We visited the
corporate office of excel crop care on
the the 27th December, 2011 around 5 o’clock in the evening. The
purpose of our visit to find out in detail about the origins of the company,
their business process and the role of IT in the growth of the company.
Excel crop care
is more than a 60 year old company which manufactures insecticides, wedicides,
fumigants and soil health and bio products.
The video
interview was taken in the impressive IT enabled board room. The room had
options of setting various lighting conditions. This could be done by a control
unit in the room with touch screen controls. The room was equipped with a high
end audio system. The walls of the room were sound proof which gave excellent acoustics.
Mr. Pillai the
IT head explained to us the the beginning of their website and their future
plans for it.They intended the current static website to be revamped into a
database driven website which gave control to them to update the site on a more
regular basis. They also were going to list their products on their website in
the future.
He also
explained to us how their data is backed up. They have 2 servers, one situated
at their corporate office which we visited and the other at Dhirubhai Ambani
Knowledge Centre (DKAC). He explained that DKAC was a Tier IV data centre which
had all the redundancies like temperature control, automatic backups built in
for their data to be secure.
Mr. Shroff the
Managing Director explained to us one of the CSR activities undertaken by the
company. ‘Shrujan’ is one such programme which trained the Kutchi women of
Gujarat in the art of embroidery. With this initiative this art has now become
commercial allowing the women in the area to earn a decent living.
Mr. Shroff was
of the opinion that IT has played a significant role in the growth of their business,
but he also mentioned that IT services can be used to help the business but
benefits can be gained only if the business manager knows how to make use of
the services.
On the whole the
entire process of the interview was very interesting and enlightening thanks to
the people we spoke to.
Its been some time coming but the official Winzip App was released this week on the AppStore.
