Lofty Portals of Wisdom

The India division of Cable & Wireless, launched in 1994, is part of the
Enterprise Market Group of Cable & Wireless Global specializing in high-end
system integration and network management for the enterprise markets. The India
division acts as a central hub for providing back office support in managing
extensive telecom networks of the enterprise customers of Cable & Wireless.
The company has approximately 600 enterprise customers today, spread across 33
countries, which are currently being serviced out of the India center in
addition to India specific customers.

With a virtual support team spread across 70 countries worldwide, knowledge
sharing and collaboration amongst the onsite and offshore teams is critical for
Cable & Wireless operations. However in the context of India, smartly
managing huge amounts of data that existed in disparate forms was posing to be a
challenge for the team resulting in loss of precious time and employee
productivity. The ‘Wisdom Portal’ based on Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal
Server, Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 served to be the ideal solution,
simplifying the overall delivery process and enabling easy and quick access to
the vast amount of data in real-time and enabling intelligent filtering of the
information to meet focused needs.

Background

Cable & Wireless India is responsible for managing the enterprise
networks not only for its global enterprise customers but also India specific
customers. This translates into a mammoth task of managing huge amounts of data
with speed of accessing relevant information being a critical success factor. In
this context, it was equally important to have a mechanism that enabled quick
decision making for addressing the customer requests. The need was obvious for a
full-fledged document management and knowledge management solution. Such a
solution would provide great value in introducing effectiveness to the overall
process by leveraging learnings gained from customer cases in other parts of the
world and enabling exchange of critical information amongst the various
resources and experts across the company’s numerous locations worldwide.

Key issues faced

n Management of complex
networks: With an exhaustive client list spanning across various industry
verticals, Cable & Wireless was managing complex networks that were vastly
different from one another and unique in terms of their individual servicing
requirements.

n Islands of information:
Ensuring communication between disparate islands of information was critical
since this was leading to higher uptimes which introduced inefficiencies in the
system.

The Microsoft solution

Key attributes of the solution:

n Quick implementation with
minimal resources: A team was formed in 2001 to assess the situation and begin
the implementation process. Dreamquest, the Microsoft partner helped Cable &
Wireless and provided them with ongoing support throughout the implementation
process. The implementation process took around two months to adapt SharePoint
Portal Server, Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 to the functioning of Cable &
Wireless and has been undergoing small enhancements for the last 2 months.

n Live access to Cable &
Wireless networks worldwide: The solution termed ‘Wisdom Portal’ is a
complete Knowledge Management solution, which collates all the learnings and
best practices accumulated by Cable & Wireless over the years across its
operations in various parts of the world with details on current projects and
confidential network information. The solution has enabled Cable & Wireless
to have live access to the complex networks of its clients across the world and
track all developments taking place on these networks in real time.

The solution enabled integration of Exchange 2000, instant messaging and net
meeting features with one to one voice and video chat. Cable & Wireless is
now even considering multicast video conferencing using Exchange 2000
Conferencing server in addition to the existing solution.

n The people component: ‘Wisdom
Portal’ integrated all the information pertaining to the company’s
functions, details on global operations and portfolio of services on to the
company intranet enabling easy access to the central pool of information, saving
time and resulting in increased efficiency in operations.

n Customer services: The solution
facilitated the easy integration of voluminous data points from various customer
case studies from more than 1000 locations across the world on to a single point
of access. This enabled employees to access information faster from any
connected location thereby reducing response time to less than 30-35 seconds and
also helped distill information further to match specific needs.

n Data management center: A mini
data center environment was created in the process with approximately 30-40
servers being devoted to service each customer request with data on MIS and
trend information. The ‘Wisdom Portal’ helped integrate this mini data
center environment onto the main operations to enable faster access to customer
information in real time, permitting an easy exchange of information and sharing
of operations.

n Advanced Document Management:
Cable & Wireless can now configure folders to route documents for approvals.
The system has an inbuilt check, which ensures that any document added to a
folder is approved before it can be published to the portal. This routing for
approval takes place automatically, eliminating the need to manually keep track
of people for sign off. With SharePoint Portal Server, secure access to content
and a powerful search engine are also part of the package.

n Beyond storage and viewing to
discussion and collaboration: Access can be configured so that access to
information on select networks is restricted to people who are part of the
project. Access is provided to the clients as well, so that they are able to
check the status of their networks at any point in time. Collaboration between
the various team members and the client has been facilitated through instant
messaging, discussion forums as well as online data conferencing which includes
features such as chat, white boarding, file transfer and application sharing.
This effectively facilitates the model that Cable & Wireless operates on.

Benefits accrued

The ‘Wisdom portal’ has brought about tremendous improvements in the
functioning of Cable & Wireless India. Document management and a single
knowledge repository are the immediate benefits that Cable & Wireless has
reaped, apart from greater speed of implementation, increased flexibility and
adaptability of usage and scalability. SharePoint Portal Server, Exchange 2000
and Windows 2000 have enabled Cable & Wireless India to deliver efficiently
to the customer, considering the vast and complex networks it needs to operate
on. The user-friendly interface of the product has further improved efficiency
within the business process.

n Increased customer
satisfaction: The ‘Wisdom Portal’ has enabled Cable & Wireless India to
get closer to achieving customer satisfaction by facilitating faster access to
the plethora of information and faster data interaction in real time. The better
management of the customers’ networks has helped them to focus on their core
business objectives.

n Introducing structured
operations: The ‘Wisdom Portal’ has created a structure for operations at
Cable & Wireless improving the internal functions of the organization. The
system also provided for an office automation system that has helped in
directing the right information to the right people as and when required. Cable
& Wireless was immediately able to relate to these features. With the
adaptability of the product, the requirements of Cable & Wireless have been
continuously implemented over the period. The user-friendly interface of
SharePoint Portal Server and Exchange 2000 has further improved efficiency
within the business process.

n Increased employee
productivity:

The ‘Wisdom Portal’ has helped Cable & Wireless increase its employee
productivity. The efficiency improvements in the operations of Cable &
Wireless is more than apparent and is in fact being relayed to the Cable &
Wireless offices in other countries which are also evaluating implementation of
a similar process.

Team DQ

Solution Overview

Cable & Wireless

Industry

Network Design, Management and System Integration

Profile

Part of Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Cable & Wireless India launched
its operations in India in 1994 to provide telecom networks design, management,
and integration for their enterprise customers.

Scenario

Cable & Wireless was responsible for designing and managing the
enterprise networks of its customers worldwide apart from handling the security
aspects that exist with these networks. Cable & Wireless was faced with a
mammoth task of managing and supporting these complex networks and providing
customized solutions to clients based on the information they had and were able
to retrieve from these networks. The 'Phoenix Portal' provided Cable &
Wireless with an ideal solution to this problem, improving efficiencies across
the company's operations.

Key Clients

n Standard
Chartered  

n Glaxo
SmithKline  

n P&O Nedlloyd

n Merrill
Lynch  

n Coca-Cola  

n Visa

n Xansa

Microsoft technologies used

n SharePoint
Portal Server

n SharePoint Team
Services

n Exchange 2000
Collaboration Services

n Windows 2000
Advanced–Server

Benefits

n Reduction in
communication costs

n Faster access to
customer's networks

n Global knowledge
and document repository

n Time saving Better
customer service