A growing number of devotees expecting quicker religious services and the pressure to become more transparent are key drivers for these temples to seek the help of business software solutions, used traditionally by large corporates like Bajaj Auto, ONGC and Maruti Suzuki.
“Temples have evolved into a service industry; expectations of devotees have increased,” says Kishor More, CEO of Shree Saibaba Sansthan Trust at Shirdi in Maharashtra. A data centre will come up inside the temple campus and first modules of the popular ERP software from SAP will go live later this month.
The shrine is the latest among places of worship that are moving to ERP solutions to manage donations and daily activities. The Tirupati temple at Tirumala, the Meenakshi Amman temple at Madurai, the Gajanan Maharaj Temple at Shegaon and the Mata Vaishno Devi temple at Katra are the other major ones to adopt technology.
“Temples are now like mini (municipal ) corporations,” More says. “Their activities have increased beyond darshan (sighting the deity), bhakta nivas (devotee stay) and prasad (sacred food). We have also launched hospitals and educational institutions. They have to be managed like any other organisation. There is no option but to use technology.” he said.
The shrine receives 40,000 daily visitors , who stay in the bhakta nivas, pay for the products and services, have meals and also offer donations. This translates into over a lakh transactions a day, increasing the need to have a technology solution. The trust contracted IT services major Cognizant for the Rs 25-crore ERP implementation, currently under way.
Patni Computer Systems completed the country’s first SAP ERP implementation at the Shri Sant Gajanan Maharaj Sansthan at Shegaon in Maharashtra. With operations spread over 10 sites, construction activity across 55 places and 10,000 transactions every day, the management had a tough time keeping track.
“We updated all transactions manually, which hampered productivity. It was impossible to manage records of over 1,000 vendors. Redundancy in work and duplication of requisition was common,” an official , who now maintains the IT and ERP systems at the Sansthan, said.
“After the ERP installation, all branches are linked. The management knows the amount of donations received and raw material used and instantly decides on the allocation of resources for each activity,” the official said.
After the ERP is implemented, it will allow devotees to book a darshan online, reserve rooms at the bhakta nivas, make a purchase for various items that will be handed over to them on their visit.
All activities at the Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple, for example, are recorded with IT help. The temple’s main festival , the Chithirai festival, can now be viewed online. Even the Meenakshi Amman Tirukalyanam — the festival of god’s marriage — has also been made online and has had 10,000 hits.
Not just that, e-darshan of every pooja is possible. Also, anyone can retrieve a specific pooja and see it online. There is a video streaming server at the temple, which can perform live poojas at any time. The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, which manages temples across Tamil Nadu, wants to replicate this model in temples at Rameshwaram and Thiruthani. The temple also manages all it accounts with the help of an ERP solution. “We designed an ERP for the Madurai Meenakshi Amman temple. There is a huge funds flow on a day-to-day basis and we felt the need for an ERP for them,” says Winways Systems managing director R Sivarajah, the firm which provided the ERP for the temple. Meenakshi Amman is not Winways’ only client: they serve three more big temples and 20 small ones. “Providing IT and ERP for temples is a potential segment,” he says.
Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam (TTD), the largest religious body in India, has decided to upgrade its IT systems to streamline the pilgrim ecosystem and called for request for proposal from system integrators . It has also appointed Ernst &Young as consultant to carry out a detailed study to assess the cost and fix the implementation.
“The plan is to start IT upgradation by April. We will finalise a vendor by March after getting the E&Y report. Though we have adopted technology a few years back, there are some glitches. Once the upgradation is over, we will be able to process pilgrim applications faster. Besides , we wanted to bring all our departments under one platform through ERP so that co-ordination is easy,’’ said an official of TTD.
He says right now the pilgrim application process is slow. “We also need to upgrade our hardware and network infrastructure and need to rectify our existing software applications ,’’ he said. As part of its technology adaptation efforts, it has already introduced unique platforms like e-seva , e-hundi and edarshan where pilgrims can book services online through its portal. All the security installations of TTD are manned by HCL Technologies while portals are configured and supported by TCS.
"With the upgradation of technology, we will be able to make use of biometric technology, where a pilgrim can get a unique ID to book services and cash transactions . We are working on introduction of pre-paid smart cards, which would provide payment gateways for all services at all counters,’’ said the official. TTD had established standard systems and procedures for discharging the various functions efficiently . But with the phenomenal growth in the number of pilgrims visiting Tirumala, there is a considerable pressure on all the systems , which are substantially based on manual operations. TTD maintains 12 temples and their sub-shrines , of which the major pilgrimage centre is one located on the seventh peak, Venkatachala of the Tirupati Hill. The temple gets 70,000 devotees a day and generous donations making it the richest in the country.
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