With more than ten and a half years in the retail industry, Manoj Singh has vast
experience in managing the supply chain at distinguished organizations such as HyperCITY, Pyramid Retail and Reliance. In his current role at HyperCITY Retail India, he’s moved up the value chain, as a second-in-line, and manages infrastructure, budgets and business critical projects.
Singh joined HyperCITY without any technology background in 2006, and was assigned the task of setting up a distribution center/warehouse for a retail chain. He had to ensure that the Warehouse Management setup was in line with the business requirement. He also doubled as a functional expert for the Logistics Team.
Singh achieved a lot by way of streamlining the warehouse processes, introduced mobility solutions for warehouse automation, and completed warehouse system setups several times. He is now not only responsible for distribution and logistics, but also for store infrastructure setups and store rollouts — thereby becoming a key functional lead for the organization.
His mentor endorses his knowledge of the business, his ability to work with the business and understand its specific requirements. Says Veneeth Purushotaman, Head Technology, HyperCITY Retail India, “Singh has a passion for getting work done on time, and that makes him ideal CIO material. His passion for work would be one ability to influence the business.”
CHALLENGES
Day-to-day, Singh and his team are confronted with a number of challenges, the main one being to continuously live up to the user expectation of delivering on time. The
requirements for process improvements and customizations continue to stream in, and the team has to not only document the requirement, but also understand the cross-platform dependencies, and the impact on other applications, before confirming and signing off the requirements.
The other challenge is providing the required resources to all stakeholders.
PROJECTS
Among the projects to Singh’s credit are:
- DCMS (Distribution Center Management System) - Implementation at HyperCITY Retail with customization
- Vendor portal: B2B
- Warehouse configuration to enable automation by JDA WMS
DCMS - A warehouse automation system that runs on a mobile device to help the warehouse manage work on the floor. The product helped in considerably reducing the turnaround time of the vendor vehicles and improved availability at the stores with better fill rates. Within a month of implementation, sale increased by 17 percent in GM (general merchandise) and 23 percent in food & grocery. Staff costs at the distribution center fell by 23 percent.
The turnaround time fell by 12 hrs because errors from misreading data virtually disappeared, and this improved the efficiency of the staff and also reduced staff costs. The solution also created a unique bond between IT and business processes, creating happier employees. Attrition is now near zero.
B2B Vendor Portal - A vendor portal for all vendors of HyperCITY, where they
can access all information pertaining to sales, inventory, transfers, payments etc. The site now has over 1,000 vendors online using the information to ensure better collaboration with the business.
Store Rollouts – Singh and his team delivered five stores in the recent past with seamless IT operations right from day one.