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Chandan Sinha,
CIO,
GHCL
Earlier, GHCL was known as Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Limited. Our focus then was primarily on textiles and soda ash. At present, we are also focusing aggressively on growing our home furnishing and IT/ITES divisions.
Having acquired Grace (Indian market), Danriver and Rosebys (overseas markets), we are unifying our IT architecture on SAP platform. We will gradually shut the IT and other units overseas and integrate them with our systems. Our Indian offices will maintain all systems and processes for all the companies. However, we will continue with certain legacies which are superior technologies and can work seamlessly with ours.
At GHCL, IT’s motto is to facilitate decision making not only from the system but both internal and external. It is important for the CIO to keep himself or herself of the latest technology. I make it a point to attend at-least one technical and one non-technical seminar per year. I also read all the IT magazines I get to keep abreast of all latest technologies. Today, the CIO must also possess a sound understanding of business so that he can identify and procure the latest and optimum technology, best suited for business.
Some of the parameters we monitor how IT is performing are:
- Understand user requirements and constantly upgrade as per requirements
- Ensure that 30 per cent of hardware is changed each year
- Use customer survey as a benchmark
My vision for GHCL is that IT should play a key role in decision making. The challenge then is to familiarize executives with IT. This can be achieved through training sessions. As our company moves ahead, some of the challenges that I foresee are information integration, forecasting, limited budgets and multi-lingual environment.
At GHCL, we enjoy a lot of freedom but we are also aware that freedom comes with responsibility and accountability. The best part is that IT has been able to support the growth of the company. Earlier, we were looked upon as a service function; but now we are considered a business.
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