Presenting India's Best IT Projects: Catch All the Action

With the Indian economy booming, organizations are leveraging IT to extend
their reach, automate internal processes, and improve customer service. In the
Best IT Implementation Awards, we spend many months discovering what these
organizations are implementing. In the first volume of our awards, we present to
you the most comprehensive collection of IT implementations in the country,
featuring 164 projects of 25 types across 21 different industries

Having a good idea that's guided by a strong vision is one thing. That's
definitely required, but ultimately, what really matters is its timely and
successful execution. And you know that an idea is successful when you see it
delivering results you wanted it to. This is true for any idea, IT and non-IT
alike, but since our focus is on IT, in this issue, we present to you a complete
collection of successful IT implementations.

This is the fifth year of the PCQuest Best IT Implementation awards, and as
always, we've received a large number of IT project nominations. As a result of
that, we've felt that covering them in a single issue is no longer sufficient.
That's why this time we've split the story across two volumes. This volume
contains all the projects that we've received this time through our public
nomination process. So in the pages to follow, you'll find a very clear, concise
compilation of the best IT deployments that have been done by Indian
enterprises. Since these are all projects that have prospects of becoming the
winning projects, they've been given equal coverage. They pack quite a punch for
anybody wanting to understand how IT is being used across leading Indian
organizations.

In the next volume, after we've audited these projects, we'll present them
before a panel of jury members, who'll then decide the winners.

Our Selection Process

Our process for determining the winners remains the same. In Stage I, we
invite IT projects through a public nomination process. After we receive them,
we shortlist them through a preliminary audit. In Stage II, We ask the project
heads of the shortlisted projects to fill up and submit a detailed audit form.
This time, we received 164 public nominations, which we brought down to around
150 after a preliminary audit. Out of these, we received detailed audit forms
for 105 IT projects, which is higher than what we received last year. Stage III
will involve a detailed audit of these 105 projects, and in stage IV, we'll
present them to a panel of jury members, who'll then declare the winners.

IT Projects in this issue

In the pages to follow, we've divided these 105 IT projects according to
their type and featured them. We've split them into seven broad project types-ERP
and CRM, Business Process Management and Automation, IT Infrastructure,
Mobility, e-Gov, Web-based Solutions, and Others. Here, the IT infrastructure
projects have been sub-divided, into networking, security, green IT, etc.

The remaining projects, which comprise of public nominations, have been
covered in a separate table. We also received some interesting pilot projects
this time. Those have also been featured in this issue, but they would not be
rated, since they're still in their pilot stage.

What's different?

So what's different about IT implementations this time? Stronger, faster,
and more widespread-that's what they're doing to the IT infrastructures of
Indian enterprises. With the Indian economy booming, organizations are
leveraging IT to extend their reach, improve internal processes, and improve
customer service.

Moreover, IT requirements also vary across different industries. It's not as
if everybody requires everything. For instance, 50% of the manufacturing
companies that participated were deploying ERP solutions. The Banking and
Financial Services institutes were deploying multiple IT projects to extend
their reach into newer markets, especially the SMBs and rural areas. IT/ITES
companies were toiling with innovative ideas. The govt. continues to strengthen
its backbone through information systems.

In this story, we've also done a detailed drill down into what various
industry verticals are deploying. This includes not only the types of projects,
but also the kinds of technologies that are hot.

We'd like to thank everyone for such active participation in these awards, and
hope to continue receiving your support for the same in the future also. Enjoy
reading.

Anil Chopra, Adeesh Sharma, Anindya Roy, Deepshika Yadav, Jasmine
Desai, Mastufa Ahmad, Swapnil Arora and Vishnu Anand