M&M Brings Group Companies Closer With IT

Mahindra Group is one of the leading industrial houses in the country. Arvind Tawde, CIO, Mahindra & Mahindra, in a tete-a-tete with Biztech2.0 shares the company’s strategy on green IT, virtualisation and how IT can be leveraged during times of crisis.

Can you elaborate on the role of IT at M&M and how is it evolving?

In the beginning of the 21st century, globalisation truly got into the economies of many countries especially India. Presently, the canvas in which companies are competing has changed completely. Today, organisations are not looking at IT only in terms of automation. A decade back IT was considered mainly as an enabler of automation for applications related to data processing. Companies can now increase their competitive advantage by using IT to do things differently. In manufacturing per se, because of the complexity involved, IT is deployed from end-to-end. The emphasis has changed though, from pushing recovery and managing inventory (i.e. supply chain management) to demand management, use of IT has become customer centric making the structure pull based.

Customers now have the option of getting the best quality products at very optimum cost. Their preferences also play a part in getting the right product. The internal system of the company has to align with what the customer needs. So now IT is present in all customer-touching processes as well as manufacturing processes, including the shop floor. Schedules are becoming more collaborative. Earlier we used to have monthly plans but now we are talking about the daily plan or weekly plans. Every week, the process is refined with inputs received from the market.

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Mobile workforce has increased to a great extent. In such a situation, how does one prepare for security?

Mobile force would present one set of risk. That is why M&M went for Formal Structured Information Security Management. We went for VSSL certification about four years back for the whole organisation. It is not enough to just manage IT assets. Threats are constantly evolving. Thus, one has to keep upgrading.

How is virtualistion helping M&M to optimise its operations?

Our new data centre is based at Kandivali, Mumbai. It is an extension of our present data centre, also based in Mumbai. We use blade servers and VMWare for virtualisation. There may be 70 physical servers hosting 120 applications. Thus, one can manage large volume of transactions on a small square foot of the data centre. There is a lot of saving in terms of power consumption. It is a part of our green IT strategy.

What is the role of IT at M&M during the recession, especially with a lot of cost cutting being done?

IT is important during such times. Nobody will look at cost cutting just for the sake of cost cutting. Organisations undertake investment, which affect their long-term growth. There may be sudden investment, which could be optimised, or phased out or completely scrapped. During recession, IT can take over in terms of managing operations effectively. In the current situation, managing cash becomes the most important thing.

Which is the latest technology that M&M is leveraging?

We are using SOA extensively to maximise our operations. We are using SOA for our customer databases too. M&M has a very diverse portfolio, which includes automobile sector, Mahindra Finance, Mahindra Lifestyle, Mahindra Holidays etc. We often find that there is a common customer across these segments. This bulk data can be used in various ways. Imagination can open many doors here.

What is the future roadmap of IT at M&M?

We are bringing group companies closer. We recently launched One Mahindra as a group portal. All group companies and locations are connected through this. It is a platform for all employees to come together. It is a knowledge-sharing platform, which should also enable our customers to get their problems resolved at a single destination and receive help for the same.