IT Casebook 2010: Cover Features

BANGALORE,INDIA.

OXFORD EDUCATION INSTITUTE AUTOMATES ITS PROCESSES USING AN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCE PLANNING SOFTWARE

To resolve the admission management, attendance as well as assessment processes issues the Oxford institute choosed Smart Campus. Smart Campus as its called has loads of features to automate the institute's campus, including smart card based attendance, web-based information system for parents, and much more.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Dr Nagaraj Ramarao

Tech used: P.NET, SQL server, Contact less smart cards, Smart card readers, biometric devices.

Expected life: 5 yrs

Implementation Partner: Denizen Smartware

Quote: “Smart Campus helped our institution to achieve smooth flow of information across all the departments, eliminate proxy attendance. It has not only helped us to provide instant information updates of students for parents and college management but also provide us with an effective and efficient staff administration management by addressing problems like payroll and leave management.”

By: Mr Nagaraj Rao

Professor & HOD — E&C Engineering

The Oxford College of Engineering

Also read: SMB IT Casebook 2010

ALMONDZ GLOBAL SECURITIES DEPLOYS CRM AND IMPROVES CUSTOMER SERVICE EFFICIENCY BY 90%.

To maintain growth, improve customer retention and enhance their market presence Almondz Global Securities deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 that could deliver contact/ account management, customer service, data security and MIS reports. In addition integration of Customer Telephone Integration (CTI) with  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 reduced queries/ complaint response time to hours and thus increasing the customer service efficiency by 90%.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Lokesh Bahri

Tech used:  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Expected life: N/A

Implementation Partner: Religare Technologies

Quote: “ The detailed reporting functionality in  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 helped us to track and generate MIS reports faster and this in turn reduced the Turn Around Time.”

By: Lokesh Bahri

VP- Retail Equity Broking

S TEL'S CRM IMPLEMENTATION

To gain a competitive edge over its rivals and to achieve customized management information and automation of supplementary process for faster customer service delivery S Tel opted for  Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. As a result customer hold time has been cut by 10% and calls are shorter by 20 seconds, service staff has been lowered by 20%, cost saving of INR 22 million approximately per year and complaint resolution SLA  became an average of 4hrs.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is integrated with Microsoft Office Sharepoint Portal Server 2007 and  Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and BizTalkServer for the assimilation of customer's profile, e-recharge system, billing system and customers service thus saving  hundred's of hours' work daily.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Dr Selvam K, CIO

Tech used:  IBM Servers, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, SQL Server 2008, Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2008,  BizTalkServer

Expected life: 6 yrs

Implementation Partner: Tech Mahindra

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A CONSTRUCTION COMPANY DEPLOYS ERP

Ahemedabad based Montecarlo Constructions deploys an ERP package to improve resource utilization, keep a tab on their inventory, and meet various statutory obligations. Montecarlo decided to implement SAP ERP to resolve these needs and choose Highbar Technologies as their implementation partners for the same. As a result the top management are now enjoying the fruits in the form of improved resource utilization, reduced inventory and completed statutory obligations. Along with aiding in estimation and tendering of new projects, ERP also enabled identification of areas for cost-control to improve profitability.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Mrunal Patel

Tech used:  SAP ERP

Expected life: N/A

Implementation Partner: Highbar Technologies ( An HCC Group Company)

Also read: Key Quotes from IT Casebook 2010

RAJIV GANDHI CANCER INSTITUTE IMPLEMENTS IT SOLUTIONS

RGCIRC super specialty hospital implements IT solutions to automate its processes and move from paper-based patient record system to electronic medical record system. Now RGCIRC is able to capture   the patient information in a comprehensive manner and is able to centre its services management around the patient. HR processes, payroll, Doctors Accounting are now consuming less time  and are accurately linked to Finance and Bank.

Project Specs:

Project Head: D S Negi, CEO

Tech used: OHUM Vista, an open source Electronic Medical Record, PARAS a hospital management software, Synapse PACS, Fijifilm's medical imaging and information management system

Expected life: N/A

Implementation Partner: Vista: OHUM, Pune

CENTURY COMM USES GREEN IT TO SAVE ENERGY COSTS

Century had previously implemented Leap 2 where the company had identified, devised, evolved and mastered the blade technology to best suit its work flow. Now this film production house uses the latest server blades to cut down on power consumption and real-estate required for its IT infrastructure. Through all these Century is contributing to fighting the crisis of global warming.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Abhishek Tewari, Director

Tech used: Latest blade servers and network software

Expected life: Ongoing

Implementation Partner: Compton Computers

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POWER EXCHANGE HELPS POWER DEFICIENT INDIA WITH ITS POWER TRADING PLATFORM

To augment the sharing of information and to give boost to power trading amongst power companies in India, the Power Exchange went for a complete overhaul of its IT infrastructure, implementing  a trading system consisting of centralised infrastructure with all the system hosted at a professional tier III data centre with 99.5% availability SLA.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Rupa Devi Singh, MD & CEO

Tech used: HP Blade Servers, HP FC 2000 SAN Storege, Cisco Mars 1841 Routers, Cisco 2960 and 3750 Switches

S/W: Windows 2003 OS with Service Pack 2, SQL Server 2005

Expected life: Ongoing

Implementation Partner: NSE.IT

A COOL SCHOOL SOFTWARE

As a part of the e-governance initiative, Edumate- an ID card preparation software, will effectively help schools and institutions to use IT in an organized way to save money and time. Measurable benefits include time reduction in administering college/schools activities, reduction in time spent in marking attendance of students, calculating shortages in attendance, online tests reduce the time in evaluating the test papers and online MIS reports give management a bird's eye view of activities going-on.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Sonia Juneja

Tech used: Open Source Software Development Tools

Expected life: N/A

Implementation Partner: Vaibhav Informatics

Quote: “The solution facilitates student registration, employee registration, fees payment, ID card preparation, library management system, time table preparation, lecture notes and attendance system. Going forward the intent is to add the application to mobile, GPS and UID based solutions.”

Also read: ERP and SMB how do they get along?

MINDLANCE ACHIEVES 99.9% NETWORK UPTIME

Mindlance was stuck with the manual help desk and was facing recurring network performance issues. To resolve these problems Mindlance implemented a help desk management system, a chat server, and standardizes its IT environment, leading to a significantly improved team efficiency.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Kamal Sharma, CIO

Tech used: CISCO networking equipment and IBM's servers, Windows 2008 Server, Windows XP, Open Fire, Manage Engine, OCS inventory NG, MRTG.

Expected life: Ongoing

Implementation Partner: In House

Quote: “ The USP of this project is adaptation of Open Source platform, low cost involved and being highly customizable. Key challenges faced during this implementation were compatibility issues in implementing Open Source technologies and customization and standardization of Operating System.”

RCA'S ONLINE TICKETING APP

Some of the major challenges faced by the cricket associations were ensuring no fake ticket generation and sales is happening, ensuring the smooth entry of spectators in the stadium, capturing complete data of all these spectators in the stadium, capturing complete data of all these spectators and taking proactive measures to avoid any terrorist activity. For this Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA) signed up  an exclusive MoU with Data Infosys as their official IT partner and ODI cricket match ticketing goes online for the first time in the history of Indian cricket.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Sanjay Dixit (IAS)

Tech used: RFID, Web 2.0, Web services, SMPP, e-commerce, SSL, MS SQL.

Expected life: Ongoing

Implementation Partner: Data Infosys

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EKO DEPLOYS CLOUD BASED CORE BANKING SYSTEM

Eko India Financial Services deploys SimpliBank, a platform that provides financial services to 50000+ customers from under/ unserved low and middle income group Indians. It aims to transform banking into- simple and accessible banking for everyone. The customers are now able to complete deposit, withdrawals, money remittances safely, instantaneously, conveniently, using a widely available device like the mobile phone.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Matteo Chiampo, COO

Tech used: Wipro's laaS Cloud with RedHat OS, MySQL DB and Jboss/ Tomcat App framework.

Expected life: 2yrs

Implementation Partner: Wipro, Anduril Technologies.

BRINGING TRANSPARENCY

Premier (India) Bearings Limited was finding it extremely difficult to track the value and quantity of inventory available at its 4 locations in Gurgaon, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Mundra. Hence Premier (India) Bearings Limited selected Microsoft Business Dynamics-NAV (INSTA NAV) to bring simplicity in the operations by minimizing redundant operations.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Lokesh Bahri

Deployment Location:  Gurgaon, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Mundra

Team Size: 3

Tech Used: Microsoft Business Dynamics- NAV, HP server with 4 GB RAM

Expected life: Approximately 3yrs

Implementation Partner: Alle Consulting

Quote: “The company was able to import orders betters and were able to process schedule orders of customers and manufacturer with clear control on deliveries.”

By: Lokesh Bahiri

VP- Retail Equity Broking

Also read: Powering up SMB's

REAPING  BENEFITS FROM ERP

The implementation of ERP has helped the management of Transpek Industry to get desired result from the same system rather than wait for excel reports from the middle management. Now they have better controls and improved process. All the credit goes to the assistance provided by TRU Care Consultants.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Satish Nambair

Tech used: Microsoft Windows 2003 Server, Oracle 9i

Key Technologies: WAN

Expected life: Ongoing

Implementation Partner: TRU Care Consultants

Quote: “ This project has benefited all the business divisions of the company. The management was able to get the desired result from the system rather than excel reports from the middle management. The USP of the project is understanding the need of the customer/user rather than pitching what product offers.”

{#PageBreak#}LAVASA, INDIA'S FIRST PRIVATE HILL CITY EMBRACES CRM

Lavasa is the first and largest private hill city set admist the western ghats of Maharastra, India. To meet the challenges of CRM, Manual entering and merging of data, collaboration and communication, Lavasa chose Microsoft Dynamic CRM. As a result now Lavasa saves 20% in payroll, enjoys enhanced sales efficiency of almost 30% and has reduced its response time to customers' queries from a day to immediate.

Project Specs:

Project Head: Vinod Vyas, Head-Information Systems, Lavasa

Tech used: Intel based servers, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, MS Visual Studio, SQL Server 2005, MS Exchange, MS Unified Communication

Expected life: Forever

Implementation Partner: Wipro

Quote: “Lavasa evaluated more than fifteen CRM solutions and finally chose Microsoft Dynamic CRM. They found that it provides the flexibility, automates the business processes with built-in integration to other applications.”

 ENHANCING STUDENT-TEACHER INTERACTIONS

University Management System (UMS) was conceptualized to enhance teacher-student interaction through the use of IT solutions. The USP of the project is its ability to handle a number of users and stress load. It is also acting as a huge cost saver as it has reduced paper work to a great extent and has benefited both administrative and academic processes.

Quote: “ The project benefited administrative and academic processes like accounting, library, learning management system, HR, online leaves, online feedback, integration with SMS, Email, online polling, etc.”

Also read: SMBIT.IN Forum 2010

A WEBSITE TO HELP ENGINEERING STUDENTS  LEARN AND PRACTICE MATHEMATICS.

A Coimbatore based company deploys a website to practice engineering mathematics online with tests for instant self-evaluation. Though the project has been implemented for engineering students it also supports Arts & Science. There are future plans to provide the next face of learn, Practice and Test by giving an embedded digital pen which writes on any paper for the purpose of practice and test and videos in regional language.

Quote: “The site offers student friendly videos in simple English and Tamil. It has a unique interface to practice Mathematics online. There's even an Instant Self Evaluator which provides the rights and wrongs in the sums.”