Technology Means Business at Mahindra Finance(23 Oct 2012)

How many organizations today believe technology is the biggest differentiator in their business. At Mahindra and Mahindra Financial Services I don't need to reiterate this fact again and again. Being one of India's premier non-banking finance companies (NBFC) and the largest NBFC operating in rural India, we hold a lot of proud in saying that we are because our technology delivers. To engage with and cater to the countless customers, the 8,000 employees are technology by the technology and that's what makes us the numaro uno!

To you, all this must be appearing very fabricated. Isn't it? But the reality is that the IT organization and our farsightedness has made it appear so simple and doable. I will tell you how.

To meet our business demands, the IT team worked on a radically different approach. Having understood the needs, we came out with a concept of 'Enterprise Architecture and Technology Solution', now popular known as EAATS.

Initially, we were running different pools of data. With EAATS, we were able to club all these data pools into a single entity, and integrate the entire data architecture of the company. 

The architecture will have one common platform, while the technology software solutions can be of any type and from any service provider. It will provide analytics and secured interface access, and is a good mix of Big Data and media transformation concept. There will be no duplication of data entry or maintenance. If a data has been entered once, it will reflect in EAATS. There will be a common entry point for users coming in through various channels.

The solution is dynamic in every sense. If we configure something in the database, the same configuration will be available on the Web, end-point devices and all other interface areas. For any maintenance, version controls, implementations etc. there will be no downtime, and operations are carried out in a seamless manner. 

For example, if the marketing / HR department needs to carry out a survey. All they need to do is put the questions in EAATS. This, in turn, will ensure that the target audience gets the questions. At the back-end, we have already defined the pages accordingly. The relevant information is pushed once and used across for multiple purposes. 

Previously, we had multiple applications running. For any deployment we had to rely on a lot of manpower. Once the deployment was over we had to conduct training for the employees. Each application looked different, and our workforce found it difficult to utilize them. 

In addition, we had only two or three products earlier, but now we have a wide range of products. Being part of NBFC financial services, each time we launched a product, we had to make changes within our system. We now wanted to give the power to the users to define what they want from the services. EAATS is like a tap; you open it and decide whether you want cold water or hot water.

With this solution, we are meeting the demands of our workforce on a continuous basis. The entire solution is based on Open Source, and is used by around 96 percent of the user community. The head office consolidation database is on Oracle, while the remaining process users use Microsoft SQL database for reports. 

In a way, we have created a demand for the business users to use IT solutions and applications. The architecture has helped us gain reach and speed when application deployment really matters.