmakumar. an integration of three smaller offices in Bangalore with zero downtime — 850 employees walked into their new offices and went straight to work. When Flextronics’ board went over the nomination for ones to Watch, Padmakumar was the unanimous choice. “the most appreciated within Flextronics,” observes seoni,

Mahesh K. Pinnamaneni,Head IT, Aurobindo Pharma

foot in his responsible for one worry-line lesser on Babu’s forehead. and technical skills distinguish him from the pack. feels keeps Pinnamaneni on top of his responsibilities and still looking ahead. strengths is an ability to never let a situation get the better of him, says Babu.

Daya Prakash,Software Project Manager, LG Electronics IndiaPrakash is one of four domain experts at lG recently went live with

4 2 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

40,Head IT, Bangalore Center,

year-and-a-half ago, Flextron-

oftware bought a part of

oftware ndia.

he challenge of integrating the infrastructure of

ughes’ with Flextron-ics’ (and six other companies that

ughes owned) fell on the shoulders ater, he handled

an integration of three smaller

downtime — 850 employees walked into their new offices and went straight to work. When Flextronics’ board went over the nomination

nes to Watch, Padmakumar he’s

executive rajeev

Mahesh K. Pinnamaneni, 37,Head IT, Aurobindo Pharma

Pinnamaneni’s score card, as penned by cio

hittu Babu, is fit for a plaque.

it, he already has a

’s world, a fact that’s responsible for one worry-line lesser

is analytical and technical skills distinguish him

t’s a mix that his ciofeels keeps Pinnamaneni on top of his responsibilities and still looking

ne of his most important strengths is an ability to never let a situation get the better of him, says

Software Project Manager,

Prakash is one of four domain ndia.

racle

thousands of users at over 220 locations. Prakash successfully led a team of 150, including the vendor and the system integrators, through many rough patches. “small group that both looks into the future and aligns goals. arindam Bose.

Jitendra Sarode,Head – IT Infrastructure,Pantaloon Retail

ing the punishing timelines of the retail business. that when the person heading the appdev project for Food Bazaar quit, sspent two days with Food Bazaar staff at different warehouses and stores, getting clued into their expectations and requirements. project demanded 30 days. got it done in 15,” says

Anish Shah,Member, IT Team,Reliance Industries Limited

more than 50 percent of the cost for an international project. plan is implemented, the potential savings are estimated in excess of rs 9 crore ($2 million).

uite, which involved a roll-out of almost all applications. t took seven

months of work and impacted

thousands of users at over 220 locations. Prakash successfully led a team of 150, including the vendor and the system integrators, through

e is one of a small group that both looks into the

with business e is my next star,” says Gm it

maintains that arode scores

a 9 out of 10 on punctual project execution, meet-

ing the punishing timelines of the eshpande recalls

that when the person heading the appdev project for Food Bazaar

arode was asked to fill in. “he spent two days with Food Bazaar staff at different warehouses and

expectations and requirements. the arode

eshpande.

Reliance Industries Limitedutting opera-

tional costs is a eli-

ndustries, hah has

come up with a plan to reduce

more than 50 percent of the cost for nce the

plan is implemented, the potential savings are estimated in excess of

Flexibility is one of his hallmark attributes and he encourages his team to work with multiple platforms. summing up advisor, Kumar standing of business processes is immaculate.”

Arun ShakyaManger SAP Britannia Industries

with an dedication to detail and background work has paid off more than once. project involving pushed through thanks to his understanding of the context. led his team through a complex implementation. workflow improvement, a knack he’s honed from his days at he is also Britannia’s ance officer.

Shiv Shankar Singh,Assistant General Manager IT,Bombay Stock Exchange

innovation. the fore when Brecovery site. data extractor and replicator and was responsible for setting up most of the recovery site. singh a critical resource for Bteam. “here. hpath-breaking time,” says

ONES TOONES TOWATCHRavinder Sharma, 26,Assistant Manager – IT,Fortis Healthcare

sharma joined Fortis five years ago as a programmer for Fortis’ hospital information tem (his). When

the it manager quit, sharma found himself called upon to do what he’d never done before. But, take over he did, and showed a knack for people management and business insight. Within five months, he was in charge of both the his and the overall it project. since then hishas been rolled out at four other locations. “ravinder has shown great depth of understanding in whatever he is asked to do,” says cio sunil Kapoor.

Suren Shetty, 35, Vice President IT,YES Bank

cio aditya menon states that shetty was a key asset in implementing yEs Bank’s blueprint. With

much of the bank’s it infrastructure being outsourced, shetty’s wields his talent at bridging the divide between systems and users as he manages multiple vendor relationships. his responsibilities, which include corporate banking applications, point to a multi-faceted manager with an attitude of getting work accomplished and enhancing the implicit contract between business and it — so essential to it governance.

Subbalakshmi Shirali, Senior Manager, IT,Shamrao Vithal Co-op Bankapart from being a core member of the it team, shirali has also spent a considerable amount of

her 18-years of experience being a part of banking operations. “shirali has headed a branch and is aware of

the monotonous activities that can be automated to ensure effective manpower utilization and business growth,” says dGm-credit & it

avikiran mankikar. datawarehousing solutions and a head office

ccounting application to enable straight through processing of the bank’s real time Gross settlement transactions are some of the projects that showcase her innovative thinking.

Dheeraj Sinha, 35,Head IT, Apollo Tyres

three years ago, apollo tyres tyres tbrought sinha on board as head of information services to make it a 360 degree

function. the past two years have dheeraj fulfill that mandate.

e has successfully deployed across 140 locations in india and created a dealer Portal — a first for

ndian tire industry. an intranet portal followed suit. “sinha has been an asset to apollo during a critical juncture of our growth and has put systems in place seamlessly,” says coo neeraj

. Kanwar.

Prasad Sohoni, 37,IT Manager,Thomas Cook India

Business continuity is an untouchable variable as sohoni works on thomas cook’s it infrastructure.

thomas cook wired into a number of customer reservation

systems, sohoni has set up a secondary Wan ensuring almost zero downtime and introduced a solution that simultaneously minimizes bandwidth requirement and keeps the network secure. ncredibly, it came at a hundredth

of the price that a solution from a global vendor would have cost.

ohoni demonstrates excellent business acumen and technological maturity,” says head it

nadkarni.

N. Srinivas, 33,Manager Systems & Security, Novo Nordisk India

“srinivas is authoritative, task-oriented and possesses a keen sense of follow up,” says it head Wilfred

Prakash. the pharma company turned to srinivas when it needed to convince its it-shy sales team about a sales-force automation program.

e squarely faced the challenge of commissioning the project, winning the sales team over and train-ing them, while juggling network security and support. he also found a way to complete the project under budget and on time.

C. Thangavel, 40,Technical director & Scientist, National Informatics Centre

thangavel brings to the table 17 years of it expertise in government institutions. deep under

standing of both the technical and administrative worlds has kept him on top of the game and his projects on schedule, especially when he engaged in KaverEcom, a single-window service that generates bills for Karnataka government departments. thangavel led

KaverEcom from concept to execu-tion and won global recognition for the project.

Alok Verma, 38, FMGC division, ITC

in an earlier assignment with itc’s retail business, verma remodeled the business on it. Wills lifestyle and

its fleet of 50 premium stores and warehouses became a leading retail chain mainly due to its ability to handle merchandize management and forecast fashion trends. verma was also responsible for making the supply chain work in a ‘just in

ime’ manufacturing environment. t present, verma spearheads it

for the FmcG division. he’s heading the upgrade to saP Enterprise Edition 5.0 and is working on devel-oping information systems for field force automation.

Veena Vasanth, 33, eputy Manager Systems,

BioconPutting together an ErP system for a biotech com-pany takes grit, know-how and an abundance of emotional

intelligence — all of which vasanth er ability to sponge up new

technologies and wield them is what asanth her boss’ vote. “she’s

adaptive and has a high degree of natural intelligence. What differenti-ates her from her colleagues is her commitment to work and initiative,”

radhakrishnan menon, man-it at Biocon. she’s currently

using some of that for building Biocon an intranet while getting herself an mBa.

HOnOREES

REAL CIO WORLD | J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 4 3Vol/1 | ISSUE/4

26,

harma joined

years ago as a programmer for

ospital nformation sys-

). When harma found

himself called upon to do what he’d never done before. But, take over he did, and showed a knack for people management and business insight. Within five months, he was

and the his

has been rolled out at four other avinder has shown

great depth of understanding in whatever he is asked to do,” says

enon states hetty was

a key asset in implementing

itblueprint. With

infrastruc-hetty’s

wields his talent at bridging the divide between systems and users as he manages multiple vendor

is responsibilities, which include corporate banking applications, point to a multi-fac-eted manager with an attitude of getting work accomplished and enhancing the implicit contract

— so es-

Subbalakshmi Shirali, 39,

Shamrao Vithal Co-op Bankpart from being a core member

hirali has also spent a considerable amount of

the monotonous activities that can be automated to ensure effective manpower utilization and business growth,” says ravikiran ing solutions and a accounting application to enable straight through processing of the bank’s ment transactions are some of the projects that showcase her innovative thinking

Dheeraj Sinha, Head IT, Apollo Tyres

function. seen dhe has successfully deployed across 140 locations in created a the indian tire industry. portal followed suit. “been an asset to critical juncture of our growth and has put systems in place seamlessly,” says r. s. Kanwar.

Prasad Sohoni,IT Manager,Thomas Cook India

With tnumber of customer reservation

her 18-years of experience being a part of banking operations.

hirali has headed a branch and is aware of

the monotonous activities that can be automated to ensure effective manpower utilization and business

itatawarehous-

ffice ccounting application to enable

straight through processing of the ettle-

ment transactions are some of the projects that showcase her innova-

hree years ago, yres

inha on board as head of information services to make

a 360 degree he past two years have

heeraj fulfill that mandate. e has successfully deployed saP

ndia and ealer Portal — a first for

n intranet inha has

pollo during a critical juncture of our growth and has put systems in place seam-

continuity is an untouch-able variable as

ohoni works on ook’s

infrastructure. ook wired into a

number of customer reservation

systems, secondary Wzero downtime and introduced a solution that simultaneously minimizes bandwidth requirement and keeps the network secure. incredibly, it came at a hundredth of the price that a solution from a global vendor would have cost. “sohoni demonstrates excellent business acumen and technological maturity,” says anil n

N. Srinivas, Manager Systems & Security, Novo Nordisk India

Prakash. turned to convince its a sales-force automation program. he squarely faced the challenge of commissioning the project, winning the sales team over and training them, while juggling network security and support. a way to complete the project under budget and on time.

C. Thangavel, Technical National Informatics Centre

standing of both the technical and administrative worlds has kept him on top of the game and his projects on schedule, especially when he engaged in KaverEcom, a single-window service that generates bills for Karnataka government departments.

ensuring almost zero downtime and introduced a solution that simultaneously minimizes bandwidth requirement and keeps the network secure. ncredibly, it came at a hundredth

of the price that a solution from a global vendor would have cost.

ohoni demonstrates excellent business acumen and technologi-

Manager Systems & Security,

authoritative, task-oriented and possesses a keen sense of follow up,” says

ead Wilfred he pharma company rinivas when it needed to

-shy sales team about a sales-force automation program.

e squarely faced the challenge of commissioning the project, winning

ing them, while juggling network e also found

a way to complete the project under

irector & Scientist, National Informatics Centre

brings to the table 17 years

expertise in government institutions. a

-standing of both the technical and administrative worlds has kept him on top of the game and his projects on schedule, especially when he engaged in KaverEcom, a single-window service that gener-ates bills for Karnataka govern-

hangavel led

KaverEcom from concept to execution and won global recognition for the project.

Alok Verma, CIo FMGC

its fleet of 50 premium stores and warehouses became a leading retail chain mainly due to its ability to handle merchandize management and forecast fashion trends. was also responsible for making the supply chain work in a ‘time’ manufacturing environment. at present, for the Fthe upgrade to Edition 5.0 and is working on developing information systems for field force automation.

Veena Vasanth,deputy Manager Systems,Biocon

intelligence — all of which has. htechnologies and wield them is what gets vasanth her boss’ vote. “adaptive and has a high degree of natural intelligence. What differentiates her from her colleagues is her commitment to work and initiative,” says rager itusing some of that for building Biocon an intranet while getting herself an

EmpoweringSuccess

ing Director, LGEIL, says that IT empowers the company and its employees, and expects his IT team to create the platform that will transition the organization into an intelligent enterprise.

Kwang-Ro Kim, MD, LG Electronics India,

is convinced that IT is the only way to

foster a culture of success that’ll

create a Rs 45,000 crore corporation

by 2010.

Everyone loves a dark horse. When LG Electronics India streaked to the Rs 9,000 crore mark in less than 10 years, it earned the respect of even close competi-tiors. Kwang-Ro Kim, Manag-

By Rahul Neel MaNi

View from the top isaseriesofinter-viewswithCEOsandotherC-levelexecutivesabouttheroleofITintheircompaniesandwhattheyexpectfromtheirCIOs.

4 4 J a N u a R y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

Empowering

CIO: Has IT helped power LG India's phenomenal growth over the past decade?

K.R. Kim: In our first year, we didn’t have any centralized IT architecture, though we touched Rs 90 crore in sales. At that time we operated only 10 branches. Today, we’re spread over 47 branch offices. If you count some of the remote offices, we are present at 220 locations across the country. It’s simply impossible to run a company of this size without IT; that much is evident. But IT also drives my own philosophy: The most important element for a corporation’s success is how much it can empower its employees. In the 21st century, empower-ment translates into information which requires IT. When we rolled out the Mil-lennium (M) System (LG’s global ERP), it was our first enterprise-wide application and it was partially meant to network and empower our employees.

IT’s more noteworthy contribution to LG is replacing our offline learning model with e-learning. With e-learning, every relevant person knows the features of a product before it’s even launched. We’re now mak-ing this available to LG dealers on a pilot basis.

How does LG utilize IT to carry your vision forward?

My only concern is to make LG the most efficient and service-oriented company in the sector. IT already has the ability to update us on the status of sales, dispatches, inventory, returns, damages, etc. We would like IT to be able to make demand forecasts so that we can synchronize production accordingly.

What I expect from IT boils down to just one need: Information should be available instantly to those who want it. I believe in IT so much that without the IT department’s approval we don’t open a remote office, since we need to clear issues like connectiv-ity and communications infrastructure.

I also discourage physical documentation and the IT team has been asked to solve this. Efficient companies are not known for cumbersome documentation, they are known for swift IT-empow-ered decision making.

Where does the dealer portal figure in this strategy?

LG thrives on its dealer-distributor channel. We have a strong supply chain that connects to our dealers and distributors across the country. This benefits us as well. In business a sale is not closed until money is in the kitty. Constant and IT-pow-ered accounts reconciliation helps us ensure that we only have Rs 1 crore of bad debt in the market. For a corporation of our size, this is good.

In the initial days, when we had only 100 dealers, reconciliation was possible without IT. Now, we have 3,500 deal-ers and physical reconciliation is impossible. That’s why we created www.lgdealernet.com. We square our accounts with 70 percent of our dealers through this interface.

LG is known as a Just-In-Time company. How has IT impacted your production department?

LG sells over one crore of products a year. To keep inventory at a minimum it’s necessary to keep in touch with our vendors and suppli-ers. LG’s IT team created www.lgesource.com to make this possible and for us to find out what’s selling, what’s not, and why.

At LG, sourcing is done through an elec-tronic bidding system. This allows us to get

not only the best price, but also a wide choice of vendors. Once a vendor, is selected they are provided a unique user ID and password and they merge into LG’s system. The por-tal informs them of weekly, monthly and yearly produc-tion and when they can expect their next consignment.

Until the system was put into place, the purchase department was skeptical of dispatch schedules and was often clueless of stock status. It led to improper planning. Now we’ve shortened the production cycle and smooth-ened the process of sourcing from vendors.

When LG India started its operations, we had inventory worth a month. Now we’re at half of that. The IT team has a mandate to shrink this even further. We are also trying to create a knowledge manage-ment system that’s going to be

connected directly with the product devel-opment system and R&D.

Do you expect your new ERP to provide an added edge?

LG India has set a target of Rs 45,000 crore LG India has set a target of Rs 45,000 crore ($ 10 billion) by 2010, of which exports will contribute 30 percent. Given this goal, it is necessary to adopt the fast track approach, which we can only sustain if we empower our people and business with equally fast infor-mation systems.

Oracle 11i allows us to do just this. It will empower our people to integrate seamlessly with other LG subsidiaries worldwide. Sec-ondly, managing four manufacturing plants (including contract manufacturing units) is only possible using a robust ERP. MSystem was great, but a time came when it was no lon-

SNAPSHOT LGPRImARy BuSINESS: Consumer Electron-ics, GSM Handset Manufacturing, IT Peripherals

2004-2005 REvENuE: Rs 9,000 crore (expected)

ANNuAL IT BuDGET: 0.4 percent of revenue

EmPLOyEES: 3,000 (Approx.)

IT STAff: 6 permanent (94 on project basis)

HEADquARTERS: Greater Noida (UP)

PLANT LOCATIONS: 2

TOTAL LOCATIONS: 220

DEALERS: 3,500

CIO: Arindam Bose

View from the Top

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ger possible to make additional amendments to the system.

Has IT changed the way you interact with customers?

LGezbuy.com is our answer to our B2C requirements. The portal targets Non Resi-dent Indians who want to purchase goods for their families in India. It helps us push slow moving items, which are not always in demand. The site allows someone living in the United States to buy a product at the best price and we promise to have it delivered. If eBay can do it, why can’t LG?

I have a dream of seeing at least 10 per-cent of our business coming through lgez-buy.com by 2010. At the moment it makes about Rs 20 crore.

LG is viewed as customer-centric com-pany and we require strong customer feed-

back mechanisms to keep this reputation intact. That said, we are only in the initial stages of a large CRM initiative.

What are your top three ex-pectations from the LG CIO?

One, I want LG to be the number one con-sumer goods corporation. Two, I want it to be a premier marketing organization. Three, I want to see LG as a first-rate operations company. These three goals have a lot to do with IT’s contribution. The CIO’s Key Performance Index (KPI) clearly mentions these three objectives. He is evaluated by how much he has empowered LG, how IT has pitched in to shrink decision-making processes and how much operational excel-lence he brings in. I think this is only fair. We judge the sales head on sales figures, and we should be able to judge the CIO on

his KPIs. Even I’m held responsible if the region under me does not perform.

moving forward, how do you view LG’s transition to an intelligent enterprise?

To create an intelligent enterprise, we have to depend on business intelligence powered by IT. When we say that LG India wants to be a Rs 45,000 crore corporation, I see IT providing the platform to achieve that vision. Remaining a leader is tougher than getting to the top. You become everyone’s target when you are a leader. Staying a leader in the years to come will call for an innovative use of our IT infrastructure. CIO

Bureau Head - North Rahul Neel Mani can be reached at rahul_m@cio.in

Staying a leader in the years to come will call for an innovative use of our IT infrastructure. And to make that happen, I will empower the IT team.

4 8 J a N u a R y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLD Vol/1 | ISSUE/4

Trendline_Nov11.indd 19 11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

another four to five years. “My first instinct was that the project had absolutely no chance of suc-cess,” says Cumming, currently CIO for ADP Employer Services, Canada.

Requirements, as every CIO knows, are a prob-lem, but CIOs may not be aware of just how cata-strophic the problem has become. Analysts report that as many as 71 percent of software projects that fail do so because of poor requirements manage-ment, making it the single biggest reason for proj-ect failure — bigger than bad technology, missed deadlines or change management fiascoes. Though

CIOs are rarely directly responsible for require-ments management, they are accountable for poor outcomes, which, when requirements go bad, can include: Project delays, software that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to and, worst of all, software that may not work correctly when rolled out, putting the business — and the CIO’s job — at risk.

Mishandled requirements can torpedo a project at any time, from inception to delivery. Start down the wrong road and you arrive at the wrong des-tination. And even if you’re heading in the right direction, making fumbling changes midstream

By C h r i sto p h e r L i n d q u i st

hugh Cumming had his work cut out for him. the gap between what his not-yet-implemented call center management application at a large European company could do and the requirements list created by 40 eager business-side stakeholders now filled 3,000 pages and threatened to delay an already overdue call center consolidation effort

Analysts report that as many as 71% of software projects that fail do so because of poor requirements management, making it the single biggest reason for project failure.

The requirements process — literally, deciding what should be included in software — is destroying projects in ways that aren’t evident until it’s too late. Some CIOs are stepping in to rewrite the rules.

Reader ROI:

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can be almost as deadly. Not integrating requirements with your test process can have you racing back late in the game to correct problems that might have been solved early on (and more cheaply).

It’s up to the CIO to establish an overall requirements process that works and to support it with the political skills necessary to get buy-in from both the business and development sides. The CIO must also have the organi-zational backbone necessary to shove wayward require-ments processes back into line.

None of this is easy. Business users often don’t know exactly what they want, can’t prioritize what they do

want, request things IT simply can’t deliver (because of complexity or cost), or can’t describe their desires in terms that translate accurately into code. On the IT side, analysts, architects and coders regularly try too hard to please and don’t set realistic expectations for projects; they don’t use every means possible to guarantee that what they’re building is what the user really needs, and sometimes they even fail to make sure that they’re talk-ing to all the right stakeholders.

In short, the traditional practice of requirements is bro-ken. But some IT folks are doing everything they can to fix the situation. To a man, they say process is key. Exactly what process? They all have their own ideas. One execu-tive decided to simply enforce rules that should have been enforced all along. Another rewrote the rules from the ground up. And a pair threw out the old rule books com-pletely, one taking a business-process-focused approach and the other choosing to build applications with quick iterations rather than long requirements documents. But they all agree that you should choose a formal require-ments-gathering process and stick to it.

Writing requirements is hard. It will always be hard. But with a handful of smart decisions you can create a

requirements process that will produce positive results — and maybe keep your next project from becoming another statistic.

Forty’s a CrowdCumming’s solution to his requirements nightmare was

radical surgery. First — with backing from ADP’s chief executive — he stripped down the scope of the consoli-dation project, lopping off existing processes that worked as-is and didn’t need to be rolled into the new application. He also pared the group of 40 stakeholders to five active participants. He allowed the others to stay involved, but

only in the more passive role of reviewing the implementa-tion plan and feature specifications, without actually add-ing feature requests of their own. He then repeatedly went back to the remaining five stakeholders and asked them if specific requirements were really must-haves or simply nice-to-haves. After less than two months of pressing the issue, his new requirements list was less than 10 percent of the original. And after the project went into production, it needed to accommodate only one major change before being rolled out to 12 global locations.

Cumming says the problem in this case — and in many cases — is that IT often does not take a leadership position in the requirements process, instead taking the attitude that “the business is requesting it, so it must be the best thing to do.” But that kind of thinking can lead to requirements lists that are unmanageable and unforgiv-ing. Instead, he says, IT people need to develop a valuable skill: Saying no with a smile. “Really what you’re saying is, ‘Not yet,’” Cumming says.

To paraphrase Daniele Vare, managing requirements—like diplomacy—is the art of letting everybody have your way. When Cumming reduced his army of 40 stakehold-ers to five, he admits that there were some “interesting con-

Analysts report that as many as 71% of software projects that fail do so because of poor requirements management, making it the single biggest reason for project failure.

Software and Systems

The requirements process — literally, deciding what should be included in software — is destroying projects in ways that aren’t evident until it’s too late. Some CIOs are stepping in to rewrite the rules.

REAL CIO WORLD | J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 5 1Vol/1 | ISSUE/4

versations” about who would stay in primary roles, noting that people were worried they were going to lose features they felt were important to their business units. To ease their fears, Cumming and the core stakeholders created a “high-level vision” (a summary of the most important functions) for the project and spent time demonstrating how the final project lined up with that vision. He also showed all the stakeholders how they would get at least some value from the project — even if they weren’t going to get every single detail they wanted.

The more passive stakeholders were also encouraged to become more active as the call center system began rolling out. When the system moved into their departments, these stakeholders became directly responsible for sponsoring any necessary application changes within those departments. This task was assisted by the intense interest that senior management had in getting the project into production. Cumming felt he needed to know who really wielded influence in the company (versus what appeared in the org chart), plus he wanted to identify stakeholders with sufficient technical expertise to add value to the requirements-gathering process.

“The list of people who would have the most to contrib-ute to a requirement list always ends up being small in my experience,” Cumming says.

The Rules of the RolesTired of his company’s hodgepodge of requirements

practices, Jesse Hanspal, director of development technology services at Bank of Montreal Financial Group, decided to create his own process by combining pieces of existing requirements techniques and adding a quality assurance process as well. Hanspal says that after five years of effort, the bank has defined the requirements process at a level of abstraction high enough that it can be applied to any project or problem. After much consideration, the bank decided that it needed a process built around responsibility and job roles in order to guarantee that all necessary stakeholders had a say.

“It’s important to get all the stakeholders around the table and get the requirements from the horse’s mouth,” Hanspal says. And, he adds, by defining stakeholders according to their roles, you get a more accurate cross-section. For instance, he says, for a given project, you need representation of the end user role, of course, but also of the application administrator role, not to mention roles related to security and regulatory compliance.

Hanspal notes that in the past IT spent 10 percent to 20 percent of its time and energy on defining requirements. “What we’ve learned is that once you have defined a pro-cess, then you go and get an ISO 9000 certification for that,” he says. Having the certification lets people know what is required of them. It also gives the bank a chance to evaluate effectiveness and improve the process. And Hanspal says the new process has produced results. For instance, the number of software defects related to require-ments has dropped by some 50 percent since implement-ing the new controls.

Bank of Montreal also wanted to make sure that its ana-lysts had the skills necessary to execute the new process. Unfortunately, while it had been easy to find external certi-fication for project management (the Project Management Institute) and functional testing (the Quality Assurance Institute), no similar body existed for business analysis. So the bank created its own. The International Institute of Business Analysis now boasts some 800 international members, Hanspal says, and any company can send ana-lysts for training in the Bank of Montreal approach.

Going AgileGiven the trouble companies continue to have with

requirements, some practitioners argue that the process needs to be more flexible.

Gregor Bailar, CIO at Capital One, is a convert to one of these anti-establishment philosophies: Agile develop-ment. Agile development advocates argue that old-style

Software and Systems

Business users often don’t know exactly what they want. on the IT side, analysts, architects and coders regularly try too hard to please and don’t set realistic expectations for projects.

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requirements processes are too rigid, put walls between users and developers, and, given the ever-changing nature of software and business, are fated to fail. Instead, they say, developers and users should sit down together and start coding almost immediately, stopping frequently to evaluate progress and make necessary changes based on user input without feeling the need to follow a monolithic requirements document.

“What we needed wasn’t more process but to get to the value [in a project],”Bailar says.

After piloting the concept in early 2004, Bailar began forming the ultra-lean, connected teams that are the basis of the agile method. Agile teams at Capi-tal One generally consist of three businesspeople, two operations people, and five to seven IT folks, including a business information officer (in effect, a translator who works between the business and IT sides), a proj-ect manager and at least one of the 80 developers that Bailar sent to formal agile training classes. Along the way, some archi-tects and security experts will add their skills as necessary. Each team gets its own agile coach (one of 20 Bailar hired) to keep an eye on the proceedings and offer advice and support. Teams meet in dedicated, open rooms, and initial require-ments are limited to a goal for the project, a handful of cards with specific needs, and some models or prototypes for reference. Teams work together in close quarters throughout the project, and devel-opment stops regularly — perhaps three or four times in a typical nine-week development cycle — to assess progress and determine if changes are needed. Larger projects are built by breaking projects down into small pieces and assigning each subsection to an agile team (the method is sometimes called “swarm-ing” in agile circles), with the overall progress controlled by a project manager.

To test the results of the system, Bai-lar took several in-development proj-ects and switched them midstream from older waterfall-style develop-ment to “scrum,” an agile technique that prescribes small, flexible groups that include developers and users and divides development into a sequence of 30-day “sprints.” These sprints begin

with a planning meeting and end with the group review-ing test results before the start of the next sprint.

He then tracked their progress against the historically expected progress of the older method, and he was happy with what he saw. Agile reduced development time by an average of 30 percent to 40 percent (sometimes nearer to 50 percent) while simultaneously improving the quality of the deliverables. He’s sold, though he acknowledges that agile has its limitations.

“There are lots of things we don’t use agile for,” Bai-lar says, noting that the method excels where require-ments are ambiguous and priorities are unclear, or for situations where you have the triple constraint of “faster, cheaper, better” but can’t afford to drop one of the three. For extremely large projects or those with very distinct and ordered requirements, Bailar says more traditional approaches are probably a better fit.

Software and Systems

Capital One CIO GrEGOr BaILar is a fan of agile devel-opment, saying requirements gathering should focus less on process and more on the project’s business value.

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Every Line of Code Connected to a Business Process

Robert Sherman might not see it that way, however. Sherman, the strategic methods leader for IT at Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, isn’t a huge fan of traditional approaches to requirements. He considers requirements only one of the first threads in a tapestry that includes everything from business processes to a finished software application. And unless IT managers begin to realize the importance of this interconnectedness, he warns, count-less projects will continue to crash and burn.

Like ADP’s Cumming, Sherman had a requirements epiphany in the late 1990s. At the time, he was involved in an effort to standardize all of P&G’s 150 factories on a sin-gle factory-floor information management system. He and nine other experts at the company compared a 70-page specification written by the supplier to a 200-page require-ments document written by P&G. Experts and vendor alike agreed that the document contained everything necessary for a successful project. It was concise. It was complete. It also “went to hell in a handbasket,” Sherman says.

Poking through the rubble, Sherman at first couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. Why had the seemingly

ideal specification failed to produce a suitable application? He hired a contractor who spent two months tracing every requirement to every relevant sentence in the specification. P&G found that 30 percent of the deliverables were not adequately addressed. And from what Sherman could tell, the misfires were a result of being too dependent on team members’ recollection of document comparison. The supplier had looked for common patterns that it could duplicate in order to reduce coding complexity. To Sherman and the others reviewing the specification, it looked — on the surface — as if those patterns matched exactly to the requirements. But they hadn’t. The problem, Sherman eventually decided, was that everyone involved had simply run up against the limits of their ability to comprehend extremely complex situations. The management tools they were using were also unable to make proper connections between deliverables and the actual business processes they would support — connections that would have highlighted the subtle distinctions that turned success into failure.

Frustrated with the inability of requirements manage-ment software vendors to address the overriding discon-nectedness he felt was at the core of many development

REQUIREMENTSTOOLS

"TOOLs nEvER fIxEDasoftwareproblem,”saysRich-ardChennault,enterprisearchitectatKaiserPerma-nente.Butwhenitcomestomanagingtherequirementsprocess,toolscanbeahelp—assuminggoodproc-essesarealreadyinplace.

WhetheryousubscribetotheRationalUnifiedProc-essandownthecompletesuiteofRationalapplicationsorsimplypiecetogetheryourowntoolsetfromsmallervendorssuchasBorlandandiRise,toolscanactasbearingsandguardrailstohelpkeepyourrequirementsprocessmovingandontrack.Someexamples:

ThE fRAmEWORk fOR InTEgRATED TEsT (fIT),developedbyWardCunningham(whoalsoinventedthecommunity-editedonlineWikipedia),isaplat-formwhererequirementsareliterallywrittenastests

—forarequirementtobemet,thetestmustpass.AndFitNesse,whichputsawiki-likeinterfaceontheFITmethodology,allowsbusinessusers(ormorelikelybusinessanalysts)toenterrequirementsintoaspreadsheetinterfacethatautomaticallyproducestestcasesforlatertesting.

sOfEA’s PROPhEsy (usedbyBankofMontreal)lets

customersandbusinessanalystsproducesimula-tionsandtestsbeforeanycodegetswritten.

sTEELTRACE CATALyzE (usedbyADP)isarequire-ments-managementtoolthatbreaksrequirementsintofunctionalandnonfunctional(qualitative)buck-ets,createsgraphicalstoryboardsofrequirementsandgeneratestestdocumentation.

TELELOgIC’s DOORs (usedbyBankofMontrealandProcter&Gamble)integrateswithMercuryInteractive’sTestDirectorforautomatedtesting.

RIsE’s iRIsE sTuDIOletscompaniescreaterichprototypesofapplications,allowing,ifnotfunctionaltests,atleastvisualconfirmationthatrequirementsarebeingaccuratelymodeled."Shortofhavingasimulation,youwillgettothetestingphaseandhavemisrequirements,”saysDavidNix,vicepresidentofonlinebankingatSuntrust,aniRiseuser.

BORLAnD CALIBER Rmallowssimplifiedrequire-mentsmodeling.

But,whilealltheseproductscansimplifytherequire-mentsinyourlife,"youhavetofocusonprocessfirst,”saysChennault."Youcandoallthisstuffwithanotepadandapencilifyouhaveagreatprocess.” —C.L.

Guardrails to a Good Process

Software and SystemsSoftware and Systems

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problems (not just this one), Sherman decided to build a system using his own schema and a collection of tools that now includes Visio and Telelogic’s Doors. The premise, he says, was simple: Granular traceability. His vision was to be able to take a piece of code and quickly trace it back and then — rather than stopping there — map it all the way back to every affected business process to gauge the application’s impact.

Getting to this point has taken five years and has required the IT team to gain an encyclopedic understanding of business processes, but the results have been worthwhile. Using complex pharmaceutical project lifecycle management tools as a benchmark, Sherman says he produced the application at one-quarter the cost and with fewer than 10 percent of the expected defects compared with outside development estimates.

The P&G schema has produced numerous side benefits as well, Sherman adds. For instance, an approach called “initiative scenarios” helps IT teams identify potential enterprise-level stakeholders, with the aim of converting them to sponsors. Since every requirement links back to a business process, stakeholders can trace their way through the organization. As an example, Sherman points to an Electronic Lab Notebooking (ELN) application (a digital data collection tool for researchers) that P&G had been having trouble getting rolled out. Previous attempts at delivering the ELN limited the requirements analysis to the lab bench and the scientist who used the notebook. But Sherman was able to demonstrate a domino effect that showed how notebook data would affect acquisitions, divestitures, patent filing and more. As a result, the IT group was able to seek additional sponsors and the project is heading toward 4,000 users.

“If you’ve done the appropriate joins [to these work pro-cesses] and you understand the linkages back to the roles, you can get the clearance ahead of time — or kill the project if you don’t have the buy-in,” Sherman says.

The schema also has a dramatic impact on compliance. Sherman says that compliance experts can trace legal requirements all the way from business process to final code. And the schema’s chartlike format makes it possible for anyone to trace a path, which helps users and develop-ers to prioritize requirements.

Even so, Sherman says, successfully using the schema requires a couple of rules. Projects must be broken down into pieces. More complex applications can be built by

combining these pieces, but Sherman believes that going beyond a certain level of documentation leads only to more documentation — and greater complexity — instead of execution.

Required ThinkingAs these cases show, requirements processes must

change, and CIOs need to drive the charge. Fixing your bro-ken process probably won’t be easy or quick, so start now.

“Today, survival depends on game changing — cer-tainly for IT it does,” P&G’s Sherman says. To change the development game, “IT is going to have to understand the intersections between requirements and business pro-cesses.” Failure to achieve that understanding could have dire consequences, he warns.

“If you’re not rewriting the rules of the game,” Sherman says, “then you deserve to have your job offshored.” CIO

Sendfeedbackonthisfeaturetoeditor@cio.in

Software and SystemsSoftware and Systems

rOBErt ShErman, strategic methods leader for It at P&G Pharmaceuticals, believes that going beyond a certain lev-el of documentation in the requirements process leads only to more documenta-tion instead of execution.

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BY T. RadhakRishna

Not all agencies take the hand-railed path to e-Government. Here are three instances from India and Scotland that have pioneered a way to hasten tenders and save the tax-payers crores.

SavingS Up For aUction

The blue and grey colors of the Karna-taka State Police Housing Corporation (KSPHC), website wash over a large room in its Bangalore headquarters. The room’s empty except for the stray

department member. But its emptiness belies a pal-pable excitement as the corporation tests its first e-tender on January 7, 2003.

The KSPHC is on the lookout for someone to co-locate its web servers, since its service provide is shut-ting shop. Using the traditional process of placing a tender, going back and forth with a handful of bidders and getting authorizations at each stage, could take them up to six months — time it can not afford.

On the big screen firms from across the country log onto the site, their identities hidden behind screen

names like Green123 and Santro. Though they’ve all been put through the ropes, they’re a little nervous. Some of that apprehension filters across as screen names blink expectantly.

The bidding opens at Rs 32 lakh. Green123 bids Rs 2 lakh lower. The display tracks the project’s price like a stock graph in a bear market. There are only seven bidders left in the fray 85 minutes and 200 bids later. In a frantic attempt to corner a new account, they push through 16 more bids in the last five minutes. When the virtual hammer comes down the project goes to the company that quoted Rs 7.80 lakh — 75 percent less than the opening bid.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), it is later known, took the project home. Some of the others that participated in that e-tender included VSNL, Reliance Infocomm, Bharti, HCL and SIFY.

“This isn’t only about driving down suppliers’ prices. e-Procurement strengthens the process of pro-curement,” says R. Sri Kumar, DGP and chairman and managing director, KSPHC, the agency that builds houses for the police, the fire and prison departments. The online tender also reduced the chances of KSPHC playing favorites or of bidders forming cartels.

How do you build a sound e-Procurement strat-egy? What are the rules that define the game? To find answers, CIO approached the Government of Andhra Pradesh, the Scottish Executive, and the KSPHC, all of whom have set e-Procurement benchmarks to address unique business challenges.

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Why suppliers need training and hand-holding

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Government in the LeadA few years ago, a lack of transparency, delays, reams of paper and even threats to

the lives of bidders formed a fair description of the procurement system of the Andhra Pradesh government.

In a determined attempt to shrink procurement time and inject integrity back into the system, the then chief minister put a cabinet sub-committee on the job. The panel recommended creating an e-Procurement Exchange with a dynamic pricing system.

Based on the advice of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), the Andhra government selected C1 India to implement the exchange. It started out by identifying project managers and key officials in each department. These officials were subsequently trained by IIM-Ahmedabad to think like CIOs and function as a bridge between domain experts and firms vying for projects and assist in bringing about legislative changes to streamline the procurement process.

To effectively communicate the objectives and benefits of the project, extensive concept selling and workshops were conducted for both the department and bidders (termed ‘suppliers’). Four hundred department users and over 1,000 suppliers received hands-on training and detailed training kits were distributed to all departments.

A pilot launched in January 2003 covered four agencies: Public Works Department, Andhra Pradesh Technology Services, Transport Corporation and Health & Medical Infrastructure Corporation. The proof-of-concept lasted nine months during which the state made e-Procurement mandatory for all procurement over Rs 50 lakh. After the success of the pilot, e-Procurement was compulsory for all departments and purchases above Rs 10 lakh.

The e-Procurement Exchange has lent transparency to the procurement system and slashed processing time by over 70 percent. In the last 28 months, the state has processed 9,600 tenders that tally up to purchases of Rs 36,000 crore. The number of its suppliers has jumped to 6,000. In fact, the state saved Rs 1,000 crore in 2004-05, a year that saw e-Procurement touch Rs 15,600 crore, accounting for 80 percent of the state’s total buying. Interestingly, the government saved Rs 3 crore by not placing tender advertisements in publications.

Run on a Build-Operate-Transfer model, the Exchange does not require state funding. Departments pay a fixed hosting fee and a percentage of the project to the service provider. C1 India gets 0.4 percent of the estimated cost of project.

Online procurement of services and engineering contracts has benefited both the government and suppliers. “Without e-Procurement, we’d never have been able to hand out such an astounding number of tenders in so short a time,” says Dr. J. C. Mohanty, former principal secretary, IT department, Andhra Pradesh.

Today, 70 government agencies use e-Procurement. The IT department has already drawn a roadmap that includes new modules like a contractors’ database and an online payment facility.

Initially it was tough to secure buy in. “It was one thing to set up the e-Procurement Exchange but quite another issue to convince stakeholders to use it,” says another official. The implementation had to be buttressed by an enormous effort in change management.

Invest in Stakeholders Pertinently, Tom Wilson, Director, eProcurement Scotl@nd Programme (ePS),

believes that e-Procurement is a misleading term. e-Procurement, he says, is about changing the business culture in organizations and then locking those changes in place. “It is not an IT project and can not be run as such,” he observes.

The project Wilson oversees was started by the Scottish Executive (SE), which is responsible for education, health, justice, transport, and rural affairs. In 2000, SE initi-ated a cross-sector Procurement Steering Group to rectify a number of issues in the way that public sector purchases were conducted.

tom WilsonDirector, eprocurement scotl@nd programme (eps), Finance and Central services Department, scottish executive

What were the objectives of ePS?Our objective was to transform Scottish

Public Sector Procurement, and make it more efficient. Others include reduced cost of sales for suppliers and creating an e-procurement service assessed via a web-browser from across a range of platforms. Digitizing all purchasing activities from requisition to payment, support-ing the procurement process from advertising to awarding contracts and providing detailed MIS are among the objectives.

What has the system achieved?We have 60 public sector organizations

now using ePS. Their combined procurement permits a recurring saving of about £200 mil-lion a year.

The Scottish National Health’s requirement for disposable latex gloves is a recent example of how this is done. The reverse auction saved £500,000 over a 12 month period. For exam-ple, on an average, we achieved a 15 to 18 per-cent saving. Through purchase orders being placed straight into suppliers’ sales order processing systems and automated payment (through an embedded Visa Government Pro-curement card).

How was the turnaround time for procurement brought down?

There are two aspects to this. The traditional authorization and placement of an order could take anything up to two to three weeks because paper-based forms are forwarded to a central requisitioning area where purchase orders are placed. e-procurement reduces this to two to three hours on an average.

There is also a marked improvement on pay-ments. The use of the Visa Government Pro-curement Card sees to it that suppliers are paid in three to four days. Tendering by electronic means through the new European Commission legislation is reduced by 12 days as against the traditional paper method. —T.R.

e-Procurement Success Stories

REAL CIO WORLD | J a n u a R Y 1 , 2 0 06 5 9Vol/1 | Issue/4

e-Procurement

Following considerable market research, the SE recog-Following considerable market research, the SE recog-Following considerable market research, the SE recognized that the traditional tender process did not address ROI. It also realized that early e-Procurement solutions were buyer-centric, a stand they needed to steer clear of if they wanted the system to appeal to suppliers.

In conjunction with an early adopting group of local authorities and health organizations, the parameters for an e-Procurement platform were frozen. After an international competition, the Scot-tish Executive handed the contract to Cap Gemini in November 2001.

As of September 2005, the Scottish Executive’s administration had 1,400 officers in over 40 central public sector organizations who have drawn on ePS services. More than 10,000 firms have received orders through ePS.

The SE realized early that unless stakeholders were shown the benefits and were trained in the use of ePS, implementations could fail. E-learning techniques were

developed to guide suppliers through the system. The initiation formed an important aspect of e-Procurement success, says Wilson. Another was the use of created credit cards designed in collaboration with ISA.

This change in doing business delivers measurable benefits due to reduced transaction costs, greater purchase discipline and a more effective deployment of staff. If the target to increase participation to 125 public sector organizations by 2007 is met and they spend a projected Rs 24,000 crore to 32,000 crore (£3 billion to 4 billion), it could result in savings of Rs 1,600 crore (£200 million) a year.

Wilson says a successful procurement change requires strong and senior leadership. And if effec-tive procurement rests on developing relationships between buyers and bidders, the same applies for e-tendering. e-Procurement is a two-way street. Its aim is not merely to cut costs for the buyers but to benefit suppliers as well.

Simply put, an organization cannot maximize the potential benefits of an e-Procurement solution if suppli-ers can’t connect to the system or refuse to participate.

The Joy of Choice Karnataka State Police Housing Corporation’s suppli-

ers too quickly grasped that if they wanted to be in the running, they had to participate in the reverse auction process because the lowest bid determined who took home the project.

The traditional method typically saw only 5 class-A bidders and 10 class-B participating in tenders routinely. Now, KSPHC has 444 class-A and 106 class-B civil con-tractors registered with it.

“With the reverse auction, orders are finalized swiftly. Everyone knows who made the lowest bid and the work order is often issued within 24 hours,” says KSPHC’s chairman and managing director R. Sri Kumar. The con-tract also binds suppliers to making progress reports through the web-based PMS.

Interestingly, KSPHC’s foray into e-Procurement started off as a one-off attempt to beat a deadline to co-locate its web servers. “Our objective for the first e-ten-der was to save time. We didn’t expect anything more,” says R. Sri Kumar.

After the success of its first e-tender, KSPHC decided to use the process with all its civil contracts. This brought them good techno-commercial offers at the lowest of prices. The result was a boom in construction. In the two years starting 2004, 5,000 quarters have been built (as compared to the 9,964 structures worth Rs 238 crore put up from 1985 to March 2003).

As part of its IT strategy, KSPHC has invested about Rs 1.2 crore towards the e-tender system. Using an e-Procurement solution, KSPHC saved 8 percent over the traditional system. In 2005, KSPHC finalized 61 con-tracts with price tags that range from Rs 32 lakh to Rs 5.55 crore. On contracts worth a total of Rs 132 crore, the department has saved Rs 9.94 crore. An additional ben-efit is that projects start earlier since the system bypasses post-bid negotiations.

The system, however, is not without its pitfalls. KSPHC, looking ahead, has deployed a backup system in case of Internet disruption. In a real crisis, it could abandon an auction and start afresh. It’s also possible for quotes to fall below a level where the quality of work becomes doubtful. In such a case, the organization can apply a circuit breaker by intervening in the proceed-ings. Online tenders can result in a possible violation of the KTPAA Act, 1999 (Karnataka Transparency in Public Procurement) although there is now a move to amend it, to take advantage of the incredible savings through the system.

Who said governments agencies can’t lead an IT revolution? CIO

special Correspondent T. Radhakrishna can be reached at radha_t@cio.in

e-Procurement Success Stories

OrganizationOrganization

Tenders ProcessedTenders ProcessedTenders Processed

Cost SavingCost Saving

UsersUsersUsersUsers

SuppliersSuppliersSuppliers

Project CostProject CostProject CostProject Cost

Govt. of APGovt. of APGovt. of APGovt. of AP

Rs 15,600 croreRs 15,600 croreRs 15,600 croreRs 15,600 crore

Rs 1,000 croreRs 1,000 croreRs 1,000 croreRs 1,000 crore

65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments65 departments

Scottish ExecutiveScottish Executive

Rs 24,000 croreRs 24,000 crore

Rs 1,656 croreRs 1,656 crore

60 organizations60 organizations

4,0004,000

KSPHCKSPHC

Rs 132 croreRs 132 crore

Rs 9.95 croreRs 9.95 crore

11

550 (A+B Grade)550 (A+B Grade)550 (A+B Grade)

Rs 1.20 croreRs 1.20 crore

Militant labor unions ensured that computerization got a bad name in West Bengal. Dr. G. D. Gautama, Principal Secretary, IT department, has done much to change that trend and re-invent the way citizens interact with the government.

6 0 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

By T. R a d h a k R i s h n a

6 0 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 0 5 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

MindsetMAniFestO

CIO: What were your concerns when you took charge in 2003, given the state’s reputation for unions that dis-liked IT? Dr. G.D. Gautama:During the early 90s, West Bengal was seen as being almost hostile to IT. Militant unions in government organizations were only one of several reasons. My biggest concern was to correct this perception, not only outside the state but within as well.

To this end, we held roadshows and participated in exhibitions. We also appointed cricketer Saurav Ganguly as West Bengal’s IT ambassador. We’re cur-rently stressing on the need to employ IT in administration to provide a better citizen interface.

Of course, we had to build everything from scratch. So, based on the IT blue-prints of other states and on discussions with various government agencies, we set our course. West Bengal is determined to put itself back on India’s industrial map. This requires the government to restruc-ture its mechanisms and change the mindset of the labor unions.

How much support do you get from the state to make this happen?

We’re trying to get the state to allocate two percent of its entire budget to IT. We expect to spend Rs 23.97 crore in 2006-07, which includes Rs 14.16 crore from the Central Government.

We haven’t yet studied the business value of IT proj-ects, because we are focusing on social benefits. If it increases transparency, accountability and responsive-ness among government departments, I will look at it as positive and beneficial.

Has West Bengal then taken a different approach to e-Governance?

Our stand stems from our belief that the benefits of technology have no meaning unless they percolate to the masses. Thus, we have focused our efforts on those departments that interface heavily with citizens. These include the departments of higher education, finance, Panchayat and rural development, labor, transport, tour-ism, forestry, youth services, and municipal affairs

The finance department, for instance, has automated its process to distribute funds to its offices. All major revenue collection offices under the commercial tax directorate have been computerized, as have over 60 percent of the treasuries. The revenue department has

also started to build a system to reduce the number of tax defaulters. This involves connecting five out of the 26 border check-posts to a central system using VSATs, thus making it possible to monitor goods entering and leaving the state.

What about land records?Currently, land records in 238 blocks

out of 341 in the state have been com-puterized. The digitization of maps has also been initiated. The Hooghly dis-trict has a pilot project running. Along the same lines, a land acquisition infor-mation system was recently deployed to reduce time spent in court. The sys-tem generates various reports related to the notification, declaration, alloca-tion and pricing of land.

We have launched three tele-medi-cine projects in the state using a low-speed WAN. They cover 19 centers and government rural hospitals and aim to provide quality healthcare facilities to rural folk in the fields of cardiology, radiology, pediatrics, neurology and

tropical diseases. This will take telemedicine to all government hospitals in the state by September 2006. The project bagged the IT department the ‘Bronze Icon’ from the Government of India for exemplary imple-mentation of an e-Governance initiative.

The State Pollution Control Board, through a unique G2C (government to citizen) interface, is opening the department’s EMIS (Emission Monitoring Information System) to citizens. This will permit online application for industrial environmental clearances.

Our milestone project is the Computer-Aided Text to Braille System, which enables visually impaired chil-dren to access and read documents from the Internet using special printers located in select schools.

West Bengal is also the first state in the country to undertake a State Wide Area Network (WBSWAN). It’s currently on pilot and one of our chief priorities in 2006 is to scale it up and take it to the villages.

How will WBSWAN benefit citizens at the village level?

WBSWAN (West Bengal State Wide Area Network) simultaneously carries voice, video and data over IP. It started with connecting 18 district headquarters to the capital using a two-MBPS leased lines rented from BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd). Subsequently the network was extended in April 2003 to cover eight

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project)nEmission Monitor-

ing Information System

G2G:nKPICN (Police

intranet) nFinger Print

Analysis

Interview | G.D. Gautama

REAL CIO WORLD | J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 6 1Vol/1 | ISSUE/4

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more commercially important subdivisions. The pilot project cost Rs 4.96 crore.

It will serve as a foundation for further e-Gover-nance applications. Soon six sub-divisions, 31 blocks and 278 Gram Panchayats will be hooked up. This will enable people living in the rural areas to access citizen-centric applications.

It will improve service delivery and empower small businesses by giving them access to information. We’re also planning to use the system for file transfers between government offices and the public distribution system.

West Bengal was also among the first states to computerize its police directorate. What was the reason for this?

The basic objective of the project was to increase operational efficiency. Our first step was to roll out the Kolkata Police Intranet and Computer Network (KPICN) under which 45 police stations and 35 other offices were

computerized. It has now been operational for over two years and connects police stations allowing them to share their morning reports. In the next phase, we computer-ized all the police stations under the West Bengal Direc-torate. This has a three-fold benefit of increased efficiency due to daily monitoring, better crime control and closer ties with the police-related cases in court. Webel Technol-ogy Ltd — a state enterprise — is driving the program home in 407 police stations and 52 courts. So far it has achieved over 90 percent of this target.

Interestingly, the state police also launched Finger Print Analysis and Criminal Tracing System (FACTS), which was designed, developed and implemented by CMC Ltd. It’s an advanced system that uses pattern rec-ognition and neural network techniques to match and identify finger prints. It’s fixing issues that traditional fingerprint bureaus face including archiving large vol-umes of paper-based fingerprint records. The system currently contains about 40,000 fingerprints, which

can be scaled up to beyond a lakh. It also has a mobile FACTS unit which is instrumental in bringing police resources to crime scene.

Looking ahead, what are your plans for 2006-07?We are focusing on capacity building, common ser-

vice centers and nine Mission Mode Projects. These projects fall under the National E-governance Plan and cover land records, property registration, transport, agriculture, municipalities, Gram Panchayats, commer-cial taxes, treasuries and the police.

The departments involved in the project have already prepared their road maps and cost estimates with assistance from PWC and the National Informat-ics Centre (NIC).

Before we can successfully implement the Mission Mode Projects, we need to get the state WAN and the state data centers off the ground. All our activities are converging to a point where we can establish citizen ser-

vice centers in the rural areas, which will bring modern services to the villages.

From an administrative point-of-view, West Bengal plans to set up a State Nodal Organization and an e-Gov-ernance Mission Team, which will act as a single-point project monitor. We are also looking to appoint a consul-tant to see us through capacity building.

The Panchayat Raj department is establishing Common Service Centers (CSC) in villages, using a private-public partnership model. The department, in association with an NGO, will run CSC pilots in the dis-tricts of Bankure, Burdwan, Jalpaiguri and Hooghly. The centers will be located in the existing Panchayat offices and will be manned by the local entrepreneurs.CIO

Special Correspondent T. Radhakrishna can be reached at radha_t@cio.in

Interview | G.D. Gautama

“Our stand stems from our belief that the benefits of technology have no meaning unless they percolate to the masses.”

6 2 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVol/1 | ISSUE/4

Trendline_Nov11.indd 19 11/16/2011 11:56:19 AM

New Locks, New Keys BY GALEN GRUMAN

security |No doubt all the breaches of customer data this year have forced you to defend your security strategy. And no doubt you’re being pushed to improve security without increasing costs or scaring away users in the process. You might be hoping the pressure will subside as the breaches become distant memories, but both the federal and state governments aren’t likely to give you that break.

CIOs at retailers must analyze the current security measures they take for data in three areas: in transit online, at the point of sale and where it is stored. The analysis of each area should determine how data is secured, accessed and utilized, and what the risk is at each step, says John Pironti, principal security consultant at Unisys. At the same time, CIOs of financial services companies must work around the fear that outwardly visible — and constraining — security measures could send customers fleeing into the arms of a competitor.

When They’re Buying, Who’s Watching?Of the three security areas, the point of sale is perhaps the least risky. While it’s possible

for properly equipped crooks to compromise computerized point-of-sale systems, it’s simply easier for the bad guys to buy or steal information on the Internet than to physically invade

CIOs need to examine options for

authenticating users — or risk

their companies becoming the

latest data theft headline.

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essentIal technology

6 4 J A N U A R Y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVOl/1 | Issue/4

technology a POS location or to shadow customers to get their credit card number, PINs or other data, says Matt Curtin, founder of the secu-rity consultancy Interhack.

The popularity of credit cards has also made it hard to justify any significant form of authentication at the point of sale. Credit card companies have long limited consumers’ liability, relying on fees paid by merchants to cover the cost of fraud, which is involved in about 1 percent of all transactions, says Avi-vah Litan, vice president and research direc-tor for payments and fraud at Gartner. And

credit card companies depend on sophis-ticated fraud-detection systems that can reveal patterns of fraudulent use after very few transactions, limiting the losses.

Some retailers would love to drop credit cards because of their high fees. That’s why Piggly Wiggly Carolina, a South Carolina–based grocery chain, has debuted a payment system from Pay By Touch in which custom-ers use a finger scan and an ID number to establish their identity at a sales terminal. No credit card information is needed at the sales terminal, because the user identity is matched at a service provider — Pay By Touch — and the charge is then deducted from a linked bank account, says Piggly Wiggly VP of Information Services Rich Farrell.

The use of a second authentication factor (the PIN) also helps secure the new Blink card, a wireless card from Chase Card Ser-vices that uses radio frequency to transmit cardholder information to a sales terminal. The technology limits the card’s wireless range to just two inches, so thieves can’t use portable readers to snatch account numbers over the air, says Tom O’Donnell, a senior VP at Chase.

The Vulnerable DatabaseGartner’s Litan expects thieves to increas-

ingly target the systems that store customer data as more and more financial and retail systems are linked together. Standalone host systems (often aging mainframes) weren’t originally built to defend such networked connections, so “more and more companies are centralizing security again,” returning to the single security architecture approach that worked well for mainframe systems, says Jef-frey Margolies, lead for Accenture’s security services and identity management practice.

CIOs should consider these two basic approaches to secure stored data, Pironti advises: Encrypt data that is not being used; and better manage access so a rogue insider doesn’t have the privileges necessary to steal data. Most CIOs also need to acquire a thor-ough understanding of the flow of customer data and its potential weak spots, such as the use of unencrypted backup tapes, Pironti says, rather than rely on technological fixes. “In the short run there’s a higher expense to process thinking, but in the long run it’s cheaper,” he says.

On the Web, No One Knows You’re a Crook

Analysts warn that electronic data theft is growing fast, even as other types of data theft stay level or decline. A Gartner survey, for example, shows phishing attacks grew 28 percent in 2005. In addition, increas-ing numbers of online thefts and hacking attempts are being perpetrated on behalf of organized crime, which has started hiring hackers, says Litan.

To combat phishing attacks, bank regula-tor Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plans

essentIal technology

thieves are expected to increasingly target the systems that store customer data. standalone host systems weren’t originally built to defend such networked connections.

the biggest Fraud of all And it can be fixed easily. the largest

percentage of fraud involves thieves using

stolen consumer information to open up new

accounts, says unisys security consultant

John pironti. a fraudulent account can

go undetected for months, because the

consumer never sees any bills, and the

financial provider and retailers have no

previous history with the account that would

make it possible for them to detect unusual

patterns. Often the fraud is detected only

when the consumer whose information has

been stolen undergoes a credit check, such as

when he’s buying a home or applying

for refinancing.

repairing the damage from identity theft

can take hundreds of hours (330 on average,

according to a 2004 study by the Identity theft

resource Center), but because the number

of victims of this kind of identity theft is still

small, there’s been little incentive for data

brokers to take stronger preventive measures.

also, because it’s very hard to prove where the

stolen information came from, data brokers

and processors can safely dodge liability for

the damage, says matt Curtin, founder of the

security consultancy Interhack.

but a straightforward and relatively inex-

pensive technology could address this prob-

lem: notification. If a customer has an e-mail

account or a telephone, it should be a simple

matter to send a real-time alert to a cell

phone number or e-mail address when a new

account is opened, says Jeff schmidt, CeO at

security consultancy authis. Credit bureaus

already alert consumers when someone

opens a new account in their name — but

only if the consumer previously had his iden-

tity stolen and requested such notifications to

prevent further activity without express per-

mission. requiring this notification for every

new account could considerably eliminate

identity theft. –G.G.

REAL CIO WORLD | J A N U A R Y 1 , 2 0 06 6 5VOl/1 | Issue/4

to issue guidelines for online banking this fall that require authentication beyond user IDs and passwords. The agency isn’t dictat-ing what technologies companies must use, giving the financial and retail industries a chance to develop their own standards and technologies.

Two-factor authentication’s success in the physical world has made it the choice of tech-nology to protect online transactions as well. “It minimizes the theft of identity online,” notes former national security adviser Rich-ard Clarke, now chairman of security consul-tancy Good Harbor Consulting.

Several companies are experimenting with two-factor authentication approaches. For example, Bank of America is deploying a system from PassMark Security that requires the user to answer a personal question from a rotating set and to choose from a collection of pictures supplied by the bank, with only one picture matching the “validator” picture the customer selected when opening the account. And online bank ING Direct rotates personal questions to provide a second chal-lenge when the user logs in. Some banks and online retailers are using technology from such companies as Actimize, Corillian, Cyota and The 41st Parameter that creates a profile of user access, noting the IP addresses from which users log in, the time zone and so forth. If a thief logs in from Argentina posing as a customer from Delaware, the profile won’t match and the bank can issue an additional challenge question to verify the identity. (That extra step allows access by legitimate users who are traveling.)

Still, any data — even biometric informa-tion such as fingerprints — that’s stored as an authentication mechanism is vulnerable: If a thief breaks into a bank’s systems, he gets the validating data along with everything else. Such systems can also be vulnerable to “man

in the middle” attacks, where communica-tion between the customer and the company is intercepted, Clarke notes.

That’s why some companies are trying token-based methods, such as scratch cards, where customers scratch off a protective cov-ering on a card to reveal a one-time access code. In the United States, E-Trade Finan-cial is implementing the high-tech version of this approach using RSA Security’s lip-stick-sized SecurID device, which produces new, one-time codes every 60 seconds and displays them on a small LCD screen. Users enter the code showing on the screen when

logging into their investment accounts. If the device is stolen, a phone call from the cus-tomer flags it as invalid, so a thief could not use it. And even if the consumer’s computer has been hacked and a keylogger installed to steal passwords, the code’s ever-changing nature means a thief would still be stymied, says Joshua S. Levine, E-Trade’s chief tech-nology and operations officer.

But token-based authentication makes many companies nervous, analysts say, because of the implementation and support costs. They also say that consumers won’t tolerate having more than a very few such devices. Alternatives do exist, of course. Canadian cash-card provider SolidPay, for instance, uses cell phones for two-factor authentication. It has deployed StrikeForce Technologies’ software, which calls custom-ers’ cell phones and prompts them to enter their PIN on the phone’s keypad when they try to, for example, transfer money to their cards. And to combat device proliferation, RSA plans to launch a form of federation service this fall that would let consumers use the same SecurID authenticator device for accounts at multiple companies.

Some analysts believe such systems are inevitable. The federal government’s require-

ment that passport holders, transportation workers and government employees all use smart card IDs will create a critical mass of adoption for a standard token, says Good Har-bor’s Clarke. He ultimately envisions ID cards that everyone carries, just as most now carry a driver’s license and a credit or debit card.

The Slow Road to SecurityWary of the cost of token-based authenti-

cation and of annoying customers with extra steps such as answering validation questions, financial providers are implementing fraud-detection systems similar to what credit card companies have long used, Litan says. For online access, most are focusing on methods

essentIal technology

analysts warn that electronic data theft is growing fast, even as other types of data theft stay level or decline.

SOURCE: Gartner

6 6 J A N U A R Y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVOl/1 | Issue/4

In 2003, 5.7 million credit card numbers were stolen and used to purchase an average of rs 36,000 worth of merchandise, totaling rs 20,250 crore in losses for credit card companies.

essentIal technology

that don’t require user action (for example, checking a user’s current location against his profile of usual access locations).

A second low-impact approach — this one designed to limit the damage caused by phishing attacks — is the use of server-side certificates to verify that users have in fact reached the bank or retailer they intended to contact, suggests David Meunier, CSO of CUNA Mutual Group, which provides processing services to credit unions. This approach means that the browsers should have SSL and Validation turned on, enabling the browser to display the certi-fication results, so users will know if they have arrived at their intended site and not a sinister look-alike. (Students at Stanford University recently released such software for the Mozilla Firefox browser.) Meunier acknowledges, however, that this technol-ogy would not stop phishing via e-mail (which has no similar widespread certifi-cate standard in place as of yet).

Another browser-security option according to Chris Novak, senior secu-rity consultant at Cybertrust, is a browser plug-in that detects password or account entry fields and scrambles them with a key known to both the browser and the legitimate server. Considering the small number of browser types in wide use, it should be straightforward to distribute such a plug-in if the financial industry agreed on a standard for it, he says.

Given the fractured nature of the finan-cial services and retail industries, analysts agree that it’s likely that improved security for customer data will come from efforts that combine numerous techniques such as those mentioned above. While government regulation could push reluctant companies to implement more-intrusive technologies such as two-factor authentication for at least some online transactions, public pres-sure is the more likely way slow-moving companies will be spurred on, especially if consumers view security as an asset rather than as a barrier to commerce. CIO

send feedback on this feature to editor@cio.in

utiLity cOMPutiNG | All those computers, sitting on desks throughout your office,

most of the time doing — nothing. Grid computing proponents have long promised to tap those

machines, providing a new and low-cost source of processing power. But thus far, the applica-

tions for grid have mostly benefited scientists, derivatives analysts and people trying to extract

alien messages from galactic background noise.

Now one of grid’s biggest boosters is hoping to change the situation, creating a truly gen-

eral-purpose grid by turning networks of computers into a single virtual machine. (For more

on virtualization, see “the Virtues of Vir-

tualization,” December 15 issue) Platform

Computing’ s Enterprise Grid Orchestrator

(EGO) purports to offer a standardized way

of consolidating, managing and sharing

computing resources spread throughout

a grid, one that will put those resources

to use for Web services, service-oriented

architectures, and — through partnerships

— general applications.

it’s nothing we haven’t heard before,

of course, but Platform has some deals

already on the books that make this look

somewhat promising. Cognos, for instance,

this past summer demonstrated its Cog-

nos ReportNet business reporting software

running on EGO. Platform has also part-

nered with VMWare to create the Platform

VM Orchestrator, software that will allow

corporations to pool it resources (CPUs,

storage and memory) and automatically

carve out environments for running appli-

cations on virtual machines, in much the

same way as VMWare currently lets cus-

tomers divide single computers into virtual

partitions, each with its own operating sys-

tem and resources.

the benefit of such a system is that it would allow applications to run unmodified on VMWare

virtual environments that could scale up or down quickly depending on requirements and

available resources. Getting a sudden surge in usage on the business intelligence application?

suck a few more idle desktop PCs into the pool and put them to work doing something besides

warming a desk.

Both EGO development kit and Platform VM Orchestrator are available now.

—By Christopher Lindquist

DevelopmentUnDer

The Dawn of General-Purpose Grid?

REAL CIO WORLD | J A N U A R Y 1 , 2 0 06 6 7VOl/1 | Issue/4

thus far, the applications for grid have mostly benefited scientists, derivatives analysts and people trying to extract alien messages from galactic background noise.

essential technology Pundit

CHANGING TECH | This is the age of outsourcing. The reason behind the trend is simple: The financial crystal balls at most companies are still cloudy, which puts a damper on capital expenses.

As you stare at your list of backlogged projects, the practical appeal of outsourc-ing is undeniable, since it’s an operating expense. But strategic insourcing is also a viable option—one where you may be able to do more than shore up your defenses and actually gain new ground. It’s all about balancing the outside with the inside.

Selective SourcingFirst, get a good handle on your out-

sourcing. I’m always perplexed when people equate it with offshoring and the exploitation of cheap programming talent. Application development should be one of the last things you farm out, particularly to places where intellectual property is hard to protect, because that code often contains unique business value. If it doesn’t, you should probably just license commodity software—or avoid licensing costs altogether by opting for a hosted solution.

Yes, I mean services like Salesforce.com, but that’s only the most obvious example. How about e-mail? I still hear plenty about the pain of managing and scaling mail servers. A good specialized e-mail hosting service such as Zantaz’s

Hosted Exchange Archive Solution can take that off your plate.

Application monitoring is another good prospect. Mercury Interactive says that half of its monitoring customers opt for a hosted solution. It makes sense, since Mercury probably has a lot more experience poring over those logs than your staff ever will.

Then there’s content management. CrownPeak, Clickability and iUpload all offer capable hosted solutions. Grand Cen-tral even purports to integrate hosted appli-cations before they touch your enterprise.

People also talk about using managed security providers, but outside of VPNs, I find that idea dicier. There’s security trend—known as security event management or security information management—that provides a consolidated view of the “threat-scape” by capturing and filtering security events from devices and software all over the enterprise. I have yet to see a managed service in this space that provides as com-prehensive a view as, say, an in-house imple-mentation from ArcSight or NetForensics.

So there’s no such thing as a totally outsourced enterprise IT department yet. In fact, although IT is shrinking in some respects, it’s also expanding into new areas. So, as you outsource in some domains, you can actually insource new territory.

VoIP is the most obvious example of a new frontier of inner space. Under the

right conditions — a highly distributed workforce, a call center hobbled by old equipment — putting the phone system on the enterprise data network can wow the business side with immediate payback.

Just remember to resist with all your might when someone inevitably suggests that VoIP get its own dedicated network to ensure quality of service. Instead, use VoIP as the perfect excuse to upgrade your network to gigabit Ethernet. Along with enjoying a nice bandwidth boost, your control over phone service — a whole new domain — will make the IT department even more indispensable (though your power grab may be enjoyed less by your current telecom people).

Electric CompanyBig IT operations might consider push-

ing the envelope even further, all the way to electric power. Some IT organizations have gotten into enterprisewide power management with constant voltage trans-formers and fuel cells for backup. Heck, you might even consider the data center as a heat source for an HVAC system. It’s been done. Remember, your budget may be constrained, but if you think creatively and grab a new area outside of conventional IT, that’s new money. CIO

Eric Knorr is executive editor at large at InfoWorld. Send feedback about this column to editor@cio.in

Looking Out; Looking InOutsource what makes sense, but create some new internal opportunities for yourself.

BY ERIC KNORR

as you outsource in some domains,

you can actually insource new

territory.

6 8 J a n u a r y 1 , 2 0 06 | REAL CIO WORLDVOl/1 | issUe/4