Anytime Anywhere

One of

the leading consultancy firms, KPMG India, provides audit, tax and advisory

services to over 2,000 international and national clients. Making this possible

is its 1,400 odd 'highly mobile' workforce. Encouraging and enabling its

employees to work from anywhere, the company has imbibed the spirit of a truly

mobile enterprise.

Whether providing

laptops to over 85% of its employees or the Blackberry service to its leadership

team, various aspects of the mobile and wireless technology are being leveraged,

allowing 'anytime, anywhere' flexibility. This flexibility is a necessity

considering the nature of work at KPMG, which requires the employees to work at

client locations and travel frequently. According to Suresh Kumar, regional

director—IT, Middle East and South Asia, KPMG International, for the company

the time factor is very critical and even more so because the employees are

working and interfacing with people in different time zones. The constraints of

time and location have been overcome through providing remote connectivity to

office network/email.

Since most of the

employees are working from client locations, the most basic and fundamental

mobility has been provisioned through the extensive usage of laptops, which is

almost a given. “We don't want people to come to office only to do routine

things. That is the fundamental driving force.” More than 85% of the users

have laptops and many of them occasionally visit office. However, the advantage

of flexibility also brings in its wake the issue of opening the organization to

greater security vulnerabilities. As a result, the policy framework surrounding

mobility is integral to KPMG's success as a mobile enterprise. The users are

not given access to Wi-Fi hotspots and those working from client locations are

now allowed to connect to the client's network. They have been provided with

the wireless Internet card to connect to the Internet and then establish VPN

connectivity over Internet to connect to their office network.

Prior to deploying

Blackberry, the key users had to connect to office mail system using RAS and

secure authentication. However, this methodology had its own pain points like

finding telephone line/internet connection, speed, authentication, etc. These

hassles discouraged the most of the key users to access email unless essential.

KPMG UK and KPMG Canada

were already using Blackberry for more than three years and it was one of the

few mobile messaging solution approved by the KPMG Global Security team to meet

stiff IT security requirements. In India, the company approached service

providers to enquire about Blackberry service as early as in November 2003, even

before the service was available in the country. As a result, when the service

was launched in India, KPMG was among the first of the companies to adopt

Blackberry at the enterprise level and participated in the Beta launch of the

service in the country.    

The Blackberry

enterprise servers have been implemented at the Delhi and Mumbai offices to act

as DR sites for each other in the event of a failure. These servers are

connected to the company's mail system, Microsoft Exchange 2003 Server. “The

objective is to provide them real-time access to the email system so that the

decisions can be taken faster,” explains Kumar.

The company has set up

a dedicated in-house Blackberry support team that provides support to the users,

while the entire network related issues are escalated to Airtel Blackberry

support. Online intranet training is also provided to the new users.

Eyeing greater business

value out of its Blackberry application, a development team is working on

Blackberry integration with the ERP. This will allow the Blackberry users to

take key business decisions on the firm's PMS instantly. In line with the

essence of mobility, the company has set the goal to provide every mobile user

with either Blackberry or wireless Internet card in the near future.

Shipra Arora



shipraa@cybermedia.co.in