Driving MPS at Maruti Suzuki India
From its very inception, Maruti Suzuki has brought to India a simple yet powerful Japanese philosophy: smaller, fewer, lighter and more beautiful.
In a recent trip to India, Photizo had the opportunity to see how this very philosophy was making its way through the IT department, particularly in the printing arena as they are implementing managed print services with partner, Canon India. “I don’t think any of our IT energy should be spent on printing,” said Rajesh Uppal, executive officer (IT) and CIO. “This has to become a total outsource. It has to be something you put your mind into.” Signing a three-year managed print services contract with Canon India, Maruti Suzuki aims to cut printing costs by over 20 percent and improve the employee device ratio from 2:1 to 6:1.
Uppal first had to gain buy-in from upper management. One of the first things they did upon seeing a need for outsourcing the management of print was take the managing director into confidence, he said. Discussing the entire operation and the driving structure, Uppal explained how the managing director would have to drive this project from a management perspective. With the managing director on board, the project was well accepted. “I think the whole top-down approach to communication was very strong,” said Uppal; also attributing the expected cost savings to the ease of acceptance.
Once Maruti Suzuki decided this made business sense and would be their new direction, the search for a partner began. They started negotiating with different vendors, with Xerox performing an initial assessment. However, the final two vendors up for the bid were Hewlett-Packard India and Canon India. He spoke with several customers, conducting reference checks with Canon India’s previous customers. While there were strong competitors, it was Canon India’s exciting technology and competitive costs that won Uppal over.
They have experienced great success in the change management department, which Uppal measures at a 95 percent success rate. To him, IT has always been in the change management game—this was just a new project to begin messaging. Canon India and Uppal’s team have naturally filled roles, working together as partners, but leveraging their strengths to carry out different responsibilities.
Canon India has been beside Maruti Suzuki throughout the process environmental assessment, design and optimization. They have helped to find the best solutions and right size fleet, while Maruti Suzuki has taken on the role of change management.
Maruti Suzuki and Canon India do not intend to implement the engagement across the 600 sales outlets and 2,628 workshops of Maruti Suzuki in the first stage. For now, they are focusing on three of the larger offices: marketing, administration and supply chain, with incremental expansion in other areas. The goal is to have the first stage of the implementation completed before moving forward. In the three initial locations, new devices are being installed where 300 aged devices once stood. While new, more productive equipment is always a plus for users, education is often the key. “Along with this whole process, we are giving information to everybody about how much they are printing—whether it is going up or going down.”
Education was also a key to gaining acceptance for consolidating and reducing the number of imaging devices. Many users do not want to give up their printers; Maruti Suzuki’s users were no different. However, by communicating the benefits to the organization of reduced printing costs and improving imaging efficiency, the resistance was reduced dramatically. Uppal noted that the current economic environment has also assisted with the transition. This environment has made most corporate end-users extremely sensitive to costs and more cooperative in taking steps to reduce costs.
In terms of the Photizo’s Customer Adoption Model, Maruti Suzuki is in Stage 1 (Control), moving to Stage 2.
For more info view interview with Sr Vice President of Canon India, Alok Bhardawaj.
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This was a really interesting interview to conduct. The Canon India team is being very aggressive in their effort to expand the MSP market in India. There are unique challenges in India, but Mr. Uppal’s key concerns were pretty similar to those that a CIO in New York or Brussels has! It was a real pleasure interviewing Mr. Uppal and his team.