Customer: Large Contact Company

Industry: Business Services

Customer Size: 12000 employees

Customer Profile:
Customer is a leading provider of outsourced contact center management and CRM solutions to customers across North America. Customer delivers outsourced sales & marketing effectiveness programs to a host of Fortune 500 customers through its Business-to-Business (B2B) line of business. Customer undertakes end-to-end process of developing and executing programs including but not limited to lead generation, appointment setting, campaign management and telemarketing.

The Situation: The B2B team at Customer has been using an in-house developed solution to manage several small to large projects for its customers. Since 1991, Customer continued to use and customize the solution to meet specific needs of their customer’s sales & marketing programs.

In late 2006, Customer management realized that the changing business environment, technology innovation and increasing competition in their market space required them to move to a more sophisticated solution to meet the complex solution requirements of their customers’ sales and marketing programs. Some of the key challenges faced by the business users with the current system were:

• Provide for complex customization to meet customer’s unique project requirements.

• Improve time-to-market by reducing time taken for project setup and launch.

• Improve project management capabilities to track and manage projects across different customer groups.

• Reduce turn around time on all project related activities through business process and workflow automation.

• Provide document management capabilities to all project team members.

• Increase collaboration among project teams and improve employee productivity.

• On demand reporting capabilities for customers and Customer management.

The Solution: Customer and i³ jointly engaged into business discussions to understand different stakeholder needs and perspective within the organization. After gaining detailed understanding of the requirements and the unique challenges faced by the business, both the team took a joint decision to implement best-of-breed solution from Microsoft. Some of the key drivers for the decision were to build solution using MS SharePoint 2007 and MS Project Server 2007:.

• Some of the key driver’s in using the Microsoft solution space were:

• Project Server 2007 provides with out of box project management tool

• SharePoint 2007 is a highly customizable rapid application development tool.

• Leverage i³’s expertise in Microsoft Technologies as a Microsoft Certified Partner.

• Reduce training costs and gain end-user confidence by using familiar environment and technology.

•  Reduce turn around time by customizing packaged solution available from Microsoft

The solution was implemented by customizing best-of-breed technologies available from Microsoft using:

• MS Windows Server 2003

• MS SQL Server 20032005

• MS SharePoint Server 2007

• MS Project Server 2007

• MS Office 2007

The Benefits:
Customer gained on many fronts at the same time by leveraging on the capabilities of i³ and Microsoft.

Execution Benefits:

• Reduce development & implementation time by utilizing i³’s expertise on Microsoft Technologies.

• Lower cost of implementation by leveraging i³’s offshore resources.

• Increased productivity and utilization by utilizing i³’s global delivery model.

• Using i³’s agile development methodology (SCRUM) to demonstrate quick results to and gain end user end user confidence.

Solution Benefits:

• SharePoint Server 2007:

  • Simple, familiar and consistent user experience through seamless integration with existing Microsoft Office applications.

  • Boost employee productivity by automating daily business activities including initiating, tracking and approval.

  • Better control over content and meet compliance requirements specified by customers.

  • Quick escalation and resolution on issues through workflow automation.

• Project Server 2007:

  • Provide better tracking and visibility to managers on existing projects.

  • Deploy and manage resources effectively and improve utilization.

  • Quick escalation and resolution on issues through workflow automation.

  • Improved employee productivity and turn around time through better collaboration and coordination.

  • Complete automation for task management facilitating resources to better manage their daily activities.