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Beating IT challenges in Indian auto industry: The AMW variant |
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By Yuga Chaudhari, Principal Correspondent
22 Jan 2010 | SearchCIO.in |
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Umesh Mehta, the vice president of IT at Asia Motor Works (AMW), speaks about the challenges of building new IT infrastructure for AMW, a new entrant in the Indian auto market. AMW is a Gujarat-based company manufacturing heavy commercial vehicles and auto ancillaries.SearchCIO.in: You have closely monitored the Indian automobile industry over the years. What are the IT challenges in this vertical?
Umesh Mehta: The commercial vehicles segment is an established vertical
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| Umesh Mehta, Vice President, IT, Asia Motor Works |
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in India, with two big players dominating the market for more than four
decades. Further, with the opening up of the Indian economy, almost all
the commercial vehicle players in the world are now present in the
Indian market. The challenge
for technology managers in this segment is to make business more
productive at lower cost and to improve customer service; this will
help in the long run.
Getting information visibility across the supply chain is also a
challenge because vendors at the back end of the supply chain and
channel partners at the front end use different applications.
Consequently, integrating their systems and applications with the
manufacturer's systems is by no means easy. If you do not have a common
centralized application across all channel partners, getting
consolidated information relating to new enquiries, sales, stocks and
service is impossible.
At AMW we are looking for a common centralized application for our
channel partners to standardize processes and give complete visibility
on new enquiries, follow-ups, sales, service and spare parts. It will
help in maintaining vehicle history. Today, we have approximately 50
dealerships across India, and managing them with a common centralized
dealer management system (DMS) will be much more easier.
SearchCIO.in: How challenging is it to be part of a young company? How did your experience in the auto industry help in building a robust infrastructure for AMW?
Mehta: Since the team members came from different organizations, each
person had his own ideas and way of doing things. So while defining the
business processes for AMW, bringing members onboard and making them
agree to a common process was a challenge in itself. Change
management was a big issue, and required a lot of unlearning.
As a young company without any legacy or baggage, we started using
information technology from the very beginning. We implemented certain
applications in the initial year of our operations, which our
competitors started using after decades of existence. This is giving us
a competitive advantage.
I have been in the automotive industry for more than 15 years, and know
this vertical's business and technology aspects well. There are
industry-specific issues which I had dealt with in my previous
assignments, and they helped me to design solutions which are practical
and have shown the desired results.
SearchCIO.in: Could you elaborate on your current IT infrastructure? Any new deployments in the pipeline for 2010?
Mehta: For our manufacturing operations we are currently using SAP
together with some Web-based applications. These are being managed by a
mix of internal and external resources. Facilities management has been outsourced.
As a result, this gives time to our IT team members to understand and
appreciate business issues, as well as provide the right solutions for
our business requirements.
This year we intend to implement applications such as CRM/DMS and
product lifecycle management. We are also planning a new data center in
Mumbai.
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