Maharashtra State Excise Department's SCM System

A highly customized supply chain management system that gives Mahatrashtra State Excise Department a 360 degree view of day to day liquor transactions done by licensees including all distilleries, manufactories of country liquor, manufactories of IMFL, wineries, breweries, wholesalers, and retailers

The Maharashtra State Excise Department (MSED) functions with the primary statutory objective of collecting excise duty on alcoholic products and to regulate the trade of these products thereby eradicating clandestine activities in the processes of distillation, transportation, possession and sale of alcoholic products.

After the budget of March 2011, the revenue targets for MSED were increased from Rs. 5,800 crore to Rs. 8,500 crore. At the same time, there was a severe staff constraint in the department. This necessitated a need for taking up an integrated ICT transformation project to enable MSED perform its operations seamlessly.

Challenges

There was large arbitration opportunity for illicit liquor operators and bootleggers due to high increase in taxation in the budget of March 2011. So, the department needed to have stronger control and regulation mechanism in place. Due to limited resource availability, there was an immediate need towards adoption of innovative ways for control and enforcement. The department also wanted to combat duty evasion by generating a 360 degree profile of the licensee.

Accurate information about the licensees was restricted and record retrieval was painful as there was no centralized information system. Also there was lack of data to support analytics based decision making.

The only way to put into place a robust monitoring and control system was to undertake a comprehensive transformation initiative. Under this project, information was collected in a centralized system from the lowest of the users in the chain on a periodic basis. This information could be processed to enable effective and efficient administration aided by informed decision making on the basis of business intelligence.

The Implementation

It's a complete supply chain solution that was developed using Microsoft .NET 4.0 with MS SQL Server as the back-end database as well as the BI engine. All the application reports and dashboards were deployed on SharePoint 2013. The reports and dashboards were prepared using SQL Server Reporting Services, PerformancePoint Services  and Powerview. The company used an in-house developed Geographical Information System (‘GIS’) as well as Google Maps.

Solution Modules

1. The MahaExcise System has been rolled out to electronically collect data at the lowest level of data generation i.e. at the Sub-Inspector Level or Manufactory Officer. Data collation at district, division or state level is done automatically and made easily accessible to excise officers at a macro as well as micro level. The solution contains information about following key operational aspects:

•   Revenue details

•   Revenue realized

•   Liquor sale details

•   Breach Cases Summary

•   Criminal Cases Summary

•   Illegal Activities’ Action Summary

•   Country Liquor Trading Account Summary

•   IMFL Trading Account Summary

•   Administrative Information

2.  Maharashtra State Excise Licensee Tracking System: Database of licensees contains entire history of license holder along with his name, address, TIN, PAN, phone, grant of license date, type of license, partner details, etc. An advanced search features allows excise officers to locate licensees as per their criteria.

3.  Maharashtra State Excise Brand Management System: Database of brands establishes a linkage between licensee and the brands registered by him. The office in-charge of all the manufacturing units submits the production data on periodic basis.

4. Maharashtra State Excise BI - The Business Intelligence module: provides unparalleled analytical ability to Excise Officers.

5.  Maharashtra State Excise Duty Payment System: Real time information about the revenue collected, arrears and payment dues has enhanced the visibility and helped the officials take policy decisions based on data analytics.

6.  Maharashtra State Excise e-Tendering System: The department has adopted e-Tendering and all tenders are floated online, which has resulted in the transparency in tendering process.

7.  Maharashtra State Excise Grievance Monitoring System: An online Grievance Redressal System is made available for public to communicate their concerns anonymously. This enables the administration to take quick action on complaints of Illicit distillation, bootlegging, etc

8.  Maharashtra State Excise Mapping System: Google Maps are used by the department innovatively for tagging of license number, village name and distance from National Highway and for identification of routes taken by vehicles for transport of liquor and tagging of various Licensee locations.

By completing the tagging of Retail level licenses on Google Maps, the Excise department has equipped itself with in-house developed Geographical Information System (‘GIS’) which helps to analyze scenarios like:

•   Existence of liquor shop within restricted area

•   Concentration of above average number of liquor shops in a particular locality.

Moving forward, the Google Maps service will also be extended to all excise licenses including distilleries, manufactories, molasses units, wholesalers, etc. Plus, it would also be extended to crime locations/illicit liquor manufacturing locations.

9. Maharashtra State Excise Video Conferencing System: This has enabled the department to organize online meetings without the need to travel to head office thereby saving time & cost.

10. Maharashtra State Excise Bulletin Board: In order to enable sharing of ideas, department has created an online blog post wherein Excise officers share their ideas and views online and collaborate among each other.

11. Maharashtra State Excise Texting System: A desktop based SMS alert system having capability to send SMSs to multiple users for quick exchange of information, especially when urgent uniform message has to be communicated.

12. Maharashtra State Excise Supply Chain Management System: The transport pass is computerized with encoded TP numbers. The routes for a particular manufactory unit are predefined and can be selected from a dropdown list while generating a TP. Whenever a new route is created, the concerned area excise officer & district officer are informed of the same via an SMS and email. Integration with Google Maps is also provided while creating a new route.

This module deals with the day to day transactions done by the licensee. This includes distilleries, manufactories of country liquor, manufactories of IMFL, wineries, breweries, wholesalers, retailers and regulation of DNS preparations.

The Result

There is increase in accuracy and timely completion of forms submitted online. The electronic payment mechanism for excise duty is seamless and hassle free.

The Commissioner can easily view state level aggregated information or can narrow down to lowest level of unit i.e. sub-inspector or manufactory unit. This has given tremendous power to Excise Officials to examine the data instantaneously and make informed decision. Similarly, respective officers have information about their respective jurisdictions at their fingertips.

The grievance redressal system, online blog and group sms has improved the flow of communication thereby improving the performance of the whole department.