SSGC is probably unlike any Government organization you will come across. They have systems in place that help manage the millions of customers better and faster. The Rs.10 billion company also has a brilliant Chief Innovation Technology Officer named Irfan Zafar, who inspires and manages a team of people who are aligned with the vision of the organization. Here’s what Irfan Zafar had to share with us regarding the organization, innovation, team building and progressing a company towards excellence.
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- Posted on 02.17.10
- CIO Drawing Room, Featured
(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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28 Responses to “Inspiring Organizational Innovation: Irfan Zafar, SSGC”
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[...] Click here for a great interview of Mr. Irfan Zafar, CTIO, SSGC. [...]
It is a privilege to have the opportunity to work in core ERP implementation with Mr. Irfan Zafar and his team at such early stage of my career.
Composed and persistently excited, nothing has changed since the time i took your interview, same motivation and vision; well, just time as changed:)
i have visited to this site and found to get the latest up date which is very impressive.
Thank you very much for the kind words. The concept proposed by you seems to very interesting and hitting the nail on its head. Please contact me when you are back in Pakistan or otherwise also as the email is always an option. I can be contacted on irfan.zafar@ssgc.com.pk and SSGC would be very interested in exploring what you have to offer. We have our own ESRI products base GIS and maps of our entire franchise area. Please do contact me.
Irfan sahab? Seems like an interesting concept.. Would be great to share your thoughts and see how workable this is?
Amazing interview and I must say we are proud to have people like Mr.Irfan Zafar serving the people of Pakistan. I have had some experience of interaction with SSGC but not to much success. However, I do admit that SSGC is far better than other govt or semi-govt organizations operating in Pakistan.
After completing education in Canada, I returned to Pakistan 2 years ago and started the indenting business. Since SSGC is on the up and we hope it further reaches the sky, I thought of introducing a new technology of GPR SYSTEM (Ground Penetrating Radar). It is an amazing innovation, which can be used efficiently and effectively by SSGC for the following applications:
1. Control Gas Theft
2. Locate Under Ground Utility
3. Mapping of Under Ground Utility
4. Etc
After researching extensively on GPR, my interest in the equipment got deeper and I decided to fly to USA to attend a training session of GPR System, and now I am amongst only a few certified people of GPR System in Pakistan.
I thought this forum was nicely suited to share our ideas which will be beneficial to the department as well as the end user.
Once again great work Mr.Zafar. Best of Luck.
@Irfan Zafar, This is great! I was quite surprised when Sheikh Raza’s comment came in… Wonderful to know that the outreach of Pakistani companies is so great!
Sheikh Raza I did not know that you also subscribed to this site. For those who do not know Sheikh, he comes from a company called ATI from BD. We have partnered with them to implement their state-of-the-art Hospital Management System at Dr. Zia Ud Din Hospital. Our vision is to make their product a standard for the healthcare industry in Pakistan. We have already proposed it at a few hospitals other than DZH. This is another initiative from SSGC as we provide consulting services to a wide range of industries as we have professionals on our team that compliment that.
It was a very very enlightening interview, learnt a lot about SSGC’s vision. I had been to SSGC couple of times, courtesy Irfan Zafar, and found SSGC to be state of art technology bound, highly impressive, sophisticated organization. Unlike traditional semi-autonomous government organization, found in this part of the world. My hats off to the Board and top Management of SSGC, whom I find to be extremely visionary fearless industry leaders. It takes guts to approve technology plans in order to encourage people like Mr. Zuhair, Irfan and the dynamic IT team members of all strata of SSGC to transform into reality.
All the best in all future technology projects
Regards
Reza, Bangladesh
Given the power and fuel situation in the country the demand for natural gas is increasing by the hour. This is directly proportional to the misuse and theft of this very scarce and important national asset. Yes, there are many household without gas but they are mostly in rural, far flung areas where either the terrain is unfriendly or the population is very small and the per household cost of providing the gas is extremely high and unjustifiable. However, we are adding approx. 100,000 customers every year to our network.
Our contact centre is in-house but the agents are on contract basis. SSGC manages its facility 100%. It is very impressive and you are more than welcome to visit it. In fact we can also show you our bill printing facility as well.
The demand for natural gas is increasing by the hour given the power and fuel situation in the country. This is directly proportional to the misuse and theft of this very scarce and important national asset. Yes, there are many household without gas but they are mostly in rural, far flung areas where either the terrain is unfriendly or the population is very small and the per household cost of providing the gas is extremely high and unjustifiable. However, we are adding approx. 100,000 customers every year to our network.
The whole idea of having technology enablement is to close the loop around culprits: both external and internal. However, we did not start with that objective otherwise the resistance would have been unmanageable
Great interview!
Thanks for highlighting the brighter side of SSGC. I believe SSGC is moving in right direction.
Can any one share more information about SSGC contact center 1199? Is it in-house or outsourced?
Regards,
Zee Waqar
Great interview! THank you CIO for sharing stuff that is actually relevant!
Irfan. Congratultions to you and your team for the hard work. But what with all the leanings towards Alternative Electricity Generation and Distribution, do you see the demand of Natural Gas as much as it is now?
And even though it perhaps isn’t your area of expertise I want to put the question out there anyway. If SSGC services 2 million households, aren’t there a lot more households that don’t have a basic utility such as gas as yet? What’s the vision to actually make the utility widely available?
On another note, I have experienced the efficiency of your support teams. Great work!
@rabia garib Of course that’s true. It is silly to think that IT can solve ALL problems created by humans. But it would make a serious business case to quantify exactly how much automation has helped curtail the “leaks”. After all, Isn’t the accountability and ownership one of the biggest hinderances to widespread adoption of IT around the globe?
@Irfan Zafar, Thanks irfan. The volume and size of your business is obviously impressive, and I think that would prove valuable to a company like Oracle.
I am also curious what impact, if any, the last year’s economic instability in the region and country have had on IT spending?
@Irfan Zafar, Yes… And I think that’s why I found the online meters, for example, so interesting. It adds accountability to a complete process which is meant to be delivered efficiently to the consumers.
I can reached on +92 322 222 5000 effective Friday the 19th just in case someone wanted to contact
Technology in SSGC is very new. Whatever we have done and are doing is since 2003. We have already scrapped one implementation of Oracle because it was not done right and very successfully implemented it again. The company has been very proactive when it comes to technology in the operations. Technology is being widely used by the operations and it is for this reason also that our customers are very happy with SSGC and we stand out in the utility industry as leaders in customer service.
Technology is not at responsible for the natural gas crisis in the country. It is misuse and theft of this fast depleting natural resource. In fact, technology is being used very aggressively to combat this crisis. Loop is being tightened around unaccounted for losses. Technology is being effectively deployed to measure and manage. Our management and the Board of Directors are pro technology and very much focused on using it to combat the menace of unaccounted for losses ( UFG ).
Thank you very much for the appreciation. Every penny that we have spent has been thru the teeth and justified. The benefits the company has reaped are both tangible and intangible. Maybe you should come over some day to our office to see what we have and how it is deployed and we can discuss the budget figures then. We can also discuss our portfolio of application then as well.
Dear Kamran Hanif
Oracle has promoted our case study on several international forums. SSGC is Oracle’s reference site for utilities world-wide. We have also presented ourselves at conferences. However, we look forward to interacting with the organization you know to benefit each other. And thanks for your feedback, it is very encouraging
Good show here. I’m wondering if Oracle has promoted your case study amongst any channels or avenues beyond posting it up on their website. Fore xample, I know a number of organizations in the Far East who would only benefit from learning from the experience of your deployments. To your knowledge, has any effort been made to do more than just a case study? how about any matchmaking or reference cites? or do multinational companeis not do that for Pakistani success stories?
Just curious.
How much, if any, is technology responsible for the Natural gas crisis Pakistan is facing? Purely from a technology perspective, do you think there is any way to make distribution more efficient to relieve the per-person load on natural gas?
Very impressive accomplishements, Irfan! Thank you for sharing
I knew SSGC was big but had no idea your worth was so much! If you could turn back and redo one decision in the company’s operations with respect to technology, what would it be?
Congratulations on your progress and achievements!!
Great interview Irfan! I was wondering what SSGC’s budgets have been like over the past 3 years. With so much automation being planned for the longterm and all of it being driven by departments other than IT, have there been budgetary constraints? You didn’t mention any, hence I thought I’d ask.
Thnaks for the showcase!