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It was in 2003, that top management at Godfrey Phillips India Limited (GPIL), a leading tobacco manufacturing company, decided that they needed to have anytime, anywhere connectivity for all its employees, especially the field sales force. The company's operations span northern and western India, with two manufacturing units at Ghaziabad and Andheri, Mumbai; an R&D center in Mumbai and a tobacco buying unit in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh. The company is headquartered in Delhi with sales offices at Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Delhi, Chandigarh and Hyderabad.

	'We said that anything that could be done in the office should be accessible outside the office as well.'
	-Alagu Balaraman, executive vice president, IT and Corporate Development, Godfrey Phillips India

Challenges
The decision for anytime, anywhere connectivity was guided by the fact that a majority of the GPIL staff are on the move and use to be stranded due to lack of access to sales data. The company realized that goods were flowing at multiple levels before they reach the end consumers. Each level was posing problems for the company and required detailed planning. Another problem was dealing with various incentive schemes and demand shaping exercises that take place to ensure sales targets are met. Finding out whether growth was due to actual consumer demand or incentive programs along the supply chains.

The man behind all this was Alagu Balaraman, executive vice president, Information Technology and Corporate Development, Godfrey Phillips India, responsible for IT deployment and process re-design of the Company. Recalling those early days, Balaraman, says, "We said that anything that could be done in the office should be accessible outside the office as well."

Solution
To begin with, the company standardized the infrastructure on the Linux Oracle platform and put some package applications depending on specific needs. The company went for Oracle E-Business suite and Web enabled applications.

A beginning was made with the basic systems of invoicing and accounting with the customers. The company then moved on to notify people on the ground through an extensive use of mobile phones. Collections that were made were notified to the customers. The managers at the head offices were thus able to know if things were moving in the right direction. The system even allowed field staff to inquire about the balance.

On the sale side, the company chose to retain the custom built applications as the company was evolving many processes. For this, it followed the premise-you go for packaged applications when you know what processes the company has. GPIL currently has several ongoing projects in this area.

GPIL also uses a service provider for its SMS based applications. The service provider takes care of the actual delivery of the SMSs based on what they get from the company's systems. To ensure the security of communications, the company has an Information Security Committee. Members deliberate and frame policy related to security of data and applications within the company, based on the criticality of the information.

Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in

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