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Tata Steel needs no introduction. What many people are unaware of, though, is that it is also one of the largest IT adopters in India Inc. And IT has been extended even to areas like township management, medical facilities and community development.

Tata Steel has made pioneering strides in IT usage, proof of which is its winning the Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise in Asia award. A corporate knowledge management solution based on Lotus Notes generates some 3,000 hits per day, contributing upwards of Rs 15 crore in savings/ value. An operations-research-based in-house developed solution for optimizing trimming and slitting operations reduced wastage by 3% and reduced cycle time for planning from 52 man-days to 3 man-days.

Innovation has been another key factor in its usage of IT. The managing director reaches out to all employees to communicate on performance, strategic initiatives and customer needs, using an integration of video conferencing, video streaming, and PSTN-based telephone network. This is a solution developed in-house, the first of its kind among corporates in Asia. Besides this there is eLearning, a HR initiative using LMS from IBM to deliver self-paced managerial and technical training.

Tata Steel was one of the first in the world to employ data mining technology in production processes resulting in improvement in product quality. It has a document management, employee self-service, and workflow all developed in-house. This solution has been implemented in all departments and also at the shop floor level with the help of kiosks. Tata's implementation is a show-and-tell story of how IT can be effective in handling even administrative tasks.

The company was an early adopter of e-procurement with 3100 suppliers transacting business through this system. This culminated in a B2B integration between Tata Steel and Tata Ryerson. Integrating with external processing agents and service centers for production planning and scheduling and real-time integration of supply chain application with distributors are its other achievements in extending the purview of IT management.

In the final analysis, with this display of leadership, innovation and pioneeering creativity in advocating IT, it is no surprise that Varun Jha, CIO of Tata Steel, is our Champion CIO in the Large Enterprise (over Rs 1,000 crore) category.

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