1. MAIA Intelligence
BUSiness Intelilgente SOftWilt!
In India's fiercely
competitive life-in-
surance market, time
is one thing that
Bharti Axalife's Dipak
Sahoo doesn't have
on his side. The com-
pany's Vice Presi-
dent-IT is firing on all
cylinders to help his
company capture
market share.
Dipak Sahoo is candid in his admission: "We have been
a late entrant in the market and for that we have to be dou-
bly aggressive." Many of Bharti Axa Life's competitors, the
other private-sector life insurance players, have been in
the market for five years or more, while Bharti debuted just
around a year ago. To a good measure, Sahoo is epitomiz-
ing that aggression in the IT support that he is ensuring. In
less than a year, the IT team has deployed the infrastruc-
ture for more than 70 branches, of which around 60 branches
have been rolled out over a period of less than four months.
The company's late-mover status has been cleverly lever-
Catching Up,
and How!
aged by Sahoo to adopt technologies that are helping it to
leap-frog others. Deployment of an enterprise content man-
agement application used for cataloging and storing docu-
ments has shaved off days from processing time-as docu-
ments are verified at the branch office. and sent digitally,
the time spent on couriering documents is saved.
In the insurance industry, having a great product. can
only take you so far, as cloning a product has become very
simple. Sahoo is focused on providing the sales team with
a service differentiator by helping customers take a finan-
cial decision based on correct information, quickly and re-
liably. "In all this, dependence on proper documentation of
customer's records and access to that information is criti-
cal," points out Sahoo. _
TOP PROJECTS AT SHARTI AXA LIFE INSURANCE huge: over a period of two to three months, it will employ
HR Information System: Sahoo's team tailored a Lead Man- around 8,000 persons, 4,000 of whom are agents.
agement System (from Talisma) to fit the company's HR Enterprise Content Managementapplications from FileNet: Used
processes. The application has automated the hiring to catalog and store documents, the application has made
process, tracking follow-up and providing alerts when re- the documentation process efficient and provided the sales
quired. The company's recruitment needs are currently force with easy access to customer pbpinformation.
Photograph by Yogesh Chiplunkar JANUARY·FEBRUARY 200B CIO DECISIONS S1