State-owned ERP to fully track laptop scheme for college students in Tamil Nadu

CHENNAI: With the Tamil Nadu government having initiated the free laptop scheme for 20 lakh college students, the state-owned Electronics Corporation will be implementing Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for the scheme.

This project will be an end-to-end online portal along with mobile application having dashboard, logistics coordination, distribution scheduling, delivery acknowledgment and verification and grievance redressal along with facility for Aadhaar-based authentication.

The DMK government had announced a new scheme in the financial year 2025–26 budget to distribute high-tech devices to college students. It aims to distribute tablets or laptops (based on student preference) to 20 lakh students in arts, science, engineering, agriculture, and medical colleges over two years.

“The Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) had already floated an international tender to purchase about 20 lakh laptops, which will be distributed free of cost to college students,” a senior official from the Higher Education Department told DT Next. “ERP project will be used by the ELCOT laptop scheme management, product suppliers, district collectors and heads of about 4,650 higher educational institutions across the state and college students.”

The ERP system will track key vendor performance indicators such as on-time delivery rate and adherence to service level agreements. “The new system will help ELCOT in generating a delivery schedule based on the month-wise supply quantity assured by vendors and their mapping with respective colleges having such number of eligible beneficiaries,” he pointed out.

After delivery completion, the head of institutions approves the list of students who have received laptops, faulty device reports along with an abstract through the system. “After receiving the laptops, students can also raise service requests through this portal,” stated the official. “The mobile app with dashboard view for monitoring the delivery status of laptops that’s viewable at both the state and district levels will also be developed. The system will also track the life cycle of each delivered laptop from delivery to the end of its warranty period.”