IT Strategy
That’s an approach, Agarwal from Apollo Munich agrees to. “Target workable solutions instead of perfect solutions or risk losing your window of opportunity. Think agile and think what can be built in a 90-day timeframe,” he says. Another benefit of breaking up projects into smaller pieces and working on them one at a time, is that CIOs can build more agility. How? By putting out prototypes and asking for feedback, both business and IT get a better sense of what customers or users really want. This could result in deleting some requirements from blueprints—saving business-IT teams time. It could also lead to new realizations of what customers really want—which can then be fast-tracked. That’s what happened at Ola Cabs. By the time the company had put out its mobile app, it had already started work on a second feature for the app. Initially, the app was only meant to schedule immediate pick-ups. In the second version, Aggarwal planned for a feature that allowed users to book pick-ups in advance. In the meanwhile, Ola Cabs had sought feedback and learnt that what customers really wanted was a way to pay via mobile. Although that wasn’t a feature that was on Aggarwal’s immediate plans, he ensured that he included it in the app’s second release— which took 75 days. For CIOs who want some of that agility and speed, Humble says there are some factors to watch out for. Organizational mindsets, he says can come in the way of speed. Companies, for example, still plan budgets once a year, which isn’t conducive to the fast changes they want to introduce at frequent intervals. “Organizations are setup in the wrong way,” says Humble. “We have budgets once a year and create big projects at the time. When you plan for a year-long project, from that point on, you have framed the problem in a one year timeframe.”
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Ensure ROI Like with anything new, asking people to adopt this quick and agile approach will meet 38
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Mukesh Mehta, VP and Head-IT, Anand Rathi Financial Services, says teaming up with the business is key to fast project delivery.
with resistance. One way to win them over is showing them proof that it works, in terms they understand: ROI Too often though, says Humble, ROI isn’t a key criteria when starting off on a project. “Most companies have a small number of projects that they are expected to build, but they don’t necessarily produce good ROI,” he says, adding that if a project’s ROI is lower than 4 percent, CIOs are better off putting their money into a trust. Whether or not that was part of this plan, the technical underwriting project Agarwal ran at Apollo Munich, got plenty of business bang. The decision to focus on one key aspect of the policy issuance process ensured that Apollo Munich was able to make the most of its busiest season. The project, says Agarwal, ensured that 97 percent of policies can now be issued in three days—compared to 83 percent in three days before the project. Not every project will give you easy-todemonstrate metrics. But CIOs can look for other measures that their businesses track. Since its launch, customers have booked over 4,000 Ola cabs a day, on average—across
three channels (its contact center, website, and mobile app). “But the mobile app is the fastest growing channel, increasing at the rate of 30-40 percent a month,” says Aggarwal. “Customers simply love the application and its repeat use is higher than any other channel.” In the meanwhile at Anand Rathi, Mehta says that automating certain CRM processes ensured that each business unit no longer needs to manually create daily sales reports. The system now is programmed to generate automatic sales reports at the end of each day. “This has slashed the turnaround time for report generation from 24 hours to approximately two hours,” says Mehta. “This translates into a direct business benefit because every vertical can now ensure whether daily sales targets are being met or not.” Who ever said slow and steady beat fast and furious? CIO
Shubhra Rishi is correspondent. Send feedback on this feature to shubhra_rishi@idgindia.com
VOL/8 | ISSUE/06
PHOTO BY FOTOCO RP
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