The industrial conglomerate supports the digital India initiative
JITENDRA SINGH
JK CEMENT
We are not building two parallel systems to reduce friction. Instead, we take people into confidence, modify the processes in the best possible manner, introduce new processes wherever required that are coupled with technology to transform digitally.
Digital transformation is always a work in progress, thereby calling for a different mindset / approach altogether, having agility at its kernel and dynamics of ecosystem around it. Digital transformation of a business has manifold benefits, over and above the fact that it provides insight and opportunities to conduct business in an innovative way. Most organisations across industries now swear by digitisation and understand how important it is for growth.
Jitendra Singh, CIO, JK Cement, has been associated with several digital transformation projects and the one worth a mention is the eNAM (e-National Agriculture Market) project representing Nagarjuna Fertilisers and Chemicals Ltd for the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India. It is a landmark project under Digital India project where the eNAM portal was created to facilitate farmers and traders for an online sale and purchase of agricultural commodity (both perishable and non-perishable) across various marketplaces (called mandis) in the country. Initially meant for 750-plus mandis, it will be later rolled out at all the mandis in India.
The transaction is done through online auction and closed bidding method (based on existing model of a mandis) coupled with online payment facility through payment gateway. Successfully launched on April 14, 2016 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the project is aimed at getting the best prices for the farmers and accessibility to the traders outside a mandi to have visibility and bid for the commodity they wish to buy. Before the launch of this portal, the farmers were constrained to sell their produce only to the traders who were present in the mandi they were associated with. This portal works as a mother of all mandis giving visibility to all registered farmers and traders in the country.
Some other key digital projects launched by JK Cement include Digital Enablement of Customers as well as Customer Facing Executives (field force), Logistics and Supply Chain Digitalisation through Order Execution Management System (OEMS), Transport Management System (TMS), RFID and GPS and moving Infrastructure to Cloud.
Singh shares the organisation is focussing on a complete transformation which includes people, process and technology addressed simultaneously, resulting in little or no friction. Without the appropriate handling of processes and people issues, digital transformation will be nothing more than an automation of a function.
Our long-term goal is to create a culture which is agile enough to adapt the market dynamics and quickly benefit from that while retaining the core values of the organisation of being a customer and employee-centric organisation which contributes to the nation's infrastructure initiatives,” says Singh.
JK Cement is working with start-ups to explore and experiment the innovative thoughts in certain areas of their operations. Their endeavour is not to create a start-up culture but to quickly experiment and convert the ideas into execution for a faster return in terms of revenue generation or cost savings whichever is applicable with a major focus on agility.
“Our effort has been to align business and IT to such an extent where the functions own digital transformation and IT becomes an enabler instead of it being the other way around,” explains Singh.
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