Aditya Birla bags Nasscom Overall Best IT User Award

Chennai: The Aditya Birla group, a diversified conglomerate, has bagged the Overall Best IT User Award from the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom). The group was the key contender across sectors to win the award.

According to Nasscom, the Aditya Birla group is in the mature state of utilising services of IT as all the processes — key or not — are automated and integrated with each other. The group possesses excellent networking infrastructure, computer literate employees and follows well documented IT action plans with the top officials giving much importance to the IT initiatives.

Interestingly, three public sector companies won the award in their respective industry category despite the presence of the private sector. In the insurance field, public sector life insurer Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) bagged the first prize for its customer-friendly IT initiatives, while Indian Airlines and Bharat Petroleum Corporation won the award for the transportation and energy and utilities category.

The other award winners are: Tata Iron and Steel Company (Tisco) for the manufacturing category, GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare (pharmaceutical), HDFC Bank (banking), Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (educational institution), Shopper's Stop (retail) and WeP Peripherals (information and communication technology).

According to Nasscom's User Industry Survey, conducted in association with IMRB to assess IT usage among ten key business verticals, 66 per cent of the organisations have well documented IT policy, 18 per cent were in the process of documenting an IT policy, while 4 per cent were in the planning stage.

The survey also found that 36 per cent of companies surveyed had well-defined and documented proof on return on investment (ROI) for implementing IT in processes while 56 per cent stated that they did not have documentation but ROI for implementing IT was apparent. However, IT spending as a percentage of the annual turnover of user organisations was found to be less than 1 per cent.

Says Nasscom chairman Som Mittal: "The IT User Survey was intended to assess if there has been an incremental shift in terms of investment and mind share among the user industry about IT usage, and we are glad that the results have been positive."

Adds Nasscom president Kiran Karnik: "Major global businesses across verticals have realised efficiency and productivity benefits due to adoption of Indian IT software and services, but we haven't been able to fully utilise this expertise among Indian businesses. With the rapid deregulation of sectors such as utilities, energy, power, telecom and banking in India, the demand for IT products and services is increasing. This creates a win-win situation for both — the IT industry and the user industry."

Some other significant findings of the NASSCOM user survey include:

• 12 per cent of the respondents had a personal computer (PC) to employee ratio of less than 0.1 while 33 per cent had a ratio of more than 0.6 implying that one computer is shared between two employees.
• More than half of the companies surveyed have less than 1 per cent of their total employees in the IT department.
• On an average, about 50 per cent of the employees within the organisation (excluding factory workers) have basic computer knowledge.
• 58 per cent of the organisations have most processes in all departments automated while 6 per cent have a few processes in all departments automated.
• Over 75 per cent of the organisations stated that most processes in key departments have been integrated with each other, whereas for 18 per cent of the organisations only a few processes have been integrated.
• 72 per cent of the organisations use an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package, 48 per cent use customer relationship management (CRM) and 28 per cent use supply chain management (SCM). 44 per cent of the organisations also use industry specific customised management software.
• 44 per cent of the organisations have integrated web data with internal systems; 28 per cent use the website  for e-transactions.
  

The survey, however, does not speak about the user-friendliness of the Indian corporate websites.