Elbee Express, a consignments delivery company with a solid distribution system, is looking at doubling its presence from the present 125 offices this year. Its application eTABS provides access into its network for information and updates on the physical movement of the consignments. Shirish Gariba, CIO, is responsible for the acquisition and management of information resources and for providing broad leadership in planning, budgeting, acquiring, and managing IT resources. Gariba spoke about the company's initiatives for data and hardware infrastructure, Web initiatives, and e-commerce directives. Excerpts

Elbee Express is known for innovative technology deployments to keep pace with customer demands. What are your focus areas for 2008-09?
We are planning to double the number of offices across the country from the present 125. To improve performance and offer better experience to the growing number of customers, our main requirement for IT includes Web-based centralized application, mobile application for the filed, and SaaS-based CRM model. We need a centralized database in order to ensure that rest of the HO can access any data on a browser. On the telecom front, since the application is Web-based, we are working with various service providers and telcos to provide us with a reliable network for data and voice. We are also setting up our own call center. We need to centralize our call center where the telecom plays a big role.

Shirish Gariba CIO, Elbee Express

Are you looking at new IT initiatives to strengthen CRM?
We need a good CRM package. Ideally, we should be able to capture the conversation between our customers and executives on the field and offer better solutions. At present, services available to a customer in remote locations may not be as good as those available in metros. For instance, we have clients like IBM, who want the uniform customer experience across all branch offices. According to us, satisfaction should be common when our customers deal with a small branch office or a metro office.

Keeping this in mind, we are looking at a CRM package, which covers sales management and customer relationship among other things. This package should also assist us in forecasting the market demands effectively.

What were your main IT deployments in 2007?
Delivery of new centralized Web-based business application to users was one of the main focus areas in 2007. This year we will strengthen our focus on mobility. We see a lot of value by deploying a technology that would ultimately benefit our customers. We will also explore business application on SaaS model.

Which technology is going to be the key driver in the coming days? Are you convinced that technologies would deliver business value?
Regarding technologies that would drive my industry, my bets would be on mobility, unified communications, RFID, and Web-based centralized solution. At Elbee Express, we have started looking at unified communications and I believe this would be very important for the consignment delivery sector.

Any technology that does not suit the business requirement has a tough task to deliver business value. Vendors come up with many new solutions and technologies and we work with them to understand their use. There are many occasions where we are convinced about some of the new solutions and deploy them. There are cases wherein we have chased the technology that is showcased to us, but did not choose since we did not find value for our business.

All investments are linked to business goals as IT is aligned to business. Is RoI a major challenge for you?
This is really a big question to answer. Yes, it is a challenge but the moment business users ask for new solutions, we identify the same for them. As said earlier, we work with them very closely right from the beginning. Only when they confirm that they vouch for a particular solution, we adopt it. This ensures that there is a linkage to the business goals.

I guess there would be hardly any organization whose IT infrastructure is not critical in this globally competitive environment. To answer your question, it has to be up all the times. So, it's very critical and the business depends on infrastructure.

We have user engagement right from the beginning of the project. Whenever there is a new requirement of application/solution, or if we find there are solutions in the market to solve our business problems, we bounce the idea to the business and explain how this would solve the problem. If the organization decides to go ahead with that particular solution, we deliver necessary IT services and technologies to execute the solution. The objective here is to solve the business problem whereby IT automatically gets aligned to business.

How do you handle security issues? Which IT risks concern you the most?
Security is outsourced to the IDC, which is an expert in the field. We have only one goal that we should try and keep our business pretty secured and give comfort to internal and external customers. Like every organization, we also have a mission and to accomplish it, we use IT systems. The risk management process for us is to protect the IT assets and enable the organization to achieve the mission.

Elbee Express is setting up its own call center. What approach do you follow in outsourcing, and is the outsourcing component growing?
Yes, the outsourcing component is growing. Honestly, I have liked the outsourcing model from the beginning and thus anything which the market can deliver better, faster, and cheaper, we try and put the outsource model to it. Once all the stakeholders, including the business, are ready, we go for it completely.

What has been your experience in terms of services delivered by the service provider?
Most of the times, the services from the vendors are good; they deliver as per the commitments made. But it does not mean we have always had exceedingly good experience with them. We have had our own share of bad experience from the vendors. I would not like to name any vendor. But if you look into the problem and try to analyze why this has happened, it is either the vendor has not understood the business problem and is trying to address it with a solution which does not fit the organization, or they oversell. When it comes to delivery, they do not get the required approvals from their management and thus they try to run away from their commitments.

The worry is not how much good or bad experience any organization has. The real issue from vendors is generally post deployment of the solution. Here only customer-focused company supports you and the relationship manager drives it. So, it is dependent on a particular person and the moment she or he leaves the job, trouble starts.

Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in