Introduction

The first name that pops up on an average Indian when asked about paints is Asian Paints. It is one of
the reason why they are so popular and market leader in the industry. Asian Paints isn’t just the
leader in Indian market with 55% market share but also is a front-runner in the Asian market. The
company currently operates in around 16 countries with 25 manufacturing plants across the globe.
Though they are the biggest market in the country, they have not captured every essence of their
product or offering. Yet, they have reinvented the company at every period of crisis and now in the
modern world where Data is the new normal, they lack progress in effective usage of Digital
innovations. The firm has never been shy at taking risks and we have witnessed how the firm has
grown leaps and bounds due to the strategy the higher ups of the firm lined up in those difficult
times. This brings into our present situation on how Asian Paints should leverage digital innovation
and become a customer centric firm to unlock more loyal base and better profitability.

In order to become a customer centric organization, the company needs to focus more on the
opportunities in the market by enabling IT and digitalization. The only growth mantra to create
demand and to satisfy customers is through the continual and proactive introduction of innovative
products and services. This goal can be aided by a modern IT backbone powered by enterprise
application from SAP and automating the supply chain management (SCM).So by keeping IT as a
foundational element helps to make people efficient, accountable and focused precisely on the
customer. Data analytics can also be used as another foundational element. For the full integration of
shop floor operations, SAP-ERP systems can be used efficiently .Further roughly 60% of the costs
are attributed to raw materials and most of the raw material requirements are met through imports.
Macro factors such as commodity demand fluctuations, price volatility affects the cost structure. In
order to handle these uncertainties we can make use of advanced SCM applications. By providing a
seamless experience to customers, dealers and influencers across physical, digital and human
channels helps to increase the profit margin also.

The urbanized India had the largest working youth population in the world, and that they also had
high disposable incomes. The urbanization increased the younger generation’s ability to afford finely
designed and decorated homes. There’s been a massive transformation in the Indian consumer.
Earlier, people used to paint when the walls were peeling. Now it’s about decor. A person can choose
a particular pattern with a particular colour. The modern method of business is more digital oriented
with people attaining the services at their place rather than them moving out in the world and
acquiring products. Asian Paints need to transform itself from a predominantly brick-and-mortar
product manufacturer to a company that provides various value-added services. This way, new age
customers who are compatible with the modern technology, those who does a research before they
select would be able to know more about the firm and try out the services of Asian Paints.

Transforming Failed Innovative Store Concepts

Asian Paints called the dealer stores through which its products were sold ‘Asian Paints Colour
World’. Over the years, the company had invested heavily in building a strong dealer network. Each
dealer was provided with a tinting (colour dispensing) machine, that bolstered the company’s
distribution strength. Dealers could procure the tinting machines and install them in their stores to
provide the various colours offered by Asian Paints which is a costly one for the dealers. The primary
concern with the users who availed the products was that the colour that was provided on the
brochure was not matching with the colour they obtain in real life. Part of the issue was due to the
colour variation while printing the brochure.

The problem can be solved with the use of technology, thus by providing the customers better
understanding of the colour as well as an added bonus of realizing how it will fit their home. Asian
Paints could use the 3-D visualization and virtual reality technologies to provide consumers a better
visual treat. Virtual reality can be used in such a way that the customers attain the feel of being in
their own home, walking through one room to another with a variety of colours available at the Asian
Paints stores and witnessing first hand which colours and textures suits the best with the décor they
have at home. This way, the customers will not be disappointed after the service is taken.

To facilitate this, Asian Paints created a colour consultant app that allows consultants to take pictures
of customers’ home walls and apply colour and texture. The app renders them instantly, providing a
view of what they would look like if painted in different colours and finishes.

Digital Innovation - The New Business Model

Asian Paints lacked in the use of various digital technologies through the years, and these are playing
a critical part in its slow growth. As the company went through a paradigm shift in terms of size and
brand positioning, the company management didn't felt the need to upgrade its internal processes for
expeditious execution of its deliverables. So as to achieve a good result, the company need to be
focus more on implementing digital technologies to achieve speed and accuracy in its operations. The
company need to make technological advances from its shop floors to warehouses.

Asian Paints has decided to bust the paradigm that legacy companies cannot be nimble. The need to
push the boundaries and shake up its operations keeps Asian Paints agile. So when the company
sensed that it’s hobbling ERP needed an upgrade, it decided to adopt the highly scalable in-memory
 platform and the new S/4 HANA. The platform helped Asian Paints target customers with
personalized real time offers and reduces operational costs with a 60% reduction in database
requirements. The project set the foundation for future innovations by allowing IT to rapidly integrate
the core transactional platform as newer business models emerge for the company. With the ever-
expanding network of dealers, the amount of data to be dealt also increased exponentially. It was a
big challenge to analyse the sales trends and other key performance indicators with the then IT
architecture. This limited the data access, visibility and usability. To deal with this problem it was
important for the company to get a system that made it possible to get speedy access to both current
and historical data. Various alternatives were considered including:

·        IBM Db2 – It is a database that offers enterprise-wide solutions handling high volume workloads.
It is optimized to deliver industry-leading performance while lowering costs.

·        Oracle Database – Help customers to lower IT costs and deliver a higher quality of service by
enabling consolidation onto database clouds. It is favorable to use it as a descriptive, representative
and simple management mechanism to carry out very essential database operations to use it and
discover tasks that can be automated.

·        PostgreSQL – PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system. It has

good amounts of features like integration, migration, flexible deployment options and has a good tool
kit for management.

Modernization Using Culture

Customers’ need for Vastu consulting is a niche requirement that is added to menu of services and
embedded into the mobile app after listening to many customer calls over the past two years. This has
enabled the firm to better understand and standardize the process. No digital makeover is complete
without a website component designed to educate, encourage and entertain our customers in their
home improvement quest. To that end, firm launched websites such as www.beautifulhomes.com to
create curated customer experiences. These are geared toward storytelling and are not linked with
sales. The next step on the expansion needs to be the methods that could monetize these sites.

As of now there are nearly 10 main paint manufactures and each of these are providing advanced
products. So Asian paints need to take part in the competition with a good product position strategies,
brand building strategies and through innovations. Applying precision customer segmentation by
blending behavioural and data science. Armed with foundational data architecture that connects all
systems, firm embarked on mapping the customer journey across our human, digital and physical
channels to create specific behavioural categories. Supplemented by in-depth interviews and
research, this led us to segment customers based on their demonstrated choices and behaviours. 

The Team behind the Success

The amount of data to be handled was more and on the process of making the organization customer
centric they needed an efficient team with experienced and talented employees. The company have to
provide opportunities to its employees to attend trainings to update their skills in this transition and
continue building their leadership and functional skills. To promote innovation, the Company also
launched a program in which employees were invited for ideas and inputs. The project team should
have:
1. Project sponsor: This is typically a senior level executive who will be accountable for the overall
success of the project. This includes CEO and CIO (Chief Information Officer) of the organization
2. Project manager: Will be responsible for coordinating the project on a day to day basis to ensure
that the required outcomes are delivered, within the agreed budgets and timelines. Project Manager
will be the General Manager (IT) of the Organization.
3. Project board members: The role of the project board is to oversee and steer the project. The board
will generally include the project sponsor, managing director, executive directors etc:-
4. Senior programme manager: He should have experience in developing and managing the IT
architecture, SAP development and other programming and analytics used in the project. The
company can also consider an external CRM consultant. 
5. The voice of the customer: As the sales persons and small retailers are having direct conversation
with customers, we can use their opinion as the voice of customer and design the project accordingly.
The digital interface could also help.
6. Subject matter experts: The Company can consult some experts to collect data and get expert
opinions and services.
7. Business analysts: To help define the requirements for a system, as well as its ultimate design.
8. Internal IT architect: The role of the internal IT architect is to ensure that the new system complies
with any defined technical standards and is compatible with other existing systems and technologies.
9. Project team member: Project team members are generally the staff who actively work on the
project. These people will be the programmers, SAP developers, testing analysts, staffs with
experience in IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Conversational chat bots, Natural language translation and
3-D visualization of home décor, etc:
10. System administrator: The system administrator is responsible for maintaining and running the
system. Some vendors offer administration services as part of their support contracts, so they can also
outsource the functions if needed.
Benefits Stakeholder Achieves

Source: Annual Report

Promoter holdings constitute 52.79 % of

shares as in December 2019.

A stakeholder expects the following benefits and assurances from the company:

 As a company Asian Paints Ltd. values and claims to inform their stakeholders regarding their
performance; so the stakeholders expect to know the same in a transparent manner.
 Asian Paints appoint a core team which is responsible for cascading sustainability across
various functions. The stakeholders expect to be a part of the core team. This helps the
stakeholder to engage in the process to identify economic, environment, social and
governance related topics that are important to the company’s business and stakeholders.
 They expect the company to follow a consistent commitment to compliance, disclosure and
responsible business conduct which helps in building trust with the stakeholders.
 A say in the company’s growth plan with respect to the business as well as employee growth.

The above mentioned benefits were part of the policy structure of Asian Paints and these policies
form the foundation to build trust and retain their customers and stakeholders. This will ensure more
buy-in and support. By making the stakeholders a part of sustainability team of Asian Paints, the
stakeholders are assured that they are committed to sustainable development and judicious use of
resources. The company believes in the value of doing more with less i.e. effectively utilising
resources to achieve scalable ambitions. The company has launched an agenda ‘SHIKHAR’ for
inclusive growth. The main objective of this initiative is to form a Structured Annual
Vertical/Horizontal growth plan for all cadres and investing resources in high potential operators and
officers. This plan would ensure effective utilization of resources and since the stakeholders are a
part in designing the growth plan, this would enhance the trust and relationship between the company
and the stakeholders pouring in more resources, investments and support.
Organizing the Growth

Manish Choksi the CIO has been the pillar to all innovation in the company. He steered the company
into digital era, heading IT, Corporate Strategy, Supply Chain, and Strategic Planning. Choksi calls
himself a facilitator of corporate growth in the digital age. Core Values of the company comprising
passion, persuasion, courage of its conviction and the view that legacy is both a challenge and an
opportunity that has enabled Asian paints to push boundaries and chase growth. This made the
company step up its efforts on the digital front when the word had not even entered the corporate
lexicon. Business Policies like Agile business modelling, measured risk taking, customer-driven
product development, and marketing outreach gave the company the ability to respond effectively to
business demands. Translating vision into execution became easy. There are a number of
advancements in the technology side starting with B2C painting services with Ezycolour. The
company harnessed the cloud model to facilitate its business operations, PoCs in emerging
technologies like IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Conversational chat bots, Natural language translation
and 3-D visualization of home décor where proposed. Data mining platform were leveraged to gain
insights into a wide variety of business problems in logistics, people analytics, and material sourcing,
predictive and prescriptive analytics. SAP HANA was introduced for streamlining the company’s
ERP. An ideation software Eureka, Virtual TSO (Territory Sales Officer) App are also some of the
important projects. The company has used the combination of industrialized sensors, automation, and
social media analytics to catalyze both internal operations and customer-driven product development
and marketing outreach. The websites were designed to understand the online behaviour to position
the right content and offers to the consumer in line with their preferences. Automated storage and
retrieval systems, robotic warehousing integrated it with ERP to solve the problems of a bloated
inventory, increased operating expense, supply chain efficiency and factory level losses.

Cash Flow of SAP

Data is the foundation of digital transformation which is being made increasingly easy due to the use
of advanced technology like SAP HANA. Asian Paints has been making investments in this, the
financial implications of which are expected to be quite long standing and huge for the company. 
The total cost of implementing SAP HANA is as follows:
 Component Price (512 GB)
Base Price for Dell R910 Server 202000
16-Drive Chassis 31177
Upgrade to 2x E7-4870 CPU 527641
Upgrade to 4x E7-4870 CPU 687283
Upgrade to 512GB RAM 620324
Upgrade to 3 year Mission Critical Support 124762
Upgrade to 10 300GB SAS Disks 186564
SuSe Enterprise Linux 3 year subscription 465827
High Output PSU 37286
785GB FusionIO ioDrive 779736
iDRAC Enterprise 21750
Grand Total 3684350

The above estimate is the cost for acquiring the tools needed for successful implementation of SAP
HANA across the country for all branches of Asian Paints. The rough estimate is approximately
Rs.3700000. Along with this, the installation of other components like technology supporting this
app and the labour required for its usage will bring the cost to about Rs. 5000000 approximately.

One of the biggest advantages of implementing these solutions was the accurate demand forecasts –
this helped them bring down inventory stock costs and working capital costs. For e.g., white colour
was always in high demand, so these was always kept in stock. The Retails outlets could blend the
whites with other tints to meet the requirements of customers. Warehouses that were situated nearby
used to supply the requested paints within a day. This helped minimize supply chain inefficiencies. It
is estimated that these initiatives gave AP an estimated savings of INR 100 million, 25% of which
came due to reduction in finished goods inventory. So all in all the application of SAP HANA would
provide long lasting benefits as well as financial stability to the company. However it is essential that
the economic conditions remain stable for the company to be able to generate the estimated revenue.
The ongoing pandemic has somewhat distorted these estimates for the company. The scale and extent
of the crisis has made it unlikely for the company to be able to do business for almost a year and its
business thereafter for some time. Keeping these factors in mind the company is still likely to cover
these reduced costs in about 2-3 years.

The Future of Innovation

Key enterprise systems of Asian paints run on the SAP landscape and it was crucial to make this
entire landscape resilient. SAP landscape is tightly integrated with underlying factory automation
and warehouse control systems. Any downtime or data loss would be a huge risk. Looking at options
that would allow us to set up a disaster management plan with a zero data loss. HANA’s native
replication technology paved the way. The first step in transformation to HANA started with BW on
HANA. Moving of all SAP BW applications on SAP HANA which will significant gain in speed and
scalability and in the quantum of data that we could analyze at one time. This can be achieved by
adopting the design thinking methodology with help from SAP. Which will help to understand the
requirements much more deeply. Not everything Asian paints needed would be standard in SAP. So
learning from SAP standards, and build our own UX with SAP’s UI5 technology would help. At the
next phase using SAP IQ software as a near-line storage (NLS) solution. When combined with the
SAP HANA platform, this high-performance columnar database software provides real-time access
to all enterprise data. SAP IQ connects to an NLS feature in SAP BW to unify in-memory and disk-
based column stores. This means Asian Paints can combine the real-time comprehensive analytics of
the SAP HANA platform with historical data that it stores cost-effectively in NLS through SAP IQ.
Asian Paints can connect historical data while running three years of “hot” data on SAP HANA, its
managers have a streamlined analysis experience from both a current and a historical perspective.
Then integrating SAP HANA capabilities around SAP CRM. Asian paints can transform from a
“Product Company” to “Product and Service Company” 360 degree view of the customer
transactions at a click of a button will serve them better with an offer that is unique to them. To
achieve this, Asian paints needed real time offer management capabilities, and SAP HANA can
support that. In the past this offer management process was happening offline via different service
providers. Now Asian Paints is moving to real time offers as their customer management system is
built on SAP HANA, . The solution provided real-time sales data, giving the company valuable
insights into sales patterns during its heavy month-end period. In addition, the company achieves a
compression ratio of almost 6 to 1, reducing the data footprint of one of its largest cubes from 180
GB in the legacy database system to 30 GB in the SAP HANA platform. Plus data extraction
performance improved more than 90% across acquisition, transformation, loading, and reporting.

Dealing With the Risk and Uncertainties

The Company is committed to managing the enterprise using a risk-based approach to appropriately
manage the broad spectrum of risks facing this complex organisation and to ensure achievement of its
strategic, operational, reporting and compliance objectives. When migrating to SAP HANA, a
thorough check of  code-base is needed  to identify troublesome code, including any instances of
code that rely on database-specific features, for example, native SQL statements or the use of DB
hints in Open SQL statements , any instances of code that rely on implicit sorting done by the
database ,any instances of code that relate to cluster or pool tables and any instances of code that
aren’t written using new best-practices for SAP HANA. While some instances of incompatible
custom ABAP code will simply result in significant performance degradation, others will cause fatal
system crashes. So it’s vital to clean up the custom code before migration, a process that’s also
known as a HANA-readiness project.

Information Various IT applications used by the Company are exposed to the internet.
security risk Also, with the new and emerging cyber-attacks and hacking threats, the
information security risk has increased. The Company manages the risk
by identifying possible threats/events that may compromise the
confidentiality, integrity and availability of information and pro-actively
mitigating them. Substantial investments have been made in advanced IT
tools to enhance the information security capabilities. The Company has
also adopted a five-element framework based on data lifecycle. A
complete range of initiatives have been undertaken/identified in all the
elements of this framework.

Currency risk Asian Paints operates in many countries. The Company also has
significant dealings in foreign currency, including import of raw materials
and capital goods. Hence, an adverse and unforeseen fluctuation can
impact its margins and profitability. The Company tries to balance its risk
exposure by closely monitoring it and taking currency hedges whenever
required. However, there is a limitation on the extent of risk mitigation,
especially in case of extremely adverse currency fluctuations

Safety risk Safety is an ever-evolving journey. Asian Paints strives to be at the

forefront of this evolution. It follows a multi-pronged strategy, with
additional emphasis on establishing a culture that promotes sound safety
practices. The Company implements Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) at its
manufacturing facilities. Facilities that have already implemented BBS
are, at present, focusing on enhancing the maturity stage of safety culture.
Manufacturing facilities have adopted Safety Management System (SMS)
based on the leading safety standards. Regular audits are conducted to
assess the on-ground implementation of various processes prescribed by
SMS.
Human capital Human capital risk is a critical risk for any business. It has elements of
risk attraction, retention and engagement of talent; employee relations at
plants/ offices; etc. These areas are being continuously worked upon
 through various initiatives and processes. The Company believes proper
management of human capital is key to achieve the strategic and
operational goals of an organisation.

Customer risk The Company has a rigorous complaint management process in place,
which enables swift and prompt corrective actions to mitigate the risk of
losing connection with customers. Further, the Company implements
several programmes to cement relationships with customers and
influencers through a variety of platforms, including digital

Financial risk The Company's financial liabilities comprise mainly of borrowings, trade
payables and other payables. The Company's financial assets comprise
mainly investments, cash and cash equivalents, other balances with banks,
loans, trade receivables and other receivables. The Company is exposed to
Market risk, Credit risk and Liquidity risk. The Board of Directors
oversee the management of these financial risks through its Risk
Management Committee. The Risk Management Policy of the Company
formulated by the Risk Management Committee and approved by the
Board, states the Company's approach to address uncertainties in its
endeavour to achieve its stated and implicit objectives. It prescribes the
roles and responsibilities of the Company's management, the structure for
managing risks and the framework for risk management. The framework
seeks to identify, assess and mitigate financial risks in order to minimize
potential adverse effects on the Company's financial performance.

What does the future holds for Company

Asian Paints has managed to transform a boring and low-involvement category like paints into a
snazzy and lifestyle-led category. The home-grown company, founded in 1942, has kept itself at the
cusp of technological innovations, futuristic brand building and anticipating consumer needs.
Building on its success at turning the commodity market of paints into an FMCG category, it has
applied the same approach to extend its brand into wall coverings, decor and most recently,
adhesives. The company needs to focus more on the opportunities in the market by enabling IT and
digitalization, so as to become a customer centric organization. So, by keeping IT as a foundational
element, helps to make people efficient, accountable and focused precisely on the customer. For the
full integration of shop floor operations, SAP-ERP systems can be used efficiently.
So as to succeed their goal, the company need to be focusing more on implementing digital
technologies to achieve speed and accuracy in its operations. The company need to make
technological advances from its shop floors to warehouses. The company started by bringing changes
to its Store Concepts - ‘Asian Paints Colour World’. The primary concern with the users who availed
the products was that the colour that was provided on the brochure was not matching with the colour
they obtain in real life. Asian Paints used the 3-D visualization and virtual reality technologies to
provide consumers with an application that renders them instantly, providing a view of what their
home would look like if painted in different colours and finishes. The company pushed their
boundaries and shake up its operations when it sensed that it needed an upgrade, it decided to adopt
the highly scalable in-memory platform and the new S/4 HANA. This was one of the first
implementations of S/4 HANA in India’s manufacturing industry. Can the Company withstand
financial prowess in the ongoing pandemic? Will the new digital age and innovation measure taken
help the company grow?

References:

1. Akanksha Jaiswal, R. P. (2019). Asian Paints: Towards a Lustrous HR Future.

2. Maheshwari, D. S. (2016). A STUDY ON CONSUMER PREFERENCE TOWARDS ASIAN

PAINTS IN VIRUDHUNAGAR.

3. Rushina Singhi, D. K. (2009). Asian Paints:Changing Rules of the Game.

Richard Boardman (2017)- https://www.mareeba.co.uk/blog/2017/11/17-key-roles-in-a-crm-project-team-

%E2%80%93-including-some-you-may-not-have-thought-of.htm

4.
5. Ramesh Nair. (2014). SAP Success Story : Asian Paints : Enabling Real-time Analytics
Former Member - https://blogs.sap.com/2014/05/22/enabling-real-time-analytics-to-drive-
growth-asian-paints-innovates-and-gets-future-ready-with-sap-hana/
6. Sneha Jha - Revealed: How Asian Paints Leveraged Digital Innovations To Become
Customer Centric – Et Cio- https://cio.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/strategy-and-
management/revealed-how-asian-paints-leveraged-digital-innovations-to-become-customer-
centric/60053105
7. Asian Paints – 2018-19 – Annual Report
8. Asian Paints – 2017-18 – Annual Report
9. Webdeveloper – Digital Innovation at Asian Paints (2019).
https://www.icmrindia.org/casestudies/catalogue/Business%20Strategy/BSTR563.htm
 10. Pawan Kumar (2018) - Asian Paints – Leading the Way - https://finception.in/stocks/asian-
paints/index.html

Appendix – Analysing IT impact on Business Model Performance

Business
Best Practices: Processes and Infrastructure Comments
Rating
Streamlined, integrated, best-in-class processes
and infrastructure that:
a. Generate and meet demand 5 Accurate demand forecasts this
helped them bring down
inventory stock costs and
working capital costs
b. Manage supply chain 4
Played an important role in
improving operational
efficiencies and creating agile
procurement, production and
c. Develop and produce products 3 delivery systems.

New products have been

d. Deliver services 5 developed and existing ones
improved

e. Ensure continuous innovation 3 Transformed painting into

service offering toll-free
telephone service and other
consultancy services

Reduction in manufacturing
process cycle time and
advancement in productivity by
different practices

Recognized by customers and other industry Consider zero defect as a quality

participants as a quality leader; able to charge a 5 absolute,
price differential for the quality of products and Continually improve processes
services to understand changing
customer needs and preferences

Best Practices : People and Partners

Recognized leader in attracting and retaining top 4 The leadership competency
talent framework for the organisation
has been fully integrated with
various HR processes.

Recognized leader in rewarding employees and No work life balance and slow
partners, in motivating commitment and loyalty, 2 career growth
and in providing high quality career development

Best Practices : Organization and Culture

The organization is structured to support Based structure involving
processes, develop talent, and reduce barriers to 3 members across cadres
coordinating work and shaping information (including operators) for driving
employee welfare and resolving
grievances.
Authority and accountability for key decisions and Responsibility and
actions is clearly defined and consistent with 3 accountability of each role is
business strategy and goals clearly specified
Information needed to make decisions and take Information pack is handed over
action is readily available and easily accessible, 3 to the new director which
culture fosters information sharing and knowledge Strategy and such other
building operational information.

Best Practices : Leadership and governance

Visionary, yet pragmatic, leadership; experienced The leadership competency
and committed leaders with a demonstrated track framework for the organisation
record of success; leaders are well connected 3 has been fully integrated with
within the industry and community various HR processes.
Sustainability leadership
standards

Strong governance and risk management ensure Governance is built on a

growth while also protecting the rights of foundation of ethical and
stakeholders; shared values and culture guide 4 transparent business operations
decisions and actions and is designed to inspire trust
among all stakeholders,
strengthen the Board and
management accountability.

Key Capability Strengths Key Capability Weakness

 Accurate sales forecast, take corrective actions in  No work life balance and
case of low sales and incentivize the high slow career growth
performing dealers.  Predominantly brick-and-
 Strong Growth: Asian Paints has shown a healthy mortar product manufacturer
growth of around 8 – 12 % in the past 5 financial
years. This has made sure that the company
maintains the top spot as far as market share is
concerned. It is double the size of any other paint
company in India.
 Brand Value: Asian Paints was ranked 20th in the
Top 20 best brands in Interbrand report by
Economic Times. It also featured in the Top 20
World’s Most Innovative companies.
 The supply chain of Asian paints runs across
functions ranging from material planning to
procurement to distribution (primary). It has
played an important role in improving operational
 efficiencies and creating agile procurement,
production and delivery systems.
Role of IT in developing Strengths Role of IT in reducing weakness
 At Asian paints, IT drives cutting edge technology  Transformed into an agile
solutions to bring a competitive edge to the and adaptive enterprise that
business. Experts in developing in-house provides value-add services
applications to enable sales, manufacturing, in addition to products
planning, distribution, materials, accounts and
research and technology.  Extending home décor
umbrella to include kitchen
 Implemented large scale integrated enterprise and bath spaces. This
systems, applications and technology platforms. required us to make a few
acquisitions and to extend
 IT was created with an intention to help the enterprise in newly
company in demand forecasting, deriving optimal collaborative ways. This
plant, some depot and SKU combinations, was a significant shift
reduction in procurement costs, streamlining involving cultural change
vendor relationships etc. and new IT systems. 

 One of the biggest advantages of implementing

these solutions was the accurate demand forecasts
– this helped them bring down inventory stock
costs and working capital costs

 Using data to add intelligence to a complex supply

chain

 Toll-free telephone service for customers to

request home painting. They also began offering
consultancy services.

Appendix: SWOT Analysis of Asian Paints

Strength Weakness
 Strong Growth  Low market share in Industrial
Strategic Audit

 Strong global presence and Auto Paint.

 Wide range of products  Slow International Business
 Brand Value
 Strong Supply Chain Management
Opportunities Threats
Capability Audit

 Growth in Industrial sector  Threat of slowdown

 Growing Indian economy  Unorganized sector
 Emerging nations  Scarcity of raw materials
 Adapting to customer psyche
Questions:

1. What kinds of quality policies should Asian paints take while considering the production of
paints?

2. How well were their websites revamped during their digital transformation?

3. State the initiatives taken by Asian Paints to become customer centric.

4. Given the economic slowdown to follow, how should Asian Paints strategize to steady the
ship in this hard times? Justify your answer.

5. How can we analyse the first user advantage Asian paints obtained over using SAP CRM in
India?

Answers:

1. Control the wastage of material during the manufacturing process, control the wastage of
human resources through proper planning to maintain the proper level of quality, to create a
good knowledge bank by organizing the training and development program.

2. All key websites of Asian Paints, www.asianpaints.com, www.sleekworld.com,

www.beautifulhomes.com and the websites of international units have been significantly
revamped. By leveraging advanced web analytics and personalisation technology, these
websites understand the online behaviour to position the right content and offers to the
consumer in line with their preferences. The degree to which different landing pages are
associated with online purchases, performance of the website in a commercial context were
all analysed. The data is typically compared against key performance indicators for
performance.

3. Asian Paints has launched a supplier portal that includes an automated digital document
exchange facility that will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of interaction with
suppliers. An employee portal has also been set up. Customer Relations Management (CRM)
tools are being used in Asian Paints Helpline and Home Solutions initiatives. The successful
deployment of ERP, CRM, Business Intelligence and Portal software from leading solution
 providers and integrated SCM systems has helped improve efficiency in the business as well
as increase the transparency and accuracy of information across the company.

4. The ongoing pandemic worldwide has shut majority of the countries to shut down their day to
day life activities, which would cause an economic slowdown inevitable. Asian Paints should
anticipate the upcoming crisis and plan in such a way that they should do the works on a
credit basis and collect the money at a later point. Rebuild India with the contracts with
several institutions and help them get back on track. This way, the hesitation of clients to not
put the money will be solved and Asian Paints could achieve their sales to an extent than
being out of sales.

5. Aided by a direct pipeline to SAP Labs in Mumbai Singapore, and Germany, Asian Paints
was able to tap into a responsive network of development experts. If a glitch arose within the
Asian Paints IT landscape, SAP developers would test and resolve the problem using similar
implementations running at their labs.

As the first company in India to use the new version of SAP CRM, Asian Paints took full
advantage of the SAP Ramp-Up program, which provides direct links to the SAP
development organization. With expedited treatment of error messages, early training of key
users. Ramp-up coaching, and other services, the program helps early adopters reduce the cost
time, and risk of implementation.