|
Shirish Patwardhan,
CTO,
KPIT Cummins Infosystems Limited
As a CIO, I feel that a leader must be a change agent and should have in depth understanding of business risks.
S/he should create the right perception about IT, have affinity to appropriate technology and should be the Jack of all trades, but master of a chosen few.
CIOs/CTOs need to know their business terrain and the changing markets very well. This helps them to focus on appropriate use of technology. They should have focus not just in saving the costs by using technology but also in increasing revenue earning opportunities.
At KPIT Cummins, opportunities are created at an early stage for potential leaders to display their skills. Our HR processes track high potential employees and counsel them on careers. I feel there is a lot of emphasis in creating and nurturing leaders, which are rare to find, but enough attention is not given to creating excellent followers. Leaders can never be effective without excellent executives. In IT teams, there is often the need for specialists and they need to be nurtured and there have to be excellent followers who can execute the leaders' strategy.
Once trained, we expand their circle of engagement through challenges and rewards. Our understanding of the word `to retain’ is different. An ongoing employment may not mean "retention". What is really important is ongoing relationship. We have a good network of skilled people who have gone out of their way to provide their support in spite of not being employed with us.
With the fast changing IT environment, a lot of new technologies are being introduced into the IT architecture, increasing average complexity of IT environment by more than double. While we undergo external and internal trainings, employees are also encouraged to appear for external certifications.
We execute several POC (proof of concepts) projects to understand new technology and thereby understand its capabilities and limitations. Many POCs are first internally tested and then used for our customers.
We believe in hands-on training and also in "on the job" training in less critical areas. Front ending IT teams (helpdesk, floor engineers) should be very good at soft skills and are trained to improve customer touch points in creating the right impression about IT. After all, the farthest of the IT team are the closest to their customers, and their soft abilities are key to their effectiveness.
KPIT Cummins’ IT division has always had a clear strategy focusing on investing into those technologies which will increase our revenue earning opportunities, e.g. we have embraced SAP as the core business process platform long back to give boost to our own SAP practice.
The average age of common users is constantly decreasing. We are having younger and younger managers, who are much more tech savvy. They demand and also consume lot of technology and are very smart at using it. This will generate even further demand a balancing act between demanding users, costs and security concerns before embracing any technologies. Life in IT is not getting any simple, it is in fact much more complex. CIOs are struggling to keep it simple.
I feel there is a great shortage of people who can play these roles. But this is set to change, as the perception of the IT department is changing, slowly but surely. It has started taking ownership of all business processes. A CIO will soon be a CPO! We have started making significant contributions not just to the cost side of it, but to the revenue earnings too.
Top 5 Management Tips to Peers:
- Build for change, not just to last long.
- Build constant customer connect through end point contacts.
- Create value reinforcement for IT.
- Focus on revenue generation opportunities than simply cost saving.
- Cheap is not low quality and expensive is not guaranteed to be the best.
-------- as told to Sonal Desai
|