Jawed Ahmed at Kancor Ingredients Limited, Cochin

Md. Jawed Ahmed, Group IT Head for Kancor Ingredients, Cochin

Md. Jawed Ahmed, Group IT Head for Kancor Ingredients, Cochin

I have been stationed here for the past few months for SAP Implementation project at Kancor Ingredients.

Jawed's Visit to Fort Kochi

  Places to visit in Cochin ( Kochi ) : An outsider's Perspective
 A common question asked by many first time visitors / tourists to Kerala is "What are the tourist places in Kochi?" or "What are the places should I visit when I am in Cochin?". There are so many places to visit in Kerala and specifically Kochi that there is no one single answer to the above question. Depending upon your time, you can spend 3 days or 3 weeks and there would still be places left to visit. But among all these, Fort Kochi stands out as a must visit place. Fort Kochi is an important place and is normally visited by all tourist

What is Fort Kochi?
 Fort Kochi is a small water-bound area near the city of Kochi. Earlier it was an important trading area due to the proximity to sea. But now in the modern age, its importance as a trading place has diminished and now its more known as a tourist attraction. It has many old buildings, Churches, Schools. The people who live there are a mix of Malayalis, Anglo-Indians, Jews. I visited Fort Kochi recently. Its quite far from the place where I am put up. I stay in Angamally and Fort Kochi is around 45 kms from here. For a change I decided to travel by Auto Rickshaw. I booked the Auto-rickshaw for a full day and asked the driver to show me around Fort Kochi. It took us around one hour to reach Fort Kochi from Angamally.

Maritime Museum

 The first place which I visited in Fort Kochi is the SNC Maritime Musuem. Its relatively new, built in 2001. It was innaugurated by Rear Admiral Kirpal Singh. The entry fees is Rs. 25. You have to shell out another Rs. 100 if you want to carry a camera inside. There are lots of things to see inside. I am not sure if they are worth clicking pics.
But since I had not clicked pics for a long time and I was really itching to photograph anything and everything so I carried the camera with me. Lots of things are there inside. They have Navy Dresses, Maps, Ship Name Plates, historical documents. There are a few life-like statues of important (from the Maritime angle !) persons too. Two or three rooms have only Relief-Paintings on the walls. Paintings of sea planes, ships, maps etc. They have a few replica models of ships constructed in high detail. What I felt was, these exhibits will hardly be interesting for a normal person, unless you take an active interest in Navy related things.

Good place to see if you have to kill time. I visited because I had travelled very far to reach that place, and it would have been a shame to return back without seeing it. Strictly for the bragging rights... My next stop was Bishop's House. And then the Chinese Fishing Nets. Near the Chinese Fishing Nets, you can see fishermen selling freshly caught fish. All you have to do is select the one that you want and they will cook and serve it to you. It seemed quite popular among the tourists. They were crowding around the shops selling fish. There is a small jetty from where boats leave for the different towns. I also saw dolphins in the water. Initially I chanced upon them and saw quite a few. But afterwards when I started looking for them, I did not find them.

Once in a while I could see their tail splashing in the sea. This particular has developed like the normal sea-beaches that one sees at other places (but there's no sea beach here). Many small shops selling the usual touristy stuff like handicrafts, hats, bottled water etc.

I also visited a disappointing place called the Dutch Palace. Its situated some 2.5 kms from the Promenade near the Chinese Fishing Nets. My expectations rose because of the name. But its a normal building with a temple on the ground floor and some 5 large rooms in the first floor. They allow visitors to go through the rooms in the first floor. The personal items of the erstwhile rulers of the Kochi are displayed here. They have a number of Royal Dolis ( hand-held carriages), Old Photographs, Weapons etc. Its small in size. So unless you take a very great interest in these things, you can be in and out of the entire building in 10 mins.

I noticed one interesting thing there. There is an old photograph of the ladies of the Royal Family. Must have been clicked around 1930. Each of the lady in the picture has been shown carrying a black umbrella. I found it quite strange. There is some fixation with Umbrellas that Malayali people have. I know British have it and to some extend the Bengali Babus have it. But now I know that even Malayalis have it. In my office, there is a convention, every year, the company gifts an umbrella to each employee. Yes, we get the normal stuff like Diwali Sweets, Christmas Cakes and New year Diaries. But seriously, Umbrellas?


While returning through an area called Panampilly Nagar, we stopped to have lunch at Itty's Cafe. They served the normal Kerala Meals. It was good. The place was clean and hygenic. They served us on Banana leaf. After walking around for close to 2 hours I had built up quite an apettite and they served good food. I had a sumptous lunch and then started back for Angamally.

Kancor Ingredients goes live on SAP ERP

SAP Implementation completed at Kancor Ingredients

End user Training for SAP at Kancor Ingredients

Kancor Ingredients is one of India's largest manufacturer and exporter of speciality extracts. More details about Kancor Ingredients can be had at www.kancor.in

Kancor Ingredients had been wanting to implement SAP in the entire organisation but somehow it could not start. After a lot of preparations, finally the SAP implementation was formally kicked off on 21st December 2012.

Like any other Large Scale Initiative (LSI), ERP implementation is a  complex and challenging exercise for

SAP Screen Kancor 

an organisation. More so at Kancor because Kancor Ingredients is an established organisation which has been operating for around 40 years. All SAP implementations requires some amount of process re-engineering. Changing the processes in a mature organisation like Kancor is difficult. One has to deal with the accumulated wisdom of so many years and convince the Process Owners of the new best practices which SAP advocates. We can't be successfull in changing the process all the time so at some places SAP had to be configured to reflect the ongoing business process.  It took us around 4 months and the IT team along with the implementing partner was able to deliver the system ready for transactions on time. Kancor Ingredients went live on 3rd April 2013 on SAP.  The SAP implementation project at Kancor Ingredients was completed on time and as promised in the Project Kick-off meeting. Though Kancor  have used a lot of customised transactions, they have not made any changes to the standard flow as suggested by SAP. The customisation has been done to include a few more fields using screen exits in some of the data entry screens like COR1, CO6RN etc.

Kancor Ingredients Goes Live on SAP ERP

The SAP implementation at Kancor Ingredients was started in mid December 2012 and the project successfully went live on 3rd April 2013. The core team consisted of members from Production dept, Quality Dept, Finance & Accounts dept. All businesses of Kancor Ingredients at Angamally in Cochin and in Bareilly are on SAP today.

SAP Coreteam meeting at Kancor Ingredients

Md. Jawed Ahmed

[Jawed Ahmed heads the IT function at the Group level for Kancor Ingredients and is based out of the corporate office in Mumbai]

Kancor Ingredients goes live on SAP

Kancor Ingredients went live on SAP on 3rd April 2013. The vision of MD, Mr. Sanjaya Mariwala to have a single business system for the entire operations has finally borne fruit. Kancor has moved from legacy system to SAP.

Mr. Sanjaya Mariwala, Managing Director, Mr. Geemon Korah CEO  at the SAP Go-Live Event of Kancor Ingredients on 3rd April 2013

Jawed: No moustache

PC Quest Awards for Kancor Ingredients Limited

Kancor Ingredients wins the award for the best IT Implementation in the SME Category - 2012

Kancor Ingredients wins the PC Quest Award for Best IT Implementation

The Exports Benefits Management System(EBMS), developed at Kancor Ingredients has been awarded for the best IT Implementation in the SME Category in the PC Quest Awards for 2012.

The EBMS has been developed using SAP Platform and it consists of multiple Z-Reports and Dialogs. Kancor Ingredients has been awarded for innovative application of technology as well as for the high and clearly visible benefits arising out of the Exports Benefits Management System.

Jawed Ahmed (Group IT Head) with KC Babu and Rajesh MP

Internal IT department at Kancor Ingredients developed the EBMS in around 4-5 months of development time. Initial SAP Development took around 3 months and we started using it. Subsequently the system was enhanced as we went along.

There has been a clearly identified, recognised and universally accepted financial benefit arising out of the implementation of the Exports Benefits Management System. The high quality of the System Documentation and the timely tracking of the license dates has resulted in the reduction of the claim settlement time from 6-9 months earlier to 2-3 months now. 6 months of claims are approximately equal to INR 12 crores.

PC Quest Award
Kancor

The IT department at Kancor Ingredients has developed the EBMS taking into account the specific requirements of the Licensing Regime for Spices Industry. The solution fits the business scenario perfectly and there have been quite a few enquiries from similar companies who use SAP in the spices industry and are tracking licenses. By using this system, the manual effort is reduced significantly and overall execution efficiency increases.

In the Industry-specific segment of Spices, Kancor Ingredients is one of the foremost IT Enabled organisations. In fact Kancor is the first spice company to implement SAP in Kerala.  

Chhota Kashmir

I had been to this tourist place recently. These two photographs were clicked there.

Jawed Ahmed at Chhota Kashmir

Md.Jawed Ahmed at Chhota Kashmir

Jawed - The Chef

Sara’s Playschool had a Saturday Activity called Pappa Banao Dadi Ki Recipe. Father and Kid had to participate in this activity without any help from Mummy. We had to prepare a healthy and non-fried dish within 30 minutes. I and Sara made Pineapple Shahi Tukda and Fruit Salad. It was a runaway success with not even a small piece left afterwards.

Sara and Jawed Ready to start !

We wore paper aprons which were provided by the organisers. The getup included a small Chef Headgear as well.

Sara and Jawed Ahmed busy in dressing the Shahi Tukda

We had taken the ingredients from home. The moment the event started, we laid them out on the table and started setting up the plate.

Pineapple Shahi Tukda and Fruit Salad

This is what the dish looked like after it was ready.


 The dish was as tasty as it looks !

Yummy Pineapple Shahi Tukda prepared by Jawed Ahmed and Sara Ahmed of Poddar Happy Kids, Parel, Mumbai

Jawed Ahmed and Sara Ahmed awarded the participation certificate

We won a participation certificate as well !

Jawed - August 2012

Sara Ahmed

Sara Ahmed Posing for the Camera !