About seven months ago, the erstwhile Hero Honda Motors, India’s largest two-wheeler company,decided to part ways with its major equity holder, the Honda Motor Company. Operationally, the parting was a difficult one and there were many activities
to be performed within a short timeframe. For Vijay Sethi (and other executives in his company) this was a highly challenging situation. They had to review legal, operational and people aspects, and make the most suitable decisions for the future of the company — now known as Hero MotoCorp. Donning his business cap, Vijay Sethi successfully helped the company in its separation, and in its transition to the new company. Sethi has also done a commendable job of blending IT and business at his company — he wins the Global CIO Award largely on the basis of this accomplishment. To quote one of the jury members, “Vijay demonstrates excellent mix of business and IT responsibilities, which many CIOs aspire to achieve. His contributions and increasing responsibilities with the business are commendable.”
Sethi has extensive experience in developing and deploying IT strategies and plans, managing global deployment, maintaining enterprise-wide applications and infrastructure and implementing business continuity plans. He has traveled to more than 25 countries and led several IT integration projects for Global M&As. Of his 22 years in the industry, Sethi has served almost four years at his current company. He is responsible for IT initiatives across the organization. Sethi is also on the Enterprise Management team. This is the core leadership team, which makes crucial business decisions. The seven member team includes the MD & CEO, the CFO and other business heads.
Apart from this, Sethi has other responsibilities at Hero MotoCorp. For instance, he heads certain cross functional teams within the organization — the teams that are formed to work on specific business issues (usually non-IT related). Sethi is also credited for driving certain projects and initiatives that have contributed to the business. The most notable one being the Dealer Management System (DMS) — an implementation of Siebel-based software at more than 500 dealer sites across country. He claims this was one of the largest IT projects undertaken by a manufacturing organization in India. He also spearheaded the Product Lifecycle Management System — an implementation of Siemens Team center-based software linking the R&D and manufacturing operations of the organization. And then he helped deploy Governance Risk and Compliance Software.
When we last met Sethi, he spoke passionately about Hero Honda Goodlife, a customer loyalty system that converts the existing paper-based system to a card-based online system. He can talk for hours about the numerous initiatives on IT infrastructure, information security and Green IT. When the jury examined Sethi’s contribution to the business, they could see clear visibility across most of these initiatives. However, he did not quote numbers to prove the ROI, citing confidentiality reasons. To measure the IT-business alignment, he uses external and internal metrics.
External metrics: Study of companies last year showed that less than 3 percent of companies mention IT in their annual reports. In its last annual report, two whole pages were devoted to IT. That clearly demonstrates that IT is an integral part of business.
Internal metrics: Notwithstanding the recession (2008), the company continued to increase its IT budgets. While most companies were slashing budgets in 2008, the company boldly sanctioned a Rs 100 crore project.
In a tele-interview with one of the jury members, Sethi said, “IT is as much a part of business, as business is a part of IT. They are one today. Anything that IT has to do has to contribute to the business. When business strategy is planned, IT is part of the discussion. Businesses know that they cannot do anything without IT. It is a mutual pull