Praveen Chaudhary, Chief Technical Officer, Uflex Ltd, talked to Pupul Dutta about the IT solutions that had helped the company achieve improved efficiency as well as his plans
What is the role of IT in your organization?
IT plays a vital role in the development of any organization and for us it is a variable that is used to enhance the quality and timeliness of organizational intelligence and decision making, thereby enhancing the performance of the organization. We examine IT as a moderator of the relationship between organizational characteristics and several organization outcomes, most importantly efficiency and innovation.
Tell us about the IT solutions that you have implemented for the smooth functioning of Uflex.
The concept of implementing integrated IT solutions came to our mind in late 1990s when we had started growing and numerous inter-divisional transactions were taking place. It became a big challenge for us then to keep track of all of the transactions. In order to overcome the problem, the company explored various solutions and, after due consideration, it decided to implement the Oracle E-Business suite.
During the initial period, we had started with Oracle Financials and, with the passage of time, our major production activities are now on the Oracle E-Business or OPM, building a link between various production processes, procurement, customer or vendor support, supply chain, customer relations and financials. Apart from that, our production machines are integrated with software and the system flows in accordance with the production process—starting from receiving an order to determining the cost, material component required, procurement of material, issuing the same to stores, monitoring material utilization by the production department etc.
Apart from Oracle E-Business suite, we are now using IBM Lotus Notes for collaboration, bar code solutions, global network connectivity and Java for our business needs.
Our production facilities, which are located in various locations across India and the rest of the world, are connected centrally to our headquarters at Noida.
Is there an IT deployment that had a significant impact on the company’s business?
The implementation of IT infrastructure enabled the management to control the global operations from one place and resulted in quick and fast decision in respect of pricing, quality, and delivery terms and after sales support. Further, it helped make the information available on demand, synchronize various activities of the companies and improve co-ordination between the various operations and organizations.
What are the current IT projects that you are currently spearheading?
We are doing piloting Oracle BI publisher, which will provide us with a reporting platform. We are also extending our implementation of Oracle E-Business to upcoming locations.
What is the outcome that you expect once these deployments are completed?
BI publisher will give the users a free hand in designing reports as per their requirement rather than being dependent on the IT department or working manually on other software. This will save the users time and energy and enable them to perform more efficiently.
Further, this will bring analytical tools into the hands of the users linked with a database and help them to control their operation effectively.
Will BYOD have an effect on Uflex in particular and the sector in general?
We are yet to adopt the BYOD because of security reasons.
Are you using Cloud computing?
Cloud computing is a good solution but we are not using it. Firstly, there’s the risk of vendor lock in. Then there’s the concern about the availability of the Cloud module across all of our global locations due to political reasons. Lastly, there are issues in terms of connectivity.
What are your IT goals?
We plan to have standardized information technology platforms and integrate all of our global operations and various functions to ensure that we derive analytical value from our database along with better controls.
