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Santhosh Reddy Chitla

"In infrastructure industry it is challenging to bring (user friendly) applications accepted both by unskilled labour as well as skilled engineering staff."

Santhosh Reddy Chitla
CIO
Ramky Group
 
Over a two decade career of progressive achievements, Santhosh has provided robust and scalable solutions that consistently boosted productivity with enormous improvements in cost efficiency through enhanced and extended corporate investment in ERP/CRM systems as well as Six Sigma programs in various industry sectors.
 
Challenges in technology to meet enterprise needs in 2013 and expectations 

In infrastructure industry, the challenges are compounded when you have to bring the technology to drive the businesses, albeit for shorter duration and keep the cost effectiveness in place. Similarly, the real estate brings a different challenge and that requires mobile solutions, be it onsite where a customer wants to inquire about a flat and ensure that we are not promising the same flat to multiple customers by various sales/ channel partners or our ability to provide the details at a stall in a property show regarding availability of flats. My wish list for 2013 would be cost effective connectivity and mobility of business solutions that ensures confidentiality, availability and integrity of the data and information “on-line, on-demand”.

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

There are several pain points. Mobile, effective user friendly solutions that will keep track of men, machine and material at remote sites that are fluid and change with the progress is of utmost importance. The thing that makes my work exciting and challenging is to bring easy to use (user friendly) applications/ solutions accepted both by unskilled labour as well as skilled engineering staff, innovative solutions to improve the productivity and building alert systems to identify pilferage at the construction sites as well as the waste management sites. In fact thinking of a business solution is not hard at all, but to ensure the pragmatic viability and to have it accepted by the workforce is what keeps me awake at nights.

Technology trends impacting enterprise business environment 

The current technology trend of useful apps on the Smartphones and their acceptance and adaptation by everyone has actually given us hope that WE CAN leverage on the technology and it no longer intimidates the users as once was thought. Mobile apps that provide required security on cost-effective networking/ wireless infrastructure will have huge impact on our business line.

My roles and responsibilities as a CIO
 
The biggest change that I noticed in the recent past regarding the role of a CIO that used to be “Keep my systems running” or as I call “Keep the lights on” to What can you do to help me run the business?. In the past, business not just necessarily stated the problem, but came to you with a solution and you were expected to implement. Examples could be: I need Blackberry/ ERP/  RM for my business, to where they are expecting CIO to understand the business, problems of stakeholders and decide on the solution and technology rather than just implement what was handed over and keep it running. CIO is expected to be technology consultant to solve business problems and no longer just a technology expert be it hardware or software.

Lessons learned and advice for fellow CIOs

In the early part of my career, I was thinking more in terms of IT strategy that dealt primarily with the IT support for hardware and the business applications, project implementation and the NOC/ data center. The lesson learned is there is no such thing as IT strategy. The right IT organization enables the successful execution of Business Strategy. Our only job is to provide the right tools to let them do their job effectively and efficiently by using the right technology that suits the enterprise. To provide the cost effective solution, CIO is expected to keep abreast of current and evolving technologies and use them because they fit the business need and not necessarily is the most promising or most talked about technology.