Dabur

Leading FMCG Company Moves Business Critical Application to the Cloud

Situation

Building on a legacy of quality and experience of over 125 years, Dabur India Limited is today India’s leading FMCG companies. It is the most trusted name and the world’s leading Ayurvedic and Natural Health Care Company. The company operates in key consumer products categories like Hair Care, Oral Care, Health Care, Skin Care, Home Care and Foods.

Dabur has a wide distribution network, covering over 2.8 million retail outlets with a high penetration in both urban and rural markets. Its products also have a huge presence in the overseas markets and are today available in over 60 countries across the globe. The brands are very popular in the Middle East, SAARC countries, Africa, United States, Europe and Russia. The overseas revenues of the company stands at over INR 500 crore in the 2008-09 fiscal, accounting for about 20 percent of the total revenue.

The advantages to us are clear – no third-party providers, access through just an internet connection, email IDs of all locations are @Dabur.com and share the same address book.

– Anil Garg Chief Information Officer Dabur India

What sets Dabur apart from the crowd is its ability to change ahead of others and to always set new standards in corporate governance and innovation. The organization has been a strong user of IT systems for a long time and is a firm believer in IT being an important business enabler. The IT department at Dabur has been instrumental in facilitating the planning, testing, and deployment of new ideas for the business.

The organization’s current IT landscape serves the manufacturing, sales, finance, and procurement functions well with SAP R/3 as the ERP. The company also uses applications for secondary sales tracking, claims management, master data management, media tracking, and employee management.

Dabur was in the process of consolidating email and Microsoft Exchange applications for its entire geographical footprint, which would bring the organization and its wide-spread subsidiaries under the common domain of Dabur.com. This involved auxiliary servers at each location, relevant infrastructure and admin support, backup facilities, leased lines, and firewalls, in a phased operation across the globe.

Continuing its tradition of innovation and competitiveness, Dabur began investigating ways to leverage technology to meet this immediate need.

Solution

According to Anil Garg, Chief Information Officer, Dabur India, cloud computing was not on the roadmap for Dabur. But one introductory session to the benefits of the technology, changed that for him and his organization. And the company decided it would focus on ‘cloud’ computing, which is the hosting and management of applications and services on the Internet through data centers.

Dabur found its solution in the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite. The suite offers hosted communication and collaboration services that include Microsoft® Exchange Online, Microsoft® SharePoint Online, Microsoft® Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft® Office Communications Online. However, it was Exchange Online that piqued the company’s interest.

Accenture India is IT outsourcing partner of Dabur and was responsible for the deployment of cloud services with assistance from Microsoft Virtual Technical Solution Team.

To demonstrate the platform capabilities, Dabur built a Proof of Concept (POC) immediately. The POC showcased how the power of cloud can be used to build solutions that reduce costs, improve agility, and enhance global consistency. “The Proof of Concept was completed in 15 days and within one and half months, we had 8 locations of Dabur connected on a common platform, at 5 percent of the cost we would have otherwise incurred,” says Anil Garg. “And, the conventional solution would have taken us at least a year.”

Dabur has a customized design and approach to deploying Microsoft Exchange on the cloud. The company still retains its main Exchange server in its own data center. The international subsidiaries access an auxiliary mail server on the cloud. This server synchronizes with Dabur’s core Exchange Server at the data center.

With Microsoft® Online Services, Dabur can take advantage of a Microsoft Exchange–based email solution that provides employees access to email, calendars, and contacts from any Internet-connected personal computer, laptop, or mobile device for a low monthly subscription fee. Because Microsoft hosts and manages the servers, the company does not have to invest in hardware or the administrative support required to deploy and manage solutions in-house.

“The advantages to us are clear – no third-party providers, access through just an Internet connection, email IDs of all locations are @Dabur.com and share the same address book,” adds Anil. “In addition, with Microsoft Unified Communications, we also have audio and video conferencing – all on a single network. Even the sever on the cloud is managed by our data center administrator.”

With 350 users on this network, Dabur’s IT has India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Dubai, Egypt, Nigeria, and soon-to-be-integrated Turkey and the United States, on the cloud.

Today however, Anil describes his cloud stint as a timely introduction to the space. It is the future for Dabur. The company has plans to move Exchange completely to the cloud, followed by intranet applications and other Microsoft technologies.

If we had deployed any other solution, the cost of adding storage capacity on-premises could have been exponential. We have reduced our costs by hosting this solution in the cloud.

– Anil Garg Chief Information Officer Dabur India

Benefits

The Microsoft cloud solution helped Dabur move forward with its strategic business goals and IT initiatives. The company has not only been able to shrink its IT workload but also reduce IT costs significantly.

Reduces Costs by 80 Percent

With the cloud solution, Dabur now has an easily managed IT infrastructure. The company can eliminate much of its need to procure, host, and manage its own physical servers—reducing costs by 80 percent. Instead, the companies can rely on data centers hosted by Microsoft. “If we had deployed any other solution, the cost of adding storage capacity on-premises could have been exponential,” says Anil. “We have reduced our costs by hosting this solution in the cloud.”

Lowers IT Management

With most of its hardware and software hosted by Microsoft, Dabur is no longer burdened by an unwieldy IT infrastructure. It also does not need to redirect valuable developer resources or hire additional staff to deploy and manage the server infrastructure. Instead, because the solution is hosted by Microsoft, the company can rely on enterprise-class service for maintenance tasks. “With this solution, our IT staff has far fewer servers to manage, so we can spend our time setting and maintaining a strategic direction,” comments Anil Garg.

Improves Reliability

Dabur is confident that the critical data of the company is now more secure because it is hosted in a Microsoft data center. Information is highly available, employees have uninterrupted access to everything they need to do their jobs, all guaranteed by financially-backed service-level agreements.

Enables Faster Implementation

Deploying Microsoft Online Services is much faster than deploying the same solutions on-premises, which helps ACME accelerate overall business velocity. “As part of our growth strategy we are looking at mergers and acquisitions,” says Satyadev. “The time required to set up software with Microsoft Online Services versus on-premises goes down dramatically, from weeks to hours. Implementation is four-times faster with Microsoft Online Services. There is no hardware or software to deploy, training is faster, and we get more done in a shorter amount of time.”

Enhances Scalability

With its cloud solution, Dabur can add data storage capacity for new and innovative services without having to invest more in computing infrastructure. “We can scale the solution as we go,” says Anil. “In addition, we have all the agility and scalability we need to add employees at any time, and our operational costs will be more predictable and easier to track.”

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.

Source:

Microsoft Case Study: Dabur