Shivank Bansal
Head-IT
MGF Developments
Company Profile and its IT Policies
Emaar MGF is a real estate company, joint venture of Emaar PSJC Dubai
& MGF construction India. IT is one of the main facilitator into
decision making and integral part of this organization since the
inception back in 2005.
We are currently on Oracle Apps 11i
as ERP, IBM Lotus Domino for emails and totally on IBM infrastructure
across Wintel and AIX platforms and VMware technology.
Perspective on Innovative Technologies like Cloud and Virtualization
As an individual and Organization we are in a total acceptance mode for
cloud and virtualization to reduce the ITi nfrastructure cost at the
outset. We have already adapted the virtualization with the usage of
VMware technology in our initial stages itself
At present we are
evaluating the possibility of shifting the emails on cloud and already in
talks with few market players for the same.
Keeping Pace with Latest Technologies
Attending the frequent seminars and conferences held by OEMs and by
conducting the knowledge discussion on new technologies with our vendors
from time to time.
Personals in your Team
We have a combination of on-rolls and consultants at present. Have a 20
member no-roll team who take care of all the IT functions are IT Infra or
Applications. We have outsourced our FMS services to Wipro.
Biggest Obstacle
Pain point lies both internally and externally actually. Internally real
estate industry still prevails on the primitive and traditional ways of
working and is just in very initial rather a growing stage and the
adaptability towards technology and IT services is very slow and biased.
Though cash rich and good to have profitable business industry we as IT
have to work differently as any other IT in any other domain.
Externally
knowledge of real estate as a domain to most of the OEM is one of the
concern we always come across.There would just be a handful who actually
understands the real-estate in terms of functionality, processes and the
way they actually work in India.
Technology as a Rescue Act
Why not! When we make Organization aware of the benefits and cost
analysis they are willing to adapt any new technology but as already
stated before this sector are not very friendly with
technology adaptation. It takes time make people understand and move up
the things.
Decisive Role of IT during Recession
Sure they do, the recent recession which actually had affected
real-estate in a bad way it becomes more critical for IT to always have
some innovative ideas to carry forward the business and which in turn
save some expenditures as a company. To mention here IT always facilitate
the business to implement their ideas, to be specific in a layman
language a business plan is like a blue print from architect and IT is a
worker to but bricks and cement to bring that to reality but it’s the
ability of worker that in what innovative ideas he can make it fast and
in a minimum expenditure.
Challenges Faced
One of the most crucial and challenging job is security and to be more
precise data & information security.People are reluctant to any new
changes or restriction in their access to information they were accessing
since long. This a typical industry that believes in the power of excel
and physical customer files at present and forever and then when we
introduce system like ERP , CRM & DMS people take time to adapt to it
and have many constraints to use it.
Importance of Cloud in the Organization
With a gradual increase in the space and resource as we are growing big
bigger to huge day by day and as world is moving a step further from
their own office spaces to cloud to make same pace even Emaar MGF has
adopted the cloud policy.
Using cloud to Secure Database
Just recently for one whole day my Organization’s email services were
down and in evening when email services went up, we came across close to
100 corrupt user databases who have actually lost whole of there server
email data. Someone would have lost
their jobs for this but this is one of the instance where cloud will
actually help me to secure the information, continuity of business and
services and many more.
Funds Allocated for IT(annually)
IT budget actually get closed to 4 to 5Cr every year but expenditure may
vary from 2 to 3 a year or even close to budgeted amount. Factors
effecting are many and we always have to take care of 11th hour
requirements from any influential person and cater to requirements.
IT Leader must be Manger or Technologist First.
An IT leader should be a Technologist at first who eventually have the
managerial skills to provide the best of the innovation and solution to
the business. As we all have read the basis definition of computer “An
electronic device which takes in raw data & give us meaningful
information” same has to be the IT leader - a blend of technology and
management a TEHCNOMANGER but definitely a technologist first.
IT Leader must be Manger or Technologist First.
Position of Emaar MGF today in market and prosperity in business is what
it explains it all. All the major technology investment were made at the
time of inception of Emaar MGF back in 2005/6and I don’t see we need to
further spend on at least the infrastructure for even next 2/3 years.
Welcoming New technologies
Currently we are planning upgrade of our Oracle Apps 11.5.10.2 to Release 12.1.3. BI and CRM are also in the pipeline.
