The Capstone Project places you in the shoes of a CIO of a hypothetical FMCG firm, Indus Consumer Products Limited, who is required to select a portfolio of IT investments for the decision year that is aligned with the business strategy and objectives of the firm. Different business units in the company have proposed different applications to implement. Your job as CIO will be to analyze the business case for each of the projects and identify those that best serve the long-term business strategy and objectives of the firm. Your choice of IT investments is constrained by the IT budget for the given financial year. The case consists of the following artifacts: - Letter from the CEO - Company Report - IT Assessment Report - Proposal for the SCM Initiative - Proposal for Rural Connect - Proposal for the new ERP System The case is designed to provide a Capstone experience on many of the concepts and frameworks learned in the specialization. Learners need to: (a) Identify a broad business focus of the company using the competitor data. Provide a couple of lines on the strategic pain points for the firm. (b) Which one of the five applications must the company invest in? Why? Provide strategic and financial reasons in support. (c) Thoroughly analyse past projects to remove redundant or unviable investments. (d) Identify and propose strategies for managing risk associated with large scale IT investments. (e) Create an organizational structure and communication plan that will engage various stakeholders of the organization.
Operating Models (Part 1)
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From the course by Indian School of Business
Capstone Project: Business Technology Management
18 ratings
Indian School of Business
18 ratings
Course 6 of 6 in the Specialization Business Technology Management
From the lesson
Operating Model Design
In this module, you will learn to evaluate a firm's current and ideal operating model as it aligns with its business goals.
Meet the Instructors
M Rammohan RaoProfessor Emeritus
Operations Management
Ramnarayan SubramaniamClinical Professor
Organisational Behaviour
Deepa ManiAssociate Professor and Executive Director, Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy
Information Systems
Sudhir VoletiAssistant Professor and ISB Research Fellow
Marketing
Ramabhadran ThirumalaiAssistant Professor
Indian School of Business
[MUSIC]
In the last session, we talked about the motivation for designing information
capabilities, and how these can be a source of competitive advantage.
In this session, we will work through the design of these capabilities in
the context of reliance industries.
Remember, I said that the first thing you need to focus on
in the design of your capability is the business objective.
If you are on top of your game related to the competition and
there is no business problem to solve, there is really no need for
the design of the information capabilities.
Your value chain as-is, is perfect.
So let's start by examining the business problem that Reliance was facing.
Actually even before we look at the business problem that Reliance was facing,
let's take a closer look at the sector in which the company was operating,
to better understand the context for the business problem.
Reliance was operating in the Indian power sector, a sector with
tight government control on both the downstream and upstream value chain.
Just look at this value chain, we have power generation,
we have power transmission and we have power distribution.
Generation and distribution are privatized while transmission remains largely under
the control of the state electricity boards.
Who supplies raw materials to the sector?
The government, the government has a monopoly introducing coal with over 90%
of the production coming from government controlled mines however
companies coal India mine enough coal to meet the power sector's needs.
A 2012 PWC report highlighted that of the total demand supply gap which
stands at about 98 million tons, India imports about 85 million tons of coal.
In fact to reduce this reliance on imported coal and boost the domestic
supply, the government amended the Coal Mines Nationalization Act of 1973,
to allot captive coal blocks to companies that were engaged in
specific end uses of coal, including power, steam, cement, etc.
The rationale behind this policy was to allocate a specific coal
block to a specific end-user company, thus ensuring that the companies
receive a regular supply of cheap coal for their requirements.
Something that the government was responsible for but could not deliver.
How do you think that went?
Remember the Colgate scam?
Out of the 200 allocated blocks, only 30 mines commenced production.
Instead of auctioning off the captive coal blocks, the Indian government chose to
hand them out through a discretionary process involving a screening committee.
Who did that coal go to?
Likely their cronies.
At least that's what the Controller and
Auditor General of India alleged in its report.
The CIG estimated loss of revenues to the [INAUDIBLE] in this process as INR
10000 billion.
This was the control the government exercised in the upstream value chain.
Is it unimaginable that a government which exercises so
much control upstream would exercise equal control, downstream as well?
Indeed the government controls areas of operation on distribution,
it specifies status, it imposes subsidies, and it imposes environmental norms.
The National Tariff Policy lays down the guidelines for
providing electricity to consumers at reasonable and competitive prices.
Therefore, power distribution companies are unable to charge consumers
the right price for the electricity that they consume, leading to heavy losses.
So a company that operates in this beleaguered power sector
has none of the levers typically available to a company
in other sectors to improve growth and profits.
Procurement, prices,
marketing, none of these levers that the company can play with.
Given the profile of this sector, constrained at both ends of the value
chain, operating amid high levels of government dominance,
bureaucratic control and regulation What do you
expect of companies that operate in this sector in terms of profitability?
It would be reasonable and safe for you to say not much.
In fact, apart from public sector organisations,
companies that operated in the Indian power sector largely included.
Conglomerates, and large companies with government ties and
the financial wherewithal to cross subsidize the cross businesses.
It was this sector that Reliance sought to enter through its acquisition of
Bombay Suburban Electricity Services in 2003.
Keep this context in mind as we now begin to evaluate the business performance and
pain points of Reliance.
At the time Reliance Energy acquired BSES,
BSES had achieved a total income of INR 28 billion.
With a profit after tax of INR 1.62 billion in 2003.
As I just remarked, it was no mean feat to be profitable in this sector.
And BSES was not just profitable.
Your case tells you that it was ranked amongst India's top 25 listed
private sector companies on all major financial parameters.
Then what were the competitive imperatives for Reliance Energy?
For this, you need to take a closer look in the case
at Reliance's closest competitor, Tata Power Company.
Tata Power distributed electricity in the same geography as Reliance.
Tata Power with 80% of its power generation concentrated in Mumbai and
its vicinity, was the largest private player in the power sector.
And although the BSES's numbers looked good, they were no better than Tata.
In 2003, Tata had a net profit margin of 10.4% with
revenues of 50 billion and profit of to tax to 5.2 billion.
For the same year BSES achieved a net profit margin of 5.8%.
Additionally, Tata Power's transmission and
distribution loses of 2.4% were known to be amongst the lowest in the country.
Much better than those of Reliance.
So the operational performance of Reliance was lower than that of Tata's.
Another major constraint for Reliance Energy at the time of the acquisition
was that BSES did not generate enough electricity to meet its demands.
Tata's generation capacity was nearly thrice that of BSES, and
accounted for nearly 52% of the total
power generation capacity of the private sector at the time.
And since BSES did not generate enough power,
it bought 41% of its power from Tata Power.
Higher costs of power acquisition in turn led to higher consumer tariffs
with Reliance Energy having the highest average tariff in Mumbai.
The consumer mix at Reliance further exacerbated this problem of high tariffs.
Around 70% of Reliance Energy's consumers
were low-end consumers who used up to 300 units per month.
And Reliance also had far fewer commercial consumers than Tata Power.
These nearly two million low-end consumers were subsidized by
the 0.6 million remaining consumers.
As a result, Reliance Energy's high-end consumers paid higher
tariffs than Tata Power's equally valid consumers, and
were vulnerable to competitive offers from Tata.
In order to prevent the migration of these customers, it was imperative for Reliance
to either lower tariffs for this segment through improved operational efficiency.
Remember, they couldn't play around with their cost of acquisition.
That was fixed.
So to reduce the total cost, they could only play around with cost of operations,
or operational efficiency.
The other option was to provide more value added services to justify
the higher status.
These where the business objectives of Reliance.
To summarize, Reliance was not in any crisis.
However there are certain competitive imperatives operating in the company
that deserves attention.
Like I said, if you assume that their cost of raw material was fixed,
if you assume they were operating in a sector where they had
few levers to play around with, they had to improve their operational efficiency.
Both to reduce their cost of operations and
lower tariffs as well as to provide better service for high paying customers.
In this case,
Reliance was looking to address problems of both revenue growth and profitability.
But often firms find that they need to only focus on one objective.
So when you asses your performance relative to competition,
keep your eye on what is the bigger problem and focus on that,
instead of trying to solve growth and profitability goals simultaneously.
There is a need to increase operational efficiency that is the stated
business goal of Reliance.
But what was the reason behind the operational inefficiency at Reliance?
The operational efficiency of an organization
directly correlates with the informational efficiency of the organization.
In the case of Reliance, ask yourself,
was information flowing very efficiently to all stakeholders?
Not really.
For instance, the case cites an example of billing and
operations not talking to each other.
So let's suppose a bill was generated based on a faulty meter reading.
It would often happen that the operations and maintenance department responded to
customer complaints and fixed the faulty meter.
But the billing department would not be updated about this in real time,
with the result that the customer received no communication apart from a faulty bill.
This information asymmetry across departments was an outcome of a lack of or
delayed coordination and integration between these departments.
And this information asymmetry resulted in many dissatisfied customers not to mention
significant operational efficiency drains.
Further, each business segment,
example customer retail etc., had developed its own systems and processes.
Network outage, for instance, will be managed differently for
the customer segment than it was for
retail, although both these segments drew on common resources.
In turn, there were many stand-alone legacy systems
locally developed applications that just did not talk to each other.
The lack of process standardization and
data integration created a fragmented organization with several redundancies.
And to reiterate,
this is the business objective of any IT investment at this point in the lines.
And therefore if I have to break down the business objective of
improving operational efficiency into sub-objectives, it will be
to resolve this information asymmetry and fragmentation within the firm.
Resolving this information asymmetry would increase operational efficiency and
customer service, ultimately improving profitability.
[MUSIC]
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