Organization Size: 1000 employees
Organization Profile
Adhunik Group is one of the fastest growing conglomerates of India having interest in steel, mines, power, cement and auto forge.
Business Situation
The company found its legacy messaging system to be inefficient, unreliable, and costly, which impaired employees’ ability to communicate across the company or connect when working remotely.
Solution
Adhunik chose the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, part of Microsoft Online Services, to gain Internet-based access to a full suite of communications software.
Benefits
• Increased user satisfaction boosts productivity by 15 – 25 percent
• Mobile connectivity for all
• Lowers Total cost of ownership by 40 – 50 percent
• Higher reliability
Software and Services
• Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite
• Cloud Services
Vertical Industries: Other Services
Country/Region: India
Business Need
• Business Productivity
• Collaboration
• Cost Containment
• Unified Communications
• Mobility
IT Issue
• Cloud Services
• Hosted Messaging and Collaboration
• Virtualization
Languages: English
Adhunik Group, a renowned name in iron and steel industry, was looking at replacing its aging messaging system provided limited email access options. With 1000 employees working across 20 locations around the country, email communication was vital. However, inefficient performance frustrated employees.
Rising cost of maintenance was of concern to the IT department. With aggressive growth planned through organic and inorganic means, the management wanted to resolve these issues quickly.
Adhunik Group switched to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite to gain cloud–based email, collaboration, instant messaging, and web conferencing. Since making the switch employee productivity is up by 15 – 25 percent and email is significantly more reliable.
The company has gained a suite of communication and collaboration services, reducing the total cost of ownership by half over three years. What’s more, no capital expenditure was required.
Adhunik Group, the INR 3,500 crore conglomerate, is one of the fastest growing groups in India. The Group, with one of the most strategically poised growth path and integrated business models, deals in mining, steel, power, transmission structures and value added products, catering to a vast and quality focused customer base. With a dependable back-up of committed employees as well as a strong and ever-growing customer support, the Group has emerged over a period of time as a steady performer, undeterred even during the cyclic fluctuation and unsteadiness of the market. It has continuous shown growth backed with strong financial performance. Its revenues in fiscal year 2010 were INR 1,540 crore (U.S.$342 million).
The product is excellent and because we no longer need to purchase and maintain servers. There was no capital expenditure and the total cost of ownership will come down by 40 – 50 percent over three years, a significant savings that we can invest elsewhere.
– Sanjeev Kumar Group CIO and Group President – Business Excellence Adhunik Group
With manufacturing facilities located in Eastern India in the states of West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, and Meghalaya and with more than 1000 employees and operations spread across multiple locations, providing reliable, user-friendly communication and collaboration technologies is one of the main concerns of Adhunik Group.
While its business was expanding, its use of technology was not keeping pace. Adhunik had long used a legacy email service, which ran on several geographically dispersed servers. However, in the company’s experience, this messaging environment was slow, unreliable, costly, and above all it was not universally popular among employees. Users complained about the lack of modern email features, non-intuitive user interface, and the overall lack of familiarity.
Additionally, users and administrators often found it difficult to make its email environment interoperate efficiently with the rest of the company’s IT infrastructure, which sometimes blocked easy collaboration. “The archaic messaging frustrated our staff,” says Sanjeev Kumar, Group CIO and Group President – Business Excellence, Adhunik Group. “Our employees had to constantly switch between user interfaces, which was a time-consuming and redundant activity.”
Adhunik had a huge mobile workforce who needed to access their email from multiple locations to complete day-to-day business and keep in touch. In the current messaging environment, they were unable to use mobile devices or smart phones to access email. It could be accessed only desktops or laptop computers. In addition, they relied on face-to-face meetings or scheduled conference calls to communicate with staff members in their areas.
Plus, email maintenance and dealing with spam was starting to take up far too much of the time of IT admin team.
As the company evolved, it became apparent to the IT staff that it was outgrowing this solution. “That’s when we began thinking about alternative email and collaboration solutions,” says Sanjeev Kumar. “The opportunity to implement an email system that was hosted for us and available to buy on a per-user, per-month basis seemed like the logical step forward.”
Adhunik Group found a solution with the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, which is part of Microsoft® Online Services. This suite offers interoperable services that include desktop and mobile email, calendaring and contacts, instant messaging and presence, shared workspaces, and live audio-visual web-conferencing applications. Through Microsoft Online Services, Adhunik gained access to the suite’s collection of finished services – Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office Communications Online – all for a reasonable monthly per-user fee.
“As we have multiple locations, our workforce is mobile and dispersed,” says Sanjeev Kumar. “Our personnel need to connect easily and reliably, but an on-premises collaboration solution was out of reach. When we heard about the Business Productivity Online Suite not only were we excited but also felt that this could be the ideal solution for Adhunik.”
Adhunik worked with Microsoft and it’s, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Microland Limited to help plan and deploy the suite.
As the first step, Microland helped Adhunik migrate its unsupported legacy email system to Microsoft Exchange Online. Email inboxes are hosted at the Microsoft data centre in Singapore and employees access email as a fully managed service. The speed and reliability offered by Microsoft data center is far superior to an on premise solution.
Today, Adhunik employees across locations access email messages from any Internet browser by using Microsoft Exchange Online. Employees have a wealth of features that they did not have before, the most useful of which are the ability to toggle between email, calendars, contacts, and tasks, and customize the interface. They are thrilled to have a modern, familiar email program, which makes them more efficient and productive. Additionally, the solution provides multiple filters and virus-scanning engines that help protect from spam, viruses, and phishing scams.
As part of the migration to the Business Productivity Online Suite, Adhunik also adopted Office Live Meeting and Office Communications Online. Office Live Meeting gives employees the ability to conduct conferencing over the web. This will reduce travel and costs while enabling collaboration among staff in different locations. With Office Communications Online, which uses Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 as the desktop client, employees will be able to see when colleagues are online so that they can contact them by using a quick instant message.
Adhunik migrated all data and users in under a month. The solution went live in February 2011. Today, Adhunik has 1000 users on Microsoft Online Services.
Adhunik is also adopting SharePoint Online as its central document repository along with the technology’s search capability, making it easier to find, share, and collaborate on documents. “We are using this technology to access all the information and resources we need,” says Sanjeev Kumar. “The centralized view accelerates information sharing.”
Sanjeev Kumar explains, “With Microsoft Online Services, we have gained all the advantages afforded by these powerful communication and collaboration tools, with virtually none of the overheads.”
We have 100+ smart phone users and it is the benefit of mobile access to email that really makes an impact on our employees’ productivity. For an organization like ours, running dispersed operations across the country, Online Services enable field communications that deliver immeasurable benefits.
– Sanjeev Kumar Group CIO and Group President – Business Excellence Adhunik Group
By migrating its infrastructure to Microsoft Online Services, Adhunik has a sustainable communication and collaboration environment that reduced the need for capital investment. The company has provided its employees with a familiar messaging environment and easy-to-use tools for staying in touch with colleagues across locations.
Increased User Satisfaction Boosts Productivity by 15 – 25 Percent
Adhunik employees are happy, because they are on a messaging platform that is more familiar and modern than what they had been using. “The new solution is far easier to use,” says Sanjeev Kumar. “It follows the consistent look and feel of all Microsoft Office programs.”
By using applications that offer richer and more intuitive features, employees can complete tasks faster. For example, employees now spend perform daily business tasks on handheld devices while on the move. Sanjeev Kumar adds, “In fact, we’ve increased productivity by 15 – 25 percent.”
Mobile Connectivity for All
Company employees now have the ability to communicate from anywhere through Microsoft Online services. They appreciate better connectivity using smart phones while on the road, and having a richer user experience with Microsoft Outlook in the office and working remotely on their laptops.
“We have 100+ smart phone users and it is the benefit of mobile access to email that really makes an impact on our employees’ productivity,” says Sanjeev Kumar. “For an organization like ours, running dispersed operations across the country, Online Services enable field communications that deliver immeasurable benefits.”
Lowers Total cost of ownership by 40 -50 percent
Adhunik realized tangible savings by moving to Microsoft Online Services. “The product is excellent and because we no longer need to purchase and maintain servers. There was no capital expenditure and the total cost of ownership will come down by 40 -50 percent over three years, a significant savings that we can invest elsewhere,” says Sanjeev Kumar.
The company is specifically redirecting both the hard savings and the IT staff time (that was previously spent maintaining the legacy environment) to improving the company’s development environment.
Higher Reliability
Another productivity boost comes from higher email reliability. “Earlier spam was a huge problem for us,” says Sanjeev Kumar. “But it completely went away with Microsoft Online Services.”
Microsoft Exchange Online, together with Forefront Online Protection for Exchange, provides multilayer spam and virus protection, email encryption, and other message protection features.
Having its email infrastructure running in a Microsoft data center with 99.9 percent scheduled uptime and backed by service-level agreements gives the management team at Adhunik peace of mind.
Microsoft Cloud Services
Microsoft offers a complete set of cloud-based solutions to meet business needs, including solutions for advertising, communications (email, meetings), collaboration (document storage, sharing, workflow), business applications (customer resource management, business productivity), data storage and management, and infrastructure services. In addition, customers can take advantage of an entire ecosystem of solution providers and Microsoft partners.
Microsoft Case Study: Adhunik Group