Indranil Chakraborty in Kolkata

ITC Ltd is effecting a quiet in-house revolution that will bind its diverse new businesses seamlessly, using the best ideas in e-business and enterprise resource planning.

With the thrust of the Rs.8,816-crore powerhouse moving unmistakably towards non-tobacco businesses like lifestyle retailing, foods, gifts and greeting cards, the click and mortar business model is being leveraged across business functions to run the new initiatives.

Over the next two years, ITC will spend around Rs.100 crore just on e-business and enterprise-wide applications for the new businesses. The aim: e-business portals, communication infrastructure, application technology and various business processes.

ITC’s spokesman as well as the pointman for the complex task, are both quick to deny that the goal is a virtual shopping mall hosting all its products.

According to Mr. Sanjay Verma, the managing director of ITC Infotech, the subsidiary mainly responsible for the e-initiative across the verticals, a virtual private network (VPN) will handle information flow at each of the verticals.

Dr. KS Basu, chief technology officer of ITC Infotech, said it was a challenging job, since things like e-procurement and supply chain management of the diverse verticals have to be made to conform to the overall structure.

"Currently we are looking at e-business implementation in a number of layers. One is corporate wide connectivity, which will allow us to transact businesses across the boundaries of the enterprise through intranet and extranet connectivity," Dr. Basu said.

The second and third layers are the application technology and business process.

For the new areas, ITC is following the tobacco division model – an extensive backend integration with suppliers. At the core will be an ERP solution with the business process software sitting on the top of ERP solution at each division.

For example, lifestyle retailing will be integrated with sourcing centres, distribution channels, customer service and marketing.

Under new accounting rules, ITC and other corporates will have to specify the contribution of each division to the overall profit & loss account.

Dr. Basu said each vertical division will have a portal that could be linked to the main ITC portal. In future, Net retailing will be one of the channels of sales, he said.