India’s Council of Agricultural Research has made the jump from paper-based processes to an Oracle-on-Power ERP system supporting well over 100 sites.

The ambitious project is something of a coup for IBM’s Global Business Services division. Partly funded by the World Bank, it is one of the first national ERP implementations by central government in India, according to a report from Big Blue.

Global Business Services installed two AIX-driven Power 750s to support Oracle databases with two Power 740s as application servers running Oracle E-Business Suite 12.

The state-run Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is one of the largest of its kind in the world with 110 institutes and 65 universities. Over half of the country’s population relies on agriculture to make a living.

After an initial roll out to six large institutes, plus its headquarters in New Delhi, ICAR went for 14 medium-sized sites and then began to roll out the rest in June, 2014.

Sh Devendra Kumar, director of finance at ICAR, says that the objective was to implement a robust and flexible management information system with strong financials that could handle project and materials management, human resources and payroll.

He says: “It is still early days in our journey with Oracle and IBM, and we have high hopes for the future. By helping drive greater transparency into our operations and bringing our processes, staff and partners closer together, this MIS and FMS system will transform the way we work at ICAR.”