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Follow UsApollo Tyres is a leading tyre manufacturer in India. The
company has four manufacturing units in India, two in South Africa and two in
Zimbabwe. It has a network of around 4,500 dealerships in India-of which over
3,000 are exclusive outlets-and nearly 230 multi-brand Dunlop Accredited
Dealers in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
"Unstoppable IT" is part of Apollo Tyres's overall
IT strategy derived out of its philosophy of having services available at all
times. This concept is woven around "Anywhere, Anytime, Any Device"
whereby a complete set of IT systems, processes and capability are deployed for
availability, confidentiality and integrity of information. As part of this
strategy, Apollo aggregated and centralized data for anywhere and anytime access
through its employee and dealer portals.
Achieving Anywhere, Anytime connectivity was not a difficult
task; the real challenge lay in identifying and determining an appropriate
device which could fit into the company's IT deployment strategy. The key
requirements were application deployment capability and remote device
manageability, and the company considered various mobile devices and PDAs in
these respects. Apollo Tyre was also looking at devices which could continue to
work and store data locally in the network; the company's IT department did a
few pilots to check the proof of concept of some of these devices.
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An enterprise-wide BlackBerry deployment met the requirements of access to email and applications through a single device |
| At a Glance |
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Challenges mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">▪ Keeping dealership network connected mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA"> ▪Identifying and choosing an appropriate device out of the plethora available mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA">▪ Enabling access to email and applications while on the move through a single device
Solution
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Benefits
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The key applications identified for such a deployment were the
common baseline applications aimed at enabling the sales force, including email
access. Upon scanning the market for device capabilities, it was felt that an
enterprise-wide BlackBerry deployment met the requirements of access to email
and applications through a single device. When the evaluations were being
carried out, BlackBerry scored in terms of email. Email access on the move was
critical for management level executions within the company. Having homed in on
the device, Apollo Tyres started looking at the application deployment
capability for the BlackBerry. SAP is the transaction backend for Apollo Tyres.
Email-enabled Blackberry devices were deployed internally with BlackBerry
Enterprise Server and been a success with Apollo. The company is also looking at
the next phase for application deployment using the Enterprise Server.
There was relief within the middle and senior management after
the deployment of Blackberry Enterprise Solution. This not only enabled the top
management to stay in touch with the systems and people continuously, it also
resolved the issue of management taking their laptops just to access their
email. The teams traveling abroad have benefited the most with this solution.
Sudesh Prasad
sudeshp@cybermedia.co.in