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Nivedita Mookerji
It's not just businesses that are racing for the best technology. Even the premier business schools are spending like never before on IT. Mumbai's S P Jain Institute of Management & Research (SPJIMR), one of the top 10 B-schools in India, belongs to the highest bracket of spenders on IT. The institute recently upgraded its IT facilities, which is seen as a crucial step towards influencing management practices. Says A K Sengupta, director, SPJIMR: ``Over the past few years, the institute has been consolidating its existing infrastructure and the key area of focus has been its computer facilities.''
According to him, SPJIMR is the only reputed management institute in India with a 2:1 student-computer ratio.
A recent study conducted by BusinessWorld mentions SPJIMR's IT spend per student to be Rs 2.6 lakh. Compare that with the per student IT spend of other premier B-schools in India. Bajaj (Mumbai) spends 0.1 lakh per student on IT; Faculty of Management Studies (Delhi), Rs 1 lakh; Indian Institute ofManagement-Ahmedabad, Rs 1.1 lakh; Indian Institute of Management-Bangalore, Rs 1.6 lakh; Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, Rs 1.9 lakh; Indian Institute of Management-Lucknow, Rs 1 lakh; Management Development Institute-Gurgaon, Rs 2 lakh; Narsee Monjee Institute (Mumbai), Rs 0.9 lakh and XLRI (Jamshedpur), Rs 2.3 lakh.
The increasing annual IT budget of SPIJMR also reflects the inclination of the institute to go for the best technology. Sengupta says that in 1997-98, the IT budget of the institute was Rs 60 lakh. In 1998-99, it grew to Rs 88 lakh. For 1999-2000, it been increased to Rs 90 lakh.
The high IT spend has enabled the institute to obtain cutting edge technology. For instance, increasing investment in technology has resulted in the introduction of several new courses like Baan ERP, Data Warehousing, says Sengupta. He adds: ``We also believe that this has exposed our faculty and students to a variety of new experiences and sources of information.'' And the role of SPIJMR dean M L Shrikantis integral to the endeavour of the institute to do better than others in the field of IT.
Elaborating on the IT initiatives undertaken by the institute in the past couple of years, Sengupta says that in March 1998, SPJIMR started the ERP course with Baan. Then in August 1999, it began the Data Warehousing course for the regular batch. In preparation for this, the faculty trained at the SAS Institute, Mumbai. Also, a few months ago, the institute launched its Website-www.spjimr.org. Among other initiatives, the data communication set-up is being strengthened and a number of software packages such as Crystal Ball & Decision Tools Suite, Tally, Oracle 8, and the entire Visual Studio have been purchased recently.
From the present to the future, Sengupta talks about the things to come. He says: ``We are planning to start a course on e-commerce by December 1999.'' For that, a few members of the SPJIMR faculty are already attending training courses at IBM Bangalore. The institute also plans to start Web-basedlearning courses at the earliest and progress has been made towards this end. Also on the agenda are a powerful Intranet system; a CD library with a CD server at the computer centre; video conferencing facilities; computerisation of the library and project management tools.
And as Sengupta puts it, SPJIMR is continously looking to upgrade and improve its infrastructure in its efforts to facilitate a qualitative learning process. This process, says Sengupta, is focussed on inculcating a sensitivity to real world issues and creating true leaders of tomorrow.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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