Digital Leader 2018: CHANDER SHEKHAR DEVRA : SRF Ltd

SRF LIMITED | MANUFACTURING

CHANDER SHEKHAR DEVRA | HEAD –IT (Chemicals Technology Group)

KEY IT SPENDING AREAS FY 2018-19

Electronic Lab Notebook, Data Security

KEY SOLUTIONS DEPLOYED IN 2017-18

o   PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) system

o   IRM(Information Rights Management)

o   DLP(Data leak prevention)

WHAT DOES DIGITAL MEAN FOR YOU

Digital can play the differentiating & transformational role to reduce product Time to market & reduce developmental cost by improving the efficiencies of business processes while securing intellectual property.

NAME 3 BEST PRACTICES FOR ALIGNING IT WITH NEW NORMAL BUSINESS DEMANDS?

Using ITSM Frameworks like ITIL, COBIT. This is helping for business-IT alignment, predictable IT performance and costs, and continual improvement in terms of IT effectiveness and capabilities.

WHAT IS THAT ONE KEY MESSAGE YOU WOULD LIKE TO GIVE TO IT VENDORS?

IT vendors should have in-depth domain knowledge and technical ‘know-how’ of the business. IT vendors should work as the change agent for business transformation by consulting, building, operating & transferring the solution to the client. Proposed IT solution should give a clear picture of Return on Investment(ROI) along with benefits realization plan. IT vendor should step beyond the project consultation & Implementation. The vendor should share the responsibility with the client for getting sustainable mode stage of IT project till it starts giving the ROI. During implementation, IT vendors should be more on the shop floor to bridge the gap of actual user requirements & operational modalities.

SIGNIFICANT MILESTONES AS CIO (CURRENT AND PAST ROLES):

SRF has changed focus from being a commodities player to a specialized chemicals business in line with the revised strategic direction of Chemical Research (i.e R&D and Engineering Scale-up) to develop products for Agro and Pharma companies. We now have over 200 chemical engineers and scientists across 3 sites who design new products in our business segment called Chemicals Technology Group. While the growth in this area has been exceptional, the processes were getting chaotic and hindering our execution speed with over 30 New Product Development(NPD) projects underway simultaneously at various stages. This was causing delays and missed opportunities leading to decreased customer confidence. To Reduce Product time to market & reduce product/developmental cost, Oracle Agile PLM(Product Lifecycle Management) solution was successfully implemented.