Aligning IT With Business - The Need Of The Hour

Biztech2 speaks to Prakash Pradhan, head - IT, Jagsonpal Pharmaceuticals, to get a better understanding of the various IT innovations undertaken by his organisation, as also his views on the importance of aligning IT with business.

Could you elaborate on the IT initiatives taking place at Jagsonpal Pharmaceuticals?

Innovations are happening big time in our organisation. Cat5 that was being used for the old set ups has now been upgraded to Cat5e. Innovating further, we now plan to deploy Cat6 in some of the new set ups.

In order to enable smooth remote access and connectivity between our manufacturing plant in Faridabad and the head office, we have deployed SSL VPN from VFORTRESS. The deployment will help business applications and data residing within corporate data centres to be securely made available through Internet to remote offices, mobile employees, suppliers, customers, and partners.

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We also intend to implement some good ERP solutions, including Data Integration and Field Sales Automation, in the coming year.

Do you experience pressure from the top management while investing in IT?

Currently, businesses are passing through an unprecedented growth phase. There is no single operational area where fast transformation can be achieved without the deployment of IT.

At the top management level, there is a realisation of the potential of IT to facilitate this growth and even to fuel it in some cases. There is also an awareness regarding the potential of IT to provide competitive advantage.

All these circumstances are creating healthy pressure on the CIOs to respond to the opportunity. The realisation at the top management level needs to percolate down, for which one needs to create sufficient awareness of the potential of various IT tools.

What are your top priorities as a CIO of a pharmaceuticals major?

The priorities of a CIO always revolve around the business growth. As per the organisation’s requirements, a CIO has to prioritise the demands for technology and investments. My top priority is to connect the various distributed and separated business houses. Then comes the Data Integration of the disjointed modules spread across the organisation. Also, developing IT infrastructure to facilitate business growth over the next five years is an important priority. This comprises scaling of hardware and data-communication networks, deployment of integrated software such as ERP, data warehousing, storage and security solutions.

Could you enumerate the major challenges in the smooth functioning of the day-to-day operations?

One of the major challenges is to ensure is that the IT decisions flow out of an IT strategy aligned with the business strategy. Decisions should derive from a business strategy and not from a fancy for technology. Lack of time devotion for innovation is another key challenge in operational procedure. The IT people who drive IT deployment do not know functional procedure of the whole organisation and hence require proper training. In addition, high obsolesce rate of technology, making appropriate technology challenges and managing relationships with multiple vendors, are other major challenges that a CIO confronts.

What are your thoughts on the alignment of IT with business?

Aligning IT with business is the need of the hour. IT departments cannot survive unless they align themselves with the business. However, achieving this is very difficult.

At the same time, if this alignment is perfected, it works best for the IT function in that organisation. Today there is an awareness at the top management level about the potential of IT to facilitate fulfillment of the business objectives.