Case Studies in Strategic Management

180 Case Studies in Strategic Management

■ Align all the IT services to ensure the right information fl ow from marketing, sales and operations

through enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and Data

Warehousing (DW) to enable business intelligence (BI).

■ Train employees to make use of IT resources.

■ Benchmark IT processes, and apply for international certifi cations.

Technology Partners

To get strategic advantage over competition, the organization has partnered with leading technology

suppliers in the fi elds of digital technology and satellite television services. It uses the services of the

INSAT 4A satellite, which was launched by India, and has taken lease for all 12 Ku-band transponders.

This has given it an edge over its competitors as high quality of uninterrupted transmission can be pro-

vided for all its subscribers. All the channels beamed by Tata Sky have an edge over those beamed by

others in terms of audio and picture quality.

Tata Sky has also implemented several decision support systems for taking faster and effective

decisions. It has implemented a software developed by www.nds.com (NDS) for pay televisions. End-

to-end architecture has been implemented, which helps nationwide customers to watch channels and

pay for the movies they see (read purchase) through these channels . The conditional access system soft-

ware developed by NDS has enabled Tata Sky to offer multiple programmes at multiple price packages.

Similarly, software from Siebel has been able to support operations across the areas of call centres and

fi eld service, customer order management and product confi guration. For residential and commercial

customers, Comverse’s Kenan FX billing software has been selected to support billing. Finally, all the

software applications have been integrated with SAP, the leading ERP application suite. The modules

that have been selected for implementation are materials management, sales and distribution, fi nance

and control, and human resources (HR).

IT Infrastructure Sun Microsystems : Tata Sky has selected Sun Microsystems to provide world-class

technology infrastructure, which helps the company to maintain a high level of service standards

for its satellite television service.

Digicomp : Tata Sky has partnered with Thomson and Humax, world leaders in digital broadcasting

technology, for building top-of-the line digicomps customized specifi cally for Indian markets. The

technology’s feature-rich design enables Tata Sky to deliver multiple programming and pricing

packages and interactive services to its customers.

Systems Integration Partner for Tata Sky Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is a systems integration

partner for Tata Sky Ltd. It supports IT operations in the areas of billing, ERP, and other customer care

and employee–related internal facing applications.

Service Support for Tata Sky SerWizSol provides Tata Sky with three high-end call centres, which

offer round-the-clock support in 11 different languages at Pune (Maharashtra), Hyderabad (Andhra

Pradesh) and Mohali (Punjab) .

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF CHIEF INFORMATION

OFFICER (CIO)

The roles and responsibilities of a CIO can be stated as follows:

■ CIOs must evaluate the overall operations of computing and IT functions and recommend

enhancements.

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