Prasad Dhumal

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"Managing people is more important than managing machines, a happy and motivated employee will help improve efficiency, productivity and innovation in your function/ company with or without systems."

Prasad Dhumal
Senior IT Director
DHL Express

Prasad is a veteran and over the years has undertaken several leading positions within the company. Prasad is responsible for managing overall IT function for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives.

Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations

For me, the top 3 Challenges in 2013 are:

Enterprise Mobility:

The biggest challenge which technology is facing today and which will continue in 2013 is to keep up with the pace of “consumerization of IT”, largely in mobile phone/smart phone space. There is a race amongst all the smart phone manufacturers to outsmart each other. The challenge Indian enterprises face is that most of the employees who use gadgets for their personal consumption are young and they want to use the same at their workplaces, instead of a Corporate device. This has given birth to concepts like BYOD which many organizations are struggling to adopt.

Cloud Computing:

The debate around effectiveness vs ease of implementation of cloud continues. Arguments on whether private cloud should be the first step before moving to public cloud are keeping the various IT forumslive. While the benefits of cloud adoptions can’t be outrightly denied, security concerns and inter-operability of various cloud based service providers/ partners still remains a challenge. My expectation here again is a more co-ordinate effort by various Cloud operators to setup up norms, SLAs, rules of engagement etc.

Data Storage and Security:

The consumerization of technology is leading to tons of data being generated every hour. There isn’t sufficient knowledge available yet to develop skill sets around big data to make optimal use of it for business purposes.

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

End to end solution offering on cloud is not yet available; hence adoption is becoming a challenge. Enterprise mobility is catching up fast, however the underlying Telco infrastructure (read 3G and 4G) is yet not comprehensive in terms of coverage, or stability, hence organizations are not able to leverage enterprise mobility fully.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment

If managed well, cloud computing and enterprise mobility are going to be game changers in the next 3-5 yrs. Enterprise mobility in particular can definitely transform the way logistics solutions are being used today. Technologies like RFID can bring in a lot of discipline, security, waste reduction and productivity enhancements in logistics and distribution. Business intelligence is also something which is becoming extremely important for organizations amidst the dynamic nature of economies.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO

The expectations are to run a tight IT operation, keeping the lights on and managing the incidents/ outages well. A CIO today is expected to help transform business by leveraging his knowledge of IT solutions which delivers competitive edge, help reduce cost and waste, make processes efficient and workforce more efficient and agile. Furthermore, a CIO is expected to contribute in all areas of business development, where IT solutions play a critical role in enabling monitoring and measurement of key KPIs apart from being business savvy than technology geeks!

Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs

To be a successful IT professional and a CIO, it’s extremely important to understand your own business well and the ecosystem in which it operates. Listen carefully to the voice of your customer, be internal or external. Quite often it leads you to it innovative IT solutions. Managing people is more important than managing machines, a happy and motivated employee will help improve efficiency, productivity and innovation in your function/ company with or without systems.