CIOIN

Suresh Shanmugam

National Head, BITS and CIO, Mahindra Finance

Executive summary

The lost last-mile information was not delivering results. That's when Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services decided that it was time to change things. The longer they waited, the more consumers and business they were losing. MFConnect-3000 was devised to fix the last-mile problem. Instead of increasing the number of branches, they decided to transform on-field executives into mini-branches to bridge the last mile gap

Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services, with its business cemented in rural and semi-urban India, wanted to expand its reach and quicken the delivery of its services across remote areas of the country. So, Suresh Shanmugam, the national head of Business Information Technology Solutions (BITS) and CIO at Mahindra Finance, led a team that helped the organization keep its customers clearly in hand.

Instead of setting up more branches to cover rural India, Shanmugam and his team transformed about 3,000 of Mahindra Finance's on-field workforce into roaming mini-branches. Armed with wirelessly online handhelds, this mobile workforce ensures that Mahindra Finance reaches the doorstep of its consumers, living in far-flung villages or semi-urban locations. They also act as mini-branches equipped to conduct financial transactions and update the central servers at the company's headquarters in Mumbai, all in a jiffy.

The IT team enabled the enterprise to increase Mahindra Finance's 300-odd fully networked branches to a whopping 3,000 in less than nine months. And that was achieved - without any investment in brick-and-mortar infrastructure or headcount.

The problem wasn't new. Shanmugam and his team had already ensured seamless interconnectivity with about 418 branches riding on various networking technologies, such as MPLS-based leased lines, VSATs and ISDN connections. However, despite core business apps interfacing with the systems deployed at remote branches, Shanmugam realized that the organization was wasting a lot of time gathering data in the last mile - between the consumer and the employee. It made all their work look like it just wasn't enough.

The longer they waited, the more consumers and business they were losing. MFConnect-3000, Shanmugam's brain child, was devised to fix the last-mile problem. This networked mobile workforce initiative promised to take care of all Mahindra Finance's problems. About 2,800 employees were equipped with Wi-Fi and GPRS enabled, VisionTek handhelds, running Linux as an operating system, and weighing about 750 grams. The handheld was pre-loaded with indigenously developed custom-made, multi-lingual business application modules to capture on-site data and update the central servers directly through the Internet.

With handhelds at their disposal, a collection executive gets details of the consumers beforehand, enabling him to plan his time and route appropriately. Once on-site, he can either issue receipts to the consumer from the attached thermal ink printer after collecting an EMI payment. He can also create information trails, address business queries, record customer commitments and note relevant information for further follow-ups, undertaken with the customer at his doorstep.

All this information, riding on a GPRS network, is updated on Mahindra Finance's central servers directly from the device. This provides business heads - from the controllers of the collection team to senior management - with up-to-date status in real time.

Once an executive is back at the branch, the cash collected is deposited with an accountant, who in turn updates the systems. The automated MIS management based on online data flow enables the enterprise to have complete visibility of cashflow. This has a bigger impact than most people assume as the typical size of an EMI is between Rs 10,000 to about Rs 2 lakh. The enterprise can leverage the information captured right from the door-step of a customer to adequately plan business actions and maximize ROI.

The efficiency and performance of the collection teams can also be examined through timely information updates coming in from their devices. An executive's incentive is also automatically measured using the data related to the cash collection being captured by the handheld devices.