IIMs to increase IT investments to reduce costs

Kolkata: To return books in the library, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow (IIM-L) is planning to implement radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to enable users to 'self-check and self-issue' documents at any time of the day as well as return items without library staff assistance. "The hardware for the same is already in place," said IIM-L Spokesperson.

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IIM-L is just a case in point. All the IIMs are increasing their IT investments to manage the increasing number of students and bring down the overall costs of operations. Among other initiatives, for instance, IIM-L has used a green stone digital library (GSDL) system to convert its in-house publication in digitized format. The GSDL is developed by the University of Waikato, New Zealand and distributed as open source by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

"We have already implemented a campus wide area network and some of the new hostels are wi-fi enabled. Also, enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is under progress," said Murali A, who looks after IT deployments at IIM-L.

The solutions are expected to help IIM-L to meet deadlines more effectively and improve employee skills and productivity, as well as bring down the cost of operations. Team Synapse, IIM-L's student-run IT body, develops and maintains various applications for the institute community right from pre-admission mentoring stage to placements and beyond.

Its 'Ignicion' initiative has helped to mentor over 2,000 IIM-L aspirants this year through group discussions and personal interviews by preparing them to clear the last hurdle for admissions. Learning and content management systems such as 'Claroline' and 'Joomla' are used to manage online courses at its Lucknow and Noida campuses, and on the student intranet portals respectively. IIM-L's in-house developed placement portal also helps students and recruiters by automating and streamlining the placement process.

At IIM Calcutta (IIM-C), some of the processes of the post-graduate programme (PGP) office have been automated through custom-made software by HCL Technologies. A web-based application on JSP platform with an Oracle backend, the software is called 'academic management system' and is being used to automate three processes - attendance, grade submission and feedback submission. IIM-C spent close to 90-95 lakh for the software from HCL.

The key objective of the entire IT implementation was to reduce clerical work in the office, reduce costs and speed up operations. Also, given the fact that the PGP office is understaffed and student strength is increasing all the time at IIM-C, this software had become a necessity.

"The PGP office records attendance of each student at each lecture. The software helps compile this raw data at the end of each term. It also helps to identify which students are missing the mandatory attendance requirement and how much penalty is to be imposed. Earlier, this compilation was done manually," said Rahul Dasgupta, Head of IIM-C's Internet Solutions Group.

IIM-Bangalore (IIM-B), on its part, is investing in implementing open source software to help with grading, assignment submission, and dissemination of course content, among others. IIM-B is also investing in virtualization of the university and upgrade it from its existing VMware platform.

IIM Kozhikode (IIM-K), on the other hand, is conducting research on the possibility of implementing a content delivery network (CDN) system in its laboratories to make efficient use of the existing network bandwidth.

"The institute uses a base budget of 70-80 lakh. The purchase, use and renewal of proprietary software require additional costs. The remaining budget is mainly used for the purchase of IT infrastructure equipment like network components and laboratory PCs," said Ranjit Radhakrishnan, IT Representative at IIM-K.