IIT Kanpur Organized Conclave on 'IT: Redefining Indian Business'

IIT Kanpur Organized Conclave on 'IT: Redefining Indian Business'

Mr. Sanjiv Bakshi was the next speaker. He spoke about 'IT - A Strategic Tool for Increasing Business Competitiveness'. Mr, Bakshi started off on a highly interactive note involving the audience and coming to a consensus on basic management definitions of strategy, tool, business competitiveness, and information technology.

He then went to take two classic Indian examples - one wherein Information Technology had made a significant difference and one wherein IT had no role to play. His first example was the Indian Railways that has seen a quantum leap from being a loss making organization to a profit making one in a short span of two years. He went on to show how incorporation of IT into the railway systems, facilitating e-ticket, computerized reservations, etc., has contributed in this turnaround. On the other hand, the dabbawalas, known for their highly efficient supply chain, who have been awarded the six sigma certification use very little of high IT applications in their operations. He cited this as an institution that had found a place among multinational corporations to be awarded a six sigma certification without any high brow technology involved.

Having posed these two classic examples, Mr. Bakshi went on to define how 'business competitiveness' is measured. The first step is to get the right people to do the right job. Secondly, it is important to face and accept brutal facts, and then he drew an analogy of a hedgehog wherein it walls itself of all dangers. Apart from these, discipline and technology acceleration are indispensable.

The next speaker was Dr. Veena Bansal, who chose to speak about 'Corruption, India and IT'. Dr. Bansal's speech presented another critical viewpoint about Information Technology. India is ranked 45/49 countries on honesty of officials. She stated that a large reason for this was the lack of punishment, the state of the economy and poverty. Dr Bansal then went on to define the role of IT in improving this situation citing e-governance, and effective information dissemination, through media - citing the Tehelka scandal as a classic case.

Her speech was focused largely on the passport application process where corruption is rampant. She quoted e-seva, a service for filling passport application and other services as a classic example. Its focus is more customer-centric than conventional systems sparing the customer a lot of inconvenience.

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Contributed by -
Piyush Gupta,
PR Cell, MBA II Year,
IME, IIT Kanpur.

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