Lifting All Boats
SNAPSHOT
When the country’s oldest and largest bank decided it needed to expand the use of technology, it had a completely business-oriented objective: it needed to open 4,500 more branches to service some of the most remote villages in India. IT also wanted to enter into new businesses via tie-ups. These included pension funds, general insurance, private equity, mobile banking and advisory services. For that it needed a seamless, secure flow of information. It also needed an internal VoIP, automated treasury and risk management. The biggest challenge was carrying out the mandate over the huge network of 15,000-plus branches.
REvENuE: Rs 25,700 crore EmPLOyEES: 230,000 IT STAff: 60+ PROjECT: SAP Upgrade COST: Rs 700 crore (over a five-year period) gO-LIvE DATE: 2002
Being SBI, failure carried political repercussions. “It was clear that unless we embraced technology, this would be a nightmare,” remembers S.K. Sehgal, GM-IT, State Bank of India. Vitally their strategy had to cover people. So, they set up an internal communication program called Parivartan. The bank rolled out over 3,300, two-day workshops and covered over 130,000 employees over 100 days using about 400 trainers. The benefits were just as humongous: their bold IT initiative has given SBI business’ coverage of 99.7 percent. The number of daily online transactions went up from eight to 16 million and gross income increased by 40 percent. CIO
S.K. Seighal State Bank of India GM-IT
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