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Follow UsThe $ 450 million Finolex Group is one of India's leading business
conglomerates with interests in diverse areas such as Telecommunications,
Petrochemicals, Irrigation and Education. The group's range of products include
electrical and telecommunications cables, optical fiber Cables, Rigid PVC Pipes,
etc. In an interview to CIOL, CIO of Finolex Industries, Dilip Dandekar reveals
his IT initiative for this year, investment plans and future moves.
On the current IT set up at your organization
Our IT set up includes Windows based desktops and Linux based database
servers at the back end. We have outsourced our database administration to
Spider Systems and infrastructure maintenance to Wipro. Besides, we developed
our home grown ERP solution based on Oracle Forms and Reports. Currently, we
have a twelve-member team managing the IT requirements of our company.
On IT initiatives for this year
Once the TRAI recommendations come through, we plan to connect all our
branches across the country over the leased line connectivity. We also have
plans to implement web based Sales Force Automation Tools. Initially, we are
trying to develop these tools in-house based on the current requirements of our
sales representatives.
We have around 50 sales representatives and around 400 dealers across the
country. Since not many of them are net savvy and also because our products
cater mainly to the agricultural market, we plan to enable 100 to150 dealers to
reach out to our customers. In due course of time, depending on the response, we
might go for local language based application to reach out to the grass root
level.
We plan to migrate to Oracle application server from the current TomCat server
through our Oracle partners Spider Systems.
We are looking at storage consolidation and IP based storage solutions.
On the scale of IT investment for the year
Our investment level varies on our requirements and subsequent costing for
the implementation. In the last couple of years it varied from Rs 20 lakh to Rs
80 lakh. There is no specific budget for this year, but it could range between
Rs 50 lakh to Rs 90 lakh.
On his decision to go with Linux as his database server
Before going ahead with Linux implementation, we actually ran a pilot for
about 3 months to test and found that it worked without hassles, only then opted
for this. We implemented this last year in May 2003. Currently, we do not face
any major issues except that support is hard to come by and to some extent user
resistance.
On whether Linux on the desktop is the next move
Our ERP executables (Oracle Forms / Reports) are on Windows platform. Since
Linux desktops have to use Linux executables, the forms / reports will have to
be compiled on Oracle Developer Linux and a separate set will have to be
maintained for these users. This means deploying a separate file server for
Linux users. There could be a problem of Linux printer drivers being available
for a variety of printers in use. This is in addition to user resistance, who is
used to Windows and Microsoft Office on desktop.
If approved in principal by management then we may carry out a pilot with a
module, which will have few users.
On the ROI/TCO on IT implementation
There has been no specific study about ROI for IT investment. Organization
processes are designed with a specific IT infrastructure being available. For
example, when I design a Web-based Sales Force Automation module, a Web Server
and adequate Internet bandwidth to cater to 100-150 users is the required
infrastructure. The project will be taken up when this basic infrastructure can
be provided. Availability of a desktop for an office worker is again basic
infrastructure like a chair or table and no ROI is calculated for that.