“CIOs have to align IT with their corporate strategy to get higher returns”

Subbarao Hegde,
AVP, IT
GMR Group

“CIOs have to align IT with their corporate strategy to get higher returns”

Subbarao Hegde has transformed the way infrastructure development business is done in India by adopting innovative and benchmarking technologies at GMR. He shares some of his business and technology experiences with Megha Banduni Rai, Sr. Correspondent, Network Computing.

Career progression: Hegde was the CIO at GCMMF (Amul) for 15 plus years, until he joined GMR Group in April 2006. At Amul, his role was to focus on distribution, supply chain, logistics, and market demand, besides aligning IT with business strategy. Among other things, he put in place an IT Policy, defined technology standards, and worked toward IT competency building at the end-user level across the supply points of the organization. He has won several awards, including those for CIO Excellence, Supply Chain Management and Customer Management. He graduated as an electronics and communication engineer from the University of Mysore.

On infrastructure development business in India: “We foresee an exponential growth potential in infrastructure development business within India and worldwide also,” he says. “Integrated collaborative secured IT platform will continue to play a vital role and become a differentiator to keep us ahead of competition. In the long run, early entrants/adopters of innovative technological tools for creation of value network in order to facilitate information on demand for businesses are becoming winners and have a huge advantage in leveraging their core competencies and expertise in their respective industries.”

Tackling the challenge of change management:  Business is growing at an exponential rate, says Hegde. IT has to play a vital role to keep pace with the business needs of various sectors. “Our next big challenge is change management for building a knowledge-enabled enterprise.” According to him, the company can meet this challenge by emphasizing more on training and by bringing a collaborative transformation across the organization to make its people and partners more efficient and knowledgeable. Also, deploying a change management strategy is one of the key components to becoming successful in all its IT initiatives.

On latest IT initiatives at GMR: Integration of SAP ERP with ESS portal covering all business verticals, Office Live communicator for multi-party instant messaging and one-to-one Web video conferencing are some of the key IT implementations. “Building of a knowledge management platform with a single sign-on using Microsoft SharePoint is another key initiative we are working on,” says Hegde. Other initiatives include a document management system integrated with the Intranet and building business intelligence dashboards.

On three best initiatives/deployments at GMR so far: Executed an IT strategy study, Information Systems & Technology plan (ISTP), for the whole Group so as to align IT with business strategy and focus on a process-driven system approach. The enterprise-wide business requirements derived from the study are being translated into strategic themes and have helped to identify focus areas for technology enablement. “We have deployed IT architecture and done platforms standardization as per ISTP recommendations,” says Hegde.
Second is the implementation of MS Exchange that helped the company to enhance and ease communication and collaboration. This was enabled through WAWA architecture (Work Anywhere & Work Anytime) by seamless integration with Windows PDA.
The third best IT implementation undertaken at GMR was the setting up of a secured, MPLS-based wide area network operation in a strict SLA-driven environment for seamless VPN connectivity across the company’s offices.

On key trends emerging in the IT space: “Today, technology is available at highly affordable prices and is easily adaptable to help companies streamline their operations and foster growth,” says Hegde. According to him, turning information into a strategic asset is a key trend. Other trends that are emerging include security and governance, enterprise information infrastructure, published IT roadmap, and information on demand.
Mantra at workplace:  “Be a GEM – Goal Empowerment and Measurement. Give your best to the company and leave the rest.”

Success recipe: “Maintain self-managing leadership with ‘5 Cs’ - Calm, Clear focus, Confident, Committed, Creative. We must e-overhaul everything we did yesterday to compete tomorrow.”

Best books read: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey and Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne.