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Manish Choksi, chief, Corporate Strategy, and CIO, Asian Paints joined the paints major in 1992. He is a member of the Management Board of the Asian Paints Group responsible for new business, corporate planning, and information technology across the Group. He has seen his company through successful ERP and SCM initiatives, and spearheaded adoption of new information technology solutions across the extended enterprise. In a chat with VOICE&DATA, he talks about his company's foray into services such as painting, décor, home improvement solutions as well as new initiatives. Excerpts

Which new technologies will be deployed by Asian Paints to reduce cost and increase employee productivity?
At Asian Paints, we always make sure the technology that we implement is cost effective and increases employee productivity. We have deployed SAP R3, i2 supply chain planning suite, ERM employee platform formula management, product lifestyle platform, and so on. It is very essential for adopting new technologies, since IT is an enabler to service retailers. Also, the supply chain effectiveness has helped to capture more of the enterprise platform. The i2 software, which was deployed nearly in 2001, has helped to increase productivity from 3 tons to 8 tons.

How is telecom making business more competitive?
Considering today's competitive scenario, it is essential that organizations have the best technology in place to ensure good results. We at Asian Paints deploy technology that connects the entire field-force across all our branches in the country as well as globally. To ensure connectivity we have provided laptops and PDAs in the retail sales force areas. Laptops with data cards are a key driver for enterprises. We have implemented VSAT, which is an early adopter in far-flung locations.

Manish Choksi chief, Corporate Strategy, and CIO, Asian Paints

Asian Paints has about ninety offices in India and thirty globally. How are they connected?
Typically, all the offices are connected through MPLS, VSAT, and radio, but the preferred medium is landline. Ninety percent of our offices have MPLS and we use radio strategically where last mile connectivity is required. We have VSATs for our operations in rural areas and there is a back up of two VSATs in every location of operations.

How much investment is ideally pumped in every year for IT/telecom infrastructure?
Since technology is a key factor for the growth of any organization, it is essential that we put in place the best technology. The total investment is about less than a percent, which is close to 0.8% of our annual net turnover. When you compare this with the global standard, it's very less. The global standard generally is 1.6% of sales that is invested for infrastructure year-on-year. However, in India it is significantly less; sometimes even less than half a percent, since it entirely depends upon the kind of upgradations we do.

How does the IT function ensure consistent service across all channels?
We have a properly planned process, which ensures accurate execution of sales, marketing, and delivery. We also evaluate how IT can be effective, and our philosophies are far more flexible.

What vendor management strategies do you follow?
Our biggest requirement is that we expect our vendors to be competent enough to be able to forge a long-term partnership. We do not look for a vendor for a short period of time. All our partnerships-large platform applications such as SAP, i2, and so on-have been long-term. While selecting a vendor, we spend a lot of time understanding their roadmap, their fit with our strategies, their fit with our IT architecture, and so on. After a careful selection, we make sure that we implement the technology efficiently. The process does not stop here, we make sure that the future roadmap is in our interest and it has the capability to take us forward.

In some cases we have looked at the best-of-breed, especially in areas where we have been laggards, in terms of utilization and maturity. In such cases, we tend to partner vendors who have the required capabilities, so that we have some kind of synergy and cost benefits. For that, we have created IT and the support infrastructure.

What technology initiatives have you taken on the customer service front?
Serving the consumer is our main priority, and some of the initiatives include getting colors of customers' preference. We would want to expand this to the retail front through our Web offerings and our dealers. We also plan to have customized colors for consumers, wherein they can choose and make colors of their own. Currently, we have this facility only in metros and some big cities but our plan is to provide it across all towns and cities of India; for this we will leverage our offices and widen our dealer network. The second key initiative is for managing the customer service front and addressing customers' complaints and issues related to support. The dealers are our customers, but it is becoming more and more important to serve the end-consumers, and address their problems.

What is the biggest challenge for you as a CIO?
The traditional challenge would be to put in place a continuous mechanism by which I can come up with initiatives that deliver business value. When you provide a support function for the company, you continuously need to worry about the business value. It remains a challenge.

Other challenges would be to explore how IT can transform the business, and provide value. And, to build an innovative IT and telecom infrastructure to maintain the standards of the organization.

Ruchi Phadke
ruchip@cybermedia.co.in