Since 1989, India has been on a reform agenda, opening its economy and dismantling the license Raj that had shackled the country since Independence in 1947. And as the country found its economic rhythm, a curious thing happened – consumers began demanding more not only from their government and their commercial providers (i.e. the mobile phone company, the cable TV guy) but more recently, from their spiritual providers as well.

In India, a nation of over 1 Billion people where the vast majority is Hindu, there are thousands if not millions of temples.  If I were to grossly generalize, those temples fall into 2 main categories i.e. the local and the nirvana-worthy. The first kind is the neighborhood temple where one goes to actually do the praying and the seeking, the place where the priest knows you and your family and where your kids get their first taste of the holy “prasadam” (offering). The other is the gilded monument on top of the hill, typically an edifice of epic proportions seeped in history, mythology, and popular lore; these are the temples that one makes pilgrimages to, typically once in a lifetime journeys not unlike the Hajj or the El Camino de Santiago. Until now, such trips came with mixed emotions – while the road trip to get to the temple was quite memorable, the actual visit to the temple itself tended to be much less so. Between the questionable hygiene, the crushing throngs and endless badgering by touts, the logistical hassles alone were enough to turn a devotee into a confirmed atheist. And so it continued for centuries… until globalization stopped by, and forward thinking temple trustees saw the genius in blending Dharma & Karma with the power of German engineering to radically improve the “customer experience”.

Photo: mckaysavage/Flickr (Creative Commons)

ERP, coming soon to an ancient Hindu temple near you

One of the more revered temples in western India is the temple of Sai Baba, formally known as Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust at Shirdi in Maharashtra. The temple gets about 40,000 visitors every day and provides the usual roster of hospitality, food & beverage, and various other religious services, in addition to running charitable educational and health services. The devotees come seeking their own personal miracles and salvations for whatever it is that ails them, but for the business folks running the place, that meant dealing with hundreds of thousands of transactions daily, and managing several thousand vendors. Which despite all the divine help they had access to, was an utter nightmare. So rather than do more praying, they did what most self-respecting businesses are doing these days on the Indian sub-continent…they commissioned an SAP ERP implementation, and US$5 Million later, a data center is going live this month on the premises of a temple that was built in 1922 to commemorate a 19th century incarnation of Lord Shiva. And while I have not visited that particular temple or its data-center, I can guarantee you that there will be vermillion-streaks, incense and marigold offerings in the server room itself. Welcome to globalization, India-style!

Amongst the more technology-savvy temples is the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTD) which runs the richest and most visited temple in all of India.  The main Tirupati temple receives about 100,000 visitors a day, compared to the 40,000 daily that visit Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. With annual revenues estimated to be in the US$400-$500 Million range and employing over 14,000 employees, the Trust is more like a modern day corporation and less like an old-fashioned temple. In late 2009, it announced a pact with the State Bank of India whereby it deposited over 1 metric ton of gold in the bank’s vaults and acknowledged almost 2 metric tons being held in deposit with other banks. At the current price of about US$1300 per gram, the gold alone accounts for almost US$4 Billion in assets. Not bad for an entity that provides spiritual succor to the masses and by archaeological estimates has been around since 300AD!

The temple has invested in a biometric system that allows devotees to make advance reservations for paying their respects to Sri Venkateswara, the reigning deity of that temple. No longer do visitors have to shuffle along in a queue for as much as 10-24 hours, instead they can now do it in a sprightly 60-90 minutes. And they have purchased high speed automatic machines made by BOSCH to make “laddus”, the sweet “prasadam” of choice at Tirupati (the “laddus” incidentally have the Geographic Indication mark of protection under the Indian patent regime, much like Darjeeling Tea and analogous to similar protections being afforded to Champagne and Tequila). And to manage its vast operational empire (which includes food & beverage, lodging, charitable foundation activity, a hair tonsuring business, among many others), the temple Trust has a long-standing relationship with IT majors HCL-Axon and TCS who provide the technology to power the complex business. In 2010, they have also engaged with Ernst & Young to assess its needs and manage the RFP process to upgrade to an industrial-strength ERP like SAP, expected to commence in Q1 2011.

The website of TTD proudly lists its key objective as being “to make their pilgrimage a unique and rewarding spiritual experience”. You know a country is really on the move when the oldest and the most conservative community institutions, which have been around for millennia, start deploying modern technology to start servicing the spiritual needs of their constituents.  With the number of temples in India, I wonder if it might be a good idea for SAP to create a separate best-practices package to target this significant market niche.

 

Photo:  mckaysavage/Flickr (Creative Commons)