These days CIOs are business leaders first and then IT leaders. That means they need to have intricate knowledge about products, services, business processes, business models, financials, customers and human resources. Arun Gupta, Group CTO and Customer Care Associate at Shoppers Stop, is a model CIO for this new definition of CIO.
Around a year ago, the Group was facing certain challenges with its F&B business. The management appointed Gupta to run this business and to try and generate profitability out of it. Given the level of process execution and discipline that it demanded, the management felt Gupta was best suited to drive the initiative. Gupta candidly admits that he had no prior knowledge about the F&B business; the project was more of a learning curve where most initiatives were already in place—and there was very little technology involved.
“It was more to do with people, processes, and the way you serve and attract customers. Except for the order entry and fulfillment, there was little technology. It required knowing, for example, how to make a burger, what goes into it, what’s the cost of it and how to maximize the profit by looking at it visually; questioning, challenging, and creating opportunities,” explains Gupta.
But Gupta was quick to learn and the F&B business saw an upturn within just three months. “We continued to focus on cash margin. Later we reached a point where we felt as an overall business, there was very little to run. So we outsourced it as a venture with Café Coffee Day and converted our F&B outlets into Café Coffee Day outlets,” he says.
One of the most respected CIOs on the Indian IT scenario, Arun Gupta has supported and driven major IT initiatives across companies such as Philips, Pfizer, DHL Worldwide Express, and Great Eastern Shipping since 1994. In his current role as Group CTO, Gupta manages IT for multiple organizations under the Raheja Group and provides help to Group companies.
As CIO, Gupta looks at the IT enablement aspect of the organization, ensuring technology consistencies across the various companies of the Group. “Such consistency not only helps in creating a common framework that can be leveraged cost effectively across businesses, but also gives the ability to create common processes that allows the organization to move people from one business to another, without a big change and with very little learning,” informs Gupta.
As a part of the management team, Gupta plays the role of an advisory, providing insight into the latest happenings in retail from around the world—regarding what can be adopted as upcoming technologies or best practices—to enable the company to stay ahead of its competition in India. He is also an advisory to the Group, which includes K Raheja Constructions, Chalet, Renaissance, Marriott, Residency hotels, Raheja ServCorp and a host of other entities. “I help the IT head in K Raheja to strategize on IT initiatives looking at what are they doing and how they can benefit from what we have done in terms of processes and technologies,” says Gupta.
For Gupta, the most exciting project in his career is the one he executed in 1994, during his stint with Great Eastern Shipping. The project involved revamping the accounting system to meet industry regulations. It was then considered expensive and massive, considering the size of the company. Given the magnitude of the project its success was critical for the organization. The implementation went on to become successful and surpassed all expectations. From Deputy Manager, Gupta was appointed as the IT Head for the company.
Measuring IT Effectiveness
Gupta believes that the measurement of IT effectiveness differs from one initiative to another. IT effectiveness is sometimes measured in terms of business benefits rather than process benefits. He explains this by citing the company’s example of outsourcing it’s data center infrastructure. The company’s data center infrastructure, which was running about 100 underutilized servers, was outsourced resulting in a 10 percent decrease in running costs and 99.9 percent availability of applications, going up from the initial 97 to 98 percent.
“After the deployment we had 100 percent billing across the week. We had 100 percent shipment across the week from warehouses. It was not about IT metrics anymore, but about business metrics,” explains Gupta. His advice to an IT manager aspiring to become a CIO or an IT Head is that understanding business is as important as understanding technology. He says that good communication along with the ability to lead is important since “the business will not listen to you, believe you, or go with your ideas if you cannot communicate effectively.” Lastly, one has to be willing to take risks since always choosing the safe path will not lead to growth.