SAS Intelligence Enterprise Awards

A platform for the growing enterprise

The SAS IEA 2006 awards encourage IT innovation in the growing enterprise.

Technology is truly the application of knowledge to meet the goals, goods, and services desired by people. This is exactly what IT teams of progressive companies are doing to bring maximum benefits out of an organisation’s IT infrastructure and increase profits. The SAS Intelligent Enterprise Awards have been instituted by the Network Magazine based on carefully chosen parameters and evaluated by industry veterans to honour innovative IT initiatives that provide companies with a definite business advantage.

We have seen that people have implemented ERP systems, to take care of inventory, payroll, accounts, human resources and so on. It has now become a conventional application, of technology for management of internal processes. But, now businesses have become more competitive. They feel the need to reach out to a larger segment of customers. As they have to start creating customer differentiation, they need to look at different technologies that can be brought into play.

To encourage the requirement of innovation, entries for the awards were invited from categories across verticals such as telecom, media and entertainment, IT & ITeS, energy, construction and utilities, BFSI, health sciences, manufacturing, government and infrastructure and retail and consumer products. These companies have either implemented IT solutions using generic technologies leading to enhanced operations, processes and delivered substantial RoI or have used emerging technologies or built an in-house solution that can be regarded as a first in the industry.

Outlook of the jury

Entries received were short-listed by Network Magazine and Ernst & Young based on a set of pre-defined evaluation criteria. On the basis of the scores, three finalists in every category were short-listed for selection by the jury. A jury panel comprising eminent industry experts did the selection of winners for each category.

The short-listed entries were judged on the merits of innovation, of the application, technology used, and value and impact of the technology. Satish Naralkar, MD & CEO, NSE.IT being a part of the jury panel for the awards stated, “I am looking at innovation in terms of the concept itself. It could be something that no one has done before or it could be something done for the first time in India. Innovation can also be something that has increased productivity tremendously by just a small change in the business process or technology.”

He feels that innovation is also about doing the same thing differently either with the use of technology tools or process improvement. For instance, e-ticketing is an innovation. Even though it is not too great in terms of technology but in terms of service the queues at boarding counters have drastically reduced. In his view while deciding for innovation in an organisation, companies should look at the pain areas of their core business. They should use technology solutions or business process re-engineering to remove their pain areas, and achieve their objectives by doing an A, B, C analysis (detailed analysis) keeping the customer, the employees and the risk involved in mind.

Sunil Mehta, Senior VP and Area Systems Director, Central Asia, JWT from the jury mentioned, “We looked at complete innovation in terms of a fresh idea that had not been done earlier. The quality of the project was also considered.”

Mehta noticed that most of the applicants were focussing on workflow. He thought that’s wonderful, because now companies do not want to implement projects blindly, but were thinking about how to use a particular technology to streamline their internal processes. Also, the companies were now focussing on technologies that would help them to move up their value chain, give people internally an opportunity to grow and upgrade their skillsets.

Some of the common trends that the jury saw were that technology was being used by the companies to reach out to people, bring efficiency in businesses, cut down costs and cycle time and enhance customer experience.

“Technology is much dependent on culture of the people who would be using it, and factors such as situation, budget, support available and infrastructure. Every company should evaluate all these parameters and deploy the technology that best suits their organisation,” says jury member, Terry Thomas, Partner, Ernst & Young.

Companies have many conventional systems in place but the ability to combine technologies such as wireless with core systems, or internet portals, and ensure that it created that straight through-processing capability and delivered the benefit. The key thing was that it had to be different from conventional solutions, second it had to deliver the benefit for which it was conceived.

Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President and Chief Technology Officer, Reliance Capital said, “When you talk of innovation in technology it means being able to adopt something new and different, away from the conventional. Being able to think completely out of the box in terms of application and being able to see it accepted and adopted by end-users and customers, and ensuring that the benefit happens.”

Phanasgaonkar sees the trend that people are now becoming conscious of the fact that they need to measure the business benefits than just experiment with technology. In the sense that they are now calibrating, measuring, evaluating in terms of rupees, efficiency, time to implement, number of employees to be deployed for the job, number of customers serviced and so on.

Initially technology projects were time consuming and costly, but now there was a conscious effort towards ensuring that there was a better plan, the total cost was controlled, and more importantly, the benefits that they had computed earlier or the RoI was actually achieved. The whole technology department has become focussed.

The jury believes that an organisation should do in-depth study on what it was doing in terms of manual processes and figure out where it could automate manual processes. Then evaluate how automation will benefit the company. Also, it was important to take every stakeholder into confidence. It is essential that the project should be user-driven, business-oriented and completely aligned with business processes. Until and unless it is aligned with business processes, the technology cannot achieve any innovation or improvement.

The innovation

The uniqueness of IEA 2006 was that for the first time the jury did not know who the winner was. Mehta feels, “The innovation in IEA 2006, was that it was transparent, with an extremely fair process, and no bias. It is commendable that the people organising this event and evaluating the forms right upto the jury level, did not know of the winners till the final date.”

Manish Choksi, Chief, Corporate Strategy, and CIO, Asian Paints from the jury expresses, “The diversity of the crowd that gathers at Technology Senate is unique. You have people from different verticals, and within those verticals, there are companies that are at different maturity levels in terms of penetration in the industry, and you come across a cross-section of that represented here. So it becomes a representation of the IT microcosm. So that’s probably the most important thing about Technology Senate.”

Naralkar added praise to the systematic approach of the awards and stated, “Thanks to Ernst and Young, IEA awards outstand the other awards by its process which is methodical. The rules of the game are well defined; this is the reason why we could finish judging in a short time. The material given, especially the summary document created was of great help in quick decision-making, as its format was systematic as per the awards criteria. We had to give individual scores confidentially it was not a collective decision. Now that the scores are collected the winner will be announced.”

There are various events sponsored by different vendors. But Technology Senate is independent in terms of short-listing participants, the process validation, screening, selection and award function. It is the recognition of the IT project on whatever points that were evaluated in front of an audience that understands, speaks and sleeps technology.

Meet the Jury
	Satish Naralkar, MD & CEO, NSE.IT	Naralkar took on the mantle of leadership as CEO of NSE.IT in the year 1999. Under his able guidance, NSE.IT today has become a leading IT services organisation in the country. An engineer, Naralkar has worked with some of the best companies in the Indian IT Industry. He was with IBM from 1974 and thereafter in CMC from 1978. He joined National Stock Exchange (NSE) in 1994; almost from its inception. He has been responsible in managing its large IT infrastructure and nationwide electronic trading facility including the world’s largest satellite-based trading network for NSE, the world’s third largest stock exchange. Naralkar has presented various papers and articles and has participated in panel discussions at national as well as international level. He is a member of various core committees constituted for IT reforms.
	Sandeep Phanasgaonkar, President & Chief Technology Officer, Reliance Capital	Phanasgaonkar has over 23 years of experience in applying IT solutions for finance, banking and IT-enabled services. He began his career with the State Bank of India and has worked with Tata Infotech, iFLEX Solutions and Deutsche Bank. He recently joined Reliance Capital after working at Genpact (formerly GE Capital International Services), where he was the Global Chief Information Officer. Genpact is India’s leading BPO and has 24,000 employees globally. Phanasgaonkar’s most significant experiences include banking ERP implementations while at iFlex and the critical IT transition of Genpact from GE which involved recreating infrastructure and core systems. He is an MBA from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.
	Manish Choksi, Chief, Corporate Strategy and CIO, Asian Paints	Choksi joined Asian Paints in 1992 and has held various posts across sales, engineering and marketing departments and decorative and industrial paint businesses prior to taking up the current role of Chief, Corporate Strategy, and CIO, within the Corporate Centre. He has been a catalyst for the company’s foray into services such as painting and décor solutions as well as strengthening its Industrial paints business. He has spearheaded the company’s move into new information technology solutions across the extended enterprise for achieving improved business performance.
	Terry Thomas, Partner, Ernst & Young	Thomas is a Partner with the Risk & Business Solutions Group of Ernst & Young. He heads the e-Security initiative of E&Y, and is in-charge of the Ethical Hacking Laboratory at Chennai. He is also the Partner responsible for the technology risk management support for the statutory audit engagements of Ernst & Young. He is a chartered accountant, a certified information systems auditor, a BS 7799 lead auditor and a certified fraud examiner. He has over 16 years of IS risk management experience in several industries like technology, BPO, automobile, and banking and finance.
	Sunil Mehta, Senior VP, and Area Systems Director, Central Asia, JWT	Mehta’s professional experience spans 24-and-a half years. Currently working as the Senior Vice-President & Area Systems Director (Central Asia) at JWT (earlier called J Walter Thompson & Hindustan Thompson Associates respectively) since over nine years. He is a member of the Executive Committee of JWT India and on the Worldwide IT team of JWT besides the responsibility to look after the IT operations for JWT with its group companies & subsidiaries in India as well as Central Asia along with assisting the parent company WPP Plc. for IT strategies and outsourcing development out of India. Earlier, he was with the Business India group for over eight-and-a-half years and moved out as the Chief Executive Officer of Business India Graphics.