Jawed Ahmed: Working at Sterlite Technologies, Pune

Sterlite Technologies has been using all the major modules of SAP ERP ECC 5.0. Additionally there are other systems which use either VB or some other frontend with Oracle backend. Recently Sterlite Technologies have upgraded their Central Component to ECC 6.0.

Very shortly I will complete 4 years of my working at Sterlite Technologies, Pune. I joined in April of 2007 as Head of IT for the Transmission Business Division(TBD, as it was called then). Initially I was posted for a few months at the manufacturing plant in Rakholi, Silvassa. This is because, Sterlite Technologies had gone live on SAP just a month back and the SAP Core Team was based out of the plant at Silvassa.

In addition to the core systems, Sterlite Technologies uses lots of peripheral systems which are hosted out of the cloud. Primarily among them are the Google Apps cloud and the Salesforce cloud. While working at Sterlite Technologies, I have seen the transition from the traditional in house systems to a pre-dominantly public cloud driven applications.

Working at Sterlite Technologies is quite challenging. Especially if you are heading a critical function like Information Systems and you are based out of the corporate office. Sterlite Technologies is distributed across some 10 locations with the majority of users being concentrated at Aurangabad and Silvassa. Keeping all the different units together and making them work as one combined function is what makes it complex and difficult. However, the silver lining is that we have got very capable people managing the IT departments at the unit level. Had it not been for them, this would have been infinitely more difficult.

While working at Sterlite Technologies, I have gained a deeper insight into the fine art of change management and how to make new systems acceptable to users. Inspite of being an young organisation with a relatively young workforce, Sterlite Technologies too has its share of stubborn users who are used to working in a particular way and see no merit in a change. End user buy in is one such area wherein as the Head of Information Technology dept I have had to play a critical role. I have managed to get the users to accept the new systems in most cases.

At Sterlite Technologies, innovation is valued. In my various interactions with the senior people I have seen on more than one occassion innovation being rewarded and appreciated. Working at Sterlite Technologies has been wonderful and rewarding for me.