Pakistan: In The Line Of Wire

What’s on the mind of one of the most networked professionals of
Pakistan’s IT Industy? Jehan Ara, President of P@SHA,
shares her insights!

Why do you feel so passionate about promoting the local industry?

The Pakistan IT and ITES industry is such a vibrant and exciting industry. There is a lot of cutting edge work being done here and companies have been growing and achieving their own levels of success. However there has been no concerted effort to support them, highlight their achievements or assist them in scaling up. There is a lot of creativity, passion and expertise that exists in this sector. I feel, however, that we have not been very successful in marketing ourselves to the extent that we can and should. Hence my focus on creating a brand and getting it out there. Read more

It’s OPEN Season in the Valley!

Anyone in the IT industry in Pakistan surely already knows about the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs, better known as OPEN. Spread across 6 separate chapters in the US, OPEN has become a real force to be reckoned with, when it comes to knowledge share and networking.
Read more

Leading by Example

Much of what an organization accomplishes is a fair reflection of the leadership that drives the unit. In the case of information companies in Pakistan, Oracle stands out. It’s got unbelievable leadership and a strong sense of purpose and belonging with Pakistan.
Read more

Leading Innovation with Technology:

Ahmed Kamran, Head of Services, Faysal Bank
Ahmed Kamran comes from a strong banking background. In 2004, he moved from the position of Head of Corporate Banking into the realm of IT for a specific purpose. “I was never an IT person, but I moved into technology because the bank wanted me to spearhead a very specific project.” This was the time when Faysal Bank was contemplating changing its core banking system. When Kamran migrated his job function more towards handling the Technology requirements, he managed to balance a critical equation. “Until the time I took over, the bank was considering whether or not we should change the system. I came with a clear objective; I knew there was no option for us but to change it.

What started as one project, transformed into a long-term career move. “My original plan was to simply spearhead a migration project and then move back into banking. Everyone felt that the migration would only be successful if someone with a strong banking background was on top.” That’s why in mid 2007, when Faysal Bank’s core banking solution was finally in place, Kamran also took over the function of Country Operations of the bank with a view to fuse technology with the delivery of banking services in the branches. To leverage the newly implemented centralized system, Kamran initiated another project of centralizing the back office operations from branches into few regional hubs in the first phase. With the successful completion of the first phase of centralization of banking operations project, a decision was made to bring in and empower someone with a more technical background to take over the IT operations. And that’s why, last year, a Head of IT was brought in to head the department. “In the current hierarchy we have, the IT Division reports to me, as does the Operations Division and the General Services and Property Services Division. Together, these functions combined into one single continuum enable me to carry out my core function here, which is to continue the seamless integration between the technology we have in place, and the bank’s back office operations and delivery of services.” Kamran’s title was also changed to Head of Services.

Tracing Back the Pressure Points
“To me, the Pakistani Banking industry, until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, was fairly advanced in the use of technology of that time. UBL was spearheading computers, including several others and in the region, Pakistan was relatively advanced. The ATMs were still there as were the portfolio of services which other institutions in the region provided.” When the Banking sector came under the ownership of the Government, things changed. “For the next 30 years, as far as the investment of technology in Banking is concerned, practically nothing happened.” In the 1990’s when some private banks were allowed to operate in Pakistan and the mistake made was that those banks started with very small capital base. “Because the banks had such a small capital base, there was already a resource crunch. With limited resources, the banks were forced to use the older, legacy systems already available in the market. Most of them used UNIBANK of United Bank, and started their operations. By that time, the larger Government banks had already become stale in their technology operations.”

By the middle of 1990’s, the foreign banks began making inroads into consumer banking. “You see, the foreign banks who already had a great deal of exposure to technology-oriented offerings, were also making their presence felt in Pakistan. And as the banks began opening up shop in Pakistan, the pressure of all this technology was being felt by the local institutions.” By 2000, every bank felt the heat and realized that if they didn’t ramp up their technology platforms, they would have been out of business.

Kamran explains that the need to increase technological integration in banking institutions originates from three main sources. “Competition is a major driver. When Citibank, for example, introduced credit cards in Pakistan, they were suitably placed to offer solutions to consumers that no other local banks could have dreamed of at that time. The ‘demand’ per say was not there, but when the products were made available, the markets began to level out automatically in order to retain their customers.” Secondly, explains Kamran, is the physical expansion that banks were making. “In order to serve a larger customer base, banks that were opening up branch offices across the country, had to invest in technology platforms which would support the kind of coordination and growth required.”

And finally, explains the Head of Services, the need to be able to roll out products and services quickly, sent the message home that if a bank wanted to remain aggressive in its growth and portfolio, it must make strong investments in technology. “Most of these retail and consumer products, be it a car loan, credit card or anything else, depend on a number of processes which can only be logistically feasible if you have a robust network and information system in place.” No bank can be successful in Consumer Banking if they didn’t have a strong technology infrastructure. “Also, the time frame we are talking about, was a time when, due to political reasons, very little was happening in corporate banking. Institutions, who wanted to succeed at consumer banking, were already planning their infrastructure and support back then.”
But there was already a challenge that banks were faced with. There were no local system integrators or solution providers to meet the technology demands the banks were encountering . “This meant we had to shop outside the country for packaged solutions who could match our needs. MCB and Habib Bank took the lead at that time by signing on new Core Banking Systems.” Faysal Bank soon followed the giants into the arena.

The legacy system that Faysal Bank had its disposal ran a distributed database system. Like a lot of other banks, this meant that every branch had its own database. “We had already grown to 56 branches, which meant 56 different databases! Of course we had a great challenge in consolidating the MIS and reports from the branches.” Imagine that. Every time the bank wanted to launch a new product or make any policy change, it would need to go into the main layer of the core banking system, which was turning into one big jumble of codes. If the bank didn’t make the move when it did, it would not have been able to compete in the market.

According to Kamran, previously there was no need or pressure to produce the kinds of MIS reports as is the demand today, and neither was the regulatory environment this demanding. “The State Bank of the 1980’s was not asking for that kind of customer-centric data which they are now asking for. The systems that were in place at that time were already bending over backwards to provide the reports that they were, and with a growing network at the pace that it was, this was becoming an impossible task. I think we should have changed the system much earlier than we did, though even at the time we did, a lot of banks in Pakistan were still struggling with the older, traditional banking systems.”

Getting the Priorities Straight
The bank’s priorities are still very clear as far as a technology roll out is concerned: how can the bank’s services be continually integrated with technology. “I have always been an advocate for change. We needed change desperately at that time or I think we would have not been able to sustain the kind of growth we were experiencing. And every IT department wants to think that they have the best solution implemented, which may not always be the case.”

Kamran explains the user perspective. “A bank may have all kinds of customers, but the IT department has its customers within all the bank operations.” Since he was just a ‘user’ at the time the bank was grappling with the issue of whether or not to make the switch over, he recalls that solutions back then were more technical than business oriented. After all, isn’t it now the golden rule of integration and development that the solution or system being implemented should be more user friendly so people can actually focus on their own core functions, as opposed to relearning the technology?

“And that’s why it was important for a non-technology person to take over the role of the CIO and oversee that the criteria of the banking operations were met. The technology had to match those criteria.” CEOs and Management Executives know their field. When it comes to shopping for a technology-based solution, it is vital that the CEO keep their executive caps on. “Every banker knows that changing a core banking system is a very risky area and what the implications are. A common misconception is that they need to understand the system. The right approach is to have the technology understand the operational side so that the maximum benefit can be incurred.”

Key Lessons Learned
If you confer with business consultants about what sector they think has been the most productive for technology, the majority would agree that the large chunk of their revenue streams were coming from the financial sector. This shows the tremendous commitment Pakistan’s financial institutions were having on the development and progress in the local economy.

“My view is that going forward, many banks will be grappling with the dilemma of keeping up with customer demands and keeping operational costs down. The second opportunity which Pakistani banks may get now, is that no foreign banks will be influencing the market in these circumstances. This just means that there is more opportunity for the local banks to service the local market.”

Talking about the selection process and criteria when Faysal Bank was considering various solutions, Ahmed Kamran explains what the process involved. “In assessing what kind of system we should be finalizing, the process had been ongoing for a long time. But with my background in corporate & investment banking, one of the key trainings I had was in evaluating and managing the ‘risk’. The risk involved in the deployment of the core banking system is immense and we needed to asses not only which solution best meet our needs, but also which service provider gives us the attention we need. We may go for the best brands in the world, but we might not be large enough for them, which mean they would not be able to service our needs on the priority basis we needed.”

Considering the Pakistani market is comparatively smaller, a challenge companies across the board face is that of being small fish in a big global pond. Companies need to see the level of commitment a brand has for a country, which can be transferred to the company. “A local office or trained personnel. Take the example of iFlex. It was a major global player in banking systems. At the time we were evaluating that system, they did not have a local presence or much interest in the market. Same is true some other big names in core banking systems. At least not at that time. Things have obviously changed tremendously since then.” Organizations want to select companies who are able to demonstrate confidence in the market and preferably have a footprint in the local economy.

In Kamran’s view, the evaluation, selection, contract negotiation, implementation, post implementation always have teething problems, I think most of the systems are equally good or equally bad. The failures usually lie inside the organization.” Kamran explains that the failures are usually in the strategy or planning process.

No implementation is easy and banks are generally hesitant to make the switch. “And then when the larger banks had such difficult times in their migration process, the news shook others who were still in the process of selecting a new system. This included us!” The Head of Services recalls the frightening stories that were coming out of the other banks that were doing their migrations before Faysal Bank, and all the problems they were facing, which scared Kamran into fastening himself behind a desk and focusing on all the things that were going wrong. He, quite literally, didn’t move until he had figured how the same mistakes were not going to be repeated at Faysal Bank.

“The banks did not focus on the type of people who were initially made part of the project. Fragmentation amongst the users often leads to failure.” Another critical mistake people made was the fact that the people who were part of the project were the ones who were either on their way out or on the verge of retiring. “As a result, by the time the initial project consultants came back for the implementation phase, all the people who had been a part of the initial user groups, had left. This created a large problem for the system integrators because there was no reference point left for them to begin from which meant they had to restart the project yet again.” There has to be integration and feedback from the operation departments who know what the usability needs and issues are as opposed to guidance from just the IT departments.

To counter this challenge, Kamran made a small, core team of 25 of the best people who had 5-6 years of experience working within the bank, having a diverse range of expertise. “We pulled them out of their comfort zone, had them together in Karachi, in one location where we could have them be a part of the Super User group.” Eventually the enthusiasm built up and the efforts paid off.

“Commitment from the top management was critical. If the top tier management wasn’t involved in the process, no matter how good your system is, it would never be adopted.” For this, a project steering committee was formed where the heads of all the relevant departments were forcibly inducted in. “No second tier person was allowed as a substitute. All heads attended the weekly meetings for the course of 20 months.”

When there was a user-test training and group meeting organized in Manila, Kamran only allowed one person from the IT department to travel. “All others were users. They owned the project therefore took ownership to make it successful. I think that accounted for a great deal of success of the project.”

Faysal Bank implemented Oracle Financials, Oracle HRMS, Siebel CRM, changed their hardware platform and changed their Wide Area Network architecture. “No migration is an easy task, but selecting Oracle made sense. We were running a legacy system which had been developed by the group back in the 1980’s. It ran on Cobol and the primary function of legacy systems of that vantage was to faithfully record business transactions and produce certain financial statements.” The core banking systems were never originally intended to be used as a delivery channel. “That was the challenge we wanted to overcome. When we were shopping for a system, we were looking for a few very specific attributes.”

The new systems in place provide powerful features through the MIS. “Centralized database pose new challenges in connectivity and the Wide Area Network, but it has given us tremendous flexibility in accessing Pakistan’s complete database for any site, from anywhere. So most of that we have deployed is an Oracle product and we are to a great extent an Oracle shop! We did a lot of research prior to the investing in Oracle as a platform, but the tipping point was the fact that Oracle had such a strong presence in Pakistan, that we selected them.” All indicators that the then CIO was researching, put Oracle in a very favorable light. “This is always a risk in selecting just one platform, but we were very comfortable in our evaluation and selection of Oracle.”

The Current Crisis and Forecast for Technology Investments
The global financial crisis has obviously impacted the larger, multinational banks in a very big way but the biggest impact that this crisis has had on the local banking institutions, is to scare them. “Banks are in a very uncomfortable territory with the global cash crunch and more than anything, the IT budgets will either be reduced or frozen for some time.” While everyone does agree that a downtime or slow time is the time that is ideal for organizational restructuring and reinvestments, it is also a reality that this is a constant struggle between the finance department and IT.

According to Ahmed Kamran’s wisdom, banks and financial institutions will continue to focus on IT governance, Monitoring and IT security and Fraud Detection and other compliance, regulatory requirements. “I think there will continue to be a great deal of scope in the retail business. That’s where local banks will need robust infrastructure, flexible architecture and the ability to offer new products to the market quickly at a lesser cost.”

But banks will have to move into the mid tier market and expand their schemes to a larger market. Banking, according to Ahmed Kamran, will also be moving into microbanking and SMEs. “The State Bank is focusing more on the unbanked population, more so now than before. Innovation will have to be undertaken by many banks to be able to reach out to those people. But even that will not be the challenge. The biggest challenge for all financial institutions will continue to bring down the average cost of transaction and use technology in a manner that costs are optimized.”

The approach and objectives may differ in every organization, but if the business and technology objectives can be aligned, there will definitely be movement in the forward direction.

You can find more information about Faysal Bank at faysalbank.com•

Arshad Javed Minhas, Executive Director and CIO, Securities & Exchange Commission of Pakistan

About SECP: The Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) was set up in pursuance of the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan Act, 1997. This Act institutionalized certain policy decisions relating to the constitution and structure, powers, and functions of the SECP, thereby giving it administrative authority and financial independence in carrying out its regulatory and statutory responsibilities. Read more

Industry: Textile

Majid Noor, IT Manager
Gul Ahmed Textile Mills (Ltd)
About Gul Ahmed: Gul Ahmed Textile Mills Ltd was incorporated as a private limited company, in 1953. Since then the company has been making rapid progress and is one of the best composite textile houses in the world. The mill is presently a composite unit with an installed capacity of 103,000 spindles, 220 wide width air jet looms, 90 Sulzer’s, 297 conventional looms and a state of the art processing and finishing unit.
Scope of work: I maintain the Cisco-based infrastructure and VoIP Communication IP telephony system along with managing all connectivity, data center operations, Disaster Recovery site and IP-based surveillance and CCTV system across the organization. The IT Department also supports all IT-related workflows and connectivity as well as the textile industry-specific ERP.
Where do you see the role in Technology leading change within the Textile industry? I have been part of the Textile sector for about 9 years and it is unfortunate that only a few textile firms are IT-dependent. If they understand the potential of technology, they will be able to realize greater returns on their investment. We were the first organization in Pakistan to deploy IP Telephony which was initially setup with 500 IP Phones, and today, the IPT network has grown now to accommodate a demand of 1900 IP Phones on its network. The network allows Gul Ahmed managers to view key supply chain-related information through a seamless integration of the ERP system with the XML interface on the Cisco IP phones.
Challenges for the CIO: Achieving business objectives requires change, large and small, whether you are moving toward sustainability or some other vision. Most organizations encounter challenges along the way, for instance: defining measurable goals, developing leadership skills, managing conflicts, or dealing with resistance or other issues.
Gul Ahmed’s annual IT budget? Approximately Rs.20 million though the exact figure varies on expansion plans.
Your greatest achievement as the head of the department? Upgrading to a VoIP-enabeld infrastructure, network security infrastructure, implementing our Disaster Recovery sites and successfully implementing our ERP solution at GulAhmed.
than one hour a week with their team and only 15% spend more than 6 hours with vendors or service providers each week. In isolation, both these figures seem insignificant until you add the 83% of CIOs who said that they took part in meetings which discussed a company’s long term business strategy and the 29% that spend more than 6 hours a week with their executives. Almost 63% commented that they stay on the office premises all day long. These figures, when looked at together, seem be consistent in companies across the board.
Comments from the 5 featured CIOs also allude to a lot of the findings that these results yield. Irfan Zafar, GM Technology Innovation, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited, for example started the interview by commenting on the fact that business strategy is one of the things he does. His role at SSGC is to maintain and further develop the IT department, which is already a critical part of the company’s growth. He says, “The job involves a major technology enabled cultural and business transformation. My role extends beyond just IT - I am a business manager,” which is a statement that demonstrates the contribution the technology department has on the rest of the organization.
While we didn’t ask our respondents to comment on innovation in the workplace, simply because that is more of a subjective question than objective, but our featured CIOs did talk about innovation. Shahid Sarwar, Director IT of PIA, Pakistan’s flag carrier airline address innovation in his interview by saying that the level of competition has increased so intensely, that all businesses need to innovate through technology to stay ahead of the game. One of the challenges he faces is, “to keep pace with the rapid advancement taking place in technology tools and platforms and the second is to have them implemented across the organization with the required Business Processes Re-engineering.
It is a difficult task which requires financial
and human resources along with a management commitment to pursue implementation.” With PIA being one of the larger organizations in Pakistan, it’s no wonder they have a budget in excess of Rs.100 million to manage their technology needs on an annual basis.
Trying to assess how productive the workplace was, also proved to be interesting. We’re not surprised at the number of people who wouldn’t disclose their salary packages to us. Hopefully since we ensure the anonymity factor, more CIOs will be comfortable doing so. Recruitment is always a tough job in all companies.
IT departments seem to be struggling, like most other companies, with finding qualified people to fit the job description. The majority of companies, surprisingly enough, end up hiring people ‘with at least 2 years work experience’, only 21% hire ‘fresh graduates’ though only 5% hire experts who have no technical background.
A lot of companies seem to have the trend of bonuses and salary raises and almost half the companies say that there is a formal process to recognize achievers. We’re not really sure if the respondents in this case perhaps misunderstood the question to how they would ideally like to run their IT departments with what they have right now, and you’ll see why with the next few questions.
Linking back to the  question of the amount of innovation that is ongoing in the workplace it seems to be an assumption based on these trends that there is a lot of ‘on the job training’ taking place. Correlate that to the results we got from the question, ‘how frequently do people resign’ and ‘their reason for leaving’. A whopping 10% of employees in the IT department leave within a year of being hired, primarily to look for a better job. How much does this “better job” reason have to do with innovation is anyone’s guess, but research available online does show a link between the quality of the workplace to the rate of attrition (or productivity, for that matter).
69% of the companies reported having some kind of promotion take place in the IT department almost on an annual basis, but only 3% reported that there is no such environment and people just eventually leave the company. Could it be that there needs to be more team building in the departments for these numbers to either completely nullify or for the others to grow?

Challenges for Growth
There is no doubt an ongoing crisis. Technology brings automation, which ultimately brings business efficiency. Most companies, however, are also finding themselves cut back on IT spending – In fact, a question revealed that almost 80% of the organizations have held back on all IT spending in the past 4 months. We’re assuming this isn’t a good sign for the vendors, who usually make their orders at least one financial quarter in advance, however we should be able to present some vendor-perspective findings in the next CIO survey we release.
In speaking with Shahid Sarwar of PIA to find out how companies should be getting ready to handle the financial crisis, he says, “viewing the current financial pressures, optimize on the existing resources, delay any capital intensive projects, if possible, and increase emphasis on Data Security, Network Redundancy and fall back recovery procedures.” Ibrahim Memon, Head of IT, Greenstar Social Marketing, explains that, “The global economic crisis will restricts organizations to make further investments, including into MIS and IT, despite the fact it has become an integral part of all organizations.  My advice is to see this crisis as an opportunity – pool your efforts in optimizing the effective use of the available MIS/IT resources and businesses will benefit in the long run.”
Irfan Zafar, GM Technology In
novation, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited says something fairly simple. “Have a strategy. Look for improvement opportunities within the organization that have direct financial benefit to the bottom line. Invest in people and empower them with a strong and transparent accountability and reward mechanism. It is all about the people you have as your team and how supportive you are of each other.” Considering SSGC has reinvented itself into an extremely IT savvy organization, it would seem that Irfan is speaking from experience.
But perhaps the challenge really is to change the mindset that our organizations are stuck in. Once the culture and corporate change can be initiated and opened up to the prospect of technology innovation, then a greater impact can take place. As the SECP CIO looks back over the years and says, “    The first challenge was to change the mindset towards “real automation”. You see, in a typical sense, automation is confused with an abundance of computers and allied equipment as almost everyone is happy to have more of them without thinking of their use or what applications would run on them. When I joined SECP 5 years ago, there was no application or information system present in the organization. Computers were only given to private secretaries who were using them as typing machines or else they were being used by senior officers, who kept them well preserved.  Some middle management officers would justify some productive use of the computers for spreadsheet analysis but other than that, these machines were completely deprived.” Five years is still a relatively short time period to get a mammoth organization such as his, to change.
Looking Ahead
Pakistan has only recently achieved a certain degree of maturity in its markets. The deployment of large-scale projects have been one of the factors which have accounted for the increased level of awareness amongst the industries which make a significant contribution to the over economy. The only way to drive technology and its enabling characteristics into the mainstream, is to make sure that IT departments play a more significant role in helping organizations to conduct better business. Once the return on investment can be witnessed, technology departments automatically reap the benefits.
But in order for CIOs to really do their jobs, they must be part of the decisions. That is the only way the alignment can take place between the business and the technology. While the business maps out its growth path, the CIO will be able to assess what tools are required to make sure there is enough infrastructure, capacity and power to match that path. And this is not something that can take place overnight.
There is such a serious dearth of extracted, collated information which can indicate that our organizations, sector or economy is a reality. We encourage IT departments to work with us to better help identify issues, challenges and opportunities within specific sectors, and to help the market better understand and profile the needs of technology divisions within our companies.
The results we have collected and based this issue of CIO Pakistan on, are based on what people have told us. As for the rest of the pieces of this gigantic puzzle, we still have a long way to go.

Industry: Airline

Shahid Sarwar, Director IT,
Pakistan International Airlines
About PIA: Pakistan International Airlines Corporation (PIA) is the flag carrier of Pakistan, whose government owns 85 percent of its shares. PIA’s route network stretches to Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America. It connects 35 cities within Pakistan. Six million people flew the airline in 2000, when passenger traffic accounted for 85 percent of revenues. Engineering and charter services accounted for nine percent. PIA also conducts some contract work for aerospace manufacturers. There are approximately 19,000 employees and has a fleet size of 44. The principal divisions of PIA include Automation, Cargo Sales & Services among others.
Scope of work: To plan and implement Information Technology systems/services and solutions in all areas of the Corporation across the Domestic and International network.
Where do you see the role in Technology leading change within your sector in Pakistan? The Airline Industry has emerged as the biggest user of IT tools leaving behind all other industries.  In the present day competitive environment, use of technology is making the difference between success and failure.
Challenges for the CIO: The first challenge is to keep pace with the rapid advancement taking place in technology tools and platforms and the second is to have them implemented across the organization with the required Business Processes Re-engineering.  It is a difficult task which requires financial and human resources along with a management commitment to pursue implementation.
PIA’s annual Technology budget? The budget varies from year to year depending upon requirements but generally remains in excess of Rs.100 million.
Your greatest achievement as the head of the department? The greatest achievement is the implementation of a Reservation and Departure Control system across PIA’s domestic and international network.
Your vision for your organization? We are already a major IT establishment in the airlines of South East Asia.  We however still feel that a lot has still to be done in shape of revamping current systems, adopting to new technology platforms and assisting the airline in its various business processes.
in a bank or financial institution. Telecom and ICT companies have your next largest set of CIOs at about 14% of the total sample size. The majority, however, made up service providers who built the stronger part of the Small and Medium Enterprise segment. But call them what you will: IT heads, IT managers, General Managers, Head of MIS or Network Engineer, our consideration was if they are involved in business strategy, they fit the profile we’re looking for.
There is a strong trend of automation in the workplace. 77% of the companies report that the majority of their operations critically depend on a sound technology infrastructure. What is interesting is the could be that the number of companies that depend on technology to run their operations are also the ones with the largest IT departments,
Salary scales seem to be on the lower side but then we were focusing on a lot of SMEs. What was surprising was that the salary did not accurately reflect the number of years a lot of the IT heads had been active decision makers within the company. Neither was there too much discrepancy in the number of size of the IT department.  Take that analysis one step further and the correlation between the salary range, average size of the IT department and the budgets they have access to, and you have no consistency what so ever. Do keep in mind that the majority of these were private companies – we haven’t even started looking into the public sector companies up close.
Of course, every category of company has a dedicated IT head to manage the technology side of business, and while these findings remain consistent with what informal assessments have quoted previously, the following results help to better breakdown how the CIO spends his day. A few of the respondents wanted to know why we were so interested in this line of questioning, and our reasoning is this – If you compare the amount of time a decision-making CIO spends inside the office, to the size of his team, it makes you wonder how decentralized the operations in that department are.
Approximately 3% of the respondents spend less
For more details about the company, please visit www.piac.com.pk

Industry: NGO

Ibrahim Memon, Head of IT, Greenstar Social Marketing
About Greenstar Social Marketing: Greenstar Social Marketing Pakistan (Guarantee) Limited is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization devoted to improving quality of life among low-income people. A non-governmental organization, Greenstar has a staff strength of more than 1500 permanent and contractual employees. GSMP operates through its nationwide network of 31 fully equipped and fully functional zonal offices covering more than 100 districts of Pakistan. Scope of work: The IT department is responsible for 3 major areas: IT Infrastructure, Database Management and reporting and Development. The department is also responsible for MIS and IT training, on the organization’s own MIS system. Where do you see the role in Technology leading change within the NGO culture in Pakistan? Advancements in technology, particularly in IT, have made a significant impact on the working style of NGO sector in Pakistan.

Strengthening of IT infrastructure in NGOs is usually on the agenda of international donors for which they allocate special funds.  In my view this international support has already developed a culture of technology receptiveness in our NGOs, more than any other sector in Pakistan. Organizations like Greenstar who have a nation-wide network are in fact in a position as pioneer use of such technology in the country. Challenges for the CIO: Information Systems have become much easier to use but the optimal utility is still undermined. Users can access information at the “click of a button”, however it is difficult to convince the right budgets be allocated into the relevant infrastructure. Availability of experienced HR is also a challenge, particularly in the smaller cities.  GreenStar’s annual Technology budget? More than Rs.10 million annually.  Your greatest achievement as the head of the department? The conversion of the complete MIS system of Greenstar to an online system that has made it accessible not only from within Pakistan but from anywhere around the globe along with the successful implementation of Oracle Financials and HRIS Systems. Your vision for your organization? Being the custodian of information, I see our MIS and IT grow to a full fledged independent department.  More importantly, I see MIS reports to continue to help authentic and update information quickly, which serve as the final verdict in the success of any project or performance in the organization.
ufacturing companies, primarily industries whose head offices were away from the actual site, had separate IT heads for their plant and separate ones for their business. What we didn’t find in our random sampling, was any women in decision-making positions in the business organizations. It could have just been the luck of the draw for the companies we called, but it seems considering the conserving mindset where even the women who study Engineering or Computer Sciences, don’t make it into the workforce for very long. Perhaps one of the results of the growing economic crunch is that there might be more serious consideration given to having both members of the family contributing towards the monthly income.
Before opening the survey up to the public, one of the main concerns our research team had was that we would not be able to restrict the survey to only experienced IT professionals for a number of reasons. In our initial sampling to assess the quality and relevance of the survey, it became evident very quickly because of the high attrition in the later part of the 1990’s when a lot of the IT professionals had left the country in search for better opportunities, the number of years that the majority of IT heads had worked in any one organization, would be fairly limiting. And because this would disqualify the major part of our population, we decided to diversify the spectrum.
Also the term CIO itself was a restricting one. If we were to have restricted the general survey to only those who actually had the CIO designation, we would have had very few respondents to work with. This is a longer project for us to be able to collate information from the CIOs directly, which is a more indepth survey.
Since we were trying to locate those who actually had the designation of “CIO”, we didn’t come across too many in our random sampling, but from those that we did, these CIOs were primarily in the Financial Sector. In fact, 33% of the 100 respondents were
For more details, please visit www.greenstar.org.pk

Industry: Oil and Gas/Govt

Irfan Zafar, GM Technology Innovation, Sui Southern Gas Company Limited
About SSGC: Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC) is Pakistan’s leading integrated gas Company. The company is engaged in the business of transmission and distribution of natural gas besides construction of high pressure transmission and low pressure distribution systems. Scope of work: I am responsible for building a strong technology team and create opportunities for people in the company along with setting performance standards for them. The job involves a major technology enabled cultural and business transformation. My role extends beyond just IT - I am a business manager. Where do you see the role in Technology leading change within the public sector? “Change” in the public sector may seem a myth but we have managed to alter that mindset. Our organization is a world-class utility reference site, an example for everyone else.

Challenges for the CIO: My biggest challenge was to build and retain the team that we have developed over the past 5 years. My second biggest challenge is to find opportunities for continuous improvement within SSGC and making them happen. Every new technology-enabled transformation initiative is an opportunity for my team to do more. SSGC’s annual IT budget: Rs.100 million or less every year to expand our service network, rehabilitation of technology, and investments in new initiatives. Your greatest achievement as the head of the department? SSGC is recognized as the most technology-enabled organization in the region and we are very proud of it. My biggest achievement is the team that I have been able to build and retain. Additionally, we have had a number of successful project implementations within the organizations. Your vision for your organization? IT in SSGC is already a profit center and my vision is to further enhance our customer service and make technology as a major enabler sustaining the transformation.
We sent out a fairly generic net which spanned 100 companies across various verticals with the following objective: we wanted to be able to better identify who our CIOs were and what role they played the business environment of every company. The CIO or IT Head is the one who is responsible for making all the technology decisions in a company and once you get to know his buying behavior a little better, a lot of things will take place in the market. Vendors, for example, will be able to package their products better matching those needs, or other service providers will know how to perhaps serve the organization in a more optimum manner. As for the majority of questions, we’ll get the opportunity to learn what a CIO is all about in Pakistan’s terms.
We asked the IT Heads a series of 24 questions which allowed us to get an insight into helping profile them better. From the results, we got 71% respondents based out of Karachi, followed by 14% in Lahore, 9% in Islamabad and 6% percent in the tier two cities. While we’re certain that is a CIO in the majority of companies across the country, we’ve been trying to assess where the greatest concentration of IT heads is. If you notice on our Facebook and LinkedIn groups, there have been a few requests for us to conduct more events in cities outside of Karachi, and while we do, you can see by this sampling why we’re so Karachi focused. Simply because it is the commercial capital of Pakistan, Karachi seems to have a very healthy concentration of decision-makers. But this is something we’ll be assessing in every survey to better match the industry to the trend and the geographical proximity.
The varying designations were also of keen interest. The head of the IT or MIS department is either the CIO, more commonly referred to as the Head of IT or Department Head. In some cases where the company was smaller, the General Manager was also found to be the one making the technology decisions in the company.
For more details, please visit www.ssgc.com.pk

Opening up WiMAX

you need sustainability in order to allow robust technology to survive the test of time. Sustainability has an added challenge of making something work for all stakeholders and keep operational costs to a minimum. Pakistan has made a very quick leap from dial-up internet to broadband and despite the low internet penetration, corporations who are in it for the long haul, don’t question the ROI.  They know that things will fall into place eventually.
For the time being, everything is making mostly commercial sense. Wateen rolled out WiMAX almost a year ago, and Mobilink has chosen to tread waters more wary, but can’t help but help wonder how users in Pakistan will react to the new bandwagon. Because of the associated costs to get set up, the trickledown effect of WiMAX connectivity might not make it down to the bottom rungs of the pyramid a social internet was intended to influence. Companies, and quite rightly so, are about making business sense, but also want to inspire change amongst their customers. How can barriers for adoption be reduced so that there can be greater impact is a balancing act every company has to deal with. Read more

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