ENTERPRISE 2004 ROUND UP: Shaw Wallace Goes for a Large IT Peg
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
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While the manufacturing segment has seen high IT investments, some segments
like alcoholic beverages seemed to have missed the bus.
No wonder, the future roadmaps of the two prominent players in this sector,
Vijay Mallya’s UB Group and Chhabria’s Shaw Wallace, show marked similarity.
Both have ERP implementation as their key IT projects for 2004 and also have
earmarked about Rs 6-8 crore as the budgetary outlay for their IT strategy.
C S Subramanian, AVP, IT & MIS, Shaw Wallace admits that his company has
really never been tech savvy and investment on IT has traditionally been a low
priority area. And even when it started investing in IT a couple of years back,
enterprise apps that integrate multiple businesses across locations was never
the preferred area of focus.
C
S Subramanian, AVP IT & MIS, Shaw Wallace & Co
Till
now, we never had the time to go in for ERP. We only were busy
with standardization of our servers, OS...
"Till now, we never had the time to go in for ERP. We were only busy
with standardization of our servers, OS, standard applications as well as
connectivity protocols across geographies," Subramanian says.
The key initiatives in this phase of standardization involved closing on IBM
servers across multiple locations as well as implementing Microsoft Exchange
Server and Outlook.
After standardization, the next step was the launch of an e-procurement
initiative with an aim to automate the Shaw Wallace supply chain.
This initiative, started two years back, for which Shaw Wallace tied up with
both Wipro 01markets and baazee.com, has so far netted savings to the tune of
8-10% for the company.
