More IT Implementations 2006

Department of Fertilizers

FERTNET is a close user group on Fertilizers Informatics
Network that NIC has developed for the Deptt. of Fertilizers. This is a
Web-based information system that provides information relating to fertilizer
movement, production, distribution and subsidies paid to different fertilizer
producers, equated freight fixation  and payment handling for fertilizer
imports.

It has become easier to plan the widespread distribution of
fertilizers based on the inter-related informatics support on demand and supply
positions. This in turn helps in reducing transportation costs and demand-supply
gap, and optimize the use of stocks. While most reports are available across all
concerned departments, there are some (like the subsidy payment system) that are
kept confidential.

Timely information about the production capacities and
actual production ensures smooth and timely supply of fertilizers in the country
including remote areas for sustainable agricultural production. While different
modules under the project are already operational, the next step would be to
integrate them to make the information available on a single window.

Government of India

IntraGOV is a Web-based portal that integrates G2G
(government to government) and G2E (government to employees) operations. The key
issue of G2E services is empowerment of the employee and resulting
accountability. The project started in 2002 with the successful implementation
of IntraNIC portal-a Sharepoint based Intranet solution.

IntraGOV solution is based on the IntraNIC model. This
framework is built on Open Source and based on open standards. The application
is built using Zope as the application and Web server, Plone as the content
management server and Python as the scripting language. The portal offers
services like collaboration and messaging services, document and content
management, workflow automation and integration of various intra-departmental
applications.

HDFC Bank

Signature Verification System is a rule and image based
system that doesn't require any physical handling of instruments while
verifying signatures during validating transactions. The system has a
Hierarchical System Model with one central server and multiple regional servers.
It auto-retrieves signatures and does intelligent processing. The list of
authorized signatories has been converted into business logic and the user no
longer needs to read through the written instruments. The signature that best
qualifies business logic, is displayed to the user for verification.
Re-verification option that follows the maker-checker concept, is used for
instruments that are of high value or are suspicious in nature. The time taken
for signature verification is reduced substantially as the users need not search
for the required signature from the list of signatories in the core system for
an account.

ICICI Bank 

The APIN over IVR system is a very thoughtful project.
It's meant to help the bank's existing credit card customers by letting them
set/reset their ATM pin  (APIN) number over the IVR system. An APIN is
required if a customer needs to use the ATM. Credit card customers do not use
this very frequently, so there is a tendency to forget it. The typical process
followed is to post the APIN by courier when a request comes in, which is
costly, and customers can forget it again.

To solve the problem, five different systems have been
integrated to achieve this, starting from the IVR system and ending at the
credit card system. The system also integrates with the CRM system and sends an
SMS alert on the customer's mobile phone for APIN change confirmation. If
there's no mobile phone, then the CRM's APIN tracking system helps the
customer identify the history of APIN generation.

IIITM - Kerala

The Kerala Education Grid by Prof. KR Srivathsan of the
Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala aims to create
a network of educational institutions across Kerala (and eventually the whole of


India

). It has already setup a core of four resource centers across Kerala. Each
resource center is treated as a repository of information and a mechanism to
disburse information. These resource centers are at IIITM-K, CUSAT,

College
of
Engineering

(

Trivandrum

) and NIT (

Calicut

).

The KEG works in conjunction with the NPTEL (National
Program for Technology Enabled Learning and Teaching) and has a sanctioned
budget of around 7.5 crore rupees. It leverages the resources of EDUSAT and
ERNET to manage its network and infrastructure more efficiently.

A web based portal (edugrid.in) is the front end for this
portal and can be accessed by anyone anywhere in the world. The site hosts
information about various courses, resources for teachers, self assessment exams
and knowledge based documents (like whitepapers and concept notes). It
further allows the visitor to post a query to its expert panel using a ticketing
system. You can reuse the token number to read the reply any time.

ITC - Printing and Packaging

Project Kosh is an in-house project. This division of ITC
was using an MRP II system called MANMAN, implemented 15 years ago. Although it
has served the core business functions well, the business growth outgrew its
capabilities. So, they implemented an integrated infromation system where the
machines and systems could directly communicate with the ERP s ystem.
As a result of this, the system can make quick estimation of costs of
producing a product, as soon as a customer asks for it, and provide the
specifications.

This system is useful in a market with
rapid changes. The solution consists of SAP ECC 5.0 and IS-Mill with
printing and packaging specific templates from Dr. Lauterbach and partners. It
also interfaces with Rockwell MES and RF Device based warehouse mgmt.

ITC 

Project Trident is an in-house ITC project aimed at reconstructing and extending their existing IT infrastructure for future business needs. Today, ITC has approximately 20,000 employees spread across 400+ direct locations throughout the country. This does not include the 5,300+
e-chaupals spread across eight states. ITC has implemented ERP and customers are using Web applications to streamline their operations. Hence, it's completely dependent on 24x7 availability of IT facilities. To support business needs, a WAN was set up to connect the business locations. Each division implemented servers, desktops and LANs across its operating locations; and business specific, best-fit ERP was rolled out and MIS setup was fully strengthened.

IDBI

You can now book your air travel tickets using modified ATM
machines being deployed by IDBI across

India

. The idea is to eliminate the need to locate a travel agent at odd hours,
during holidays or when businesses are shut for any reason.The philosophy behind
using ATMs for this is that these machines are located at a large number of
locations and are usable any time of day or night.

These ATMs allow the customer to check for seat
availability and book their tickets through the ATM, while paying for the ticket
using their IDBI account.

After a ticket has been reserved, you can also query for
ticket status using the PNR number.

Currently, IDBI has tied up with Indian (previously Indian
Airlines) only. But efforts are underway to add other airlines to the network.
The application for the same has been acquired from Quest2Travel while NCR is
the supplier of the modified ATM machines.

This is a relatively new project, having started only a
year back and has been completed in about 10 months time, with the pilot taking
up most of that period (four months). The pilot is currently in progress in
Mumbai and the country-wide rollout will be finished in phases over the next
three years.

Oriental Insurance

With the insurance sector booming, and many global players
entering the Indian market, Indian insurance companies must do something to
cater to the growing customer base and gain a competitive edge. That's what
Oriental Insurance has done by implementing an integrated application for its
non-life insurance business, called INLIAS. The solution has been implemented
across Oriental's 193 offices and 25 others operating in parallel mode. The
project has been handled by 3i Infotech, which is in the process of implementing
it across the rest of the offices. Rolling out a project of this scale is an
effort in itself.

The application covers all insurance processes, right from
providing quotations to underwriting, claims, processing, re-insurance, and
accounting. The solution will allow operational control and all information
needed for the day-to-day operations of employees. The clear business benefit
from this application is reducing the time taken for various tasks. The project
has been implemented on an n-tier architecture, providing a browser front-end to
the users.

They access the application over a virtual private network.
INLIAS has been built on Oracle Application Server, which has layers for
control, operations, and business logic.

Department of Agriculture 

Plant Quarantine Department is a part of the Agriculture Department, that keeps track of all plant commodities including cereals, fruits and vegetables, going out or coming into India. The s/w is designed to help Plant Quarantine Stations and to provide quick and quality service to the exporters and importers. It makes sure that the set of tests defined for a particular kind of commodity are applied as per standards. Instead of manually deciding the number and type of tests, the system automatically gives the list of required tests necessary for a particular commodity. A certificate can be generated only once. In case duplicates are necessary, the older one is deleted and a new one printed out, keeping track of the deleted copy. This prevents spurious certification.

State Bank of India + IIIT-B

GanaSeva Rural Credit Delivery System uses information and communication technologies to solve the problem of providing financial services in rural India. Funded by Microsoft, and conceptualized by Center for Banking and IT division (C-DIT) of IIIT-B, the project has been successfully deployed in five villages in the backward Honavar block of Karnataka. In the system, PDAs are used to gather information about the rural households. This data is loaded to an Integrated Multi-Service Database System. Finally, ATMs with computer console, called Multi-Service Delivery System are placed in a commonly area, and connected to IMDS over CDMA. Banks connect to the IMDS to view citizen profiles, and provide banking services. All incoming requests come through the MSDS. This project has great potential to transform rural India.

Sony Entertainment Television

The WebSMS project is an excellent example of using simple
technology for gaining maximum business impact. It is aimed at managing cable
operators, the type of customer who has the tendency to understate his
subscriber base leading. This poses a challenge for Sony's sales team, as they
have to keep coming up with innovative ways to maximize their collections.

The WebSMS project helps Sony get timely collections and
receipts from around 7,000 cable operators spread across the country. It
improved their collections and reduced invoicing errors, thereby allowing more
accurate revenue recognition and collection. As a result, their monthly book
closures started happening around the 3rd or 4th of every month, instead of 24th
and 25th. They capture around 9,000 transactions per month, most of which used
to happen on paper earlier. The next phase of the project helped them track and
reconcile the movement of their IRD boxes, which were worth around Rs. 40 crores.

With so many thousands of IRDs lying around with extra
units with distributors for replacements, there were often delays or misses in
the IRD movement earlier. Now, this is also solved using WebSMS. The project is
based on a typical three-tier architecture based on LAMP-Linux, Apache, MySQL,
and Perl/PHP.

Borosil Glassworks

AnexGATE, a unified threat management appliance, was
implemented at their Internet gateway to add security to their networking
infrastructure. This was implemented by Xserve

India

along with Systronet. The main concern while selecting the solution was the
future need to roll out SAP across its two offices at Marol and Bharuch. Borosil
wanted to prevent unauthorized access to data transfers happening between its
SAP servers and clients between its two offices. In addition, it required that
its messaging systems to be secured against attacks.

They could not consider leased lines as an option because
of the costs involved. Therefore, they decided to go with a VPN architecture and
this needed to be secured and well managed as well. Now, all of Borosil's
branches are linked with a secured IP VPN. As a backup, they have also acquired
a site-to-site VPN secured with IPSec.

AnexGATE features an SPI firewall, IPS and Internet
proxying and local mail server capabilities with anti-spam. In addition, Borosil
has implemented a gateway level antivirus, a mail server to streamline their
messaging. The requirements were studied, planned and rolled out in one
month's time.

Tata Tele Services

The electronic bill presentation and payment system or EBPP
for short, is more than just a mere billing application deployment across 21
telecom circles of Tata Teleservices. The implementation allowed the company to
reach out to its customers in a much better fashion. Bill generation may seem
easy, but not when you have to print more than 20 million statement pages every
month across 8 bill cycles.

The output application ReportSuite is used for managing the
billing process, and provides several interesting functions such as printing
bills in regional languages, prioritize on high-value bill printing, multi-mode
personalized bill delivery, and much more. It also allows multi-channel billing,
wherein a bill can be printed, faxed, or e-mailed.

The business benefit in using such a solution is of course
a saving in printing cost, and better response to customers, especially those
requiring a duplicate bill. 30% of the company's bills have been migrated to
electronic statement delivery.

The solution has been seamlessly integrated with the core
billing application as well as Tata Tele Services Multi-Channel Customer
Interface, which is a portal for customer interaction.

Tahiliani Design

Project Butterfly was initiated as part of Tahiliani
Design's initiative in reducing problems related to management of huge
workload and production. This is an ERP system, which can integrate and manage
all types of business needs. It helps in building bridges between structured and
unstructured work.

The project is an integration of business value chain to
consolidate information and present it in an actionable, understandable format.
The biggest problem faced by the organizationwas that information was not
available on time and hence critical decisions couldn't be taken. With this
integrated system in place, the information became readily available and
decision-making, much faster. The key features of the project are inventory
management, working capital management, debtor outstanding management, on line
real time information for trend and demand analysis and back office management

To make this project work, the company went the Microsoft
path. The key components used here were MS Dynamic Navision, MS SQL Server 2000
and MS Windows Server 2003 as the back end components. And as the front end
consoles they are using Citrix Metaframe & WTS (which is essentially a thin
client) for centralized management and low cost.

Eveready Industries

UNIBIZ is a project that encompasses a system to
consolidate information and processes related to all businesses
under one application. Previously, all information was scattered,
residing in individual desktops in the form of document
files, spreadsheets and mail. Now, if the management had to take any
decision, they needed to collate all information, which consumed time. This
enterprise wide eBusiness solution gives a single window view of business
anytime anywhere. It has helped the organization automate all the important
business processes such as manufacturing, purchase finance, HR, order management
and marketing.

The application runs on Intel/Linux platform having two
servers in an active/active cluster attached to an

external SAN storage. One of the servers runs the Application, Discoverer, Forms
services while the the other runs the Database and Concurrent Manager Services.
They run over Red Hat Advanced Server and Cluster Suite.

The cluster is designed in such a way that if one server
goes down, the services running in that server would automatically shift to the
other.

Wipro Technologies

InFocus is a business intelligence project that fulfills
three key roles. One, it is used for consolidation at the CFO's office for all
the financial and business related data that flows in from all of Wipro's 10
vertical interests and 33 service offerings for those verticals, across four
geographic divisions. The second purpose of InFocus is to perform operational
planning based on this data and finally to provide appropriate compensation and
benefits to their employees. The aims of the project include removing human
inefficiencies in manual repetitive process; improve reporting by being able to
now perform analysis among all the data sets gathered. These reports can be made
use of for faster customer-facing services, as well as internal reporting.

Adani Wilmar

Lakshya is a complete ERP implementation project. It was implemented using ASAP methodology which is recommended by SAP for its ERP. The company went in for a two system landscape, in which SAP development and customization was carried out in one set of servers and live data was hosted on another. The servers were put in clustered fail-over mode using MC ServiceGuard, which provides very high up time by shifting the application to the standby server in case of problems in the main server. The system helped Adani Wilmar to derive ROI (return on investment) on MRP (Manufacturing Requirements Planning), QC (quality control), price control through price masters, credit checks, consumption based planning, internal orders and vendor analysis. The system also helps to streamline all business processes under one roof. HCL Infinet was chosen as the VPN partner for majority of locations and direct point to point leased lines were used for some other locations where transaction volume was expected to be high. In some very remote locations, Adani Wilmar also used VSATs. As on date some 80 different locations log into the central server and perform transactions through dialups, broadbands, CDMAs, leased lines, RF links and VSATs. 

Alok Industries

SAP ERP was employed by this garment manufacturer due to a rapidly growing business. This was done in order to automate their business processes and improve efficiencies. But, their network was not able to handle the load of SAP and Oracle, resulting in production delays. To get rid of this, they upgraded their existing 100 Mbps network to a Gigabit network with managed switches. This helped the company strengthen its backbone, leading to higher production and faster shipment despatch. The company has even gone one step further and deployed IP cameras for security reasons so as to create a secure working culture in the organization. The company is enjoying steady growth thanks to the wonders of IT.

Bajaj Electricals

This JDEdwards implementation by ACCEL has helped in forcasting supply and demand with greater accuracy, leading to better procurement and inventory management. It had to be implemented in their fan (chakkan) unit, mainly due to rising competition from foreign as well as local brands. Under this, everything from their shop floor to production lines, inventory, procurement, and even accounting was automated and brought online. This has reduced lead times throughout the supply chain, cut costs and improved decision making. The ERP solution uses Oracle 9i and MS SQL 2000 databases on their Web and production-class servers respectively, and IBM WebSphere 5.0 application server is running on Windows Server 2003.

BgSE Financials

VPN connectivity over broadband is what this project's all about. It's helped
BgSE, a company that's jointly promoted by Bangalore Stock Exchange and its members, to carry out secure and speedy trading at a fraction of the cost they were incurring earlier. Prior to using broadband, BgSE members (over 100) were using dial-up lines,
VSATs, and leased lines for connectivity. Broadband has reduced their initial acquisitino cost by half and monthly recurring cost by a fourth. Members can now pass on this benefit to their customers. It's now possible to securely connect to member networks, and get the performance needed for running real time applications. 

CNBC-TV18 

When the number of users going online at CNBC went up, they were also faced with a rise in the security threats. The company chose Fortinet's Forgate 400-A and 800-A firewalls for its offices in Delhi and Mumbai since these appliances could be configured for different Internet service providers with redundant failover links for continuous service to the users. Fortigate has integrated real-time AV, firewall, VPN, IDS/IPS, content filtering, and traffic shaping services in these boxes. Two of these boxes were used at each location in HA mode. Now, both offices are securely linked and issues such as network congestion have been put to rest. 

Cognizant Technology Solutions

Project InSight is truly a remarkable example of using an
IT infrastructure monitoring and management solution to manage other offshore IT
infrastructures. That's one of the businesses that Cognizant is in. They've
built a solution around HP's OpenView platform that allows them to manage
their customers' IT infrastructures remotely, and with ease. It provides their
customers enterprise management tools, an IT helpdesk, and an InSight portal.
The last one let's customers see the health of their IT infrastructure, trends
in the past and projected likely behavior. It follows a shared service model,
where the customer doesn't pay for the entire management platform.

CSIR-URDIP

Anusandhan, (www.anusandhan.net), provides information on public and private science & technology infrastructure, expertise and facilities, associated educational, government and private organizations, and their activities and related business dealings. The coverage includes 2500 publicly funded R & D institutions and 1500 privately funded in-house R & D centers of industry classified in 30 sectors. The portal is aimed at all those who benefit from Indian science and technology, from scientists to policy makers and students to professors. The portal has been developed on J2EE technology based on an n-tier Architecture. Right now, the portal is free for the general public.

Indian Overseas Bank

IOB-CROWN (Centralised Resources Over Wide-area Network) is an in-house core banking software deployed in 1500+ branches. The software is capable of e-banking and inter & intra bank fund transfer. The user can withdraw money (upto Rs. 25,000), transfer funds or clear drafts from any branch under CBS. This is running on SCO OpenServer 6.0, which runs on a low end Sun RISC server. It supports 3,000 users. There are three application servers, providing load balancing, with another server as a backup. The servers are logged with Sybase log every 5 minutes for recovery. All branches connect to this server over TCP/IP. The Front-End is called APT, which is a Sybase tool.

Ministry of Agriculture, GOI

AGMARKNET is a grand project that has networked 1700 agricultural produce markets for effective interchange of market prices. A portal called agmarknet.nic.in has been created where this information would be uploaded, and be made accessible. It's useful for traders, processors, exporters, researchers, policy makers, and planners alike with
information like agricultral census, grade information on products and the like. The Ministry of Agriculter
aims to create a national database with AGMARK-NET that will feed into a statistical and analysis report for agriculture decision makers. IFFCO has also deployed around 1000 kiosks in rural areas, which integrate with AGMARKNET. The project based on a disconnected client/server architecture and has huge potential to help growth in the Indian the rural sector. 

Government of Maharashtra

Computerized Document & Index Search System or CODISS, developed by NIC, is aimed at providing a computerized search and query facility on all the documents, which need to be retrieved when needed, from the record room of the Land Records Department. The application allows for the entry of details of the document, while providing a two level search facility to the user. One is at the document level and second, a more detailed level, for search of a key field within a document for which index details have been entered. This multi-user role based & client-server application stores data in UNICODE. The user interface is in Marathi. 

Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam

The ERP project, e-Urja, aims to handle the complexities of the energy sector. GUVNL needed better corporate governance, operational effectiveness and financial sustainability. This is achieved through Enterprise Resource Planning, which aims to integrate the business processes/functions of an organization so that key resources such as man, material, machine, money, etc. are utilized in the best interest of the organization. The current system has reduced the amount invested in inventory, processing costs per business transaction, procurement costs, and the time taken to perform a financial closure and prepare financial statements.

ICICI Bank

The channel integration across CRM project is meant to take care of providing a consisent user experience across various channels from where customer service requests can come in. At the heart of this system is the bank's CRM application. This currently allows ICICI Bank's users to log complaints on behalf of its customers. This project provides integration points to this system from other channels. Currently, a JSP based front-end has been created on a new sub-domain called
https://requests.icicibank.com, which connects to the CRM system through a middleware framework created in Java with XML for messaging, and hosted on the Pramati App server. The IVR system is also being integrated with this system, which is currently in pilot, but complete roll out is expected by the time you read this story.

Intimate Fashions

Intimate fashion is a fashion and garment house and has around 32 manufacturing lines. Garments manmufacturing is something that needs to be monitored properly at various stages of production. So in case of any fault, it can be immediately rectified at least before it goes into packaging. To reduce the time which is used in this process, they have taken help of technology. So 28 of all 32 manufacturing lines have been assigned a supervisor with a WiFi enabled PDA. The supervisor is to check the garments for any kind of faults and feed the details of the unit to the PDA. This data is then sent immediately to a central database over the wireless network. Then the data undergoes certain validity checks. If the validity check crosses a pre-defined threshold, the data is immediately sent to a superior who can then take a decision on weather to stop the manufacturing or continue if it's tolerable. The complete application is developed by the in-house IT team and uses commodity products like PDAs from HP for front-end and MS SQL as the back end. This has led to faster decision making, an increase in the production speed. 

Jindal Power

Microsoft Navision 4.0, an ERP system, was used to streamline the business processes. Setting up power plants is a mammoth exercise. It is too expensive and complicated to be managed with adhoc or manual systems. Only a solution as sophisticated as an ERP can effectively manage the operations. Since the plant is in the construction phase, the core requirement was pertaining to project costing and monitoring of work contracts and purchase orders. The system provides Jindal Power integrated functionality for financial management including Fixed Asset Accounting, Budget Monitoring & Analysis, and Inventory & Stores Management. 

LG Electronics

Primary Datacenter was aimed to build a high availability datacenter development for business continuity. It provides benefits such as improvement in business value, application availability, continuity of operations, productivity improvement, total cost reduction and single point management. The total data center architecture was built on APC Racks with APC UPS. It's a very complex environment having heterogenous platform. This includes ERP and mail on IBM, database on Sun, and thin client application on Intel based servers. The data center uses state of the art technologies from different vendors. It took three months to have it up and running. 

M&M Financial Services