"The knowledge of the CIO is driven towards the business aspects in the present time because of his awareness towards technology, security, data analytics and data architecture, be it marketing or sales."
Daya Prakash
Head – IT
LG Electronics India
Daya has over 17 years of experience in IT industry, managing IT Applications & Infrastructure. He has an indepth knowledge related to various aspects of business. He has been at the forefront of LGEIL's IT operations and is responsible for implementation of latest technologies, business process innovation to enhance organizational competitiveness.
Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations
The greatest challenge of the company till now is technology. Technology has come a long way, if you look at virtualization, cloud computing, enterprise mobility. One of the challenges that I see today within the technology space is the ability to deliver business within true sets. LG has a couple of initiatives lined up; firstly which is, the journey of virtualization that we have been talking for quite some time, and we have been able to successfully implement it. There is a plan to extend this virtualization this year to desktop virtualization.
Secondly, the journey extends to distribution channels, to specialty stores. Finally, one of the most important services that the company looks forward is to launch vehicle tracking. Service providers have genuine vigor as they are also actually putting challenges to make sure that the technology is available and is able to kind of deliver the results that have promised. So they are working hard but still there is, lots of advancement which is required.
The areas in business environment where solutions do not yet exist or not up to the mark, and which if existed, would've made job easier
When you break in our very rural markets in India, there are places today which do not have proper internet connectivity. For us to extend some solutions out there, becomes difficult as it is online in nature. It’s not just about that, the availability of the internet infrastructure is another hindrance. Therefore Big Data can solve the above problems for the company and for the whole.
Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment
If you look at the present trade today; enterprise will operate, we have one ERP system in place and that ERP connects very well, to our supplier community. It has a very tight integration with offline service centers from our customer service. One of the most common changing trends that have been witnessed is Silhouette Management System, which is a privately hosted solution that we have extended to our trade. Therefore, cloud based technology will integrate all the business partners of LG. In addition to virtualization, the company is on a journey to desktop virtualization and big data. By adopting these technologies, we wish to provide our business most of the revenues that we could.
My roles and responsibilities as a CIO
If you look at the role of a CIO today, it has moved away from sheer technology caretakers to business oriented experts. Therefore the CIO drives the technology for the organization. So, quite a couple of changes have aroused along with the definitions. The knowledge of the CIO is driven towards the business aspects in the present time because of his awareness towards technology, security, data analytics and data architecture, be it marketing or sales.
Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs
There has been lots of advancement, which has happened in the role of CIO. So my advice would be, if they still feel that they are close to technology and are relevant to the organization, I think they are mistaken. To be close to technology; they have to be the person who will reproduce the enterprise in terms of their vast technical knowledge, but also at the same time these technologies are to be used, for creating business differentiators.
