Home Just In Ketan Karkhanis, Head – IT, Clariant in India

Ketan Karkhanis, Head – IT, Clariant in India

by CIO AXIS

Ketan Karkhanis possesses over 17 years of experience in IT operations and is currently the Head of Information Technology at Clariant in India.

Prior to Clariant he was associated with at Kale Consultants Ltd, Mumbai.

Since joining Clariant Chemicals, Ketan has managed overall IT infrastructure management including networks, systems, security, IT audits as well IT financials

Ketan has launched training programs, spearheaded new technology and process initiatives, overseen key project implementations and worked closely with IT teams in APAC as well as Global.

Ketan has completed his MBA from the Indo German Training Center (IGTC) and is a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E) in Electronics from D.Y. Patil College of Engineering, Pune.

Ketan Karkhanis on Key challenges faced by IT Leadership team in the Covid-19 situation

  • Most of the companies adapted a big bang approach and asked their employees to work from home. This was one of the big challenges for IT Infra team to enable remote workspace for all of their users. The challenges included ensuring adequate VPN licensing, having sufficient laptops systems in stock, getting some systems on board quickly, shifting some desktops, printers etc to users home etc.
  • IT service desk SOPs needed to be tweaked so that end users can easily get in touch with IT team for quick support
  • The OEM support mechanism was completely stopped for few months. But IT team had to manage the show with inhouse expertise and supporting the users with whatever tools they had.
  • The economic situation required a diligent CAPEX spend. Quite a few projects had to undergo a cost avoidance mode for few months which resulted in change of plans, change in vendor orders etc.
  • With working from home, the COVID-19 situation has truly acted like a catalyst for more vicious cyber-attacks and other cybersecurity-related issues. A key challenge for IT was to impart the necessary information to the users to be vigilant for any suck attacks.
  • Covid-19 pandemic has put a lot of pressure on the entire IT team. A task in hand for the IT leader was to keep its team engaged and motivated to deliver maximum under such difficult situation.

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