OIA GLOBAL
Managing the data and the volume of units involved is the work of IT . Three years ago , OIA appointed Jay Hemmady as its CIO , giving him the brief of optimising its digital platforms to meet the realities of the present and future supply chain . “ We have to find ways to stay ahead of the industry and these changes ,” he says . “ As CIO my fundamental responsibility is to keep the IT systems up – to ‘ keep the lights on and the trains running ’. But at the strategic level we are moving fast into the realm of information and data , and using it to give a reliable service to our clients . In all three of our main business segments I am responsible for maintaining the information systems that ensure there will be no disruption in their supply chain .”
The business OIA does with footwear clients is now 100 % electronically executed . Footwear factories place orders on OIA ’ s self-service portal and all further transactions involving transportation of raw materials into that factory , and of finished goods out from it , are handled in the same way . Three years ago , Hemmady came into a company that was anxious about IT , not understanding the important job it was doing in keeping the systems up and running , let alone trusting it to lead the way into new territory . “ There is a movement away from the old ways to a new way of doing business , and as CIO I have to be on top of that . For example , when I came on board there was a certain fear of developing custom software applications .” The company had had a belief that the way forward lay in commercial off the shelf packages ( COTS ). But being available generally , these give no competitive advantage , Hemmady says .
He had to encourage the leadership that developing business critical platforms in-house would be a good idea but before that , he needed to show the business at large that IT was already doing a good job for it . “ For any CIOs the key is to keep the lights on and the trains running . If they don ’ t get that right , they don ’ t get the chance to do anything strategic .” In the first year , Hemmady set out to improve visibility into projects and the performance of his department . “ We began to
178 April 2018