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As CIO, Gupta looks at the IT enablement aspect of the organization, ensuring technology consistencies across the various companies of the Group. “Such consistency not only helps in creating a common framework that can be leveraged cost effectively across businesses, but also gives the ability to create common processes that allows the organization to move people from one business to another, without a big change and with very little learning,” informs Gupta.
| GLOBAL CIO: Arun Gupta |
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Educational DNA
» Arun Gupta holds a BSc degree from Mumbai University and a postgraduate degree in Software Technology from NCST.
Career Achievements
» Arun Gupta has been providing IT leadership since 1994 to companies spread across diversified sectors including Pharmaceuticals, Telecom, Logistics, Merchant Banking and Asset Management, and Shipping.
» He is recognized as a ‘Business friendly’ CIO and a leader in aligning IT and business. He specializes in ‘IT-Business alignment’ and turning around IT functions from pure operations to an IT which forges strategic business relationships.
» In March 2007, he joined Shoppers Stop as Customer Care Associate & Group CTO for companies spanning multiple brands and store formats including Shoppers Stop department stores, Home Stop, HyperCITY hypermarkets, Mothercare, Crossword bookstores, Nuance Group India (Airport retailing), and the F&B business with Brio and Desi Café.
» Under his leadership, Shoppers Stop won the India Retail Forum 2007 award for ‘Best Technology Usage.
» Prior to Shoppers Stop, Gupta served as Director – IT and Business Relationship Manager with Philips Electronics India. Gupta was responsible for IT initiatives across Consumer Electronics, Lighting, Domestic Appliances, Medical Systems and the Philips Innovation Center.
» Gupta has also worked as Senior Director – Business Technology at Pfizer India where he was a part of the India leadership team and Asia IT Strategy team.
Interests
» Arun Gupta’s personal interests include photography, music, and reading.
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As a part of the management team, Gupta plays the role of an advisory, providing insight into the latest happenings in retail from around the world—regarding what can be adopted as upcoming technologies or best practices—to enable the company to stay ahead of its competition in India. He is also an advisory to the Group, which includes K Raheja Constructions, Chalet, Renaissance, Marriott, Residency hotels, Raheja ServCorp and a host of other entities. “I help the IT head in K Raheja to strategize on IT initiatives looking at what are they doing and how they can benefit from what we have done in terms of processes and technologies,” says Gupta.
For Gupta, the most exciting project in his career is the one he executed in 1994, during his stint with Great Eastern Shipping. The project involved revamping the accounting system to meet industry regulations. It was then considered expensive and massive, considering the size of the company. Given the magnitude of the project its success was critical for the organization. The implementation went on to become successful and surpassed all expectations. From Deputy Manager, Gupta was appointed as the IT Head for the company.
Measuring IT Effectiveness
Gupta believes that the measurement of IT effectiveness differs from one initiative to another. IT effectiveness is sometimes measured in terms of business benefits rather than process benefits. He explains this by citing the company’s example of outsourcing it’s data center infrastructure. The company’s data center infrastructure, which was running about 100 underutilized servers, was outsourced resulting in a 10 percent decrease in running costs and 99.9 percent availability of applications, going up from the initial 97 to 98 percent.
“After the deployment we had 100 percent billing across the week. We had 100 percent shipment across the week from warehouses. It was not about IT metrics anymore, but about business metrics,” explains Gupta. His advice to an IT manager aspiring to become a CIO or an IT Head is that understanding business is as important as understanding technology. He says that good communication along with the ability to lead is important since “the business will not listen to you, believe you, or go with your ideas if you cannot communicate effectively.” Lastly, one has to be willing to take risks since always choosing the safe path will not lead to growth.
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