The organisation is managing significant savings through digitisation and automation of existing manual processes
KK CHAUDHARY
LANCO GROUP
The next big project was to reduce paper documentation through managed print services. “A centralised print management using a print server at the Gurugram office that houses the corporate office and head offices of all north-based subsidiary companies have drastically reduced printing volumes.
Infrastructure companies are the backbone of a nation but often the same companies are unable to cope up with their own IT infrastructure, given the legacy environment and IT usually being witnessed as a cost rather than an asset. But not so at Lanco Group.
The $1.4 billion Lanco Group, involved in various infrastructure areas including power, construction, real estate and mining, realised the only way to take the company forward in a growing uncertain time was to bring in agility with the help of digital transformation.
The company was laden with manual processes and decentralised processing of information that would make decision-making an arduous task. That is when the company's Executive Director-Group Head (IT & IS),
KK Chaudhary picked up three areas for Lanco's digital transformation. Being a large group with diversified business, most compliance issues at Lanco were being tracked manually and through various reports or printouts. This not only consumed time and many printouts but delayed compliance actions. “The automation of compliance activities of all departments and entire group companies has drastically reduced manual processes and non-compliance,” shares Chaudhary.
Lanco also moved towards Cloud by deploying a Virtual Data Room (VDR). “There used to be a requirement of many print outs for sharing information with external as well as internal stakeholders for any merger and acquisition activity. The formation of a Cloud-based VDR has enabled us to share the required documents in soft copy with adequate data security measures including strict access control mechanism.” says Chaudhary.
The journey was not an easy one though. But Chaudhary took a step-by-step approach instead of trying to disrupt the organisation too much. “As the hardware refresh gets due, we explore the possibility of a better IT system. Also, we keep exploring a good synergy in maintaining legacy infrastructure and transformation to a new IT system by involving the end-user and upgrading applications,” he opines.
Lanco set up a Cloud-based video / audio conferencing system wherein all the employees could collaborate with internal and external entities using any kind of device including smartphones. Lanco is now moving to Cloud-based email suite that would make chats, document sharing and project discussion easier.
The impact of all these efforts showed results earlier than expected. “Only on VDR and MPS alone, we have saved a lot on human and printing resources and have experienced good operational efficiency. On compliance project, we have improved on our brand value and reduced the business risk significantly,” says Chaudhary.
A forward-thinking CIO, Chaudhary realises that dependence on internal workforce will just not be enough to create a future-ready IT system for a company as large as Lanco. He has begun engaging with start-ups to get access to expertise in areas such as IT security. “We have experience of using start-up experts in meeting our specific requirements which is generally difficult with established high-end products,” shares Chaudhary.
The end goal for Chaudhary is to convert every manual and paper-based process in the company into an automated and digitised environment. Has the company achieved the goal? No. But then the organisation is on the right path and early successes have proved the goal is not too far from being realised.
Kommentare