"We needed to revamp the whole organization process, if we wanted to get ahead in the race," says Srinivas Kishan Anapu, VP (enterprise IS), Mahindra Satyam. He envisioned an innovative organizational structure supplemented by stringent IT controls and a metrics driven performance management system using the balanced scorecard methodology.

The main challenge in driving this initiative was change management. Anapu says, "We had to clearly define what constitutes the main organization's units, and the terms of engagement for employees." The success of the project necessitated stringent IT controls. This was a risky proposition, since it was not the most popular method with the employees. But, despite some resistance, Anapu decided to take the plunge.

The new performance management system was designed with a forward looking view across additional perspectives. "It took a while to gain popularity with all the stakeholders. But once it did, it enabled the business to segregate responsibilities and strategy into chunks that the team could relate to," says Anapu.

Having stringent IT controls simplified many things. Most importantly, it strengthened security. By moving individual customized authentication mechanism across more than 100 applications into an active directory authenticated system, the ticket volumes for security related issues came down by three percent. Further, the number of deployments per application has reduced significantly. Instead of having 1.4 deployments per application per month, they now have 0.6 deployments per application per month.

Today, Mahindra Satyam can proudly claim to have successfully leveraged its processes involving organization structure and IT controls.

The Person Behind It

Srinivas Kishan Anapu, VP-Enterprise IS

Mahindra Satyam

“We needed to revamp the processes of the whole organization, if we wanted to get ahead in the race.”