Writing a tight spec sheet is a pretty good start to completing an outsourcing project successfully,” says Paul Ratnaraj, CIO of the $4.8 billion Pew Charitable Trust, based in Philadelphia. “If a client expects the vendor to do all the homework, there are good chances of the project failing.” Ratnaraj has been the CIO at Pew since 2000. In an organization where IT and administration budgets are not even sufficient, he has managed to execute some landmark projects very successfully. “Every dollar that can be saved will go towards our grants,” he says. “IT has got us some excellent savings in time and resources.”

Paul Ratnaraj brings over 25 years of experience in the IT space, having worked in India, the Middle East and Europe before moving to the U.S. Prior to his current role at the Trusts, Ratnaraj served as the Director of Computing and Data Services at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In his stint here, the Trusts’ CIO won a U.S. patent for the usability he built around the Wharton Research Data Services (WRDS), the school’s Web-based collection of 100 finance and accounting databases and statistical analysis tools. More than six dozen business schools around the world, including Wharton’s top competitors, buy access to WRDS (pronounced “words”) for $30,000 a year. The maintenance of the database and support systems fell to Ratnaraj, who couldn’t help noticing faculty and students toil to write their own programs to search and use the databases. “It wasn’t their job to write code,” recalls he. “And they drained our staff resources in seeking help.” Ratnaraj’s pitch to help reconfigure the system, build easy-to-use search functions and screens won the nod. What he built garnered immediate interest at other schools, and Wharton realized that it was on to a big thing. Eventually, the then-director built out the database as a full business, charging universities access fee and delivering superior service and functionalities.

“The philosophy at the Trust is to look at every project holistically,” says the CIO. “IT is no different.” With very sensitive budgeting, the IT projects are finely examined for the best ROI they can deliver. “One such project we have executed is our enterprise-wide implementation of the grant process,” reveals Ratnaraj. The Trust works very closely with the grantees, assessing project goals, fund spends, project management and results and so on. In this period, the extensive interactions produced reams of paperwork requiring hard-to-find manual labor to manage the process. Ratnaraj’s IT team heaved the system on to an online, web-based portal, where the grantees could upload deliverables in seconds and progress to the next stage. EasyLink, the online Pew Trust system, was built entirely in-house. “When we began this project three-and-a half years ago, the cost of outsourcing would have taken an arm and a leg,” laughs the CIO. The compelling conviction that the web-based transaction would make the entire system more productive won Ratnaraj well-justified dollars.

The CIO cannot emphasize enough the importance of including the users of the product in the design process. “The IT team can code, but the users need to define the end results of the product,” says Ratnaraj. Throughout the EasyLink design, he ensured that the IT team met the user groups at frequent intervals and refined the design from feedback. “When you don’t have the luxury of funding a redesign, you better make sure your customers buy into your product from the beginning.” Further, the team had to ensure that all desktops within and outside the Trust were capable of accessing and using the system, without glitches.

FutureView has been another success for Ratnaraj at Pew Trusts. “Grantees need to understand the importance of managing their funds—both in the short and long term,” observes Ratnaraj. FutureView was designed to help the grantees understand the fund positions and appreciate the process of fund management. Ratnaraj has since also attacked the Trusts’ Intranet. “When I joined, the Intranet was just a bunch of static pages. I saw the potential to deliver more services through the Intranet to all the employees,” recollects Ratnaraj. From his experience in managing the Wharton systems, the CIO mapped the logical “what next” of the Intranet and came up with the concept of leveraging it to be an internal workflow system. “Today, when a grantee sends material to the Trusts’ officer, the receiver will be able to see it as a workable document in the email and can use the Intranet to enable tasks or actions on the document, which is then shared by other officers concerned,” says the CIO. The Pew Trusts’ Intranet is about 70 percent complete in its workflow enabling capabilities.

Even as the Trusts went web-based, how does the enterprise manage the vast banks of dormant knowledge? “Our ideal platform is to reduce the degrees of seperation between the person who creates the information and its receivers,” observes Ratnaraj. “Retriever” is one of the packaged tools that the CIO has implemented Trust-wide, building on its capabilities with some judicious inhouse coding.

Pew Trusts has had its share of outsourcing some projects, though the CIO hesitates to reveal the nature of the projects. But he is very pleased with the experience, he says. “We examine our briefs at the granular level and are very specific in what we need,” says Ratnaraj. “We are very sure of what we want from the vendor, which is key in the outsourcing experience.” Many projects, he opines, could have failed because the client may have been vague about the final outcome of the project, leading to scope-creep and miscommunication. “I don’t demand a tome, but a 5-line email on the status of the project is more than sufficient to keep it on track.” Paul Ratnaraj sees the IT landscape changing to cope with increasing knowledge management needs. “We are still struggling to use knowledge effectively. Entrepreneurs should watch this space.”