Every industry presents unique challenges where the CIO must marshal more than the usual chunk

of resources to solve extreme headaches.

By Balaji narasimhan, gunjan trivedi & rahul neel mani

(From left to right) Vikram Chopra, GM (passenger services application) Centre for Railways Information Systems Sunil Rawlani, head-information systems & technology HDFC Standard Life Insurance Unni Krishnan T.M., group CTO (retail business), Shopper's Stop Jay Menon, director (innovation) & group CIO, Bharti Airtel Pradeep Saha, head-IT, Max Healthcare

Verticals

Lessons Learned From the

Cover Story | Implementation

Cover Story | Implementation

The automobile industry, for instance, hardly has customers interacting directly with enterprise technologies, apart from a few dealer applications needed to help customers visualize the car they plan to buy, says Krishnan. But, retail creates a large number of customer-technology touch-points, with its self-checkouts, barcode scanners, pricechecking solutions and anti-theft devices. And the number of customers interacting with such technologies (like at the checkout counter) can easily increase from a few hundred to millions in a short period. At HyperCITY, we've had over a million footfalls in the first three months, says Krishnan. At an average of two customertechnology contact points per customer and thats about two million probable interactions between customers and technology in three months. Add to that the large number of items a customer buys per visit. (An average receipt has 30-50 items at a hypermarket.) Hypothetically, consider a 30 percent sales-conversion of two million footfalls that translates to anywhere between 9 to 15 [times customers trigger a play of technology] in three months from a single store. It goes without saying that technology deployed in a retail environment needs to be robust. But not robust like a tractor there is no place for the unsophisticated in a shopping mall. Retail technology needs to be intuitive, user-friendly and has to offer a consistent experience. This requires identifying cutting-edge technologies and putting them to innovative uses. There is a generation gap between us and other retailers in the country, as far as technology adoption is concerned. Weve brought new-age technologies to the Indian retail market, some which others havent introduced, says Krishnan. Shoppers Stop has one of the largest installed bases of AutoCAD software, says Krishnan, because the chain uses CAD technologies to craft, draw and plan its multiple stores as they roll them out. At last count, the group had over 20 Shoppers Shop stores and 30 Crosswords outlets. The enterprise is also at an early stage of deploying a solution to optimization store-to-floor space ratio. Called Intactix, its going to help the store managers visualize how to stock shelves using optimal sales and margin expectations. The application also helps analyze how much specific shelves are generating. And it can even do a what-if analysis by removing certain merchandize off shelves and watching its impact on revenue and margins, adds Krishnan. The group was also the first to deploy an IBM i550 performance server in the retail sector. This helps the organization consolidate all of its business units on a single box while running multiple applications, making it easier to administer and lowering the cost of ownership. Today, we run four different enterprise applications (primarily merchandizing and loyalty applications) catering to six different retail formats on the single box, and we can still take many more. Soon we will be the first to use the i570 series of servers running on the Power5+ chipsets, which will boost our disaster recovery capabilities, says Krishnan. Shoppers Stop was also the first in Indias organized retail space to use salesforce.com, a leader in delivering on-demand CRM solutions via the Internet as software-as-a-service, to automate its sales team. The application was customized and implemented in-house and christened IB-Force (Institutional Business). IB-Force helps us to monitor a large percentage of our gift voucher sales, which is about 10 percent (about Rs 65 crore) of Shopper's Stop's sales, says Krishnan.

Scale Up or Get Out

The TGV, even running at just 60 percent of its top speed of 515 kmph, requires over eight kilometers to brake. Retailers dont have that luxury. IT's inability to scale up to mammoth volume transactions while ensuring the constant availability of merchandize can bring a retailer to a grinding halt. Krishnan says theyre the first to have rolled out among the most advanced replenishment applications for hypermarkets. Called E3, this sophisticated mathematical software helps HyperCITY analyze inventory trends, helping the enterprise

RETAIL

a shoppers Paradise
Every month, one of Shoppers Stop 50 outlets clocks seven million instances of customers using technology. Encouraged, the group is now building on its technology capability to stay ahead in the volumes game.
By gunjan trivedi

etail is similar to the worlds fastest train, the TGV. Its speed, availability and extraordinary experience set it apart and has made it among the most preferred modes of transport in France. The same fundamentals separate the retail amateurs from the men. A retail organizations ability to scale up swiftly on demand, keep merchandize available, and create a consistently g r e at c u st o m e r experience in the face of surging volumes and mushrooming customer Keepingpacewithvolumes numbers will dictate its Guaranteeingavailability success. This is where ofmerchandize technology assumes a Creatingcustomerdelight pivotal role. andensuringconsistency Among the big players in the organized retail space in India, Shoppers Stop has

Greatest Challenges

always understood the criticality of scale, availability and experience, and has been an eager adopter of advanced, cuttingedge technology. We deployed JDA-MMS and JDA-WinDSS, core merchandizing, store PoS application and ERP in 1998, much before the other players, says Unni Krishnan T.M., the group CTO of Shoppers Stop retail business that includes Shoppers Stop, HyperCITY, Crossword, Mothercare, Desi Caf, Brio and Home Stop. And Shoppers Stop has continued to pump energy in this area. Today, says B.S.Nagesh, MD, and vice chairman of Shoppers Stop, it has implemented pioneering technologies like a self-checkout at HyperCITY, a first in both the retail brotherhood in India and globally.

The Number Crunchers

The business and technological challenges that the retail sector face are similar to those in other sectors. What sets retail apart is the sheer volume of transactions it works with. Its this volume thats responsible for the high-use of technology in retail organizations. Other sectors focus largely on ERP and CRM type of applications. We need those and much more because the number of touch points between technology and the consumer is a great deal larger in retail, says Krishnan.

Unni Krishnan T.M., group CTo (retail business), Shopper's Stop

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creating

P HOTO By S R I VATSA SHA nDI LyA

Uttered by Robert de Niro in a 1998 heist film, the writer of this memorable line is still a mystery in filmdom. It doesnt matter because the words ring true, most of all in business today. When CIOs reporters explored the IT organizations of five business sectors retail, healthcare, BFSI, telecom and services their stories revealed how Indian majors are thriving on innovation to solve their organizations problems. Most interestingly, each vertical puts forth a series of learnings that are not unique to itself, helping you derive insights into their approaches to address your own IT challenges. The solutions are now out in the landscape. Find out, across the next five stories.

Either youre part of the problem or part of the solution or youre just part of the landscape.

39

Cover Story | Implementation

refill its shelves faster at lower costs, forecast better, and address the critical element of product availability. In a hypermarket, consumables like bread and juices fly off the shelves, Krishnan explains. Replenishing them every two days means were filling them about 180 times a year. Managing different products that need replenishment at different rates is tricky: should we buy 100 units of a product or 500? One hundred units means fresher products but also more frequent replenishment. Five hundred units allows for higher discounts, but pose a storage problem. E3 helps us find the right balance at the right time. HyperCITY is also home to one of the groups most innovative use of technology. Called iScan, this platform and create a consolidated view of its businesses and one view of the consumer. Each retail set-up within Shoppers Stop drives its own business, but shareholders, management and the board want to have one view of the business. Five to six years ago, Shoppers Stops strategy was to grow quickly in different retail formats even if it meant sacrificing a single view of its businesses. Later, it became hard to see growth from multiple verticals, business relationships and franchises. Instead of having a 20,000-foot view of all our businesses, what we had a view from a hill. And as we grew, we were forced to jump from one business hill to another. Two years ago, we decided to get a consolidated view of all our SALE businesses, while it was still early enough to create commonality across platforms, says Nagesh. He associates three objectives with this move. One is transparency to view all his businesses. Another is that it provides a benchmark in managing technology as a part of the business. Third is the eventual strength in acquiring a single view of the consumer across all its businesses. We want to have a common view of one customer across our retail formats, whether hes buying coriander leaves at HyperCITY, The Afghan at Crossword, a shirt at Shoppers Stop, a set of baby diapers at Mothercare or a cappuccino at Brio, says Nagesh. Shoppers Stop is always trying to balance between common platforms and creative technological solutions. Wherever it is feasible, we try to create common applications across our retail formats. We recently moved Crossword from legacy apps to JDA-MMS and JDA-WinDSS. As a result, we have achieved a common merchandizing and store application platform almost across all our group companies, says Krishnan. Crossword is using four enterprise applications, down from 12. However, when differentiation is required, specific solutions are created unhesitatingly. HyperCITY's speed checkout solution using iScan is an example. This approach and the daring to take on new technologies is a characteristic feature of the group. And its being applied to getting a single view of the business. I firmly believe that investing in technology should be kept at par with investments in real estate, senior management, and building capacities. Never hesitate in investing in technology, says Nagesh.

With its price-checking solutions, barcode scanners and anti-theft devices, retail creates a large number of customertechnology touch-points.

IL LUSTRAT IO nS By PC A nO OP

handheld barcode scanning device lets customers scan their merchandize as they take them off shelves. When they're ready for checkout, customers dont need to stand in a queue as their merchandize is scanned and billed saving time and improving customer experience. The iScan represents a classic case where a piece of hardware is put to multiple use by bundling it with different apps. The same hardware doubles as stock-taking solution for inventory. It is also used without the shopping cart as a receiving solution at warehouses and helps managers within a store do price-checks on merchandize. Known as a platform concept, Shoppers Stop borrowed the multiple-use approach from the auto industry and experimented with it in retail for the first time in India, says Krishnan. Car models like Tata Indica and Indigo share the same [architectural] platform. When you create a platform, its easier to build more models off it by incorporating tweaks. We surprised our application provider by applying hardware and applications in new environments, says Krishnan.

SA LE

LE A

One View
Shoppers Stop primary objective as an early-mover technology adaptor is not only to empower its businesses with the agility to scale up and the power to ensure availability of merchandize, but also to eventually bring all its retail formats on a common

Senior correspondent Gunjan Trivedi can be reached at gunjan_t@cio.in

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Nothing is more frustrating than trying to get people to alter the way they do things. New research reveals why its so hard and suggests strategies to make it easier. How Bharti Airtel meets the challenges of integrating businesses and staying in line with growth fuelled by M&As.
By rahul neel mani

Dial i.t.

TELECOM

for integration

or a company that began with one mobile service license in 1995, the Rs 8,156-crore Bharti There was a dire need to integrate all the services that Airtel has taken rapid strides to become the Bharti Airtel provided as one brand. There was yet another bellwether in the Indian telecom industry today. need to integrate the systems and processes across circles, Its country-wide presence and market capitalization and initiate the swift migration of all heterogeneous of Rs 101.9 crore reflect a fast-growing company at one processes to one platform across the 23 circles. level. At another level, such expansion signals a huge In 2002, when the carrier embarked on the integration challenge, especially for a company whose growth has process, it had few circles to operate and was running come inorganically, through mergers and acquisitions legacy billing systems. Menon recalls the days when (M&As), as part of the industry consolidation. Ask Bharti the company bought its first off the shelf, high-end, Airtels IT organization. commercial billing system called Keanan in 2002. With each acquisition, the challenges grow by leaps and The migration of just two circles from legacy to this bounds. Bharti Airtel has sought to consolidate disparate platform was extremely painful. Several business rules IT systems of different entities and standardize platforms and processes needed to be aligned with the IT systems. across the company. Says Jai Menon, director (innovation) Everything was missing. It took us several months to and group CIO of Bharti Airtel, set it right. Imagine the task of In 2002, while on an S-curve repeating the similar exercise of growth, we were just on time. after every acquisition, It has reflected well in the way says Menon. we adopted technology and the There was a strong belief way customers experienced within that technology wasnt our offerings. the problem. It was integration, The journey, which started and its alignment with business then with basic integrations thereafter, which was essential Integrationinthecontextof internally, will culminate by 2010 to keep growth steady on the inorganicgrowth as One Airtel a complete intra S-curve. The non-integrated Gettingridoflegacysystems and inter-SBU integration across entities were also lying too Minimizingmigrationtime Bharti Airtels divisions. The low on the capability front journey has posed three major because of the over-customization challenges: scaling up (vertically of information systems and and horizontally), capability commercial software at different enhancement and integration. entities within the company.

Braving the Integration Blues

Greatest Challenges

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In the absence of consolidation and integration, we were only running at 10-20 percent of total capacity, recalls Menon. Yet another challenge lay in getting rid of legacy systems and hardware to the pave way for new and efficient hardware. Legacy has to be a setting sun in the cases of bigger alignments and M&As. Otherwise, the situation remains the same, asserts Menon. In its integration quest, Bharti Airtel practiced the one data model and one business process. Data residing at multiple locations on multiple heterogeneous storage systems and subsystems had to be migrated to the new data model, which would be central and accessible to all in a uniform fashion. In doing so, another challenge arose when the business logic, encoded in the legacy data models, had to be changed, migrated, mapped and then integrated to the new data model and new business logic. Says Menon: There were fundamental challenges posed in migrating to this business data modeling. The first time around, in 2002, we went completely wrong. It took us nearly seven months to correct this. But subsequently, after every M&A, the time kept reducing. Now, we are able to do it in a few hours. It was also imminent to survive the decline of revenue in the voice market and cut costs by consolidating whole universe of applications and data to streamline processes that were fragmented at the circle or business unit level. Based on the experience of multiple integration exercises, the company has since created a blue book a Center of Excellence. It took time to create the first set of common standards, but once this was achieved, it was just an act of replication, says Menon. In the IT model at Bharti Airtel, the base infrastructure layer primarily consists of WAN, LAN, network operating center and security layer. And so, another daunting integration task was knocking at the doors of the company: the outer physical layer of the network the WAN. Every circle was operating on a separate WAN. Integrating the WANs onto one common protocol became necessary. Still, a heterogeneous WAN network wouldnt have allowed diverse traffic types to travel effectively on the common infrastructure. It wasnt possible for us to support any-to-any traffic patterns cost-effectively. We were not able to ensure that individual applications got the network performance they required, says Menon. Towards this end, it became important to enable traffic engineering, where carriers direct traffic along predetermined paths. It was to make it easier to manage network build-outs and support customers. This capability only comes through multi-protocol label switching (MPLS). Our next biggest challenge was to build a unified MPLS network connecting the core across all circles, says Menon. With or without the mega-mergers, consolidation of WAN was the mandate for the company for reasons more than just a unified network.

IMAGInG By BInES H S R EEDHA RAn

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Non-stop Integration
As a result of the efforts to integrate, the first phase saw intrastrategic business unit (SBU) integration. Within all three divisions mobility, fixed line and broadband businesses the internal information systems were migrated onto one platform. It took us a few years to complete the intra SBU migration, but Bharti Airtel became the first telecom service provider in India to be working on a single, standardized platform internally, including HR, financials, knowledge management, learning management, claims Menon. On the business side (customer facing application and IT systems), the company is slowly inching towards totally integrated and standardized platforms. The thrust is to first achieve integration of systems, business intelligence systems, data warehousing, so that there is one national picture to view. At the time this story was reported, Bharti Airtel was in its penultimate stage

Jay Menon,, Director (innovation) & group CIo, Bharti Airtel

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of bringing billing onto a common engine known as convergent billing platform. We have also progressed sufficiently on the common CRM platform across all 23 SBUs. This is a tremendous success in inter-SBU integration. It has not only brought business-IT alignment into play, but the capabilities of IT systems have grown nearly 10 times between 2002 and 2006. On the customer side of IT, many areas like sales, order management, billing, revenue recognition, customer care and business intelligence have had to be migrated from outsourcing partner, with some others. All partners work on a revenue sharing basis, so that there is no immediate capital expenditure; ROI doesnt come into play. With this kind of integration, I, as a CIO, have been able to make capital expenditures, maintenance contracts and other such micro things redundant. All these functions are now offloaded to partners because of the utility computing model driven by the premise that integration not only brings operational efficiencies, but also gives cost efficiencies. In the case of Bharti, the utility computing model has worked very well. The company made sure from day one that this model is directly related to business outcome because internally, in the company, most of the IT is related to revenue, which is the business outcome. As the revenue goes higher, the percentage of spent on IT comes down, notes Menon.

The thrust is to first achieve integration of systems, business intelligence systems, data warehousing, so that there is one national picture to view.
their current platforms to one standard platform to be 100 percent more agile, say Menon. The entire IT infrastructure of Bharti Airtel now runs on multi-protocol label switching WAN, which helps the company support a host of applications, including the ones that are leading-edge. Migrating to MPLS-based services also cut costs for the company depending on the degree of converged traffic that Bharti Airtel was running on it. Says Menon: Using MPLS for all three layers data, voice and video saved us as much as 25 percent on the network expenditure. CIOs might wonder how difficult it is to make the transition. Surprisingly, its less painful than anybody thinks. Technically, MPLS isnt a service offering, but underlying infrastructure. Through this exercise, Bharti Airtel has created an IT ecosystem which now uses one piece of middleware for 16 of its major application systems running on 1,500 odd servers. As a result of this massive integration drive, Bharti Airtel executed three large utility computing models between 2004-2006 after factoring in both capital and operational expenditures. For business and internal IT, IBM became the key outsourcing partner with 15 more providers lined up behind it. For all contact center technology, Bharti Airtel picked Nortel and seven of its associated partners. On the infrastructure front, IBM was again the strategic
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The Ultimate Objective

Most of the intra-SBU and some of the inter-SBU IT systems have already been stitched with one thread and are working well. Some of the most ambitious projects like integrated CRM, integrated self care and order management convergent billing are in advanced stages of completion. We are targeting that by 2008, Bharti Airtel mobility, fixed line and broadband will have one content gateway, one messaging gateway and one application gateway across all platforms, that is, PC, mobile and TV. That will make us a 100 percent integrated telecom carrier. We'll be the first telecom company in the world to achieve this, claims Menon. Overall, the process has stemmed from the companys quest for integration, which started early on in 2002. The company gathered the right ecosystem, got the right architecture in place, and did the migration and integration upfront. It has resulted in cost-effectiveness and the ability to recognize customers better. On the S-curve of growth, we started very early. We wanted this whole strategy to ultimately translate into rich customer experience. And its nothing but a result of integration and capability enhancement in the IT systems, asserts Menon.

Bureau head-north Rahul neel mani can be reached at rahul_m@cio.in

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insuring
By gunjan trivedi

BFSI

against Paper-Pushing
HDFC Standard Life Insurance has made a successful bid to get its people away from the clutches of paper files and back to the business of insurance.

hat does it take to follow a paper trail? of paper racing around if a company handles about ten Ask an insurance company. Take an thousand policy files everyday. Now, imagine the impact insurance organization anywhere in on the organizations turnaround time. Electronic the world and it will look at paper as a content management and digitization of workflow was necessary evil. Thats because with so many entwined imperative, points out Rawlani. In 2003, HDFCSL business processes with cascading results, variables and embarked on a mission to cut out the paper chase and overlapping needs, insurers need to ensure well-defined embrace Business Process Management (BPM). workflows, which for unprepared companies means an The Mumbai-headquartered HDFCSL, a joint-venture avalanche snowballing of paper and plenty of it. between UKs mutual life assurance company Standard At one time, it got so bad that many insurers in the US Life and HDFC, was started in 2000 to tap the evolving housed in multiple-storey buildings used conveyor life insurance market in India. As one of the first private belts to carry files across hundreds of desks through life insurance companies in India, HDFCSLs operations multiple departments. The mechanical solution, though were characterized by manual processes that were added it successfully reduced the time it took to move paper files incrementally to keep up with business requirements. around, didnt address the problem. Sunil Rawlani, headIn order to differentiate itself and tap the market information systems and technology of HDFC Standard more progressively, it adopted the customer-centric Life Insurance Company (HDFCSL), was certain he wasnt approach and offered service as it's USP. As HDFCSL saw going to put his money into a conveyor belt. unprecedented growth, their manual processes, layered Rawlani was determined unsystematically over time, started to drain away all the paper to crack under the pressure. that was clogging business The number of Excel efficiency. He decided to worksheets, used to track introduce digitized content, policies, mushroomed. automated workflow and Increased communication for agile, re-engineered processes. new requirements began to Insurance is a conventional, choke the organization. Multiple Eliminatingtheproblemsof paper-based business with systems to handle status apaper-intensiveworkflow 90-page files packed with queries or communicating new withelectroniccontent supporting documents hopping management decisions rendered managementandBPM across work-desks. These process control inconsistent GivingbusinessbackitsUSP obese files then travel in and and inefficient, which hit the byfocusingonserviceand out of file cabinets, to agents, to organizations ability to measure notpaperchasing. junior underwriters, to medical performance. All the while, the institutes, to senior underwriters volume of paper exploded making and so on. Imagine the volumes document-filing and handling

Greatest Challenges

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But these changes came with a rider: it cost a lot of sweat. The changes required some of the hardest IT activities: designing an accurate business process, mapping process to defined algorithms and incorporating people, management and systems to the change. HDFCSLs IT department did a lot of the spade work. The initial process of identifying key business processes (such as new business, claims, grievances and policy management), defining workflow rules and algorithms and weeding out non-critical processes took three months. The core BPM team identified key business processes using statistical sampling. The process design was divided into three functions: defining, documenting and re-engineering. We prioritized mapping business processes to the BPM platform using a simple concept: address the most painful areas first, says Rawlani. The process of mapping and designing is an ongoing process although Rawlanis team tried to do it on the first occasion because un-ironed glitches would have cascading effects. We called the system WONDERS: Workflow On Demand Enterprise Retrieval System. There were many lessons learnt and unlearnt. We were among the first Indian insurance companies to incorporate BPM at this scale and had to come up with innovative and creative solutions, recalls Rawlani. It began with the creation of a core BPM team, whose job it was to identify key drivers and enablers, and design processes accordingly. The core team included people from business, HDFCSLs in-house IT team and the vendor. Top of its list was to automate documents and workflow Rawlani wanted paper out of the way. Documents were identified, scanned, indexed and committed to an imaging system. The system includes the most sensitive scanners available, since underwriters, who assess the authenticity of documents, need to determine things like whether the same pen was used throughout the form or whether datas been overwritten and manipulated. Underwriters man the gates of an insurance company and based on their findings, subsequent queries are generated. Only once images are committed and crossed-check by underwriters is a case released into the organizations workflow. His early-mover status didnt leave Rawlani with too many references to draw on. His solution was to take a team of people from operations, the underwriting department and IT on a tour of insurance companies in various South-east Asian countries, who had used similar BPM and digitized workflow technologies. This helped a lot, but there was still one major problem that the tour didnt solve, says Rawlani. The roadblock lay with the underwriters. In the manual setup, documents were verified on paper (a portrait view), but scanned images of documents on computer

Sunil Rawlani, head-information security & technology HDFC Standard Life Insurance

extremely tedious, and created a storage nightmare. Manually distributing work and summarizing data from proposal forms also impacted the processing time. The inability of business managers to balance workloads and a lack of insight into productivity created a vicious cycle that sucked business down. The disorder spread as misplaced documents affected policy turnaround time and created a ripple effect among interlinked files. In a firefighting attempt to stave off confusion, staff at the branch levels began duplicating documents and entered data in two places. This increased the cost of operations and worse affected HDFCSLs USP: service. After several months of deliberations, HDFCSL deployed a BPM solution from Staffware (later acquired by Tibco) and an Enterprise Content Management solution from FileNet. This exercise replaced paper with digital files, streamlined and re-engineered workflow, and created a more scalable, synergetic and agile business, says Rawlani.

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screens were viewed in landscape-mode, making the underwriters jobs very tedious. We tried using larger monitors, but that didnt work. As for portrait-oriented monitors, they were available only in the US at that time and were astronomically expensive, he recalls. With true CIOresourcefulness, Rawlani found a solution that kept everyone happy: he deployed graphics cards that supported multiple monitors. Each underwriter workstation was connected to two 15-inch monitors. One monitor displayed the document up-straight and the other displayed the scanned policy in portrait-mode. But, the document imaging solution isnt only a set of clever ideas. Its benefits, like proper indexing, access control, the ability to include annotations, secure storage, fast retrieval and better disaster recovery are far-reaching. Its also ensured better human resources allocation and that paper is eliminated from the workflow. The advanced capabilities of the BPM platform are also used to break down and monitor an automated process into steps as they are rolled out. Each step within a process is monitored and inefficiencies identified. Each steps time is noted and monitored against the duration of the entire process. Irregularities are immediately identified using key performance indicators built into the platform. Business procedural algorithms or rules are kept loosely-coupled with the BPM using a separate business rules engine, ensuring that in the wake of changing business needs, the entire process is not altered. Tweaking only the rules helps create a more agile process, which can effectively adapt to changes. Insurance companies, for example, allocate policies to either junior or senior underwriters, depending on the body weight of the applicant. If, at some stage in the future, these parameters change or say an applicant wants to customize his policy, the entire process doesnt need to undergo an alteration. The required changes are merely incorporated within the business rule engine.
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BANK

The advanced capabilities of the BPM platform are also used to break down and monitor an automated process into steps as they are rolled out.

At first, we addressed the business processes in breadth, to automate key front-end features. Then we started to scale the depth of the process. This incremental approach helps us to address issues cropping up without disrupting the entire process, and easily secure management buy-in by being able to show benefits early on, says Rawlani. The au t o m a t e d workflow has benefited the organization. Apart from the measurable benefits of a 300 percent improvement on policy turn-around time. For instance, the average time to issue a new policy today is 1.52.5 days, down from 5-6 days. The organization is also able to offer improved customer service with consistent experience, and enjoys improved efficiency in terms of immediate access to documents, tracking policies online, a new ease of administration, much better process manageability and control, better compliance, and overall reduction in the cost of ownership. There has also been a 40 percent reduction in the time underwriters spend handling queries. This translates into substantial ROI, especially since the number of policies issued in a year run in hundreds of thousands. (HDFCSL issued over just under 4 lakh policies in 200506, covering more than 5.8 lakh lives.) Moving ahead, Rawlani wants to bring all business processes that are not yet fully automated such as claims under BPM. He is working full time to bring in more third-party integration between the workflows of HDFCSL and external entities such as medical institutes or re-insurers. I am also figuring out how to further equip our sales-force and agents with sophisticated mobile devices, which can integrate seamlessly with our workflow and further reduce our turnaround time as we deliver policies to the customers, right at their doorsteps, he says.

Senior correspondent Gunjan Trivedi can be reached at gunjan_t@cio.in

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On the right

SERVICES

track
By Balaji narasimhan

How the Indian Railways overcame a logistical nightmare in a mission to change the customer experience of nearly 14 million people who travel with unreserved tickets everyday.

s the second largest rail network in the world and the largest in Asia, statistics concerning Indian Railways are bound to impress. It boasts of coverage that exceeds 60,000 kilometers, has 300 railway yards and 700 repair shops. It runs more than 11,000 trains on a daily basis, and directly or indirectly touches the life of almost every person in India. However, not all figures concerning the Indian Railways are as impressive. For instance, almost 14 million of the 15 million people whom the Railways transports every day travel on unreserved tickets. Handling them has been a huge problem. As union railway minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said in his maiden Railway Budget speech at the Lok Sabha in 2004-05, About 92 percent of railway passengers travel without reservation in unreserved coaches in trains in the country. This revelation is not something new, and the Indian Railways had realized the need for an Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) a long time ago. In fact, Nitish Kumar, in his Railway Budget in 2002-03, had announced the pilot of the Unreserved Ticketing System, at a time when the Indian Railways was celebrating its 150th Designingthesystemfrom year of operations. theground-up As Vikram Chopra, Freezingontheright group general hardware/software manager (passenger combination services applications), Creatinganextensible Centre for Railway system Information Systems (CRIS), points out, The decision to introduce

Greatest Challenges

UTS as a pilot project at 23 stations around Delhi was taken in January 2002, and the inauguration of the same was done on August 15, 2002. Today, this project is showing a lot of benefits, and has been extended to 588 stations as of March 31, 2006. Further, the Indian Railways plans to cover 943 more stations in 2006-07, and ensure that a total of 6,000 stations have UTS as of March 31, 2009. While UTS is delivering excellent payback, the road taken was thorny. As a first step towards computerizing ticketing, the Indian Railways introduced Self Printing Ticketing Machines (SPTMs), points out Chopra, adding that, These were standalone microprocessor-based ticket machines. While they contributed towards reducing ticket inventory and provided automated accounting at the station level, they had several limitations. The limitations included: The system was a logistical nightmare because fare changes had to be made on each and every machine. Since these machines were standalone systems, tickets could only be booked from the station of origin of journey. Cancellation could also be only done at the same counter where the ticket was booked. Since there was no network, there was no real-time generation of revenue. Additionally, these machines were prone to tampering. In order to overcome these limitations, CRIS designed the UTS. The project was given to CRIS on a turn key basis, and the work involved designing the system, freezing of hardware and software requirements, procuring the hardware, development of software and testing it, and finally, installation, recalls Chopra. While implementing such a large system tends to be a complex undertaking, CRIS core competency in handling such installations helped. Set up in 1986 to manage all the computer activities of the Indian Railways, CRIS had implemented large projects before, like the Freight Operations Information Systems (FOIS) and Passenger

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Reservation System (PRS). But, while the PRS has been widely hailed by e-governance experts as one of the most successful e-governance projects, not only in India but across the world because of the number of citizens it has impacted, it handles only around 0.8 to 1 million reservations per day. The unreserved ticketing system, on the other hand, had to handle several million reservations a day, and be capable of scaling way beyond 10 million reservations in the future. The most important thing about the unreserved ticket system was that, since it impacted so many people, it has to be available on a 24x7x365 basis and this applied to all aspects of the system. The system has therefore been implemented in the high availability mode from all hardware, software and telecommunication angles, says Chopra. Therefore, CRIS decided to use diskless PCs equipped with 144 MB flash ROMs. The ROM was to be loaded with three components: Red Hat Linux, Adaptive Server Anywhere Sybase RDBMS, and the ticketing application itself. The problem that CRIS faced was that all these things didnt fit into the 144 MB ROM, and so measures had to be taken to trim the RDBMS and the OS. Once this task was accomplished, CRIS faced another problem: it was using proprietary terminal servers to connect dumb terminals with the backend server. This, apart from being expensive, was also capable of tying the Indian Railways to outdated legacy methods. In order to combat this problem, the UTS team at CRIS started work on a TCP/IP terminal server, which had the advantage of being extensible. Because security was an important consideration for the Indian Railways, CRIS developed special tools to centralize the management of these dumb terminals. As a result of these tools, the security administrator can manage the ports from a central location, and even define the transmission speeds for data flow. But the finest aspect of the terminal is that it is highly fault-tolerant. While it works off the network, it can also function as a standalone system if the backend server or the telecommunications link breaks down. Once the server or the network failure is rectified, the client reconnects to the backend server and automatically synchronizes the data. Another added bonus of these efforts was that the TCP/ IP terminal server cost just one-fifth of the proprietary terminal server that was in vogue earlier. Since TCP/IP is the lingua franca of the Internet, CRIS was also able to make the UTS easily accessible over the Web. As Chopra points out, The booking of unreserved season tickets can now be done through the Internet with the physical ticket being delivered to the passengers address. The usage of the Internet apart, the overall reach of the UTS has been staggering, to say the least. Today the UTS network covers 682 stations with 2,152 users connected to eight data centers located in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Secunderabad, Patna and Gorakhpur. The system issues tickets to around 5 million passengers every day, generating revenues of over Rs 14 crore, avers Chopra. While numbers are always striking, the other benefits both to Indian Railways and to the common man are even more stirring. Now, travelers can buy tickets from any station and need not be restricted to the boarding station. The new UTS system also allows the purchase of an unreserved ticket three days prior to the date of journey, as the facility for booking unreserved return tickets exists. The Indian Railways has also seen benefits from the UTS. Since the burden on the ticket-issuing personnel was reduced, the same staff could be used for additional ticketing counters. The productivity of the booking clerks was also enhanced. The Indian Railways enjoyed other benefits, such as: Fares and business rules could be changed more easily, and this protected railway revenues and reduced passenger complaints. Passenger traffic is measurable on a real-time basis. Since more details of the usage of trains were available,

Vikram Chopra,

Gm (passenger services application), CRIS

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analytical reports with higher accuracy could be produced for top management. More counters could be opened for ticket sales without requiring any addition in manpower. The security features incorporated into the UTS reduced the chances of fraud considerably. Of course, all this comes at a cost. While Chopra was not able to provide the final cost of the UTS system because the implementation of the system is still in progress, he says that the Indian Railways has already spent Rs 80.71 crore as of March 31, 2006. An additional amount of Rs 86 crore has been sanctioned for 2006-07. While Chopra didnt provide any direct figures bearing upon the ROI of the project, he points out that, While it is not possible to quantify direct savings or increased revenues on account of UTS at present, as it is still in the expansion stage, costs will come down on account of reduced ticket stock inventories and reduction in investment for increasing points of sale. Revenues will increase because of greater productivity in ticket sales by booking clerks, better availability of tickets, and more efficient services through better planning made possible by better MIS. A study of Lalu Prasad Yadavs Budget Speech for 2006-07 gives us some indicative figures of the ROI of UTS. Passenger earnings increased by 7 percent, and no doubt, UTS would have contributed to that . Streamlining achieved by the UTS, among others, has also enabled the Indian Railways to target an additional income of Rs 200 crore by adding additional coaches to some 190 popular trains. For 2006-07, a growth target of 11 percent has been set for passenger revenues, which add up to Rs 16,800 crore. Since the UTS already touches 5 million people per day, the averment that it is bound to add significantly towards this target is not untenable. Success apart, CRIS has no plans of resting on its laurels. We are now planning to further enhance the UTS project with the introduction of touch screen based Automated Ticketing Machine, both with prepaid smart cards, debit/credit cards and currency in the near future, says Chopra. Some of the innovations are also coming from slightly out-of-the-way locations. For example, the Indian Railways launched its first satellite UTS at the Pampa Devaswom complex in Thiruvananthapuram in November 2005, which is aiming at issuing unreserved tickets from non-rail heads. This system is expected to help several lakh pilgrims visiting Sabarimala by enabling them to purchase tickets three days in advance from any railway station. Another first has been achieved by the Danapur division of the east central railway, which has become the first division of the Indian Railways in which all A B and D class stations have been provided with UTS facilities. With UTS expected to proliferate across the country in the coming years, these numbers are only likely to go up along with customer satisfaction, of course.

Empowering Passengers

hile RFID (radio frequency identification) is usually seen as something that adds value to the supply chain, the Indian Railways is also implementing this technology to make traveling easier for the common man. This plan revolves around smart cards, which are issued in denominations of Rs 100, Rs 200 and Rs 500. These cards are valid for one year, but the unused amount can be transferred to a new card. These smart cards are used with ATVMs (Automatic Ticket Vending Machines), which are equipped with a touch screen. Using the touch screen, the smart card holder can enter the details of his journey and the amount is automatically subtracted from his smart card. While this usage is bound to enhance customer satisfaction, RFID is capable of playing an even higher role in the handling of freight. The Indian Railways is supposed to have 222 million freight wagons, and RFID tags embedded in the wagons will be read by readers located in sheds. Using this system, which is currently in its pilot phase, the Indian Railways hopes to streamline freight management across the country. The impact upon the country itself is bound to be huge because, as of 2004-05, the Indian Railways carried 1.65 million tonnes of freight on a daily basis. Since the network of the Indian Railways covers around 63,465 km across the length and breadth of the country, this system will make tracking of freight much easier than it is today. B.n.

Special correspondent Balaji narasimhan can be reached at balaji_n@cio.in

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cures
By rahul neel mani

HEALTHCARE

On a large scale
Enter a healthcare WAN that has succeeded in taking highlydifferentiated and specialty medical services to remote areas.

hat India is a vast and varied geography with a burgeoning population is oft documented. Over a billion people are spread across a landscape from deserts to frozen mountain ranges, whose temperatures soar to 50 degree Celsius and plummet to -30 degree Celsius. Delve deeper into the demographics, and one will find more revealing facts: a very high infant mortality rate, an unmanageable population per doctor nearly 70 percent of the population lives in remote parts and an average life expectancy of 63 years. In many ways, all pointers to a deeper need for India to turn to telemedicine. The modern applications of telemedicine do not simply entail a better business logic for hospitals and other healthcare service providers, but also promise to contribute toward an national cause. India has been a relatively late adopter, but is fast catching up in terms of applying telemedicine technologies. Max Healthcare Institute, the Rs 145crore super-specialty hospital, has taken a plunge in proliferating treatment and medical Infrastructuretoprovide ser vices through servicetoremoteareas telemedicine. Its Trainingandenhancing TeleMed connects manpowercapabilities primary and specialty toprovideservices healthcare services, Creatingcost-efficiencies through images and throughsuchasystem other data, to health centers and tertiary hospitals with their

Greatest Challenges

highly specialized staff and technical equipment in remote areas. Telemedicine is an emerging system of medicine in India, but can prove very effective in terms of delivering timely treatment for those deprived of good medical facilities, says Pradeep Saha, head-IT for Max Healthcare. Information and telecommunication technologies have now reached a stage of maturity so that it doesnt take much time to set up a network for telemedicine facilities between two points. Earlier, an example of telemedicine may have been as simple as a doctor receiving advice and consultation from another doctor over the telephone. Today, telemedicine can bring a physician located hundreds of miles away into an actual examination room, thanks to a live, interactive system, notes Saha. However, India is still far behind when it comes to attaining acceptable standards of health infrastructure and services, says Saha. There is a shortage of computersavvy healthcare personnel. Overall, it results in the poor use of telemedical infrastructure, and the people who suffer the most are those in the remote areas. Quite early on, Max Healthcare felt the lack of training facilities with regard to information and communication technology (ICT) in medicine. In rural India, medical terms like HIS (hospital information systems, RIS (radiology information systems), and PACS (picture archiving and communication systems) are unheard of by the medical community. There is virtually no exposure to the applications of ICT in remote areas where most people of India reside, says Saha. We recognized this problem and thought of putting in place a solution to bridge this gap. Max Healthcare got actively involved in the practice of telemedicine with its various

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specialty hospitals and clinics, as well as ongoing telemedicine research and training projects, he explains. The hospital prepared a blueprint to establish tertiarylevel service delivery facilities across rural and urban locations that were integrated with Max Healthcare TeleMed. This was to bring Max Healthcare services closer to the people, regardless of the geography in question. The Max Healthcare doctors were confident that telemedicine would be a great tool to enhance the level of onsite care in small nursing homes. It would virtually eliminate unnecessary ambulance transportation and delay in providing critical medical care whenever and wherever required. The aim of Max Healthcare TeleMed was to empower physicians in remote areas as well as healthcare personnel to stay updated, vis--vis medical knowledge and the skills to provide better healthcare. Another major objective was to educate and train doctors in remote areas who were otherwise unable to access such training for both geographical and monetary constraints. Doctors in remote areas seldom get an opportunity to attend training sessions and thus lack knowledge to handle critical medicinal cases. Telemedicine is one of the greatest ways to provide an online training program, in which doctors using communication links can actually indulge in training, says Saha. Consultation with experts and taking secondary opinions is a time-consuming job, especially if the experts are unavailable. Telemedicine bridges this gap easily. If a doctor has a heart patient but is not able to read an electrocardiogram, the images need to be sent immediately for an experts interpretation. It can save a life and thats only possible if you have a telemedicine facility with data and voice, asserts Saha. Max Healthcare was confident that it could even monetize the rural centers through cost savings generated by identifying diseases in the early stages.

IMAGInG By BI nES H S R EEDHA RAn

P HOTO By n AVEEn

Brick and Mortar of Telemedicine

Telemedicine technology is generally a function of communication infrastructure and the cost of information technology hardware. There has to be a proper communication link between the center from where the telemedicine service and expert opinion are to be provided and the place where the patient is actually located. To be able to provide cost-effective services and avoid unnecessary overheads of capital and operational expenditure, Max India set up a 512-kbps primary rate interface ISDN link between the telemedicine centers and the tele-consultants. This was enough to work as a primary link between the two centers. These lines were connected with modems at both ends to transmit the data between the two places. The pain area was not the technology, but its implementation and maintenance at the remote end because doctors and technicians needed initial training for usage. Also, there were problems of downtime, which were natural. But with time, things have improved a lot, says Saha. The images of reports began to be scanned and sent to teleconsultants who would monitor and suggest approaches to treatment over the telephone. Quite naturally, Max Healthcare thought of adding video in the process. It was not only difficult, but impractical to narrate readings of the bedside monitors. There was always a threat of marginal error. The error could turn fatal if the case was critical and immediately needed intervention, explains Saha. This was overcome by adding video to the setup. Max India decided to put polycom video conferencing equipment, so that doctors could virtually collaborate in times of emergencies and critical diagnostics. This

head-IT, max Healthcare

Pradeep Saha,

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further helped in providing training and online learning to the doctors, says Saha. consultants monitor at Max Healthcare. We provide a similar facility at the doctors premise. So if there is a need for an emergency consultation, doctors in a remote location dont have to wait for their counterparts to reach the hospital, says Saha. With telemedicine now in place, an offsite catheterisation lab or cath lab (an examination room with diagnostic imaging equipment to support a catheterisation procedure) gets hooked with the intervention cardiologist. Also, the offsite cardiologist can send the cath lab images online to an expert cardiologist who can review the images before the off-site cath lab gives a final opinion on the study procedure. Max Healthcare TeleMed has greatly helped doctors, nurses and paramedical personnel in remote locations, providing them an opportunity to interact with superspecialists and update their own knowledge and skills. It ensures better patient management at a local level. Max TeleMed empowers patients to avail tertiary-level healthcare services of global standards from anywhere. A patient can contact the nearest Max TeleMed Center for scheduling her second consult or follow-up with the Max Specialty doctors, says Saha. Currently, Max Healthcare doesnt offer telemedicine at a very large scale. People are slowly catching up with this new concept in India. With rapid developments in IT, new capabilities are being added to the core telemedicine infrastructure. With decreasing bandwidth prices, we can now think of linking these centers with dedicated leased lines and perform virtual surgeries, he says. The processes established by Max Healthcare have been so effective and efficient that the initiative has got the endorsement of International Technology Unions Telemedicine division. As Saha puts it, this endeavor ensures the delivery of right healthcare irrespective of spatial separation. CIO

Healthy Processes
A medical practitioner in a remote location now schedules all his patients who require expert medical tertiary-level specialists advice on a particular day and time of the week. The medical experts sitting at specialty locations are made available online during that schedule for consultations on the cases. Before hand, the remote practitioner makes available all the case history and investigations

Patients in remote areas with chronic ailments can have follow-up consultations while sitting in their homes or workplaces.
of patients to the super-specialists. It saves time, money and, most importantly, the lives of a large number of people, says Saha. Offsite nursing homes, diagnostic centers and hospitals can now send images of diagnoses online to experts for an opinion. This takes no time in comparison to sending the images physically. The latter brings into play the possibility of a patient losing time if he is at a critical stage of treatment. TeleMed has proved to be a boon in disguise for monitoring patients while they are admitted in an intensive care unit (ICU) at a remote location. The doctor in the local ICU connects the patient to the ICU or CCU (critical care unit) of Max Healthcare, while our expert cardiologists and other critical medicine experts review the patients condition online and provide expertise to a local ICU or CCU doctor in managing the patient with the best clinical practice, which is otherwise impossible, says Saha. Further, patients with chronic ailments can have follow-up consultations with their respective consultants while sitting in their homes or workplaces. For a nominal amount, the patient is given a device that needs to be connected to an ordinary telephone line. During the consultation, this device transmits the ECG and other relevant clinical parameters to the
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Bureau head-north Rahul neel mani can be reached at rahul_m@cio.in

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