CIO and cost cutting in the current downturn: I do not think that the CIO in the current downturn should justify his role as a relentless cost cutter. According to me, a CIO should be an enabler and efficiency generator. A CIO should bring in more efficiency in every aspect of the business. This may at times lead to cost cutting. For enabling and creating efficiency, the CIO must have a sound knowledge of the business. This will help to get a buy-in for initiatives from the other business units in the company.

Focus on all business aspects: The other key factor for a CIO is the need to become data oriented. For example, a CIO can go to a business head of other function within the company and discuss certain issues that are detrimental to business and how they can be resolved. This will help the business head to understand the CIO in a better way rather than looking at him as someone who wants to cut costs etc. The CIO also has to ensure that new solution offered makes life easy for the users than before.

Will cost-cutting continue post downturn? Whatever efficiencies or processes that have been put during the downturn to make business become more productive will not go away. We have been reading that despite growth posted by many companies, the numbers of jobs being added are lesser. This is due to the efficiency built in the systems.

For example, let's say that we created a mechanism for self service. Previously, we had a lot of manpower to support various functions. Now, we create a site or portal where employees can get their queries answered or resolved by using the self service mechanism. This reduces the number of people by at least 50 percent. Companies have done this as a part of cost control and efficiency. Now, when the growth returns, would anyone go back to hiring more people and discard the self service portal? The answer is no because the efficiency created can never go out.

My contribution over the past couple of years to increase efficiency and curtail costs: Earlier when buying servers, we used to carry requisition of the servers, do the procurement and finally get them after six long weeks.  Today, by provisioning and consolidating in a virtual environment,we can get the same kind of efficiency in maximum one to two hours. So we have saved costs and also addressed the demands of the end user.

The second example is on transportation. We have used new software to optimise people utilisation that has helped us reduce our transport costs by 40 percent.

Third is more in terms of energy savings and the green initiatives. We deployed a back-end utility tool that scans computers when not in use and puts them in hibernated mode and reduces power consumption. All these initiatives were aimed at cost cutting, but now will stay as a regular process.

Look at innovative technologies to create efficiency: Collaboration, video conferencing and tele-presence are essential technologies to save costs and increase employee efficiency and productivity. We want to continue using these tools and make it more flexible and adaptable to our end-user. The other area is the creation of private clouds to increase the efficiency of the various business applications and enable business.

By Laxman K Badiga, Corporate Vice President and CIO, Wipro Technologies