IT is a Way of Life in Our Company: CFO, Havells
As a business leader, how important has IT been for Havells? We are one of the few companies that recognize the value technology brings to business. To substantiate this point, I will go back in time. Havells was a small organization in 1982 with our balance sheet showing a profit of Rs 6.5 lakh. Computers were new at that time. We came across an advertisement of HCL organizing an exhibition of computers. I, along with our Chairman and other Directors, went for the exhibition and eventually bought a computer worth Rs 6.4 lakh. We spend the entire year’s profit on it. This was the vision of our Chairman with respect to technology. We focused on IT at an early stage as we knew that if we wanted to stay ahead of the competition, the edge would come only from technology. In 1999 we migrated to Baan and then to SAP in 2007. We are on SAP across Asia today. This evolution just shows the importance that we have accorded to IT.
How have you been leveraging technology for business growth? We started with the simple computerization of the finance department first, and then extended it across the different functions. The next step was to connect all the business partners through technology. We introduced customer and vendor portals. Our vendors can now see their balance and transactions have now become seamless. Customers have increased visibility into their stocks and the entire supply chain has become seamless. We have eliminated so many processes by computerising end to end. Today, the entire organisation is integrated through technology.
How much budget have you allocated to the IT department? I was earlier the CIO as well as the CFO of Havells. Later as the company grew, experts were added to take care of different roles. While we have a specified budget, there have been times when we have gone beyond it, viewing the needs of the business. There have been instances when huge capital expenditure was approved by the top management within minutes. In 1999 when we migrated to ERP, the business was not too good. However, the Chairman gave us the go ahead on the investment, which was more than Rs 3 crore. Similarly, he took the decision of implementing video conferencing across 25 locations in 2002. Getting a buy-in from the top management at Havells is a collaborative approach. Today our CIO has the complete support from not only the CFO but also the entire top management. This has helped us go beyond the normal and we have kept our edge in the IT systems with respect to the entire electrical industry.
How do you compare yourself with others in the electrical industry when it comes to technology? We are definitely much ahead of others in the electrical industry. Every company focuses on ROI when it comes to technology. We are, however, different. For Havells, the use of technology is more important than the ROI. IT is the way of life in the company.
How are you leveraging mobility and Big Data at Havells? We started working on enterprise mobility way back in 2007. We had given BlackBerry to each and every employee. In 2010, we built an application for sales team giving them all the information on their mobile devices. Each and every application that we subsequently developed was mobile enabled.
We have recently come up with an app for the end customers giving them a virtual experience of our products in the comfort of their homes. A year back, we created a utility for our retailers, which is now generating a lot of data.
We will combine this with our service data to yield good insights.
What are your future plans with regards to IT? With the implementation of ERP, we have been able to integrate all the activities of the organization. In 2002 we opened up 25 depots across India. This was possible because of ERP platform. It enabled this decision. We have integrated our retailers, which was also a big enabler for business. Going forward, the management intends to digitize everything. This will, therefore, be a big focus area for us. We are in the process of digitising our warehousing requirements – barcoding, QR code etc.
We are also focusing on marketing and improving our presence on the social media. Till now, Havells was connected to its dealers. We now intend to track our retailers too.
As a global company, we would like to have our operations on one platform. Like finance, IT is bloodline, and on top of the agenda for the management.
