With the drastic change in
the environment emerging from being a statistic on a report to
directly affecting the common man on the street, the drive for
companies to shift to energy efficient systems and adapt green
practices is a business imperative and not putting their money down
on a “concept” technology. Recessions or an economic
downturn for the want of a nicer word, bring out a very peculiar
trend. After a continuous period of pessimism on the gloom and doom
that surrounds it and when a bottom is hit, the upswing begins.
It’s not like companies have drawn up plans to transform
their operations to adhere to the environment friendly guidelines
in the past year. Most socially conscious organizations, for
example, the Tata Group with a focus on TCS have a definite
strategy in place. Their Green Computing strategy explores and
adopts eco-friendly options which is implemented internally as well
as they offer a consulting service on the same for their client
organizations. With a buy in from the top management, corporate
functions such as Research & Development, IT, Facilities,
Corporate Communications and HR play an important role to ensure
that the company enforces its strategy.
CIOs looking for ROI
In spite
of the economic climate, CIOs are not averse to buying new
technology, products and services. As part of the study conducted
by Network Computing-Infrastructure Agenda 2009-clearly shows that
Achieving Cost Efficiency or Increasing Productivity has been rated
as the top business priority by 7 out of the 8 sectors covered.
Among them, Achieving Cost Efficiency is polled by the overwhelming
majority. This is definitely indicative of the troubled economic
times of today where companies are concentrating on keeping the
bottom line as low as possible.
|
RadhaKrishna
Pillai
CTO,
SRL, Ranbaxy
|
“This is the right time to buy only if the technology
requirement justifies the ROI because we can get the best rates
from vendors. But if you are investing just for the sake of having
one more technology then this is not the right time to do it.
During the slowdown vendors are eager to do business with everyone
irrespective of the size of the deal. So even if we have a small
budget for IT investments, we can get a better deal on both price
and other add on benefits like extended warranty, staggered payment
to some extent, better service support etc,” says
Radhakrishna Pillai, CIO, SRL Ranbaxy. |
Arun Gupta, Group CTO, Shoppers Stop is quite curt in his response.
He believes that investments in new equipment and technology during
a slowdown will only make sense if they fulfill any of the
following purposes, namely Create operational savings as compared
to status quo; Add a capability which helps in improving the
top-line or bottom-line; and Provides a differential capability as
compared to competitors. He adds, “It has to fulfill any of
the above criteria, else we will desist from investments.”
|
Ajay
Dhir
CIO,
JSL Ltd.
|
“Most of the IT investments are on hold in a majority of
the organizations. But still, the CIO with whatever little budget
he has at his disposal can take a judicious call for investing in
new equipment or technology projects which would bring about
process improvement on one side and on the other side provide a
high ROI and short payback period,” explains Ajay Kumar Dhir,
Group CIO, JSL. He believes that the ROI should be quantifiable
with high visibility for the management in order for it to get a
green light. The CIO can look for areas where they can cut down on
the operational expenses and instead channelize the funds to
capital expenditure projects or deferred revenue expenditure
entailing BPR, as process improvements would result in reduced
costs for the organization. |