Arpit Agarwal talks to Sudesh Agarwal

Sudesh wanted to know how the CIO can plan well ahead to meet near future business challenges. Arpit maintained that business has to involve the CIO from inception of project, so the requirements of the business are clear.

The CIO has to lead the robust applications, and scale up of IT has to precede the scale up of business, so the CIO and the business needs to be integrated. Efficiency does come at a cost. You cannot run a low cost IT.

The CEO of any business has to understand how the entire business works, all functions. The CIO can take that kind of a position only if he has this skill. This spot can always be filled.

Ashank Desai speaks to Tarun pandey

The role that It plays in defining business in our country is not vey critical across sectors, Ashank said he would like to see more. To Tarun's question whether CIOs are doing enough to make a difference, his answer was, I'd like CIOs to play a much more active role in the setting up of compliances, academia...in many fields.

It is not about competence, but he thinks there is a push needed for the IT needs of the users. The government needs to have a face to talk to, a single body, that helps facilitate any kind of positive interaction.  I don't know why the CIO community is not taking enough interest in taking this initiative.

The issue is to create a purpose behind the CIO job, together they can make a difference as an IT community, then making a difference to the IT future of the country.  If CIOs can make this kind of a difference, as a rule, their organization will also support them.

Raja Ramana Macha speaks to Anil Punjwani

Working in the manufacturing domain for a number of years now, leads Macha to look for improvements in processes. Switching from being an IT oriented person to a completely business person, he realized how managing waste well can completely transform a business. They helped raise service levels and made him more competitive.

Cycle times to get to optimal levels, Macha told Punjwani, could be about 3 months for adopting and Kaizen blitzes to make short term changes. Radical changes, for waste management, should be longer term projects, but the results are worth it.

Karthi Marshan talks to S Srinivasan

Its common knowledge that effective communication holds the key to many situations, so what keeps organizations from giving it enough significance? It has, Karthi says, to do with the maturity of the organizations, most are sales focused, ignoring the human angle.

But are these mutually exclusive? Marshan 's singular message, through Srinivasan's  imitative is, that wearing the business hat and understanding the consumer issues that any senior executive of the organizations should undertake, holds true for the CIO too.