Excel Sheets Replaced with an Effective Reporting Tool at ICICI Securities

Senior executives knew this was the only way the company could speed up the delivery of crucial reports and reduce the number of errors in them. But in order to get all its data on one platform, it first needed to create one version of all its data. "Some of the existing systems carried a huge amount of unclean data collected over years," says Joydeep Dutta, CTO, ICICI Securities.

In a bid to get uniformity, departmental MIS teams were dismantled and Excel-based reports were discontinued. "We also had many paper-based processes which we knew could be eliminated by implementing this project," Dutta says.

With the major clean-up in place, Dutta's next challenge was to get various systems to refer to the same data. "It required the re-engineering of some systems so that data which entered the framework was replicated to the extent required in the individual module/system," he says.

Since the Rs 60-lakh project went live in January 2008, ICICI Securities has been able to reduce 200 Excel-based data sheets into 35 reports, trim manpower needs and achieve sizeable cost savings from operational efficiencies. Various functions including HR, finance, sales, infrastructure and operations have, combined, lowered staff requirements by 20 people and the development team now functions with five fewer staff members.

More importantly, the implementation  has given the company the ability to made decisions based on accurate, quick and automated reports. Reports that used to take over a day to compile are now available on the same day a request is made and data that once took up to five day to analyze now takes a day. More accurate and more timely information has in turn saved the company 10 percent in costs across the organization. "What we have now is a seamless enterprise database enabling consistent and accurate reports across functions, and a complete framework for other modules to fit in," says Dutta.

The Person Behind It

Joydeep Dutta

CTO, ICICI Securities

“Reports —which used to take 24 hours or more to deliver — are now available on the same day."