 "Sharekhan Trading Gets Transparent Through SAM")
Sharekhan is a popular name among broking houses in India. It falls under the aegis of S S Kantilal Ishwarlal Securities and provides investment banking and corporate financial services. It has 510 offices spread across 170 cities and also has a dedicated Web portal providing information on companies whose shares and stocks it is dealing in. Apart from this, information related to the company and other transactions is also available on the portal. The company’s has a detailed philosophy on corporate governance, which envisages adherence to the highest levels of transparency, accountability and equity. The company also has an online platform, which was developed in house, to facilitate trading.
Corporate Governance Requirements
As Sharekhan is a player in the financial services segment, it is very important for the company to maintain good governance practices and to have process transparency while trading in the market. Solutions being used by the company currently were mostly developed in house. Sharekhan’s IT team comprises more than 70 people. It also has a partnership with companies like TCS, Infosys and KPMG for deploying various solutions. The company is quite aggressive as far as deploying new IT applications is concerned. It has numerous applications and solutions already functional at the back-end and front-end of its IT infrastructure. The company was able to acknowledge gaps in its current system; however it needed help to fix those gaps.
Ketan Parekh, CTO, Sharekhan, informs, “We are into financial services mainly so most of our employees are not aware about software and its uses. Though there were gaps in our processes, we were not able to recognise and solve them. Therefore, we decided to take the help of a vendor and a consultant, who could help us not only to recognise our problem, but also provide the right solution to fix it, in addition to helping our employees understand the whole system'.
Deployment Challenges
Though the management was ready to deploy Software Asset Management tools to maintain the company’s software assets in an effective way, it was difficult to get user acceptance within the employee base. It took a lot of time to provide orientation to various users. KPMG was a partner in this deployment process along with Microsoft. Both these firms extended their support to train users at Sharekhan. Parekh elaborates, “It was a tough challenge for us to find someone to take onus for the deployment, even though the management had already given its approval. Getting user acceptance also proved to be a major challenge. We had to dedicate most of our time to evaluating best practices and providing orientation to users”.
The whole deployment process was completed within 25 days and the direct cost involved in the project was Rs 5 lakh. In order to maintain compliance standards and have good corporate governance, the company charted out an initial roadmap with the partner firm. The SAM deployment is now giving a new direction to the company in the area of software management.
Adding Value To Business
With SAM deployment, Sharekhan is experiencing enhanced transparency in its business operations along with an improved security scenario. The company has been able to provide a new comfort level to its customers, who invest money in the market through Sharekhan. Parekh explains, “The benefits or RoI calculation is a long-term process. Though we haven’t yet received a direct RoI figure, we have noticed substantial benefits in terms of adding more value to our business and customers. SAM is an approach, which helps realise the full potential of software assets and enhance control over IT and the internal IT mechanism. It is a vital component of managing IT and helps organisations effectively manage various functions like software procurement, installation, training, license management and usage”.
Post SAM, Sharekhan is considering the implementation of a BI solution. It is also planning to deploy a Business Process Management (BPM) solution in the days to come. The future certainly seems to be ‘IT bright’ for Sharekhan.