Eveready Industries CIO Arup Choudhury says the company is looking to invest in applications for mobile field force and analytics.
Eveready’s IT budget is Rs 6-8 crore per year. It will be expanded depending on the size of new projects.
Eveready is planning to expand into the portable power market with new models like solar lanterns and mobile powerbank chargers. It’ll launch a lot of new and innovative products this year.
Its products are available at grocery, general provision, music, electrical, hardware, stationery, gift /novelty stores, at the chemists’ shops and at photo studios and printing centers. Eveready CIO says its new focus area is sales force mobile solution and analytics.
According to AC Nielsen, Eveready batteries are available in 3.3 million outlets out of a total universe of 7.3 million FMCG outlets. The distribution structure extends coverage out to 5000-population villages. The company employs a strong sales force so that they can operate the extensive sales network successfully.
“We are looking for a solution to implement on android based phones for the sales team. Security is not a concern on the device since it only contains local data,” Choudhury said.
Eveready has its manufacturing units spread all across the country to maximize logistical efficiency and reduce time-to-market. The company’s manufacturing units are located in Kolkata, Noida, Uttaranchal, Chennai, Lucknow and Maddur.
The company has manufacturing units, both for batteries and flashlights, with in-house facilities for metal flashlights along with a fully automated injection-moulding set-up for plastic flashlights. Eveready also has a machine design group at Chennai with capabilities of making special-purpose machines for both captive consumption and customer-specific requirements.
Eveready Industries has a distribution network with 15 branches, 40 godowns and 4,000 distributors. Eveready uses MPLS VPN from Reliance Communications and Vodafone to connect offices. It also uses Tulip Telecom for connectivity.
According to Eveready CIO, one major concern is the management of SLA’s with IT vendors. The other concern is the vendor lock in.
The company has around 2,627 employees. However, BYOD (bring your own device) concept is to be implemented at Eveready Industries.
At present, the company supports basic mail and self service portal on the individual devise of the user. It does not grant enterprise application access on user devices. The company allows use of social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc. at office after 5:30 pm.
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
