Guest Lecture by Mr. Jason Gonsalves

Information Technology is perhaps the most important and integral part of any organization today. And hence the session on “Role of IT in Manufacturing Organization” by Mr. Jason Gonsalves, Vice President, Performance Coatings Division, Corporate Planning and IT, Kansai Nerolac Paints Ltd. was soaked in with great enthusiasm by the Students of SIMSREE. Mr. Gonsalves, a 1994 alumnus of SIMSREE, has been working with Kansai Nerolac for last 18 years. While handling the position of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) with Nerolac, Mr. Gonsalves received the Gold award at CIOL-Dataquest Enterprise Connect Awards 2005 for his outstanding IT achievements. Under his leadership, the company has automated key business processes such as supply chain management (SCM), sales and after-sales processes and product development.

Mr. Gonsalves started the discussion by looking at the organization and its relationship with the various stake holders. He spoke about the extensive usage of various CRM, ERP and similar packages to deal with the different facets of business. Starting with customers he explained the various touch points at which the company interacts with them like while prospecting for probable customers, converting them and maintaining a sustainable relationship with them. Tools like CRM have enabled reaching out to a wider customer base and the ease of having a more direct relationship with them has led to a focused way of marketing along with above the line activities.

He also went on to discuss how IT has completely revolutionised the way organizations deal with their vendors, employees and shareholders as well. Speaking about more recent technologies like BigData and CRM Web 2.0, he walked us through the giant leaps taken by the IT industry and the impact it will have on the future.

He then gave us a brief overview of the various career options that we can have in the IT industry. He emphasized that irrespective of the roles we pursue in the future, working with the various package suites will be inevitable.

Later on when the floor was opened for questions he answered queries related to not just IT but general queries about Paint industry and Nerolac as well. He touched upon the various marketing strategies used by Nerolac, the thought process behind them, the plans to tap rural markets etc. All in all it was a very informative session and we hope we have the privilege of interacting with him again in the future.