Spices and Sugar Ltd (SSL) is a fast-growing snacks and savouries company in India. Its current business is spread out in a large city and surrounding areas. SSL was started by its original founders fifty years ago as a small shop which became highly popular thanks to their unique recipes. Over the years the business has grown organically based on word-of-mouth publicity. Currently they have multiple shops around the city, and they also sell thru independent shops. The independent shops are being serviced thru a distributor. Some IT systems were developed or purchased to manage sales, finance and accounts. The management has now decided to expand the business in an aggressive way. They plan aggressive marketing and expansion of business in multiple cities thru own shops and independent stores. They plan to set up an efficient sales channel to support their sales staff across India. The company plans to announce discount sale events during major festivals. They plan to introduce an online sale channel. The plan to grow revenues at 20% per year while retaining the profitability at 20% profit after tax. In line with expansion goals, they plan to modernize their production process by automating manufacturing using modern machines. Given the breadth of products they will need to import multiple production machines as well as testing and packaging machines which will be a big capital investment for the company. Once installed, the machines need to work non-stop as any issues on the production floor will translate into delayed shipments and loss of revenue and reputation. Expanded production and automation will mean that SSL needs to establish seamless supply chain covering raw material acquisition as well as ensuring responsive distribution system. They want to reduce production cost by 20% and ensure zero down time of the machines. While creating the expansion plans, SSL appointed the current deputy head of sales, Ms ABC, as the CIO for a period of 3 years. The new CIO was involved in development of strategy and high-level plans described above. The new CIO was given a specific mandate to design and install new IT for SSL in a period of 3 years after which Ms ABC would be promoted as the COO and a new CIO would be found.

1. Why did SSL appoint current deputy head of sales as CIO for a fixed period with a promise of promotion?

2. In order to support the expansion plan, the CIO has following options for implementing enterprise systems:  Acquire a best practice based ERP and implement it with appropriate customizations  Develop the software completely from scratch specially for SSL Which option should the CIO chose and why?

3. The senior management of SSL would want to know how the company is progressing and decide whether any changes are needed. Suggest parameters which should be reported to the senior managers to let them know whether the strategy is being met or not.