Pertisth Mankotia, Head-IT, Sheela Foam, in an interview with Sharon Lobo, explains how IT has enabled his organisation to overcome its business challenges and the benefits of using open source software
Could you give us an overview of Sheela Group?
Sheela Group is one of Asia's largest manufacturers of P.U. (Polyurethane) foam products. Geographically we are present in three countries and are better known by our brand 'Sleepwell'. We have 10 manufacturing locations in India and 6 in Australia. Our market share in the P.U. foam industry in India and Australia is around 40 and 45 percent respectively. In India we have a distribution network of over 70 distributors and 3000 dealers.
What were your organisation's business challenges and how did IT help you resolve them?
In an industry like ours, we need to closely work with our channel partners. Though our group functions in a structured manner our distributors do not and each distributor functions as an independent entity. Therefore the challenge for us was to bring all the distributors together to function as one entity. This would allow us not only to measure the service ability and delivery efficiencies of our distributors, but also keep a tab on the supply chain management as well. As all of our distributors used Tally, we brought all of them into our network through MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching, a mechanism in high-performance telecommunications networks which directs and carries data from one network node to the next.)
Another objective of ours was to connect with all the 3000 dealers, this was because we did not want unauthorised dealers to sell our products and also we wanted the product to reach to the dealers through the right channel. For this we put a system in place, which uses SMS technology. Once our product is dispatched from the manufacturing location to the distributor, it is then sent to the various dealers attached to a particular dealer. The distributor then sends us an invoice which mentions the unique serial number of every product he has sent to a particular dealer.
Once a dealer sells a product he sends an SMS to our SMS system, which includes the product's unique serial number and the customer's mobile number. When our system receives the SMS, it first cross-checks the dealer's mobile number with the our dealer database to verify if the dealer is an authorised one or not. Secondly the system with the help of the product's unique serial number will check if the product was routed through the right channel to the dealer. Once all of this is verified, the system sends an SMS to the customer, which mentions the product's serial number and guarantee date.
What are your views on cloud computing and does your company plan to adopt it in the near future?
Cloud computing has been one of my interest areas and I think it will surely gain prominence in future. Currently our company does not have any plans to move in to the cloud. However in future we will always keep cloud computing as an option.
Does your company prefer using open source software?
Indeed we do. A few months back we shifted from HP-UX (Hewlett Packard UniX) to Linux, and this migration resulted in an yearly savings of Rs. 40,00,000. For this migration we only had to spend on a Dell server. Apart from cost savings, Linux gave us a lot of flexibility in terms of usage as well. For instance we could try Linux on any computer and train our staff on Linux with ease. Also when it comes to support, if we use a propriety OS we would always need to take assistance of the company who owns it, however in case of Linux, as it is open source, we could rope in anybody who was well versed with implementing and troubleshooting the OS.
