Hindustan Times: Issuing New Themes

The flagship publication of the Hindustan Times group, Hindustan Times, has
been one of the most formidable media players with its strong presence in
northern India. Built over years of technology layers, the IT infrastructure
here has played a key role in streamlining its business operations by playing a
central role in the production and distribution of newspapers, and now even for
major decisions regarding business policy and launch of new editions/locations.

Hindustan Times has 13 print locations across the country. With more than
2000 desktops and 80 servers across these locations, the IT setup has been
managed very well by using a completely outsourced model for maintenance of all
IT assets. All of HT's print locations are connected via radio links and 2
Mbps leased lines. Dedicated leased lines for Internet and use of Lotus notes
for e-mail services have further kept these locations in a secure and reliable
mesh. HT has also implemented teleconferencing across locations along with VoIP.

Large enterprise class applications like SAP, ERP, PPI Page Creation and
Management software, and in-house developed 'Newsmart' for getting news
agency feeds, are being used along with legacy applications in the areas of HR,
Sales, BPO and Circulation. Built on a centralized architecture, all three
applications have been installed centrally at Delhi, on Enterprise class Sun
servers, under cluster environment, with their clients installed locally.

Advertisements, the running lifeline of a publishing house, have been
effectively administered by use of Quick Booking Counters (QBC), which book the
classified ads of walk-in customers. The software is tightly integrated with
SAP/PPI. HT's agents can now get ads booked from any location for any location
and for any edition. These ads are then transferred online to the centralized
SAP/PPI, ultimately resulting in increased ad volumes and business for HT.

On the net bandwagon, HT has been setting its own path breakers. Hosted in
USA, HT's website, hindustantimes.com, has been rated as the fourth best
content website in the world by Forbes. The publication biggie accepts
classified bookings on the net through the website. This has resulted in users
across the globe being able to book ads from the comforts of their homes, giving
a big boost to the revenue, not to mention the visibility of HT's brand.

To effectively monitor the performance of the sales network and to increase
customer satisfaction, HT operates a captive call center which front ends with
the end customer and handles their queries/complaints.

For MIS purposes, Hindustan Times uses SAP's Business Intelligence
Warehouse software. Due to the availability of information in real time basis,
HT is able to formulate strategies keeping in mind the competition and the
changing market realities.