Nirmal Prasad Rath, DGM – IT, Radico Khaitan Ltd
The challenge for any CIO is to provide information to business in a way that equips the latter with significant competitive advantage. The CIO should also focus on the actual needs of the business who need up-to-date information for decision support.
CIOs must get out of the office, work more closely with business users. A CIO should also have a standard operating practices in place based on which internal controls and checks can be established.
At Radico Khaitan, we have a management that is extremely supportive of IT. We have been allotted a budget of Rs two and half crores this year. We will be upgrading our SAP environment; implement Business Information Warehouse BI and Employee Self-Service and buy high end servers for the database storage facility. This will take care of the entire IT platform scenario so that we don’t buy or replace any other solution till at least 2010.
With BI, we plan to provide the management with dashboards where they can view and analyze reports on a daily basis. I want to differentiate Radico in terms of IT from other liquor companies. In fact, I anticipate more challenges for IT following our JV with Diageo, one of the world’s large liquor giants.
Management tips:
1. Understand business to the last detail
2. Lead by example
3. Use IT as an enabler
4. Set objectives and guidance
--------------- As told to Anoop K Menon
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