Customer Solution Case Study

IT Services Firm Increases Business Agility and Employee Productivity with Enterprise Social Networking and Collaboration

OverviewCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: IT Services

Customer ProfileIncorporated in 1997 and headquartered in Mumbai, India, L&T Infotech is one of the fastest growing IT Services companies and solutions providers. It employs over 16,000 employees across the globe.

Business SituationL&T Infotech wanted to improve enterprise business collaboration. It wanted a solution that would make it easier for employees to access knowledge, artifacts, seek expert guidance, and collaborate over business events.

SolutionL&T Infotech used Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to create CliquePoint™, an enterprise social networking tool to foster the culture of collaboration. It includes wikis, blogs, and team sites, in addition to social networking elements.

Benefits Achieves innovation through

dynamic collaboration Reduces email usage

dramatically Increases active user’s

“The adoption of enterprise social collaboration as a part of core business processes is spreading and deepening.”

Mr. Uday Gharpure, Executive Vice President & Head - Global Business Operations, L&T Infotech

L&T Infotech, a global IT services company, wanted to leverage social techniques to improve business process agility, strengthen people-to-people connection, and nurture an environment for innovation and creativity. An enterprise social collaboration platform was created, called CliquePoint™ using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 as the foundation. The portal provides access to important business events, people profiles, and communities for collaboration and content sharing. CliquePoint™ not only boosts business collaboration, but also increases user productivity by 20 percent. It is designed for of the entire organizational hierarchy; to help everyone to come together and share ideas or collaborate on business events in real time, using a PC, browser, or mobile device. As a result, email communication has reduced dramatically.

SituationL&T Infotech is a global IT services and solutions provider offering end-to-end services in banking and financial services, insurance, energy and petrochemicals, manufacturing, and product engineering services (Wireless telecom). A wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S.$ 11.7 billion Larsen & Toubro Ltd., it provides a winning edge to its clients by leveraging its philosophy Business-to-IT connect, and deeply committed people. The company’s clients include industry leaders like Chevron, Freescale, Flowserve, Hitachi, and Lafarge, among others. In 2010–11, the company generated a revenue of over U.S.$ 540 million.

L&T Infotech sees the convergence of communication and collaboration as a major factor influencing the way businesses are run, and wants to innovate in the business of providing value to its clients. To do this, it is investing heavily in promoting enterprise social networking for sharing information, tracking, and reacting to critical business events, and co-innovation within the confines of the organization. The company did extensive research to understand its employees’ needs prior to designing a solution. “We contacted employees across the organization and asked them where they wanted to go with their communications in the future,” explains Mr. Ashish Varerkar, Head of Microsoft

Practice, L&T Infotech. “We realized that social networking had permeated across the company and one of the prominent themes that emerged was making any internal collaboration platform as intuitive as these social networks. It was also necessary to increase situational awareness among our employees by providing information in the right context and tracking important business events to make decision making easier and agile.”

Another primary driver was to bring various verticals on one platform. L&T Infotech had silos of information across verticals but the communication between each required improvement. The company wanted to provide a platform where everyone could come together and share information. To get there, it needed a technology platform that would facilitate collaboration across the organization in an easy, seamless, responsive, and accurate way.

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CliquePoint™ on the Technology

Portal Landing Page

“CliquePoint™ has the ability to present information in the right context and improve situational awareness through the tracking of business events and dissemination of knowledge and information over multiple channels like the web, mobile, and desktop.”

SolutionAfter L&T Infotech investigated both commercial and open source solutions, it quickly decided that Microsoft was the best choice. Mr. Abhay Chitnis, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, L&T Infotech, says, “We were impressed by the capabilities of SharePoint Server 2010. It was the best fit for our needs and an excellent technology foundation on which we could build.”

SharePoint Server 2010 provided just the right communication and collaboration tools the company needed. The enhancements in social networking, metadata services, and connection to back-end business systems were extremely beneficial.

In December 2010, L&T Infotech began to develop its enterprise social networking solution, which it named CliquePoint™. Developers used Microsoft .NET Framework to create a compelling, interactive user experience. “CliquePoint™ was designed to connect easily to our

existing IT environment. It offered many out-of-the-box features as well as the flexibility and customizability to develop a comprehensive enterprise social network over time,” says Mr. Ashish Varerkar. “We also tried to make it very easy for users to jump right in and find the required information.”

From concept to implementation, the solution was developed in four months. It was completely driven by the technology team. In April 2011, it went live.

CliquePoint™ has two parts to it. The first is communities, where people with common interests can exchange ideas and best practices while following the activities of the community. The second is personal collaboration, which provides people with comprehensive tools such as micro-blogs, blogs, and wikis, enabling them to connect and follow others and, more importantly, help in tracking relevant business events.

CliquePoint™ Features Communities: Communities

offer connected information as well as the ability to share information on the fly. These are made up of standard SharePoint features like blogs, wikis, documents, and discussion forums. Employees can also indicate which content they find most helpful by tagging/liking and commenting on it.

Business Events: One of the critical success factors for

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Personal Wall

“A big point while selling the solution to the client was that it had an intuitive user interface, multiple delivery channels like the web, desktop, and mobile, and was a white labeled product.”

Mr. Sandeep Desai, Area Vice President, United

States - West, L&T Infotech

CliquePoint™ is business social collaboration. Employees can subscribe and follow important events from their line of business

(LOB) systems and collaborate over CliquePoint™. “For example, we have a custom application for resource fulfillment, which we have integrated with CliquePoint™,” says Mr. Pradip Kotkar, Vice President and Head of Resource Fulfillment, L&T Infotech. “If I am registered for this application, then I get feeds of what is happening within that system. I can also share this information with colleagues or

create a venture for addressing large opportunities.”

Personal Wall: The wall allows employees to keep track of business events to which they are subscribed, connecting with various teams and the personal network activities within the organization. It also helps to quickly learn more about each other’s skills and build relationships. Employees can follow people or activities across the organization via the wall, where they can also share their thoughts.

Ventures: Employees can create a venture, which is a closed transient community for collaboration. As an owner of that venture, the employee is free to call others to join it, thus making it a closed community. “This has increased organizational productivity manifold when it comes to responding to proposals, resource fulfillment, as well as managing some of our transient initiatives,” says Mr. Abhay Chitnis.

Outlook Add-in: The Add-in integrates CliquePoint™ within Outlook. Employees are able to see the entire wall on Outlook as well. They can share information, go to any of the communities or ventures, and receive and share feeds.

External Interface: Desktop-based integration has been introduced with QuikSync. This application creates a folder on an employee’s desktop, which has links to the communities or ventures of which the employee is a member. “I have a link to communities directly from my desktop,” says Mr. Anup Karade, Senior Architect, L&T Infotech. “I can use these links

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Outlook Add-in

CliquePoint™ on Smart Devices

and view and post content directly into this folder and it shows up on my wall. I have access to the entire content from within my explorer.”

Report Abuse: Communities allow employees to voice their concerns if any abusive content is posted. “Any reported content goes to the moderator, who has complete authority to reprimand the author and bar him from the community after due warning,” says Mr. Sunil Sangamnerkar, Head of Quality, L&T Infotech.

CliquePoint™ Extended Reach“For catering to the senior management and mobile workforce, CliquePoint™ has been enabled on smart devices,” says Mr. Ashish Varerkar. CliquePoint™ has a HTML5 and JQuery interface for leveraging native user experience such as touch/swipe/pinch/zoom, etc. It has been tested for seamless usage on Windows, iOS, Android, and Blackberry phones and tablets.

CliquePoint™ averages about 2,000+ visitors daily. It has

200+ blogs, 60+ wikis, 20 communities, 3,000+ documents, and 80+ ventures.“A big point while selling the solution to the client was that it had an intuitive user interface, multiple delivery channels like the web, desktop, and mobile, and was a white labeled product,” says Mr. Sandeep Desai, Area Vice President, United States-West, L&T Infotech.

BenefitsCliquePoint™ enables employees and clients to form business/social connections. This improves collaboration. The network interoperates with the existing IT infrastructure and, because it is flexible, customizable, and scalable, it can accommodate growth. “CliquePoint™ has the ability to present information in the right context and improve situational awareness through the tracking of business events and dissemination of knowledge and information over multiple channels like the web, mobile, and desktop,” says Mr. Abhay Chitnis.

Achieves Innovation through Dynamic CollaborationL&T Infotech has received highly affirmative feedback from employees who use CliquePoint™. The enterprise collaboration portal gives them streamlined access to information and they can now find people and information more easily. The company is encouraging more

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“… It is a collaboration workspace where teams can consolidate all of their information. Instead of people searching for information, we make information reach them. It is readily available for them to consume. We estimate that employee

such connections and collaborations among employees. When people connect at a social level, it helps them know and understand each other better and ultimately work better together.

Mr. Anup Karade says, “We work in a very social environment. Teamwork and collaboration is not really possible until you know who people are, and until you know how you're related to them. With CliquePoint™, we are building that social culture.”

Reduces Email Usage DramaticallyCliquePoint™ has given L&T Infotech employees a new way to engage, learn, and disseminate information. Employees are embracing the solution, which is similar to popular public social-networking sites. All information is available on the wall. “The adoption of enterprise social collaboration as a part of core business processes is spreading and deepening,” says Mr. Uday Gharpure, Executive Vice President & Head - Global Business Operations, L&T Infotech. “We are seeing a dramatic reduction in the usage of email.”

Increases Active User’s Productivity by 20 PercentL&T Infotech employees have increased their productive time at work. They have access to communities, can initiate blogs, contribute to wikis, and share files, including documents, videos, and

audios with other members. Profile pages include a wall on which employees and their contacts can write messages.

“We have brought silos of research and information to a single platform,” comments Mr. Sunil Sangamnerkar. “It is a collaboration workspace where teams can consolidate all of their information. Instead of people searching for information, we make information reach them. It is readily available for them to consume. We estimate that employee productivity has improved by 20 percent.”

Improves Business AgilityAccording to Mr. Uday Gharpure, “The turn-around time of our on-site sales force to our clients has reduced many-fold due to the use of CliquePoint™. Integration of business events on the wall and ease of tracking initiatives has helped to reduce response time for RFPs and resource fulfillment.”

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the Enterprise and the Internet.

For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Center at (877) 568-2495. Clients in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information, using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about L&T Infotech products and services, call +91-22-6776 8591 or visit the website at: www.lntinfotech.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published April 2012

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Software and Services Microsoft Server Product

Portfolio− Microsoft SharePoint Server

2010− Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2− IE 7.0 and above− Outlook client 2007 / 2010

Hardware Mobile – Windows Phones, iPhone,

Android Phones, Blackberry 6.0 and above

Tablets –iPad, Any tablet with 1024x768 resolution

Personal Computer (Windows/Linux)