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Speaking to an audience of over a hundred top CIOs of India at Cyber India
Onlines annual conference in Kathmandu, Jagdeesh Khattar (till recently the
leader of Indias ongoing automobile success story, Maruti) looked quite
bemused. He had been asked what a CIO should do to get the attention and
understanding of a boss who was not conversant with information technology. His
view was simpleany CIO who is incapable of explaining the business outcomes and
benefits of a new IT plan to the CEO does not deserve to carry the title! In a
difficult period that the next six months will surely turn out to be for all
industry sectors in India and abroad, the challenge for the CIO to deliver more
for less will call for a radically different approach to planning and executing
projects.
The topic I presented at the CIO summit was titled Impact Sourcing and was
a response to this challenge. It included a series of case studies from the US
and Europe of wise CIOs who have chosen a 10-by-10 strategystrategic projects
and initiatives that promise and deliver a 10% reduction in total cost of
ownership in ten months or less! Take the case of the manufacturing firm which
was having a tough job of integrating its sales approaches through direct
selling, distributors and business partners in various countries. A
re-engineering of the processes of data capture and implementation of a low-cost
sale forecasting and CRM solution could improve the predictability and
accounting of sales from all channels in the short span of six months and
provide a window for all managers into a mission critical process.
A recent article in the Harvard Business review also advocated a similar
approach to getting predictable results by focusing on high impact processes and
applying technology and process optimization consulting to get results. An
interesting recommendation made here is that CIOs should read analysts reports
about the company to identify areas that cause maximum concern to the
stakeholdersthat could be new customer acquisition, bringing products to
market, deliveries and logistics or even human resource management. It is
predictable that these would be the areas that cause the maximum concerns for
the leadership of the organization and hence proposals for re-engineering them
are likely to at least get a hearing from the key decision makers. Zensars own
experience with Impact Sourcing, where we promise to reduce the total cost of
ownership or improve the performance of key processes or functions by 10%t in
ten months, has met with an overwhelming response in all our key markets,
including India. This is a clear that there is always a market for an innovative
solution!
The interesting part of the Impact Sourcing approach is that the CIO as
strategist did not limit the scope of the exercise to just technology or
systems. On the contrary, in many cases the impact on the organization itself
has been substantial and inevitably one or more of the other more traditional
elementsprocesses, applications and infrastructure have been transformed by
this more holistic approach. This has always been true of most visionary
approaches to transformation. Knowledge management for instance can never be
truly successful if it does not include processes, technology, culture, and
leadership styles in its ambit. But the ability to touch so many critical
dimensions in a short span of less than a year is what makes Impact Sourcing a
worthy initiative in these difficult times.
Ganesh Natarajan
The author is Vice Chairman & MD of Zensar Technologies. He can be reached
at maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
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