Monday, February 6, 2012

Our First Video Interview


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.

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