SAP is the main technology driving the company's business, says Sudesh Agarwal, general manager-IT at the Patalganga Manufacturing Division of Reliance Industries (RIL), one of the largest companies in the private sector.

Not only at Patalganga, the German ERP is the key technology implementation at the other manufacturing sites at Hajira and Jamnagar as well as the IPCL sites at Nagothane, Vadodara and Gandhar that have now come under the Reliance fold. The other common application across all locations is Lotus Notes, which RIL has now standardized as its messaging app.

Agarwal claims that SAP is the nerve-wire of business at Patalganga and reiterates that it is the same scenario across all the six major sites as well as 7-8 other acquired sites. Even the entire automation of the supply chain and its seamless integration has been completed on the SAP platform.

"It enables normal b2b transactions like dealers logging to the SAP server to enter their sales requirements. They can even track their shipping truck since a vehicle tracking system through GPS and GIS has been integrated with SAP," he says.

He says 2004 would see Reliance Industries going further with SAP—with an aim to web-enable all their applications, systems and MIS. The company is going for mySAP.

Another obvious shift is happening on the network infrastructure front. While the WAN was earlier connected by BSNL leased lines backed up by VSATs, it is now shifting to the Reliance Data Network, which Agarwal claims offers undiluted and reliable bandwidth.

While on the Patalganga plant itself, the investment made on IT is estimated at around Rs 8 crore, a further Rs 6-7 crore would be pumped in during this year. Other than mySAP, the key implementations planned during 2004 are on Document Management System and Knowledge Management, especially conforming to the Six Sigma initiatives to be undertaken.

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