On Fertile Grounds

The marketing division of National Fertilizers is responsible for dispatching
tonnes of fertilizers across the country, therefore, the focus is on speeding up
the information flow for effective decision making. IT plays a vital role in
sales operations, checking marketing costs and safeguarding market share. In
addition, technology also plays a significant role in bridging distance barriers
and making relevant information available to all at the same time making the
communication interactive with facts and figures.

Adding Value to Business

In order to plan and monitor production, distribution and import of
fertilizers, the Department of Fertilizer (DoF), GoI has set up an online web
based Fertilizer Monitoring System (FMS). NFL has entered an MoU with DoF
wherein the government assists NFL in obtaining ECA allocations commensurate
with the availability of fertilizers from NFL plants.

"FMS leverages the distribution of fertilizers across India and is also
responsible for tracking information regarding the import of raw material and
finished goods, custom clearances, dispatches from the plant, warehouse and
wholesale details to the DoF and state governments at all points of time," says
NR Satyapalan, deputy GM, MS and CIO, National Fertilizers.

NFL has expanded its program from improving the crop productivity to include
development of the farming community by developing an extensive and integrated
marketing solution which takes care of the internal accounting system that
tracks orders, sales, inventory levels, receivables and payables. In addition
the solution also maintains the order, delivery and the billing cycle impacting
the timelines of the sales reports. This has opened up new means of business
transactions between the fertilizer supplier, channel partners and finally
customers.

IT Infrastructure

As part of its IT infrastructure, NFL has its own WAN providing leased line
connectivity through BSNL for Internet and email. Besides, laptops and data
cards have been provided to the district level executives as well.

The corporate office at Noida has 2 Mbps while the Panipat unit has 512 Kbps
broadband connectivity. In addition, the Panipat unit has its own Intranet
website wherein information related to MIS, inventory and personal information
like salary, leaves, advances, PF, blood group and income tax is made accessible
to all.

NFL has added VPN to its IT infrastructure. This has eliminated the need for
costly long distance leased lines, thereby reducing long distance telephone
calls charges. Further more with VPN, the cost of maintaining and supporting
servers goes down. As a part of the new IT initiative, NFL has replaced the old
servers with Oracle Applications Server (OAS) to lower operational costs with
superior manageability and excellent support for interoperability with other
systems.

Green IT Initiative

In tandem with the current go green theme, NFL has replaced all CRT based
monitors with TFT monitors.

In terms of pollution reduction, the Panipat unit monitors the level of
emissions from various stacks before releasing it in the atmosphere. The unit
has obtained ISO-14001 certification relating to Environment Management System
(EMS). EMS is part of an organizations overall management structure addressing
both immediate and long term impacts of its products, services and processes on
the environment. This has value added to NFLs existing process and procedures
through allocation of resources and assignment of responsibility.

Atreyee Datta

atreyeed@cybermedia.co.in