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The ING Group has promoted ING Investment Management India as a company incorporated in India for the purpose of carrying on asset management activities. The fund house has managed assets worth Rs 8,603.6 crore as on January 2, 2008. Tarun Pandey, CTO, ING Investment Management India, who joined the company eight months ago, is instrumental in setting up the IT strategy for the next three years. Pandey is currently driving the IT architecture layout, design, and implementation. He is excited about the recent SEBI guideline that has waived the entry load on direct investment in the mutual fund by investors. ING Investment Management is looking at an e-commerce portal and mobile initiatives that can attract direct investors across the country and abroad that want to invest in Indian mutual funds. Excerpts:

Generally, the finance industry is really concerned about security issues. What security standards do you follow?
Everyone is aware of the need for information security in today's highly networked business environment. Since information is arguably among the most valuable assets of any enterprise, its protection from predators, both within and outside, has taken center stage.

All security events are monitored and logged using various tools. To tackle security issues, we have a strong, defined incident management procedure that is comprehensive enough to cover steps including identification of root cause, containment, escalation, and resolution.

Banking and finance is one of the major verticals spending huge funds for IT infrastructure. What are your main IT/telecom requirements, and what is your investment plan for 2008?
The main IT requirements in the coming times would be to enable the business to have a faster turnaround time to customer needs, enhance agility to launch new products faster, enhance risk control, and increase productivity and distribution reach in a shorter period of time. On the telecom side, the need is to implement Unified Communications for work from anywhere, virtual meeting places etc.

Tarun Pandey, CTO, ING Investment Management India

We are not in a position to divulge details about our investment plan. We have a three-year plan ready and will have some special projects in the coming months, in the wake of the recent SEBI regulations, that have the potential to improve our business.

ING has a well-structured infrastructure that is playing a mission-critical role at your organization. How does this assist ING service customers?
In the ever-changing global business scenario where it is becoming imperative for all companies to have a major differentiator for competitive advantage technology plays a critical role. The IT infrastructure, if well planned, would enable any company to have a faster reach to customers spread across the country. The well-structured infrastructure would thus help the company to service customers faster, effectively and provide customers on-demand servicing. Even at ING Investment Management India, IT infrastructure plays a pivotal role and is a highly mission critical need for the organization.

What are the main drivers for outsourcing, and what approach do you follow in outsourcing?
Business strategy is the driver for outsourcing. The company's core competency is managing investments and, as a practice, only those areas that are not core competency areas of the company are outsourced. For any outsourcing activity, certain guidelines that are followed are to evaluate whether outsourcing a particular job would help the business in achieving its objectives at lesser value and a faster time, with no compromise on quality. Certain rules of outsourcing are: never outsource a problem, reengineer your process before outsourcing, never outsource risks that corporate governance would not allow, and do not outsource to deskill company in critical/vital competencies.

What matters the most to you in ERP implementations?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems promise you heaven, but the implementation is often just the opposite-cost overruns, exponentially expanding timelines, functionality shortfalls, and even business failures. Adopting ERP is a journey for organizations-from standalone systems to integrated systems, non-integrated data to integrated data and from redundant/inconsistent information to consistent and real-time information. Implementation of ERP is much more important than the selection of ERP. Any successful implementation requires strategic thinking, rational process re-engineering, managing implementation complexities, and transition management. Since ERP implementation for any organization is a cross-functional implementation, one of the main ingredients of successful ERP implementation is effective change management.

Does the convergence that is taking place in ICT excite the financial industry?
The progress in ICT, the potential of IP-oriented networks on one hand and users' demands for comprehensive and network-independent services on the other, have led to the creation of Next Generation Networks (NGN) with new opportunities for end users. In the financial sector, convergence in fixed networks like a convergence of voice and data services, fixed/mobile convergence based on the Internet Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) would enable organizations to effectively harness ,technology and utilize it to the maximum. The major driving forces will come mainly from new products, new services, and new demand created by the convergence between the traditional IT and telecom sectors, and IT and traditional industries, as well as that between the Internet and traditional industries, for example, 3G (third generation) mobile communications network applications will spur the growth of IT products and services, while the tie-up between the traditional industries and the Internet will create an even bigger boom for new markets such as e-commerce.

Convergence is going to excite the financial industry. Which technology is going to be the key driver in the  coming days?
Concepts like Web and e-commerce for mobile, customer service, and increasing business reach would be the key driving technology in the finance industry. We are looking at initiatives involving e-commerce portal and mobile in order to attract investors who want to invest directly in mutual funds.

What has been your experience in terms of services delivered by the service provider?
It has been a mixed experience where some service providers have not provided services in the desired manner and some who have followed the approach of a team/partner and walked the extra mile to ensure a win-win situation for both.

Baburajan K
baburajank@cybermedia.co.in