Towering Over Challenges to Take IT Forward

When S C Mittal started his career in the early 1970s, the word IT was virtually unknown. In those days we used the word computerisation, says Mittal. In fact, computerwas the designation in some Government Departments in that era.

By Anoop Verma

After completing his PG Diploma in Computer Science, S C Mittal joined BHEL Ranipur, Haridwar, in 1974. Finding a computer on which he could work was the first major challenge that he faced. Computers were a rarity then,he says, BHEL Ranipur, did have one.The only computer the organisation had was a Unit Record Machine (URM) in which programming was done by wires. There was no digital programming. Mittal used IBM 360 at Delhi University and IBM 1620 at SERC, Roorkee, for conducting the design related calculations for BHEL.

“At times I slept on the sofa in Delhi University, he reminisces. I had to be around when my program was being compiled or executed on the IBM 360 to ensure that if there was any error in compilation or run time, I was there to fix it. If I missed the chance of getting the compilation or execution done, I could not be sure when the turn would come for my program to be run again.There used to be a long queue for using the IBM 360.

“I was the only professional with knowledge of programming in BHEL, Haridwar, at that time. The first assignment I got was design of Kaplan Runner of Hydro Turbine. A team of three persons a design engineer, a draftsman and myself- was deputed to execute this challenging project. Fortran II and IV were used for the programming. The draftsman used to draw the design graph using the output derived by execution of computer program. The same was matched with the original blue print. After number of iterations, the parameters were decided. I had not heard the word reverse engineering at that time, but now I can relate that this was a reverse engineering project.”

After two years in BHEL Haridwar, Mittal moved to Bokaro Steel Limited in 1976, where they had a relatively larger IT department with about 50 professionals. Bokaro Steel Limited owned an IBM 1401 to manage their data processing work. In this computer system, everything, be it source code, the runtime code, the sort utility, etc., were on paper cards. Today such a machine would be fit for the museum,laughs Mittal, ?ut for that era this was quite advanced.

The problem that the IT team at Bokaro Steel faced with the IBM 1401 was that at times the cards would get torn while being read. When this happened they had to manually punch the card. Mittal? Team developed a software consisting of just six cards, which they called the bootstrap cards. These cards could be used to give instruction to the system that whatever the computer was going to compile must be stored on the magnetic disk media. It has also helped to store the Sort Utility of about 6000 cards on the magnetic disk. This innovation led to tremendous improvement in the reading speed of the machine.

Mittal’s work was recognised by SAIL and he was awarded Metallurgists Day Award. A paper around this innovation was also published in Annual Journal of Computer Society Of India in 1980.

In 1982, Mittal joined Modi Rubber Ltd, where he worked on a project for automation of manufacturing control processes of Tyres and Tubes. Then the company had purchased an Online Manufacturing and Control Package from ICIM. However, after working on it for more than one year, the company realised that the system was not suitable. The System, an MRP (Material Requirement Planning) package, was then developed and implemented by Mittal and his team. Not many people are aware of the fact that the ERP System has been conceived on the lines of MRP of that time. After a Three year stint in the company, Mittal moved to IFFCO in 1986.

Creation of computer culture
“There were no computers in IFFCO Corporate Office, its marketing offices or plant, except a mini computer in one of the plants at Kalol, when I joined the organisation,says Mittal. In fact, he was the first person to join the IT department at IFFCO Head Office. The first PC they purchased had only 10 KB memory. ?oday the organisation is full of state of the art IT systems and when I look back from where we started three decades ago, I feel amazed by the progress we have made.

On joining, Mittal was asked by the management to visit IFFCO? four plants and develop schemes for implementing computerisation there. ?t all the plants where I went, I met the heads of various departments and shared my ideas on IT with them,says Mittal. ?t first people were unenthusiastic, but when I gave a picture of the benefits of computerisation, they were interested.After returning from his tour, he briefed the management about what could be done.

Mittal was told by the management that he could hire few professionals from outside, but bulk of the members of the IT department had to be chosen from the existing employees at IFFCO and trained in the usage of IT. Setting up the department, finding a place to locate it, hiring suitable employees and purchase of computer systems were not the only problems that Mittal faced, he also needed to get the existing employees selected from within and trained by a professional body. In 1986, IFFCO purchased a mini-computer from Zenith Computer Limited. The first application that IFFCO IT team ran on it was the payroll application. Soon applications for marketing, sales and other areas were developed.

After that the team ensured that all the four plants at IFFCO had their own data centers; suitable computers and professionals were hired to develop and implement computerisation in the plants. As IFFCO has a large presence in the fertiliser marketing space, it was felt that the important marketing offices should be provided with their own computer systems. However, the organisation could not afford mini-computers in every marketing office. So they established a PC XT computer at five marketing zonal offices. Thus, began the process of computerisation of sales and distribution activity through computers.
“Today it is common for the smallest office to be full of computers,says Mittal, ?ut during those days we had to face lot of flak for spending the company? money on computers. Few of our colleagues believed that we were wasting company’s funds. They were not ready to recognise the benefits of computerisation. But there were many others who strongly supported the initiatives of the IT department and we could carry on with our work.

Around 1990, IFFCO got satellite based connection to its plants and marketing zonal offices. It purchased 10 VSATs from NIC. One VSAT was installed in the corporate office in Delhi, 5 were placed in zonal offices and 4 in the plants. Thus, some form of digital communication started. But the connectivity speed was quite low as compared to what we have today, and the system could not be integrated with the Local Applications. From there we started making progress, soon there was a Local Area Network and then the reliable Wide Area Network.

Overcoming Challenges
“Challenge, Mittal says, has always been there in my career because I had to work very hard to convince people about the benefits of IT.

His people skills were tested yet again in the 1992 when Dr U S Awasthi joined IFFCO as its Managing Director. He had a keen interest in usage of Information Technology (IT) and desired to have excellence in the working of organisation by deploying technology tools. He desired to have online Documentation System in various activities of IFFCO. With his encouragement and farsightedness, Mittal was able to outsource Facility Management of Computer Operations in the year 1996 in spite of the reservations expressed by some people in the management. Eventually they went ahead with the plan for having one application code in the organisation. Prior to that, each unit in IFFCO had its own system like Payroll, Materials Management, Financial Accounting, etc. The Document Management System was implemented in 1995 in the Board Section for all board meetings agendas and minutes, including various Executive Meetings proceedings.

The services of a major IT company was hired to develop first major enterprise wide suite of applications, but there were issues with the manpower deployed and the project could not be completed for two years. Finally Mittal and his team members decided that they needed to take a more proactive stance to complete the project. The economics were worked out and IFFCO IT Team took over the charge of project management, system analysis and design. As IFFCO did not have enough resources for development, they decided to use the services of the IT Company as a developer. The option worked out to be quite cheaper. This time they succeeded in developing and implementing Human Resource Management Software, a suite of 26 applications across the entire organisation.

“It was tough to implement the solution all across IFFCO. The unions were not convinced that this move was in the interest of the employees,Mittal says. After lengthy discussions, IFFCO began the implementation of the solution in its Head Office, Marketing Central Office, the largest plant at Aonla and the North Central Zone, which then consisted of undivided Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. This took a year. Soon the employees and the unions realised that the software was empowering the employees, as it led to lot of transparency, and after that all opposition to IT melted away. Today the IT solutions that IFFCO uses are fully optimised and are being run with seamless efficiency across all its units, departments and branches.

During early 2000, IFFCO faced the difficult challenge of losing its key developers, as there was lot of opportunities in the market for such professionals. Around 15-20 professionals, who had some kind of computer experience, left over a span of two years. With the consent of Management, we changed the strategy and we began to take engineers from other working disciplines at the plants and training them. Though 50% of them had also left but the strategy has worked and remaining engineers have provided stability to the department. These professionals at a later stage became mentors to the new batch of engineering graduates that we recruited.

Using IT for efficiency
The next challenge that Mittal faced came when it was time to change the software that was being used to manage the finances of the organisation. The government had mandated that IFFCO was one of the few organisations where International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) was to be implemented from 1st April 2011. At that time the Finance Management Software that IFFCO was using was about 10 years old. He decided to go in for the ERP system from Oracle, which has the facility for IFRS in their software. The implementation of ERP in IFFCO was a complicated project, but we were able to complete it without any significant problems,says Mittal. Many legacy applications like HRMS, Deposit Accounting, Sales and Distribution (eVikas), etc., were retained and interfaced with ERP. Some applications were developed as the ERP modules were not found suitable. A pictorial of ERP is given below.

“It is not widely known that IFFCO is one of the first companies in India to develop and implement an e-procurement system,says S C Mittal. Our e-procurement system was developed in 2000, and it got implemented in 2002.It was fully integrated with PKI and was fully compliant to IT Act 2000. Before implementation, interaction meetings with IFFCO? vendors were organised in large cities in the countries like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Lucknow, Ahmedabad. Leading Cyber law experts also participated in these meetings to address the apprehensions of the vendors. Digital Certifying Agencies were associated to issue the Digital Certificates to the vendors. IFFCO has even sponsored 50% fee of the cost of getting these certificates to increase the response.

IFFCO implemented first desktop based video conferencing in the year 2000. It has graduated to studio based system in 2006. Today, it has facilities to interact with 20 sites in one go. It has setup Video Conferencing facilities in all Units and State Marketing Offices, about 25 in number. The setup is used for Departmental Promotions, Board Meetings, AGMs, Reviews, Training, Policy Rollouts and even various event inaugurations. The ROI was achieved during first year of its implementations itself. Besides it has installed about 800 VOIP instruments for free interaction in the organisation.

The organisation has installed Kisan Call Centre in its data centre with 14 call centers across the country on behalf of Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, and is handling about 9 Lakh calls per month. This is the commitment of IFFCO towards the farmers and rural community. It is developing communities for value added services through its JV i.e IFFCO Kisan Sanchar Limited. IFFCO is also helping its partners by providing help in computerisation. The first such computerisation has been implemented for entire business operation of UP Pradesik Cooperative Federation, PCF.

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