Nilkamal’s IT Head, Abdulla Fatiya believes in experimenting with newer technologies to make a business more agile. Currently his eyes are set on analytical tools to discover how can they add value to the business. By Heena Jhingan
Nilkamal is a name synonymous with pieces of molded furniture that can be spotted at any Indian home or office. One of the most popular names in this market segment, the brand specializes in five key businesses that include material handling crates, containers and bins; molded furniture such as chairs, cabinets; custom moldings and OEM supplies for specific customers and service products for the hospitality industry. It also runs a home store retail chain called @home.
The company has about seven productions units, and each of these plants is ISO 9001/2008 Certified and it practices Six Sigma manufacturing process. The company’s manufacturing infrastructure is supported by a strong sales network, operating through about 50 regional offices and 33 warehouses spread across India. According to Abdulla Fatiya, Head IT, Nilkamal Limited, a well planned IT infrastructure goes towards making this possible.
With techno-managerial expertise in various aspects of program management, involving resource and schedule management, requirement and risk analysis, change and quality management, Fatiya, has contributed in restructuring Nilkamal’s IT infrastructure, so that the company can match global standards.
Long before Fatiya joined Nilkamal, he had proved his mettle as a IT strategist during his association with Welspun Retail and SIA Lifestyles. Fatiya recalled that his work at SIA, a silver jewelry brand, required him to work on the IT infrastructure from the scratch. He drafted an IT road map and hired the resources for project delivery. He remembered the journey with SIA very clearly right from setting up the very first of what eventually became 35 retail stores.
The most important leg of his assignment at SIA was delivery of the e-commerce model, which he said was now bearing fruit. “A significant share of the brand’s profits is procured from the online sales,” he pointed out.
A new cast
When Fatiya walked into Nilkamal, the IT infrastructure was awaiting a revamp. “The foremost requirement was to integrate the manufacturing units and regional offices. The company needed an ERP system at the backend so that all of the processes could be automated and, subsequently, regulated,” he explained.
He said it took about five months to implement SAP R3 along with modules such as quality and change management. “We saw processes becoming more organized and streamlined,” he added.
However, that was not sufficient as the company required seamless connectivity that could keep the processes running in an uninterrupted fashion. He said, “Earlier we were using BSNL services, we realized that we needed SLA-based performance and it worked out that Sify’s solution was a better fit and we switched to their service.”
Once the ERP system was in place and the connectivity issues were dealt with, Fatiya started thinking of adopting IT solutions that could further smoothen processes and also save cost. He observed that the company’s warehouses were still not automated and that they were spending a lot of money on manpower to maintain the same. “After we automated all of the processes at one of the warehouses at Thane and deployed wireless/RFID devices, we saw a manpower cost reduction of nearly 40%. It was a good learning and we could use it as a cost reducing activity,” he said.
BI and the Cloud
Not content to rest on his laurels, he believed that a manufacturer of Nilkamal’s size and category had to keep track of sales and merchandising in order to arrive at successful business models. This, he believed, could best be done by deploying business intelligence tools.
“In the first phase, we deployed the SAP Business Intelligence solution for sales and merchandising. These would help us track campaign performance and they would churn out OTP reports. These, in turn, would help us lay down KPIs for our stores,” he said.
He added that, at the next level, they planned to use the results from these reports to highlight trends and accordingly plan their promotions.
To strengthen the brand’s retail presence and performance, Fatiya is now evaluating solutions to automate the credit card payment system. “The idea is to integrate this with the gateways of various banks at the backend,” he said, adding that, since they sell their products through retail stores and also work with various franchisees of the brand, they are on the look out for a solution so that all of the franchise systems can be integrated and they can get a single view of all of them.
Considering, that they have a big army of sales executives, which is mostly on the move, the company is trying to opt for a Cloud-based CRM solution.
“Cloud computing is definitely the buzzword but we would prefer to keep the core applications like ERP in house. We are trying to move applications like CRM and HRMS to the Cloud. The final decision on the Cloud migration will be announced sometime later this year,” he informed.
Fatiya has big hopes for the BI deployment. “The realization of ROI on BI should happen soon. This will give us a more transparent view for budgeting our solutions,” he said.
Fatiya believed that online platforms are critical for the retail players to grow and generate more business. He is now working on developing an online retail platform for Nilkamal. He signed off saying that they were already in talks in with some developers, and were hopeful of zeroing on one of them soon.
