Industry innovators have one thing in common: they recognize that critical business data is an asset. They use technology and business processes to provide critical business information—customer, product, partner and financial data—at the right time, to the right people, across the whole enterprise.

Data is a critical business asset. It is the life blood of our organization. Physical assets – equipment, land, and inventory – used to determine the value of an organization. Now, as we have entered the information age, most organizations realize that their data is also a critical asset. Armed with data that is timely, data that they can trust, organizations can rapidly uncover new markets, attract and retain valuable customers, eliminate costly operational errors and delays, deliver products faster and make smarter business decisions. In short, they can consistently outperform their competitors.

However, to achieve these benefits, enterprises must set themselves up to make sure they are managing and using their data in an optimal way for how they run their business. This can be a daunting, if not overwhelming, endeavor. Think about the fact that it can take weeks for IT to respond to a business request for a simple data extract out of system. And it can take months or years to get just two applications – for example, the order management system and the billing system – sharing data effectively. Or the business may spend weeks cleaning a data set, only to have corrupted all over again as new data enters the system.

Understanding this criticality, Computer Society of India (Mumbai Chapter) along with Informatica organized a CIO Club meet on “Informatica Platform Advancements” on 10th June ‘10 at Intercontinental Marine Drive in Mumbai. The objective of the meet was to create awareness about the criticality of trustworthy data & its timely availability for effective implementation. The Program was attended by about 100 IT heads/CIOs

The meet started with Dr. Vishnu Kanhere, Chairman, CSI Mumbai Chapter, welcoming the delegates. The introduction was given by Mr. M D Agrawal, Vice President, CSI. Ms.Suganthi Shivkumar, M.D., Informatica, gave an overview about the organization and its products & services. Key Note address was given by Mr. Girish Pancha, Executive Vice President, Informatica, who gave an insight on various data integration issues. He emphasized that technology differentiation was valuable for customers. Enterprise today was more data driven and based on Timely, Trusted, Relevant data. Today data has no value if not delivered when required. The crowd was also introduced to Informatica products which were easy to deploy, extremely robust and scalable.

Mr. Maulik Desai, Sr. Manager – System Development, Asian Paints shared the success story on “Informatica Paints a Colorful Picture at Asian Paints”. It was quite an interactive session where Maulik described how they managed 4000 + sku’s data and how Informatica has helped them manage this data.

Equally insightful and energizing were the panelist for that evening. The panel had a very engrossing & informative discussion on “A Strategic Approach towards Achieving Trusted Data for Your Enterprise”. The session was chaired by Mr. Ravi Eppaturi, Associate Vice President, TCS and Vice Chairman Elect, CSI Mumbai Chapter. The eminent panelist were Mr. Munish Mittal, VP, IT, HDFC bank, Ms. Chhaya Pisupati, Senior VP & Head, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co. Ltd., Mr. Manoj Chandiramani, Ex CIO, MF Global & Mr. Sanjeev Kumar, VP & MD, R&D, Informatica.

The attendees expressed their satisfaction about the valuable thoughts shared by the panelists. The CIO meet ended on a high note with networking cocktail & dinner.