MUMBAI, NOV 18: E-commerce transactions in India will grow exponentially from $ 20 million in 1999 to $ 160 million mark in 2003, Computer Associates president and COO Sanjay Kumar said at a CEO luncheon organised by The Indian Express group and Miller Freeman. "Internet is the single biggest challenge to the enterprise. Change is occurring in Indian companies and has gone beyond a point where it can be reversed," Kumar said. In today’s world it was possible for businesses outside India to compete within the country without actually having a physical presence here, because of the internet, he said at the Intelligent Enterprise `99 seminar.
He predicted internet kiosks would take off in India just like phone booths. "While talking about India, don’t forget that for every single PC there are four e-mail IDs," he said.
Summarising the practices of world-class companies into three bullets – automation, shift to business enablement and customer focus, he said the ultimate competitive advantage was knowingthe customer. The customer would be king because the internet would provide him with more choice than ever before. Companies had to compete not just on price points but also on service, he felt. "Organisations are being painfully restructured but good will come out of it," he said.
Quoting Amazon.com as a sign of the changing times, he said its primary advantage was that it had no history, no liabilities, no assets and no luggage. "Twenty years back this would have a negative point." Kumar said these are exciting times for the world and that India is at an "inflection point in history." These changes, he emphasised, are being driven by primarily three forces — privatisation and deregulation, globalisation, knowledge workers and the Internet. He pointed out that globalisation was inevitable after privatisation had been initiated. By virtue of being the last bastion of "substantial markets," India, along with China, will globalise faster than the others.
Against this backdrop, Kumar said, a new breed ofknowledge workers will emerge within enterprises. These workers will have access to information and databases and firms will increasingly rely on them because they will evolve into decision makers. Enterprises will eventually have to rely on these workers to compete and act on behalf of their competitors.
He said Indian companies will have to try and figure out how to enable the enterprise. It involves rushing in to automate processes, empowering knowledge and using this knowledge to understand the customer. These changes, Kumar explained, will happen only when the lines that divide the CEO and the CIO blur. Responding to query on whether it was actually happening in India, he said that while dramatic changes were taking place, there India is still a couple of years away from embracing such developments. However, he said, there are companies like ICICI which are incorporating these changes into their structures.
He pointed out that ICICI is actually measuring response time within the organisation toanswer queries from customer.
"Even the CEO at ICICI is calculating the standard deviation for response time," he said. Such initiatives are necessary, he added, "else organisations will be painfully restructured."