IT Lightens Up BSES : Arun Kanchan

Interview Questions

Full Interview with Arun Kanchan

Arun Kanchan:

We were blessed to inherit the Delhi Vidyut Board manpower, who were experienced and skilled. Their experience helped us understand operational glitches, track operational network and identify power theft-prone areas. However, there always will remain a set of individuals who will resist change.

Hence, we organized regular training programs around IT, new and improved processes, customer interaction, interpersonal skills, responsiveness and accountability and involved them in our core business functions. They were given important roles to play and were made responsible for management decisions. Instead of keeping them aside, we took a path of change management, engagement and involvement. This has helped us a lot and brought cohesiveness and instilled team spirit which helped achieve our objectives. By taking advantage of this rich knowledge base, the company has benefited a lot.

Arun Kanchan:

The Indian power sector has shown impressive growth in size and capacity. The installed generation capacity has grown from 1,362 MW in 1947 to 144,564 MW as on 31st May 2008.

Despite such growth, peak electricity supply fell short by 16.6 percent and there was an overall supply shortage of 9.9 percent during 2007-2008. India is one of the most promising markets for electrical energy with an estimated demand growth rate of 7-8 percent annually. It has the potential to go much higher in the days to come. To sustain its economic growth, the present installed capacity in India needs to be enhanced. Modern transmission and distribution systems have to be improved to assure adequate, quality and competitively priced power supply. And this calls for substantial investments.

A more worrying feature is the commercial viability of the distribution sector stemming from inefficiencies and theft or misuse of power. For the year 2007-08, the total commercial loss for the state owned power sector excluding subsidy, stood at around Rs 25,701 crore.

We needed to build a world-class power distribution system. The immediate challenge was to design infrastructure that will last, and provide for sustained economic growth. We took a multi-pronged approach to upgrade the system and improve service quality and the reliability index.

And this was built on an IT infrastructure and hence IT became a key enabler for achieving our objectives. Currently, we have the largest IT infrastructure in North India coupled with streamlined business processes to provide seamless customer-oriented services from various touch points.

Arun Kanchan:

Power theft has become a great challenge for all power utilities. To reduce the AT&C losses (aggregate technical and commercial loss), containing power theft is a top priority. We have taken a drive to replace naked low-tension wires with insulated aerial bunched conductor (ABC) that will make it difficult to tap overhead wires, which has been the easiest way of stealing electricity. Simultaneously, theft-prone areas have been identified and our enforcement team makes regular raids to book offenders, while the business team makes an effort to bring new customers into the net by issuing new connections in that area.

One of the major enablers in detecting theft was the implementation of SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) and its integration with GIS. Further, the software developed for enforcement, registers and keeps track of raids as well as enforcement history. We have also floated a scheme among employees to reward them if they register a genuine power theft case. The installed electronic meters also have tamper-proof seals and are programmed to record any abnormality related to power theft.

 

Arun Kanchan:

The power distribution business runs on trust and transparency, as there is customer interaction at every service point. Customers have high expectations from this struggling sector. We have to take care of all business stakeholders’ interest. Hence, all our business innovations revolve around user expectations. Uninterrupted and quality power supply to customers, adhering to the expectations of regulators as well as the Government, meeting business profitability objectives and bringing responsiveness as well as accountability in customer services are some of the other triggers for business innovation. We have achieved a lot in terms of quality of power, improved customer services, loss reduction, better infrastructure and financial capabilities. The sale of stabilizers as well as invertors in Delhi has gone down significantly, which is a remarkable trend. The Delhi model has become a good case study in the power sector.

Arun Kanchan:

We are now witnessing a serious problem that threatens to undo our economic progress. Global warming and the threat of climate change are real and require immediate attention. The tropical regions such as the Indian subcontinent will be the worst hit. We are fast losing our fuel sources - coal and gas - required for power generation.

India has saved 3.731 billion units of electricity last year by using electricity saving gadgets. The Central Government's Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE) took many electricity saving initiatives. A city like Delhi can use this amount of power for a full month.

Arun Kanchan:

Business today demands the agility to respond to business requirements, growth, competitive threats, regulatory requirements and more. The primary goal of IT-business alignment has usually been to assure that the investments in IT generate business values and mitigate risks. The implementation of a set of sound business practices is key to delivering IT services that meet organizational needs.

Deregulation and privatization of the power industry has thrown a big challenge of improving efficiency of operations, enhancing customer care and improving overall service delivery. The most important determinant of success, perhaps, in such an endeavor is the proper use of IT.

A well-designed and integrated IT system is the way in which utilities can move from their current operational levels to the expected level. A proper IT system implementation would aid in improving efficiency by eliminating unnecessary manual involvement in transaction processing or complaints redressal. IT can aid quick resolution of issues by providing the appropriate information to the correct person in the shortest possible time. Efficiency being the main criteria, automation is being given the highest priority.

At BSES Power, our mission is customer satisfaction through technology-driven services that empower people to be creative as well as productive. This has been possible by leveraging IT in the entire spectrum of business operations. Technologies like SCADA, automated meter reading (AMR), GIS, ERP, outage management system (OMS), distribution management system (DMS), customer application system (CAS) and the integration of all these are some of the initiatives already implemented at
BSES Delhi.

Arun Kanchan:

Billing has always been a critical factor for high losses and customer grievance. Key reasons are human intervention, corruption and weakly-defined processes. Hence, metering to billing was given utmost importance. IT plays the most important and crucial role because the stress is on process improvements, that means less human intervention and more automation.

Earlier, meter reading was entirely manual. Audits of meter reading data were missing which resulted in a large number of erroneous bills. The billing cycle was long and bills with cluttered information were distributed to customers as hard copies.

There was a complete meter to bill cycle revamp. To automate the entire process the meters were first changed from electromechanical to electronic. Today, meter reading is being done through CMRI (computer meter reading interface) or hand held devices for low value customer (1 KW to 39 KW) and through AMR for high consumption value customers (40 KW and above).

This reduced human errors and corruption drastically. Further, the downloaded meter readings had to pass through stringent pre- and post-audit process to weed out abnormal or exception bills before it reached the customers. A process which used to take 20-24 days was trimmed to 10 days and we expect to bring it down to six days very shortly.

Bills are sent to customers in multiple ways: a hard copy through courier, via e-mail, via SMS and also on the Net with a user's registered account. The bills are colorful and user-friendly.

The IT process and software including pre- and post-audit has helped us reduce errors in bills, validate data, and tracking delivered bills. Customers have multiple ways of making their payments because all the payment gateways are automated and integrated, thus, the consumers can pay through cash collection centers, payment kiosks, BSES Websites, easy bill outlets and mobile cash collection vans.

Arun Kanchan:

With the success of our IT-enabled business, we have a real case study to share with the business as well as with the IT community at large. CIOs should get involved with key business processes. Instead of a reactive approach, they should be proactive in providing solutions for end-to-end business processes. The thinking process should be more towards understanding organizational business goals instead of limiting themselves to their departmental goals.

Today, IT has an ever-growing importance in organizations, and IT projects often span the entire company. CIOs need to have a high level view of the company. In our organization a CIO is as eligible CEO as any other business or operational head.

They should learn to look beyond IT, and try to think about profit as well as loss, rather than cost containment. The cost-centre mentality can be very limiting. CIOs need to listen to their teams, business stakeholders, understand non-verbal emotional signals and establish a network of relationships.

Arun Kanchan:

Our constant endeavor had been to set up a world-class power distribution utility which has triggered a set of many long-term goals. Reducing AT&C losses, empowering consumers to select from multiple metering options (post-paid or pre-paid meters), reducing theft, bringing all consumers in our billing net are some of them.

Technology is our main business driver and implementing automated metering up to the distribution transformer (DT) level, tagging all the consumers to the distribution transformers and in turn mapping the same to GIS, has made all the employees computer-savvy. At present, we are inching towards an environment of 'smart' as well as an 'intelligent'infrastructure.