Transworks Solves the Realtime Problem : Atul Kunwar

Interview Questions

Full Interview with Atul Kunwar

Atul Kunwar:

IT is very crucial for BPO or IT/ITES organizations. Fundamentally, it is key that we integrate with our customer's systems. This is the starting point of delivering any service. After taking over Minacs, the key thing was to get visibility of the entire enterprise using a single framework. Since Minacs has multiple sites, its strategy has been based per site. One of the things we are doing right now is integrating all the sites and systems, so that we can have comprehensive visibility of what's happening at each site, not just from a financial perspective, but also data, operational, customer satisfaction and legal compliance perspectives. So, we rely heavily on IT to enable such visibility.

Atul Kunwar:

Yes - and no. One of the elements we focused on as we built our systems was an openness needed to enable seamless integration. Again, it comes from a BPO/ ITES framework where every time you get a new customer, you need to integrate into their systems, for knowledge, precedence and a lot of other information. The same applied to Minacs. For similar kinds of companies - who have had a similar approach to system integration - it was quite simple tostart building it across the enterprise. There was never any resistance or debate. What changed dramatically after the acquisition was scale. The systems were already in place. The question was how to go about integrating them. No one particular system was imposed on any entity. We integrated the systems and platforms to enable seamless flow of information. It was more of an enterprise application integration approach as opposed to the implementation of systems and applications.

Atul Kunwar:

One of the things we initially did was to change our approach towards internetworking the US and India. Instead of looking at E1 bandwidth approach of interlinking individual entities, we are now moving into a country-specific, carrier-class framework.

Naturally, with this, there are a lot of other possibilities because now there is a huge amount of bandwidth, which can be used effectively in having a different view of the entire enterprise.

Apart from bringing in changes in specific approaches, we are prepared to adopt a more mature, proven platform wherever required to bring the entire enterprise on a common platform. One of the examples is our CRM framework. Minacs, in managing prospects, has a good application built on Siebel. Our CRM application is a more off the shelf product called Act. We were in the process of customizing the Act app further. With the M&A, perspective matters. Both the organizations need to be integrated seamlessly to have our sales force think and address the deals similarly. So, we took the decision to migrate to the proven platform of Minacs. For the sales force, the impact of the migration was not huge because we were at a stage of acquiring licenses and mapping resources to the applications. Our decision to adopt Minacs' Siebel-based CRM app had been taken early, and we have been able to effectively and quickly migrate our sales force to the new platform. Initially, this decision did not go down too well with the workforce, as they were

uncomfortable migrating to something that was not developed in-house or locally. The credit of managing the change goes to the leadership at the IT infrastructure level. We have people who rose above these issues and decided to roll out systems and platforms for the overall benefit of the enterprise.

 

Atul Kunwar:

Staffing and HR has two perspectives at TransWorks: IT and business. Managing lifecycle of end-to-end implementations, not merely projects, is something that has attracted IT professionals to the organization. And now, we've added global scale to the mix.

The IT team at TransWorks is definitely quite excited. With the Minacs acquisition, the scale of operations has changed. As scale changes, you get an entirely new range of projects to work on. It is easy to see real value for IT professionals here. One of the elements that will become prominent, as we go forward, is the fact that the people working at TransWorks are not just implementing key things but contributing significantly to organizational transformation. The same applies with Minacs. They have always wanted to take up a number of offshore projects. Since going offshore all by itself was expensive, it restricted itself to doing fairly limited offshore projects. With this acquisition, the whole paradigm has changed as business synergy grows. While we were strong in particular verticals and horizontals earlier, we now are capable of acquiring new lines of businesses and do things at a completely different scale and level.

This is quite exciting for our workforce, which helps us keep attrition rates in check. The IT team here has realized that we need to build infrastructure that is increasingly capable of scaling up and being integrated.

 

Atul Kunwar:

With IT, we are trying to automate various recruitment processes and hence eliminate a number of time-taking secondary processes.

Our objective is to reduce hiring time - right from the time a candidate walks in with his resume to when he knows whether he's selected or not. The entire process will now take no more than three hours, compared to a day or two earlier. And now that their profiles are on the database, the systems arebeing extended to track employee lifecycle within the organization to help HR with a detailed view of the workforce and to manage it effectively.

Another area where IT is synergizing with a HR-related function is quality and process management. One of the initiatives we recently undertook was to present relevant information to an associate in real time. This helps associates know exactly how they are performing.

For example, say there is a certain number of transactions that an associate needs to do in a day. We compute the minimum number of transactions to be processed if he has to achieve his daily target. Now, the number of transactions an associate has processed - and the number he should have - is available in real-time to him, his team leader, the floor manager and others.

This makes it possible for the right personnel to review problems as they occur.

 

Atul Kunwar:

With Minacs, we now have 18 facilities globally. From the platform perspective, we were on PeopleSoft to handle HR, financials, etcetera. Minacs was on the Lawson platform.

Since there is no point wasting resources in replicating or re-deploying platforms, we are integrating PeopleSoft and Lawson. Moreover, as outsourcers, a multiple platform experience is an advantage. Hence, we are building integration capabilities rather than migrating onto a newer platform. On the CRM front, Minacs brings Siebel expertise to the table. This kind of a multi-platform experience and expertise will help us offer different solutions to our customers and enable us to provide seamless architecture to run different applications and deliver services from anywhere to anywhere.

 

Atul Kunwar:

From a compliance perspective, there are a lot of frameworks and regulations we have to adhere to. We have COPC certification addressing operational compliance. We are ISO 9001 and BS7799 certified as well.

Moreover, we get certified specifics for many of our customer's perspectives. For instance, we are certified in SOX, GLB of US and the Data Protection Act of UK compliance. To ensure that the organization is adhering to governance and compliance guidelines, we have a chief information security officer (CSO), who directly reports to me. The CSO ensures independent and regular testing of DR and BCP capabilities. The new challenge is to deliver this business continuity across geographies and develop our capabilities to ensure seamless business continuity across our facilities situated on different continents.

 

One thing that works in our favor is that we have an internal audit function as part of our parent company - the Aditya Birla Group. This function focuses on corporate governance from the shareholders' perspective. We work with the group's internal audit company constantly and at multiple levels to ensure our compliance to corporate governance guidelines. Compliance is an investment we will continue to make.

 

Atul Kunwar:

We increasingly encourage our customers to spread out processes across multiple locations. In some cases, we spread work across the world. We have customers whose processes are being handled out of centers in India and Canada.

If the location at Canada is hit by snowstorms and people can't come, work continues from centers in India. This is the next stage we are working on. It'll happen with all customers who work beyond a particular site and whose processes are beyond a certain criticality. Right from the start, we will sit down with the customers to define business continuity plans.

Recently, a huge hurricane hit major parts of Southeast Asia, including the Philippines. We took on a huge load on our Bangalore site for some customers because work there came to a standstill for six days. These are the kinds of business continuity plans we are working on with our key customers. It entails defining and prioritizing the processes that are critical.

 

Atul Kunwar:

It's oft-stated that a CIO's role is a strategic one. I believe that strategy is just a part of his role. To me, it is more of a differentiating role. For companies like ours whose business revolves around what we do with data and how we manage it, we can create differentiation if we have good systems, processes and the ability to execute.

 

Everything we do is in real time. Naturally, real-time information, real-time actionable intelligence and real-time decision-taking are what we expect from our IT systems.

A CIO's role is contributory, where he provides infrastructure for the business to stand on and continue to better it. CIOs need to track the net benefit of what they create.

For example, for our HR systems, bringing hiring time down from two days to three hours produces a noticeable change and creates huge value. The CIO's role is no more about addressing situations; it is more about thinking ahead and challenging people from a business perspective.