Daya Prakash, CIO, LG Electronics shares his views on how IT is helping the company achieve business growth, attract and retain customers, and reduce costs.

[Q]There has been a lot of debate on whether IT should follow business change or lead it. What is your take on this?
[A]At the fundamental level, IT is still a business enabler. However, there are many avenues where IT can take a lead and play the role of a change agent to gain business advantage.

Some of the areas where IT can lead the business include achieving the topline or entering the market with innovative products. Take the example of social media tools which are now being used by many organizations for strategic and competitive advantage. IT is playing a huge role in such initiatives.

[Q]You touched upon businesses using social tools for their advantage. Are you using some features of social media within your organization?
[A]Yes we are, both for our external and internal users. Internally, we are using social features for knowledge management.

We are also using social media to capture consumer sentiments and directly interacting with them. We are studying consumer behavior that brings in a lot of intelligence back into the organization. This has helped us to improve our products that are feedback driven.

[Q]What’s greater—your challenge inside IT or with the rest of the company?
[A]This is definitely not the time when CIOs will be at peace, and it has largely to do with the uncertainty prevailing in our domestic as well as global markets.

I think CIOs will find it a bigger challenge to deal with the business than managing the IT organization. The business environment today is so dynamic that one is not sure whether a decision taken will be right or wrong. If it clicks, how long can the decision be sustained and what will be the next strategy that has to be embraced for business.

Internal IT challenges are limited in terms of doing more with less, looking for business solutions, employee grooming and retention. So it is a bigger challenge to deal with the rest of the company.

[Q]Enterprise mobile device strategies are experiencing enormous disruption as staffs insist on using their own devices to access work systems and data as part of the bring your own device (BYOD) trend. What is your view on the impact of this trend on business?

[A]This is one trend that is catching up fast and it is really difficult to control. We have certain policies in place within the organization regarding the use of personal devices. We are still evaluating whether we want to allow employees bring their own device.

At this point of time it is a clear no. However, we also realize that it will be a difficult stand to maintain in the future. We are working towards having a balance.

[Q]What will be your top two IT priorities as we move on to the next year?
[A]As an organization we have multiple channels through which we sell our products. On the sales front, we wanted to have an end-to-end visibility in our entire channel partner ecosystem. To achieve this we are working on a solution called sell-out management system. This is one priority for us.

The other would be on the customer side. We are bringing our customer call centre operations in-house.