It Implementation Stories

8/6/2019 It Implementation Stories

1/15

Eveprese

challeth

marshathe usuresourc

extreme

LessoLearned From

Vertical

By Balaj

gu

ra

(From left to right)

Vikram Chopra,

GM (passenger services application)

Centre for Railways Information SystemsSunil Rawlani,

head-information systems & technology

HDFC Standard Life Insurance

Unni Krishnan T.M., group CTO

(retail business),Shopper's Stop

Jay Menon, director (innovation)

& group CIO,Bharti Airtel

Pradeep Saha,head-IT,Max Healthcare


2/15

Retail is similar to the worlds fastest train, the

TGV. Its speed, availability and extraordinary

experience set it apart and has made it among the

most preferred modes of transport in France. The

same fundamentals separate the retail amateurs from the men.

A retail organizations

ability to scale up

swiftly on demand, keep

merchandize available,

and create a consistently

g re a t custome r

experience in the face

of surging volumes and

mushrooming customer

numbers will dictate its

success. This is where

technology assumes a

pivotal role.

Among the big

players in the organized

retail space in India,

Shoppers Stop has

always understood the criticality of scale, availability and

experience, and has been an eager adopter of advanced, cutting-

edge technology. We deployed JDA-MMS and JDA-WinDSS,

core merchandizing, store PoS application and ERP in 1998,

much before the other players, says Unni Krishnan T.M., the

group CTO of Shoppers Stop retail business that includes

Shoppers Stop, HyperCITY, Crossword, Mothercare, Desi

Caf, Brio and Home Stop. And Shoppers Stop has continued

to pump energy in this area. Today, says B.S.Nagesh, MD,

and vice chairman of Shoppers Stop, it has implemented

pioneering technologies like a self-checkout at HyperCITY,

a first in both the retail brotherhood in India and globally.

The Number CrunchersThe business and technological challenges that the retail

sector face are similar to those in other sectors. What sets retail

apart is the sheer volume of transactions it works with. Its

this volume thats responsible for the high-use of technology

in retail organizations. Other sectors focus largely on ERP

and CRM type of applications. We need those and much more

because the number of touch points between technology and

the consumer is a great deal larger in retail, says Krishnan.

The automobile industry, for instance, hardly has customers

interacting directly with enterprise technologies, apart from a

few dealer applications needed to help customers visualize the

car they plan to buy, says Krishnan.

But, retail creates a large number of customer-technology

touch-points, with its self-checkouts, barcode scanners, price-

checking solutions and anti-theft devices. And the number

of customers interacting with such technologies (like at the

checkout counter) can easily increase from a few hundred to

millions in a short period.

At HyperCITY, we've had over a million footfalls in the first

three months, says Krishnan. At an average of two custo mer-

technology contact points per customer and thats about

two million probable interactions between customers and

technology in three months. Add to that the large number of

items a customer buys per visit. (An average receipt has 30-50

items at a hypermarket.) Hypothetically, consider a 30 percent

sales-conversion of two million footfalls that translates to

anywhere between 9 to 15 [times customers trigger a play of

technology] in three months from a single store.

It goes without saying that technology deployed in a retail

environment needs to be robust. But not robust like a tractor

there is no place for the unsophisticated in a shopping mall.

Retail technology needs to be intuitive, user-friendly and has

to offer a consistent experience. This requires identifying

cutting-edge technologies and putting them to innovative uses.

There is a generation gap between us and other retailers in

the country, as far as technology adoption is concerned. Weve

brought new-age technologies to the Indian retail market, some

which others havent introduced, says Krishnan.

Shoppers Stop has one of the largest installed bases of

AutoCAD software, says Krishnan, because the chain uses

CAD technologies to craft, draw and plan its multiple stores

as they roll them out. At last count, the group had over 20

Shoppers Shop stores and 30 Crosswords outlets.

The enterprise is also at an early st age of deploying a solution

to optimization store-to-floor space ratio. Called Intactix, its

going to help the store managers visualize how to stock shelves

using optimal sales and margin expectations. The application

also helps analyze how much specific shelves are generating.

And it can even do a what-if analysis by removing certain

merchandize off shelves and watching its impact on revenue

and margins, adds Krishnan.

The group was also the first to deploy an IBM i550

performance server in the retail sector. This helps the

organization consolidate all of its business units on a single

box while running multiple applications, making it easier

to administer and lowering the cost of ownership. Today,

we run four different enterprise applications (primarily

merchandizing and loyalty applications) catering to six

different retail formats on the single box, and we can still take

many more. Soon we will be the first to use the i570 series of

servers running on the Power5+ chipsets, which will boost our

disaster recovery capabilities, says Krishnan.

Shoppers Stop was also the first in Indias organized r

space to use salesforce.com, a leader in delivering on-dem

CRM solutions via the Internet as software-as-a-servic

automate its sales team. The application was customized

implemented in-house and christened IB-Force (Instituti

Business). IB-Force helps us to monitor a large percentag

our gift voucher sales, which is about 10 percent (about R

crore) of Shopper's Stop's sales, says Krishnan.

Scale Up or Get OutThe TGV, even running at just 60 percent of its top spee

515 kmph, requires over eight kilometers to brake. Reta

dont have that luxury. IT's inability to scale up to mamm

volume transactions while ensuring the constant availab

of merchandize can bring a retailer to a grinding halt.

Krishnan says theyre the first to have rolled out among

most advanced replenishment applications for hypermark

Called E3, this sophisticated mathematical software h

HyperCITY analyze inventory trends, helping the enterp

Cover Story| Imp

REAL CIO WORLD | n o v e mVOL/2 | ISSUE/01VOL/2 | ISSUE/0138 n o v e m B e R 1 5 , 2 0 0 6 | REAL CIO WORLD

Either youre partof the problem or part of the solution or youre just part of the landscape.Uttered by Robert de Niro in a 1998 heist film, the writer of this memorable line is still a mystery

in filmdom. It doesnt matter because the words ring true, most of all in business today. WhenCIOs reporters explored the IT organizations of five business sectors retail, healthcare, BFSI, telecomand services their stories revealed how Indian majors are thriving on innovation to solve theirorganizations problems. Most interestingly, each vertical puts forth a series of learnings that are notunique to itself, helping you derive insights into their approaches to address your own IT challenges.The solutions are now out in the landscape. Find out, across the next five stories.

Cover Story| Implementation

KeepingpacewithvolumesGuaranteeingavailabilityofmerchandizeCreatingcustomerdelightandensuringconsistency

GreatestChallenges

By gunjan trivedi

Every month, one of Shoppers Stop 50 outlets clocks seven million instances ofcustomers using technology. Encouraged, the group is now building on its technologycapability to stay ahead in the volumes game.

creating shopp Pd

Unni Krisgrup CTo (ret

Sh

RETAIL


3/15

refill its shelves faster at lower costs, forecast better, and

address the critical element of product availability. In a

hypermarket, consumables like bread and juices fly off the

shelves, Krishnan explains. Replenishing them every

two days means were filling them about 180 times a year.

Managing different products that need replenishment at

different rates is tricky: should we buy 100 units of a productor 500? One hundred units means fresher products but also

more frequent replenishment. Five hundred units allows for

higher discounts, but pose a storage problem. E3 helps

us find the right balance at the right time.

HyperCITY is also home to one of

the groups most innovative use of

technology. Called iScan, this

handheld barcode scanning device

lets customers scan their merchandize as

they take them off shelves. When they're ready

for checkout, customers dont need to stand in a queue as

their merchandize is scanned and billed saving time and

improving customer experience.

The iScan represents a classic case where a piece of

hardware is put to multiple use by bundling it with different

apps. The same hardware doubles as stock-taking solution for

inventory. It is also used without the shopping cart as a

receiving solution at warehouses and helps managers within

a store do price-checks on merchandize.

Known as a platform concept, Shoppers Stop borrowed

the multiple-use approach from the auto industry and

experimented with it in retail for the first time in India, says

Krishnan. Car models like Tata Indica and Indigo share the

same [architectural] platform. When you create a platform, its

easier to build more models off it by incorporating tweaks. We

surprised our application provider by applying hardware and

applications in new environments, says Krishnan.

One ViewShoppers Stop primary objective as an early-mover technology

adaptor is not only to empower its businesses with the agility

to scale up and the power to ensure availability of merchandize,

but also to eventually bring all its retail formats on a common

platform and create a consolidated view of its business

and one view of the consumer.

Each retail set-up within Shoppers Stop drives its ow

business, but shareholders, management and the boa

want to have one view of the business. Five to six years ag

Shoppers Stops strategy was to grow quickly in differe

retail formats even if it meant sacrificing a single view of businesses. Later, it became hard to see growth from multip

verticals, business relationships and franchises. Instead

having a 20,000-foot view of all our businesse

what we had a view from a hill. And as w

grew, we were forced to jump fro

one business hill to another. Tw

years ago, we decided to get

consolidated view of all o

businesses, while it w

still early enough to crea

commonality acro

platforms, says Nagesh

He associates thr

objectives with this mov

One is transparency

view all his businesse

Another is that it provid

a benchmark in managin

technology as a part of th

business. Third is the eventu

strength in acquiring a sing

view of the consumer across all

businesses. We want to have a comm

view of one customer across our retail forma

whether hes buying coriander leaves at HyperCITY,T

Afghan at Crossword, a shirt at Shoppers Stop, a set of bab

diapers at Mothercare or a cappuccino at Brio, says Nagesh

Shoppers Stop is always trying to balance between comm

platforms and creative technological solutions. Wherever it

feasible, we try to create common applications across our ret

formats. We recently moved Crossword from legacy apps

JDA-MMS and JDA-WinDSS. As a result, we have achieved

common merchandizing and store application platform almo

across all our group companies, says Krishnan. Crossword

using four enterprise applications, down from 12.

However, when differentiation is required, specific solutio

are created unhesitatingly. HyperCITY's speed checko

solution using iScan is an example.

This approach and the daring to take on new technologi

is a characteristic feature of the group. And its being applie

to getting a single view of the business. I firmly believe th

investing in technology should be kept at par with investmen

in real estate, senior management, and building capacitie

Never hesitate in investing in technology, says Nagesh.

Seior correspodet Guja Trivedi ca be reached at [email protected]


VOL/2 | ISSUE4 0 n o v e m B e R 1 5 , 2 0 0 6 | REAL CIO WORLD

SALE

SALE

SALEWith its price-checking

solutions, barcode

scanners and anti-theftdevices, retail creates alarge number of customer-technology touch-points.

ILLUSTRATIOnS

ByPCA

nOOP


4/15


For a company that began with one mobile

service license in 1995, the Rs 8,156-crore Bharti

Airtel has taken rapid strides to become the

bellwether in the Indian telecom industry today.

Its country-wide presence and market capitalization

of Rs 101.9 crore reflect a fast-growing company at one

level. At another level, such expansion signals a huge

challenge, especially for a company whose growth has

come inorganically, through mergers and acquisitions

(M&As), as part of the industry consolidation. Ask Bharti

Airtels IT organization.

With each acquisition, the challenges grow by leaps and

bounds. Bharti Airtel has sought to consolidate disparate

IT systems of different entities and standardize platforms

across the co mpany. Says Jai Menon, directo r (innovation)

and group CIO of Bharti Airtel,

In 2002, while on an S-curve

of growth, we were just on time.

It has reflected well in the way

we adopted technology and the

way customers experienced

our offerings.

The journey, which started

then with basic integrations

internally, will culminate by 2010

as One Airtel a complete intra

and inter-SBU integration across

Bharti Airtels divisions. The

journey has posed three major

challenges: scaling up (vertically

and horizontally), capability

enhancement and integration.

Braving the Integration BluesThere was a dire need to integrate all the services th

Bharti Airtel provided as one brand. There was yet anoth

need to integrate the systems and processes across circle

and initiate the swift migration of all heterogeneo

processes to one platform across the 23 circles.

In 2002, when the carrier embarked on the integrati

process, it had few circles to operate and was runnin

legacy billing systems. Menon recalls the days wh

the company bought its first off the shelf, high-en

commercial billing system called Keanan in 200

The migration of just two circles from legacy to th

platform was extremely painful. Several business rul

and processes needed to be aligned with the IT system

Everything was missing. It took us several months

set it right. Imagine the task

repeating the similar exerci

after every acquisition

says Menon.

There was a strong beli

within that technology wasn

the problem. It was integratio

and its alignment with busine

thereafter, which was essenti

to keep growth steady on th

S-curve. The non-integrat

entities were also lying to

low on the capability fro

because of the over-customizatio

of information systems an

commercial software at differe

entities within the compan

Nothing is more frustrating than trying to get people to alter the waythey do things. New research reveals why its so hard and suggestsstrategies to make it easier.

Integrationinthecontextofinorganicgrowth

Gettingridoflegacysystems

Minimizingmigrationtime

GreatestChallenges

By rahul neel mani

Dial i.t.fo io

TELECO

How Bharti Airtel meets the challenges of integrating businesses and staying in line witgrowth fuelled by M&As.


5/15


6/15



of bringing billing onto a common engine known as

convergent billing platform.

We have also progressed sufficiently on the common

CRM platform across all 23 SBUs. This is a tremendous

success in inter-SBU integration. It has not only brought

business-IT alignment into play, but the capabilities of

IT systems have grown nearly 10 times between 2002and 2006. On the customer side of

IT, many areas like sales, order

management, billing, revenue

recognition, customer

care and business

intelligence have had

to be migrated from

their current platforms to one standard

platform to be 100 percent more agile, say Menon.

The entire IT infrastructure of Bharti Airtel now runs

on multi-protocol label switching WAN, which helps the

company support a host of applications, including the

ones that are leading-edge. Migrating to MPLS-based

services also cut costs for the company depending on

the degree of converged traffic that Bharti Airtel was

running on it. Says Menon: Using MPLS for all three

layers data, voice and video saved us as much as 25

percent on the network expenditure. CIOs might wonder

how difficult it is to make the transition. Surprisingly, its

less painful than anybody thinks. Technically, MPLS isnt

a service offering, but underlying infrastructure.

Through this exercise, Bharti Airtel has created an

IT ecosystem which now uses one piece of middleware

for 16 of its major application systems running on 1,500

odd servers. As a result of this massive integration drive,

Bharti Airtel executed three large utility computing

models between 2004-2006 after factoring in both

capital and operational expenditures.

For business and internal IT, IBM became the key

outsourcing partner with 15 more providers lined up

behind it. For all contact center technology, Bharti Airtel

picked Nortel and seven of its associated partners. On

the infrastructure front, IBM was again the strategic

outsourcing partner, with some others. All partners wo

on a revenue sharing basis, so that there is no immedia

capital expenditure; ROI doesnt come into play. Wi

this kind of integration, I, as a CIO, have been able

make capital expenditures, maintenance contracts an

other such micro things redundant.

All these functions are now offloaded to partnebecause of the utility computing model driven by th

premise that integration not only brings operation

efficiencies, but also gives cost efficiencies. In the ca

of Bharti, the utility computing model has worked ve

well. The company made sure from day one that th

model is directly related to business outcome becau

internally, in the company, most of the IT is related

revenue, which is the busine

outcome. As the revenue go

higher, the percentage of spent o

IT comes down, notes Menon.

The UltimateObjectiveMost of the intra-SBU and som

of the inter-SBU IT systems ha

already been stitched with on

thread and are working we

Some of the most ambitious projec

like integrated CRM, integrat

self care and order manageme

convergent billing are in advanced stages of completion.

We are targeting that by 2008, Bharti Airtel mobilit

fixed line and broadband will have one content gatewa

one messaging gateway and one application gatewa

across all platforms, that is, PC, mobile and TV. That w

make us a 100 percent integrated telecom carrier. We

be the first telecom company in the world to achieve thi

claims Menon.

Overall, the process has stemmed from the company

quest for integration, which started early on in 200

The company gathered the right ecosystem, got the rig

architecture in place, and did the migration and integratio

upfront. It has resulted in cost-effectiveness and the abili

to recognize customers better. On the S-curve of growt

we started very early. We wanted this whole strategy

ultimately translate into rich customer experience. An

its nothing but a result of integration and capabili

enhancement in the IT systems, asserts Menon.

Bureau head-orth Rahul neel mai ca be reached at [email protected]

The thrust is to firstachieve integration

of systems, businessintelligence systems, data

warehousing, so that there isone national picture to view.


7/15


What does it take to follow a paper trail?

Ask an insurance company. Take an

insurance organization anywhere in

the world and it will look at paper as a

necessary evil. Thats because with so many entwined

business processes with cascading results, variables and

overlapping needs, insurers need to ensure well-defined

workflows, which for unprepared companies means an

avalanche snowballing of paper and plenty of it.

At one time, it got so bad that many insurers in the US

housed in multiple-storey buildings used conveyor

belts to carry files across hundreds of desks through

multiple departments. The mechanical solution, though

it successfully reduced the time it took to move paper files

around, didnt address the problem. Sunil Rawlani, head-

information systems and technology of HDFC Standard

Life Insurance Company (HDFCSL), was certain he wasnt

going to put his money into a conveyor belt.

Rawlani was determined

to drain away all the paper

that was clogging business

efficiency. He decided to

introduce digitized content,

automated workflow and

agile, re-engineered processes.

Insurance is a conventional,

paper-based business with

90-page files packed with

supporting documents hopping

across work-desks. These

obese files then travel in and

out of file cabinets, to agents, to

junior underwriters, to medical

institutes, to senior underwriters

and so on. Imagine the volumes

of paper racing around if a company handles about t

thousand policy files everyday. Now, imagine the impa

on the organizations turnaround time. Electron

content management and digitization of workflow w

imperative, points out Rawlani. In 2003, HDFCS

embarked on a mission to cut out the paper chase an

embrace Business Process Management (BPM).

The Mumbai-headquartered HDFCSL, a joint-ventu

between UKs mutual life assurance company Standa

Life and HDFC, was started in 2000 to tap the evolvin

life insurance market in India. As one of the first priva

life insurance companies in India, HDFCSLs operatio

were characterized by manual processes that were add

incrementally to keep up with business requiremen

In order to differentiate itself and tap the mark

more progressively, it adopted the customer-centr

approach and offered service as it's USP. As HDFCSL sa

unprecedented growth, their manual processes, layer

unsystematically over time, start

to crack under the pressure.

The number of Exc

worksheets, used to tra

p o l i c i e s , m u s h r o o m e

Increased communication f

new requirements began

choke the organization. Multip

systems to handle statu

queries or communicating ne

management decisions render

process control inconsiste

and inefficient, which hit th

organizations ability to measu

performance. All the while, th

volume of paper exploded makin

document-filing and handlin

Eliminatingtheproblemsof

apaper-intensiveworkflowwithelectroniccontentmanagementandBPMGivingbusinessbackitsUSPbyfocusingonserviceandnotpaperchasing.

GreatestChallenges

insuringa Pp-PhHDFC Standard Life Insurance has made a successful bid to get its people away fromthe clutches of paper files and back to the business of insurance.

By gunjan trivedi

BFS


8/15


9/15



screens were viewed in

landscape-mode, making

the underwriters jobs

very tedious. We tried

using larger monitors,

but that didnt work.

As for portrait-oriented

monitors, they were

available only in the

US at that time and

were astronomically

expensive, he recalls.

With true CIO-

resourcefulness, Rawlani

found a solution that

kept everyone happy:

he deployed graphics

cards that supported

multiple monitors. Each

underwriter workstation

was connected to two

15-inch monitors. One

monitor displayed the

document up-straight

and the other displayed

the scanned policy in

portrait-mode.

But, the document imaging solution isnt only a set

of clever ideas. Its benefits, like proper indexing, access

control, the ability to include annotations, secure storage,

fast retrieval and better disaster recovery are far-reaching.

Its also ensured better human resources allocation and

that paper is eliminated from the workflow.

The advanced capabilities of the BPM platform are also

used to break down and monitor an automated process

into steps as they are rolled out. Each step within a

process is monitored and inefficiencies identified. Each

steps time is noted and monitored against the duration

of the entire process. Irregularities are immediately

identified using key performance indicators built into

the platform.

Business procedural algorithms or rules are kept

loosely-coupled with the BPM using a separate business

rules engine, ensuring that in the wake of changing

business needs, the entire process is not altered. Tweaking

only the rules helps create a more agile process, which

can effectively adapt to changes. Insurance companies,for example, allocate policies to either junior or senior

underwriters, depending on the body weight of the

applicant. If, at some stage in the future, these parameters

change or say an applicant wants to customize his policy,

the entire process doesnt need to undergo an alteration.

The required changes are merely incorporated within the

business rule engine.

At first, we address

the business processes

breadth, to automate k

front-end features. Th

we started to scale t

depth of the process. Th

incremental approa

helps us to address issu

cropping up witho

disrupting the enti

process, and easily secu

management buy-in b

being able to show benef

early on, says Rawlani.

T h e a u t o m a t e

workflow has benefit

the organization. Apa

from the measurab

benefits of a 30

percent improveme

on policy turn-aroun

time. For instance, t

average time to issue

new policy today is 1

2.5 days, down from 5

days. The organizatio

is also able to off

improved customer service with consistent experienc

and enjoys improved efficiency in terms of immedia

access to documents, tracking policies online, a new ea

of administration, much better process manageabili

and control, better compliance, and overall reduction

the cost of ownership.

There has also been a 40 percent reduction in the tim

underwriters spend handling queries. This translat

into substantial ROI, especially since the number

policies issued in a year run in hundreds of thousand

(HDFCSL issued over just under 4 lakh policies in 200

06, covering more than 5.8 lakh lives.)

Moving ahead, Rawlani wants to bring all busine

processes that are not yet fully automated such

claims under BPM. He is working full time to bring

more third-party integration between the workflows

HDFCSL and external entities such as medical institut

or re-insurers. I am also figuring out how to furth

equip our sales-force and agents with sophisticate

mobile devices, which can integrate seamlessly with oworkflow and further reduce our tu rnaround time as w

deliver policies to the customers, right at their doorsteps

he says.

Seior correspodet Guja Trivedi ca be reached at [email protected]

The advanced capabilities

of the BPM platform arealso used to break down andmonitor an automated processinto steps as they are rolled out.

BANK


10/15


As the second largest rail network in the world

and the largest in Asia, statistics concerning

Indian Railways are bound to impress. It boasts

of coverage that exceeds 60,000 kilometers,

has 300 railway yards and 700 repair shops. It runs more

than 11,000 trains on a daily basis, and directly or indirectly

touches the life of almost every person in India.

However, not all figures concerning the Indian Railways

are as impressive. For instance, almost 14 million of the 15

million people whom the Railways transports every day

travel on unreserved tickets. Handling them has been a

huge problem. As union railway minister Lalu Prasad

Yadav said in his maiden Railway Budget speech at the

Lok Sabha in 2004-05, About 92 percent of railway

passengers travel without reservation in unreserved

coaches in trains in the country.

This revelation is not something new, and the Indian

Railways had realized the need for an Unreserved Ticketing

System (UTS) a long time ago. In fact, Nitish Kumar, in

his Railway Budget

in 2002-03, had

announced the pilot

of the Unreserved

Ticketing System,

at a time when the

Indian Railways was

celebrating its 150th

year of operations.

As Vikram Chopra,

g r o u p g e n e r a l

manager (passenger

services applications),

Centre for Railway

Information Systems

(CRIS), points out, The

decision to introduce

UTS as a pilot project at 23 stations around Delhi was take

in January 2002, and the inauguration of the same was do

on August 15, 2002. Today, this project is showing a lot

benefits, and has been extended to 588 stations as of Mar

31, 2006. Further, the Indian Railways plans to cover 94

more stations in 2006-07, and ensure that a total of 6,00

stations have UTS as of March 31, 2009.

While UTS is delivering excellent payback, the road tak

was thorny. As a first step towards computerizing ticketin

the Indian Railways introduced Self Printing Ticketin

Machines (SPTMs), points out Chopra, adding that, The

were standalone microprocessor-based ticket machine

While they contributed towards reducing ticket invento

and provided automated accounting at the station level, th

had several limitations. The limitations included:

The system was a logistical nightmare because fa

changes had to be made on each and every machine.

Since these machines were standalone systems, ticke

could only be booked from the station of origin

journey. Cancellation could also be only done at t

same counter where the ticket was booked.

Since there was no network, there was no real-tim

generation of revenue. Additionally, these machin

were prone to tampering.

In order to overcome these limitations, CRIS designed th

UTS. The project was given to CRIS on a turn key basi

and the work involved designing the system, freezin

of hardware and software requirements, procuring th

hardware, development of software and testing it, an

finally, installation, recalls Chopra.

While implementing such a large system tends to be

complex undertaking, CRIS core competency in handli

such installations helped. Set up in 1986 to manage a

the computer activities of the Indian Railways, CR

had implemented large projects before, like the Freig

Operations Information Systems (FOIS) and Passeng

How the Indian Railways overcame a logistical nightmare in a mission to change the customeexperience of nearly 14 million people who travel with unreserved tickets everyday.

By Balaji narasimhan

O h rh

track

Designingthesystemfrom

theground-upFreezingontherighthardware/softwarecombinationCreatinganextensiblesystem

GreatestChallenges

SERVICE


11/15



Reservation System (PRS). But, while the PRS has been

widely hailed by e-governance experts as one of the most

successful e-governance projects, not only in India but across

the world because of the number of citizens it has impacted,

it handles only around 0.8 to 1 million reservations per day.

The unreserved ticketing system, on the other hand, had to

handle several million reservations a day, and be capable ofscaling way beyond 10 million reservations in the future.

The most important thing about the unreserved ticket

system was that, since it impacted so many people, it has

to be available on a 24x7x365 basis and this applied

to all aspects of the system. The system has therefore

been implemented in the high availability mode from all

hardware, software and telecommunication angles,

says Chopra. Therefore, CRIS decided to use diskless PCs

equipped with 144 MB flash ROMs. The ROM was to be

loaded with three components: Red Hat Linux, Adaptive

Server Anywhere Sybase RDBMS, and the ticketing

application itself. The problem that CRIS faced was that

all these things didnt fit into the 144 MB ROM, and

measures had to be taken to trim the RDBMS and the OS

Once this task was accomplished, CRIS faced anoth

problem: it was using proprietary terminal servers

connect dumb terminals with the backend server. Th

apart from being expensive, was also capable of tying th

Indian Railways to outdated legacy methods. In order combat this problem, the UTS team at CRIS started work o

a TCP/IP terminal server, which had the advantage of bein

extensible. Because security was an important consideratio

for the Indian Railways, CRIS developed special tools

centralize the management of these dumb terminals. As

result of these tools, the security administrator can mana

the ports from a central location, and even define th

transmission speeds for data flow. But the finest aspect

the terminal is that it is highly fault-tolerant. While it work

off the network, it can also function as a standalone syste

if the backend server or the telecommunications link brea

down. Once the server or the network failure is rectified, th

client reconnects to the backend server and automatical

synchronizes the data.

Another added bonus of these efforts was that the TCP

IP terminal server cost just one-fifth of the proprietar

terminal server that was in vogue earlier. Since TCP/IP

the lingua franca of the Internet, CRIS was also able to mak

the UTS easily accessible over the Web. As Chopra poin

out, The booking of unreserved season tickets can now b

done through the Internet with the physical ticket bein

delivered to the passengers address.

The usage of the Internet apart, the overall reach of th

UTS has been staggering, to say the least. Today the UT

network covers 682 stations with 2,152 users connected

eight data centers located in New Delhi, Kolkata, Chenna

Mumbai, Secunderabad, Patna and Gorakhpur. The syste

issues tickets to around 5 million passengers every da

generating revenues of over Rs 14 crore, avers Chopra.

While numbers are always striking, the other benefi

both to Indian Railways and to the common man a

even more stirring. Now, travelers can buy tickets from an

station and need not be restricted to the boarding statio

The new UTS system also allows the purchase of a

unreserved ticket three days prior to the date of journey,

the facility for booking unreserved return tickets exists.

The Indian Railways has also seen benefits from th

UTS. Since the burden on the ticket-issuing personn

was reduced, the same staff could be used for addition

ticketing counters. The productivity of the booking clerk

was also enhanced.

The Indian Railways enjoyed other benefits, such as:

Fares and business rules could be changed mo

easily, and this protected railway revenues an

reduced passenger complaints.

Passenger traffic is measurable on a real-time basis

Since more details of the usage of trains were availab

Vikram Chopra,Gm (passenger servicesapplicatin), CRIS


12/15

analytical reports with higher accuracy could be

produced for top management.

More counters could be opened for ticket sales without

requiring any addition in manpower.

The security features incorporated into the UTS

reduced the chances of fraud considerably.

Of course, all this comes at a cost. While Chopra was notable to provide the final cost of the UTS system because the

implementation of the system is still in progress, he says

that the Indian Railways has already spent Rs 80.71 crore

as of March 31, 2006. An additional amount of Rs 86 crore

has been sanctioned for 2006-07.

While Chopra didnt provide any direct figures bearin

upon the ROI of the project, he points out that, Whi

it is not possible to quantify direct savings or increas

revenues on account of UTS at present, as it is still in th

expansion stage, costs will come down on account of reduc

ticket stock inventories and reduction in investment f

increasing points of sale. Revenues will increase becausegreater productivity in ticket sales by booking clerks, bett

availability of tickets, and more efficient services throu

better planning made possible by better MIS.

A study of Lalu Prasad Yadavs Budget Speech f

2006-07 gives us some indicative figures of the ROI

UTS. Passenger earnings increased by 7 percent, and n

doubt, UTS would have contributed to that . Streamlinin

achieved by the UTS, among others, has also enabled th

Indian Railways to target an additional income of Rs 20

crore by adding additional coaches to some 190 popul

trains. For 2006-07, a growth target of 11 percent has bee

set for passenger revenues, which add up to Rs 16,800 cror

Since the UTS already touches 5 million people per day, t

averment that it is bound to add significantly towards th

target is not untenable.

Success apart, CRIS has no plans of resting on its laure

We are now planning to further enhance the UTS proje

with the introduction of touch screen based Automate

Ticketing Machine, both with prepaid smart card

debit/credit cards and currency in the ne

future, says Chopra.

Some of the innovations are al

coming from slightly out-of-the-w

locations. For example, the Indi

Railways launched its first satell

UTS at the Pampa Devaswo

complex in Thiruvananthapura

in November 2005, which

aiming at issuing unreserv

tickets from non-rail heads. Th

system is expected to help sever

lakh pilgrims visiting Sabarima

by enabling them to purcha

tickets three days in advance fro

any railway station.

Another first has been achieved b

the Danapur division of the east centr

railway, which has become the first divisio

of the Indian Railways in which all A B and

class stations have been provided with UTS facilitie

With UTS expected to proliferate across the country

the coming years, these numbers are only likely to go u

along with customer satisfaction, of course.

Special correspodet Balaji narasiha ca be reached at [email protected]



While RFID (radio frequency identification) is usually seen as

something that adds value to the supply chain, the Indian

Railways is also implementing this technology to make

traveling easier for the common man. This plan revolves around

smart cards, which are issued in denominations of Rs 100, Rs 200

and Rs 500. These cards are valid for one year, but the

unused amount can be transferred to a new card.

These smart cards are used with ATVMs

(Automatic Ticket Vending Machines),

which are equipped with a touch screen.

Using the touch screen, the smart

card holder can enter the details

of his journey and the amount is

automatically subtracted from his

smart card.

While this usage is bound to

enhance customer satisfaction,

RFID is capable of playing an

even higher role in the handling

of freight. The Indian Railways

is supposed to have 222 million

freight wagons, and RFID tags

embedded in the wagons will be

read by readers located in sheds.

Using this system, which is currently

in its pilot phase, the Indian Railways hopes

to streamline freight management across the

country. The impact upon the country itself is bound to

be huge because, as of 2004-05, the Indian Railways carried 1.65

million tonnes of freight on a daily basis. Since the network of the

Indian Railways covers around 63,465 km across the length and

breadth of the country, this system will make tracking of freight

much easier than it is today.

B.n.

Empowering Passengers


13/15


That India is a vast and varied geography with a

burgeoning population is oft documented. Over

a billion people are spread across a landscape

from deserts to frozen mountain ranges, whose

temperatures soar to 50 degree Celsius and plummet to -30

degree Celsius. Delve deeper into the demographics, and one

will find more revealing facts: a very high infant mortality rate,

an unmanageable population per doctor nearly 70 percent

of the population lives in remote parts and an average life

expectancy of 63 years. In many ways, all pointers to a deeper

need for India to turn to telemedicine.

The modern applications of telemedicine do not

simply entail a better business logic for hospitals

and other healthcare service providers, but also promise

to contribute toward an national cause. India has been

a relatively late adopter, but is fast catching up in terms of

applying telemedicine

technologies.

Max Healthcare

Institute, the Rs 145-

crore super-specialty

hospital, has taken a

plunge in proliferating

treatment and medical

ser vices thr o ugh

telemed icine. Its

TeleMed connects

primary and specialty

healthcare services,

through images and

other data, to health

centers and tertiary

hospitals with their

highly specialized staff and technical equipment in remo

areas. Telemedicine is an emerging system of medicine

India, but can prove very effective in terms of deliverin

timely treatment for those deprived of good medic

facilities, says Pradeep Saha, head-IT for Max Healthcar

Information and telecommunication technologies ha

now reached a stage of maturity so that it doesnt tak

much time to set up a network for telemedicine faciliti

between two points.

Earlier, an example of telemedicine may have been

simple as a doctor receiving advice and consultation fro

another doctor over the telephone. Today, telemedicin

can bring a physician located hundreds of miles away in

an actual examination room, thanks to a live, interacti

system, notes Saha.

However, India is still far behind when it comes

attaining acceptable standards of health infrastructu

and services, says Saha. There is a shortage of compute

savvy healthcare personnel. Overall, it results in the po

use of telemedical infrastructure, and the people wh

suffer the most are those in the remote areas. Quite ear

on, Max Healthcare felt the lack of training facilities wi

regard to information and communication technolog

(ICT) in medicine. In rural India, medical terms lik

HIS (hospital information systems, RIS (radiolog

information systems), and PACS (picture archivin

and communication systems) are unheard of by th

medical community.

There is virtually no exposure to the applications of IC

in remote areas where most people of India reside, says Sah

We recognized this problem and thought of putting in pla

a solution to bridge this gap. Max Healthcare got active

involved in the practice of telemedicine with its variou

Enter a healthcare WAN that has succeeded in taking highly-differentiated and specialty medical services to remote areas.

By rahul neel mani

InfrastructuretoprovideservicetoremoteareasTrainingandenhancingmanpowercapabilitiestoprovideservicesCreatingcost-efficienciesthroughsuchasystem

GreatestChallenges

curesO l s

HEALTHCAR


14/15



specialty hospitals and clinics, as well as ongoing telemedicine

research and training projects, he explains.

The hospital prepared a blueprint to establish tertiary-

level service delivery facilities across rural and urban

locations that were integrated with Max Healthcare TeleMed.

This was to bring Max Healthcare services closer to the

people, regardless of the geography in question. The MaxHealthcare doctors were confident that telemedicine would

be a great tool to enhance the level of onsite care in small

nursing homes. It would virtually eliminate unnecessary

ambulance transportation and delay in providing critical

medical care whenever and wherever required.

The aim of Max Healthcare TeleMed was to empower

physicians in remote areas as well as healthcare personnel

to stay updated, vis--vis medical knowledge and the

skills to provide better healthcare.

Another major objective was to educate and train

doctors in remote areas who were otherwise unable

to access such training for both geographical an

monetary constraints. Doctors in remote areas seldo

get an opportunity to attend training sessions an

thus lack knowledge to handle critical medicinal case

Telemedicine is one of the greatest ways to provide a

online training program, in which doctors usin

communication links can actually indulge in trainingsays Saha.

Consultation with experts and taking seconda

opinions is a time-consuming job, especially if th

experts are unavailable. Telemedicine bridges this ga

easily. If a doctor has a heart patient but is not able

read an electrocardiogram, the images need to be sen

immediately for an experts interpretation. It can sav

a life and thats only possible if you have a telemedicin

facility with data and voice, asserts Saha.

Max Healthcare was confident that it could eve

monetize the rural centers through cost savings generat

by identifying diseases in the early stages.

Brick and Mortar ofTelemedicineTelemedicine technology is generally a function

communication infrastructure and the cost of informatio

technology hardware. There has to be a prop

communication link between the center from where th

telemedicine service and expert opinion are to be provid

and the place where the patient is actually located.

To be able to provide cost-effective services an

avoid unnecessary overheads of capital and operation

expenditure, Max India set up a 512-kbps primary ra

interface ISDN link between the telemedicine cente

and the tele-consultants. This was enough to work as

primary link between the two centers. These lines we

connected with modems at both ends to transmit the da

between the two places.

The pain area was not the technology, but i

implementation and maintenance at the remote en

because doctors and technicians needed initial trainin

for usage. Also, there were problems of downtime, whi

were natural. But with time, things have improved a lo

says Saha. The images of reports began to be scanned an

sent to teleconsultants who would monitor and sugge

approaches to treatment over the telephone.

Quite naturally, Max Healthcare thought of addin

video in the process. It was not only difficult, bu

impractical to narrate readings of the bedside monitor

There was always a threat of marginal error. The err

could turn fatal if the case was critical and immediate

needed intervention, explains Saha.

This was overcome by adding video to the setu

Max India decided to put polycom video conferencin

equipment, so that doctors could virtually collabora

in times of emergencies and critical diagnostics. Th

Pradeep Saha,head-IT, max Healthcare

IMAGInGB

yBInESHS

REEDHARAn

IPHOTOB

ynAVEEn


15/15



further helped in providing training and online learning

to the doctors, says Saha.

Healthy ProcessesA medical practitioner in a remote location now schedules

all his patients who require expert medical tertiary-level

specialists advice on a particular day and time of the week.The medical experts sitting at specialty

locations are made available

online during that schedule

for consultations on

the cases. Before

hand, the remote

p r a c t i t i o n e r

makes available

all the case

history and

investigations

of patients to the super-specialists. It saves time, money

and, most importantly, the lives of a large number of

people, says Saha.

Offsite nursing homes, diagnostic centers and hospitals

can now send images of diagnoses online to experts for

an opinion. This takes no time in comparison to sending

the images physically. The latter brings into play the

possibility of a patient losing time if he is at a critical

stage of treatment. TeleMed has proved to be a boon in

disguise for monitoring patients while they are admitted

in an intensive care unit (ICU) at a remote location.

The doctor in the local ICU connects the patient to the

ICU or CCU (critical care unit) of Max Healthcare, while

our expert cardiologists and other critical medicine experts

review the patients condition online and provide expertise to

a local ICU or CCU doctor in managing the patient

with the best clinical practice, which is otherwise

impossible, says Saha.

Further, patients with chronic ailments can have

follow-up consultations with their respective consultants

while sitting in their homes or workplaces. For a nominal

amount, the patient is given a device that needs to be

connected to an ordinary telephone line.

During the consultation, this device transmits the

ECG and other relevant clinical parameters to the

consultants monitor at Max Healthcare. We provide

similar facility at the doctors premise. So if there is

need for an emergency consultation, doctors in a remo

location dont have to wait for their counterparts to rea

the hospital, says Saha.

With telemedicine now in place, an offsi

catheterisation lab or cath lab (an examination room widiagnostic imaging equipment to support a catheterisatio

procedure) gets hooked with the intervention cardiologi

Also, the offsite cardiologist can send the cath lab imag

online to an expert cardiologist who can review th

images before the off-site cath lab gives a final opinio

on the study procedure.

Max Healthcare TeleMed has greatly helped doctor

nurses and paramedical personnel in remote location

providing them an opportunity to interact with supe

specialists and update their own k nowledge and skills.

ensures better patient management at a local level.

Max TeleMed empowe

patients to avail tertiary-lev

healthcare services of glob

standards from anywhere.

patient can contact the neare

Max TeleMed Center f

scheduling her second consu

or follow-up with the Ma

Specialty doctors, says Saha.

Currently, Max Healthca

doesnt offer telemedicine at a ve

large scale. People are slowly catching up with this new conce

in India. With rapid developments in IT, new capabilities a

being added to the core telemedicine infrastructure. Wi

decreasing bandwidth prices, we can now think of linkin

these centers with dedicated leased lines and perform virtu

surgeries, he says.

The processes established by Max Healthcare hav

been so effective and efficient that the initiative has g

the endorsement of International Technology Union

Telemedicine division. As Saha puts it, this endeav

ensures the delivery of right healthcare irrespective

spatial separation. CIO

Bureau head-orth Rahul neel mai ca be reached at [email protected]

Patients in remote areaswith chronic ailmentscan have follow-up

consultations while sitting intheir homes or workplaces.

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