Covid 19: Mock DR drills done earlier have come in handy now: K N C Nair, CIO, The Muthoot Group

The Muthoot Group is one of the oldest and largest groups in India, with a presence of more than 5000 branches. As the impact of Covid 19 rages on in the country, K N C Nair, CIO, The Muthoot Group, tells us how his group is ensuring business continuity.

Some edited excerpts from an interview:

Can you describe some of the key IT initiatives initiated by your organisation to ensure that business continues as usual?
We have ensured all the critical business applications such as core banking solution(CBS), HR systems, etc are up and running smoothly. The entire IT teams involved in monitoring and support are provided work from home(WFH) with appropriate information security controls in place. In addition, our backoffice team also was equipped to function from the WFH environment.

We have a 150+ strong in-house software engineering team involved in developing required solutions for the Group companies. They were all provided WFH option and are enabled for continuous interaction with other team members and project leads thru G-Suite collaborative tool.

What were some of the key challenges faced?
Some of the challenges are the dip in personnel productivity due to various factors such as inadequate bandwidth available, home distractions, lack of environmental control such as air conditioning in hot weather, etc. Also ensuring data security by providing access to critical servers is a challenge.

What are some of the key lessons learnt during this crisis?
Some of the mock drills we have done earlier as part of the DR exercise have become handy now in quickly streamlining the IT operations by deploying the members at their respective homes. The Covid 19 crisis gives us confidence in providing all IT support & management activities from multiple locations which can also seamlessly ensure business continuity.

What are some of the technology tools used to facilitate smooth collaboration between employees?
We are extensively using the Google’s G Suite collaboration tool which was recently implemented in the organisation and found very handy. Also to protect the data, we use VPN and DLP tools for the WFH client devises used.

Do you believe that the current mandatory use of remote work for business continuity is a signal to all organizations that it’s time to revisit their remote working policies?
The success of the WFH in IT may be indicative of the likely transition for other operational areas too to embrace the WFH mode as digitalisation pervades all areas of operations.