Satyajit Sarker
DGM-IT
DTDC
Insight of My Company and its IT Policies
The company started around 23 years back in the year 1990 . Since then
it has grown from the scratch and today it is one of the leading courier
and logistics industry. This is the only company in express
distribution which works with franchise model (channel partners model).
This is the first company to introduce channel partner model in the
express distribution and the others followed us. In the last 10 years
the company has been growing rapidly has grown very much. As of now we
have 6000 franchise and 400+ branches across the country & we are
planning for 10000 franchise across the country by 2015. In the last 5
years there has been consistent growth for the company.
As a
business enabler IT has played a crucial & important role in
company’s growth. The most important part of our business is smooth
information flow which has to travel before the physical parcel travels
during pick up to delivery. In order to support this requirement, its
required a mammoth IT infrastructure . DTDC started its journey with
manual process & soon realized the requirement of it in order to
scale the business. DTDC started using IT way back in 1994 & by 2000
DTDC developed a complete express distribution application. The year
2004 was a historic year for DTDC from IT perspective as this year DTDC
prepared its structured IT strategy. Entire IT infrastructure has been
consolidated & centralized during this year as apart of the
strategy.
Views on new technologies
We are the early adopters of cloud. We adopted the cloud technology long
way back in the year 2006. We use some third party applications through
public cloud. Private cloud is there for some time & I do not think
we need to discuss anything on this rather we are talking about public
cloud. Public cloud computing is maturing very fast & expected to be
a full prove service soon. I think company is not yet ready to adopt
cloud of 100% of its requirement again cloud is also not ready to
address business fully
Keeping up with Technology
I keep myself updated with latest technologies via seminars, magazines
and the peer colleagues like CIOs, CTOs, etc. from various
organizations.
Team Size
In the centralized location we have a core team of 25 members. We have
150 support team member in the field across globe who is managing 7000
franchise and 400+ branches.
Biggest Pain Point
Our biggest pain point is connectivity. Since, we also exist in deep
rural areas where the data & voice connectivity is always a
challenge.
Technology Heals Pain Points
I do not think that any technology can help in improving the
connectivity without the focus of the service provider or till he time
the area is commercially attractive to the service provider. I am hoping
on 4G launch country wide to get some relief on data connectivity.
Slowdown Impact on IT Innovation
Definitely, IT innovation did become more critical during the slowdown.
The global slowdown has also affected the business climate within India
and the growth rate of the Information Technology (IT) and Information
Technology Enabled Services (ITES) sector is also experiencing the
tremors of the global recession.
Challenges Faced
External & internal threat is always there and I think no technology
can secure the information completely without proper system, process,
governance with quality & security compliance/standard.
Adoption of Cloud Policy
(1) The private cloud – It is much controlled & better secured compare to public cloud.
(2)
The public cloud – It is based on the vendor type and vendors adhere to
various compliance & standard. Putting right kind of governance and
ownership contract. The contract management is very vital in public
cloud policy. We put our entire focus on data security and data
ownership under contract management part.
Role of Cloud
I do not think public cloud is playing any important role in securing
the data and in future also. It depends on vendor to vendor what
security policies they have and how they adhere to certain standards.
Expenses on IT Systems
We spend 2% on our annual IT budget. We focus on using IT as a tool to serve the purpose of our organization.
IT Budget Upgrading Plan
Its most unlikely till any big shift in strategy.
IT Leader – Manager First or Technologist First
An IT leader should be a Manager first. As, a Manager is the person
responsible for planning and directing the work of a group of
individuals, monitoring their work, and taking corrective action when
necessary.
Latest Technology
I am looking forward to the technologies like Storage virtualization and
4G. It would surely help us to boost our business and also to connect
to the people dwelling in rural areas.
Relationship Between CIOs and CEOs
CIO should be a decision enabler to the CEO.
CIO’s duty is to feed all relevant business & statistical information to the CEO.
Advice/ Suggestion
We have learned enough technology which brought us to this level. Now, we should become a businessman.
