April 2008
Hybrid technologies to improve ROI
Tanmoy Chakrabarty
Vice-President & Head
Government Industry Solution Unit
Tata Consultancy Services
You have been advocating the use
of 'hybrid technologies'. Can you
elaborate on what you mean by this and
its specific use in public sector?
Hybrid technologies are used to solve
business problems, facilitate and automate
business processes, help in improving
stakeholder communication and satisfaction.
All these can only be achieved
using multiple technologies in an integrated
manner.
Integrated usage of multiple technologies
facilitates the end-to-end process efficiently
in the public
sector and improve
return on investment
(ROI).
Take the example of
tsunami early warning
system where TCS
utilised technologies
like geospatial technology,
RDBMS and data
warehousing, sensors
and communication to
provide end-to-end
solution. TCS has also
executed large integrated
GIS implementations
in water, power
distribution and telecom
industry.
Selling a geospatial
technologybased
project to a
public sector organisation
requires lot of
educating and enabling
various government
departments take
unified stance. What is
your experience in this
aspect? What are the
challenges you face? How different are
governments across the world vis-à-vis
India?
With its size, India presents in itself a
huge potential market for geospatial
services. The government is keen to reap
the rewards of e-governance, for the
benefit of larger section of the society.
Slowly and steadily, most of the public
sector organisations globally have
understood the importance and benefits
of geospatial technology based solutions
and I see no reason why it will not
happen in India.
One key challenge is to educate the
public sector officials about the right
implementation road map. Many organisations
invest in procuring GIS software
products and create digital maps but that
path does not provide expected outcome.
It is important for organisations to
understand the value of integrated
business solutions rather than GIS
products and data.
Delivering ROI on technology is a
task in public sector. What can be
done to enable this?
TCS has vast experience of delivering
projects in public private partnership
(PPP) mode in the government IT space.
Most of the inhibitions, that government
departments have to procure IT, come
from the fact that they are experts in their
domain and not in technology and hence
buying something that they do not understand
is treading a danger zone.
TCS offers outcome oriented projects,
where we invest in cutting edge technologies
and ensure that the clients pay only
when they get the outcome they desired.
This takes away all the latent and perceived
risks from the project. TCS has
been creating examples of large IT initiatives
in the country where results are
clearly visible to all the stakeholders. The
key vision and objectives of the
government is establishing a rich e-government
ecosystem aiming direct citizen
participation and transparent processes.
The biggest promise that GIS holds in
future is to enable a large cross-section
of world population to have first-hand
experience of a technology that goes to
improve the quality of life.
Developing technology per se
happens naturally. What should be
done to sustain the use of it?
Right implementation is the key for success. Other key point
specifically for geospatial implementation is to keep the information
updated. Unless effective processes are established and followed
to keep the information updated, technology will not give
expected outcome.
If technology actually solves business problems of the stakeholders,
there will not be any external impetus required to sustain
it. Ideally, managing technology and its obsolescence should
be the job of IT partner using Build Own Operate Transfer
(BOOT) and other such models.
Geospatial technologies no longer seem to be working
alone. What do you foresee happening in this arena in the
next five years, especially at enterprise level and in public sector?
Geospatial technology will become a necessary component in all
IT implementations across organisations. Public sectors, with
their important role in delivering citizen services across the
geographies, need to have spatially enabled information to take
right and faster decisions.
As GIS technology gets more affordable, more reliable and more
widely used, new applications of GIS technology would target
specific user needs and all this is likely to attract the public sector
also.
How do geospatial technologies help in optimising business
processes to ensure maximum efficiency? What can
an organisation do to optimise these? What other benefits an
organisation gain by implementing these solutions?
Public sectors deal with lots of spatial data in their daily business
activities. If we want to achieve automation of their business
processes, the solution should be well integrated with geospatial
technologies. It is important for an organisation to review its
vision, goals and objectives and re-design the business processes
to achieve operational efficiency and meet end objectives.
IT/GIS implementation should be visualised and planned in
holistic manner to gain real benefits. In addition to this, GIS can
be seen more as a powerful analytical tool to gain informed decision
making in both societal and business environments.
A trend of horizontalisation in the utilisation of geospatial
technologies seems to be catching up apart from using it
for specific verticals. Can you comment on this? What do you
foresee in the next five years?
Wider Wi-Fi coverage and larger Internet user-base will
propel the pervasiveness of GIS. Emerging re-centralising trend
in computing infrastructure will add a thrust to this spread.
The core strength of the technology can always be utilised for
multiple applications in multiple sectors. Spatial data and
tools are common elements across multiple verticals. Future
technology needs of different verticals can be common but as
business needs and processes vary, right implementation is the
key to success.
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