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CIOs discover smart ways to become lean
 The moment of truth has arrived for the Indian CIO. Unlike the past, where demand was robust, and the CIO was busy expanding the IT infrastructure to support business needs—today, the tide has reversed. IT budgets have been slashed drastically, while expectations have doubled. CIOs are compelled to devise strategies to not only reduce operating costs, but devise ways to lead business growth.
Solutions to these new challenges were discussed and debated at Smart Enterprise Exchange, an event hosted by Network Computing and Smart Enterprise magazine in conjunction with CA. The event held in Bangalore, was focused on leveraging the power of ‘Lean IT’ to transform businesses.
Saving from many small sources
The event started off with a thought provoking keynote by Professor Sadagopan, Founder Director, IIIT, Bangalore. Describing today’s environment as one with falling budgets, rising energy costs and value conscious customers, he advised CIOs to look for saving millions from several small projects, instead of saving big from a single project. For instance, instead of looking only at the datacenter to reduce costs, organizations can look for savings from the entire ecosystem comprising software, hardware and services.
The power of deriving millions from cutting costs across the enterprise was best demonstrated by Kenny Kesar, VP, Wipro Technologies. Kesar demonstrated how by using unified communication, the firm has been able to save close to 100 international trips per year with an approximate savings of $2.5 million.
Being Ishant Sharma
As a fast bowler, Ishant Sharma, has the best possible return on investment, capturing over 52 wickets from 18 tests, at a strike rate of 3.19 runs per wicket. Lean IT expert and CA Advisor, Peter Waterhouse, used this analogy to explain the concept of lean.
‘Heritage impedes innovation’, said Waterhouse, highlighting that a majority of time, IT executives were consumed in running the IT operations, rather than taking strategic IT decisions. Waterhouse implored IT executives to connect with business using the language of business, rather than using technical jargons.
Use slowdown to reengineer processes
The recession is a great time to redesign inefficient processes, and liberate precious cash. In this context, N Nataraj, CIO, Hexaware Limited, said that the current period was perhaps the best time for organizations to look at redesigning their IT architecture, and showcasing the true potential of IT to lead business growth.
Similarly, V Balakrishnan, CIO, Polaris Software, shared a simple but effective technique of putting more responsibility on business users to own the IT function. Stressing on the need of having no separate IT budget for the entire organization, Balakrishnan said that IT expenses must be shared by respective business owners. Each project must be quantified by the additional revenue it can generate due to automation and increased efficiency. This mechanism forces the business to work collaboratively with IT for success, and take adequate responsibility.
Amit Chatterjee, MD, CA, spoke of the need to look at IT as a service. He said that the real value of IT lies in the transformation of business, and IT must look at every possible way to automate activities, so that more time and money is available for strategic initiatives. He suggested the use of solutions that comply with the ITIL v3 framework, thus enabling the IT function to truly align with the business needs.
The event concluded that Lean IT is a great methodology that organizations must use to cut waste, improve productivity, and more importantly, to achieve business goals. |