- Scott Carcillo, CIO, Sun Chemical

Sun Chemical, producer of printing inks and pigments, is a leading provider of materials to packaging, publication, coatings, plastics, cosmetics, and other industrial markets. With annual sales touching $4 bn, Sun Chemical has over 12,000 employees supporting customers around the world. Scott Carcillo is the chief information officer of Sun Chemical Corporation, responsible for global IT strategy. Carcillo was the CIO and vice-president of Enterprise IT Services for Digex, Inc (an MCI company), which hosts Web sites and Web-based applications for businesses. He was responsible for Digex' offerings around PeopleSoft, Siebel, SAP, and Oracle 11i. Prior to Digex, Scott was with General Electric for four years where he was CIO for GE energy services. He was in consulting for the eight years leading up to GE and worked for Andersen Consulting (Accenture), and Booz, Allen & Hamilton.

Carcillo was chosen as one of Computerworld's “Premier 100 IT Leaders” in 2003, and his team received awards in 2002 for implementing ERP, CRM, and SCM systems and best-integrated architectures. He brings with him strong Six Sigma experience. In this exclusive interview to Minu Sirsalewala of Dataquest, Scott Carcillo talks in depth about how to choose the right off shoring partner, and the best practices followed at Sun Chemicals

How do you handle new implementations involving people change?
Any new implementation requires major cultural change in its sales, service or marketing. That's significant because companies are less likely to achieve their RoI goals when IT projects require major cultural changes. IT executives know that new applications change how people work-hence, the need for executive support, user buy-in and training.

Extensive training and ongoing communication with users are critical. It is important for top executives to use the system themselves, and insist that reports are based on the generated data.

We also emphasize on getting business users involved at an early stage in the projects. And let them drive the functional requirements. Don't force the system down their throats; instead, get the system right so that they will be eager to use it.

Start with keeping the processes simple. Get people using the system, and then create demand. Some culture change is embedded in that, but because you are incrementally introducing the system, the culture change almost happens on its own.

What is your mantra at Sun Chemicals; what strategies do you follow?
The key focus for us is customer responsibility. We follow the model where 60% of the budget is directed on leveraging on the outsourcing model.

We focus on the core competencies and partner with industry experts to get the best resources.

Areas that influence outsourcing are the core competencies and price points.

Any business from the companies perspective-pitch for the best available in the market. As people are always averse to change, and getting people to adapt is a challenge. I strongly advocate leadership and management training as this helps align the vision with IT.

We currently follow the 65:35 onshore-offshore model. In another 6 months we are looking at this 35% offshore activity to go up to 85%.

Also, after working with the offshore partner for some time we bring on the project team to the site. The team that comes on shore spends 60-90 days, working shifts between days and nights, to replicate the offshore model to work onshore.

What are the criteria for selecting a location for off shoring?
It is very important to evaluate the credibility of the systems. The entire IT set up which plays a crucial role in delivery and support should be robust and reliable. Another influencing factor is the culture of the country. For example India has a British component to it, which is an advantage. India is looked at as a preferred location. Companies here have a structure in place. The competency in language is a big advantage and the most important, price point, is significantly different. At the end of the day it's the price point which influences any such decision.

How do you choose your partners?
While selecting a partner we do a complete screening, for example, we spend significant amount of time and effort assessing their resources-will thay meet our business needs-and available core competency. Most importantly, the partner must be able to effectively communicate why they should be the preferred partner and not some one else.

There is a difference between just body shopping for projects and a partnership. Once the trust and confidence is built there is a complete sharing of the vision.

The partner needs to have our business understanding, understand the problems on IT and align them accordingly.

For us what is important is the partner's capability and the speed with which they can acquire additional quality resources when needed. There has to be a process in place for growth.

Which are the best practices you follow?
There must be a periodic review for ensuring project success and support all the way. The strategy must revolve around customer experience, service, innovation, and optimization of the back office.

Resources play a critical role-commoditize and source optimal cost model for infrastructure. One has to optimize on resources and cost. Look at sourcing application development offshore. 65% of our software development is off shored. For us, internally, the mission within the company has changed dramatically. We have increased our web capabilities as it is the source of sharing knowledge with the market today. We have created capabilities for both B2B and B2C on the web. We believe that any product/service goes through a value addition, for example, coffee beans. From the time they move from the farmer to the market to the bean processor and then to a coffee manufacturer, till being eventually served at a Coffee House such as Star Bucks-from mere cents the product is eventually sold at dollars. Commodity-to-product-to-service-to-experience.

minuvs@cybermedia.co.in

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