RAILWAYS TO ROLL OUT WORLD'S BIGGEST ERP PROJECT BY AUG

Surabhi, New Delhi
The Financial Express

Indian Railways is gearing up to roll out its ambitious enterprise resource planning (ERP) programme by August this year, which would cover all its 25 lakh past and present employees and is being touted as the biggest such exercise in the world.

“We have about 14 lakh serving workers and another 11 lakh pensioners who would be covered under the programme, making it even bigger than the ERP programme of the US Army which has about 23 lakh employees,” a railway official said.

The ERP programme is aimed at efficient management of its huge human resources and aims to integrate all of the railways’ entire freight, passenger and administrative operations across the country.

The ministry is finalising the tender for selecting the systems provider and the project implementer and is hopeful inviting bids for the contract within the next three months. “We expect that the software provider and the developer will bid together in a combination,’’ the official said. The railway ministry run CRIS has been made responsible for the overall execution of the project.

After finalising the contract by end 2008, the railways plans to hold a one-year long pilot run of the ERP project most probably on the Western railways zone, which has about 1.4 lakh employees. The entire ERP programme would then be rolled out in all the 16 railway zones over the next two to three years. The programme will be implemented on an all India basis by the end of the 11th Five Year Plan.

While the railways has been sanctioned Rs 10 lakh for the project, it has decided to implement it through the build-operate-own-transfer (BOOT) model, which will allow it not to make any heavy investments upfront. The private developer will cough up the bulk of the investment, estimated at about Rs 400 crore. It will also provide the hardware and the software required for the ERP programme over the next seven years. The railways will then compensate the developer on a per employee per month basis, the official said.

“After our financial success, we need to bring about certain strategic and administrative changes, which would help us sustain this turnaround, and the ERP project is a significant part of this,” the official said. It will provide greater transparency and improve the productivity of workers, he added.

The ERP programme is expected to have a special component on online learning and will identify railway staff that have not received specific training and will arrange it for them.