Mobility

Mobility 1. Mobile-based customer service app: LG Electronics Manufacturing mobile phones being a key area of business for LG Electronics, the company understands the business benefits of adopting mobility within the enterprise. The company has thus mobile enabled several enterprise apps to empower employees on the move. Apart from mobile enabling certain basic workflow apps for the employees across different teams, LG has mobile-enabled apps for its on-field sales team, assisting them to do their jobs in an effective and fast manner. For example, the company has rolled out a mobile sales management app for its sales force, which enables them to guide the trade partners of their regions on the product models that are high in demand and are fast moving in that particular territory. This helps the trade partners purchase the right stock. The app enables the sales force to view any transaction pertaining to sales, inventory management and basic accounting. ―We do not want our trade partners to buy inventories that will not sell in that area as this will be a losing proposition for both LG as well as the trade partner. Today, using the mobile app an area sales manager visiting a trade partner can see what kind of sales a particular partner has been doing for the last 1-2 years. Based on this information, the sales manager educates the trade partner and helps him plan the next cycle of products to stock for a particular timeline,‖ explains Daya Prakash, CIO, LG Electronics. The application has also accelerated the whole process of replenishing the trade partner‘s inventory in a timely manner. Traditionally, once the purchasing decision was made by the trade partner, the area sales manager had to travel back to the office, access the ERP, punch in the order and then figure out whether the inventory exists in stock or not. However, with this mobile app, the area sales manager can instantly check the availability of a particular stock on-site, as soon as the trade partner places his order. LG has also introduced a mobile-based customer service app to make customer service faster and much more efficient. Traditionally, whenever an LG customer had a problem with a particular LG product, he/she would call up the LG call center and file a complaint. Once the complaint was filed, the company‘s service engineer visited the customer and examined the product. After figuring out the fault in the parts, he came back to the authorized service center to check whether the part was available or not. In case, the part was not available, another 2-3 days were taken to procure that part. Today, using the customer service app, customer service engineers can check the availability of a particular part anytime, anywhere. In case the stock for a particular stock is unavailable, the engineer also has the visibility to check the availability of alternate parts, which can get the things working till the originally required parts arrive. This app brings down the whole repair turnaround time manifolds and plays a major role in enhancing customer satisfaction. Another interesting use case of enterprise mobility at LG is how the sales officials present at LG showrooms, known as Store Sales Executives (SSEs), are using the mobile-based SSE Management app to send SMSes at the end of each day about what products are being sold in that particular territory. ―The SSE app talks back to our ERP and the CRM app and helps us get

information on which models are moving fast. It not only helps us monitor product sales, but also gives us visibility into the level of inventory available with the trade partners,‖ informs Prakash. The app was primarily introduced with an intention to gauge which products are more popular in which territories, and to enable area sales managers to devise an effective business strategy for a particular territory, based on actual data on the products that sell in that area, rather than going by assumption. 2. Mobile-enabled claims app: ICICI Lombard ICICI Lombard, one of the largest general insurance companies in India, has been at the forefront of adopting emerging technologies to maintain its competitive edge. By utilizing the mobile platform to enhance customer experience and increase employee productivity, the firm has achieved yet another technology milestone. The firm has innovatively used mobile technology to simplify the process of insurance claim. For example, traditionally, for claiming motor insurance, customers had to follow a lengthy and cumbersome process of taking their damaged vehicle to the garage, calling the toll free number of the insurance company, and sharing the policy details. Then, they had to arrange the forms and documents required to support the claim. To shorten the otherwise lengthy procedure, the company launched an in-house developed Mobile Claims App called ‗Insure‘ for the customers and transformed the way in which claims were traditionally intimated. ―Our Insure app empowers customers to intimate a claim of their vehicle through their mobile phones. Customers can click picture(s) of the damaged parts and send it to us through this app. The app also allows the customer to record and upload incident description in his/her voice,‖ says Eswaranatarajan N, Chief – Operation and Technology, ICICI Lombard. This ensures that customers collect necessary evidence in terms of images and audio record and transmit it instantaneously to the claims office, thus ensuring faster claim process. The Insure application not only helps the customer to intimate a claim seamlessly but also allows them to view the nearest cashless garage network of ICICI Lombard in time when he/she experiences a car breakdown. ―We have also included a feature of locating the nearest cashless network hospital as well as the nearest ICICI Lombard office. This has been made possible with our GPS technology feature, which we have incorporated in the app,‖ adds Eswaranatarajan. Presently the app is available on the Android platform and will be soon be available for the rest of the platforms i.e. iOS, Windows 8 and BlackBerry. Eswaranatarajan tells us that since the launch of ‗Insure‘, approximately 7,600 customers have downloaded the app from the Android market. The firm has also developed another in-house app called ‗FastTrack‘ for on-field claim surveyors. Earlier, to lodge a customer‘s claim, an ICICI Lombard‘s on-field surveyor had to first visit the site, click images of the damaged vehicle via digital camera and at the end of the day visit the nearest ICICI Lombard branch office to sort and upload images and enter data into the claim system. This process generally took 2-3 days and there were instances of human error(s) while lodging a claim manually. Today, using the FastTrack app built for an Android tablet, on-field surveyors can take images, fill in the necessary data and immediately sync information to central server to process claim. ―The entire cycle is now

possible on a real-time basis. This has further reduced the time taken for lodging the claims by two days, as data is now synced immediately to the central server. Earlier, surveyors used to attend 4-5 cases in a day. But, now with the introduction of the mobile app, each surveyor completes 7-8 cases in a day. Also, overall there has been a 35 percent increase in resource efficiency,‖ adds Eswaranatarajan.

3. Mobile Quality Checklist app: Bharti Infratel Bharti Infratel, India‘s leading telecom tower infrastructure provider, is another company that is using mobility innovatively within its organization. The company is credited with pioneering the concept of passive tower infrastructure sharing by telecom operators — a model that allows various telecom operators to share the same non-electronic telecom tower infrastructure, enabling them to save a significant amount on CAPEX and OPEX. One of the biggest business needs of Bharti Infratel was ensuring timely quality checks of the tower infrastructure. In a traditional environment, a member from the quality team would go to the site armed with various items — physical checklist for quality check of towers; cameras to collect images of site condition and equipment placement as per client specifications; and laptop and data card to relay all the collected data to the concerned teams for review. The process of providing each and every member of the on-field quality team with these items was an added cost. To resolve this issue, Bharti Infratel developed a Mobile Quality Checklist app that contained all the requisite checklist criteria needed to do the quality check of towers. This app was then loaded on to the GPRS-enabled Nokia or Android handsets with inbuilt camera that was issued to the quality team. Currently, about 600 employees use this app. ―With Mobile Quality Checklist App, the quality check personnel can now review two sites within the same time, which he/she used to take previously to evaluate one site. Not only this, the time to taken to submit the checklist back to the concerned system has reduced from one day to almost instantly,‖ says Prashant Veer Singh, CIO, Bharti Infratel. Introduction of the app has also resulted in significant savings. ―The implementation of the app has enabled us to reduce the OPEX by 60 percent and CAPEX by almost 90 percent. This is because we are no longer required to equip them with laptops, cameras, data card, etc., which costed around Rs 1 lakh in totality. Instead, we now provide them with Nokia/Android phones that fall in the range of Rs 10,000,‖ Singh adds.

4. ERP integrated with Google maps : Madras Cements The flagship company of Ramco Group in India and one of the largest cement manufacturers in India, Madras Cements Limited (MCL) is yet another company that has leveraged the mobile platform innovatively by mobile-enabling ERP and integrating it with Google Maps. The company wanted to mobile-enable its existing ERP to enable its widely scattered workforce in rural areas to access business reports from anywhere. Traditionally, at MCL reporting via the ERP was done using Microsoft Excel sheets,

which were quite complex and time-consuming. To resolve this issue, MCL integrated Google Maps with the Ramco ERP system and superimposed the ERP data onto the Google maps, which resulted in a rich data visualization tool that illustrated ERP data at various levels of detail. Today, ERP integrated with Google Maps is used by both the senior employees and field force on their mobile devices. Varadarajan N, Senior GM IT, says, ―Our CXO community uses iPhones and iPads to access the ERP integrated with Google Maps for rendering geospatial data and analytics on the device with extensive drill down facilities, while our field force uses GPS enabled Android devices, which are GPRS/EDGE/3G enabled for accessing the ERP. Immediate availability of data and reports has increased their productivity manifold and reduced the cycle time.‖ The on-field sales team now uses their mobile devices armed with ERP integrated with Google maps to easily view information on the go. The team can locate their cement warehouses and key customers on Google Maps vis-à-vis critical operation information, competitor distribution networks in their area, and the best and worst performing dealers. This in turn empowers them to devise effective supply chain strategies and enhance customer service. With this solution, MCL was able to reduce penalties, losses and damages arising during the wagon clearance process by up to 70 percent, and improve consignment clearance time by up to 40 percent. In addition, post integrating Google Maps with ERP, the company has successfully captured 20-30 percent market share.

5. Mobile-enabled dealer management system: TVS Motor One of India‘s leading two wheeler manufacturers, TVS Motor Company, has mobileenabled various enterprise apps for different teams. For instance, for the sales team, it has mobile-enabled ERP, CRM and BI. This empowers the sales team to have authentic information at their fingertips, enabling them to have an effective discussion with dealers. The company has also mobile-enabled the dealer management system, which enables dealers to actually review the dashboards before attending the office. This arms them with much needed data that contributes greatly to the discussion with the company‘s sales team. Similarly, for supply chain executives, the company has mobile-enabled the SCM system. This enables supply chain executives to keep a track of the location of the consignments, which in turn has reduced production stoppages. In addition, the company has enabled workflows on mobile devices, which gives managers the capability to access office apps like leave, travel, CAPEX and give approval from anytime, anywhere. TG Dhandapani, Group CIO, TVS Motor Company, says, ―With mobile-enablement of enterprise apps, managers now have latest information for effective decision making, which has improved the quality of decisions. While office app improves hygiene, ERP and BI apps help in controlling cost and reduce loss, and strategic apps like CRM and PLM help in understanding and exploiting the business opportunities.‖ 6. Mobile-enabled customer on-boarding: ICICI Bank

Traditionally, at ICICI Bank the document-centric customer on-boarding process like account opening or availing other services offered by the bank was done on paper by the agent. The agent then transferred the document to the back-office from where the actual process of delivering the required service to the customer began. In order to bridge the gap between service delivery timelines and customer expectation, ICICI Bank started looking at mobile technologies. The bank decided to arm about 5,000 of its mobile equipped on-field staff with ZapIn, a mobile capture enterprise app developed by Newgen Software. This app enabled the agent on move to feed in all customer-related information — be it filled in app forms or verification documents — through the app instantaneously from the client location and submit it immediately to the back office through the GPRS/3G network, thus speeding up the entire customer on-boarding process. Pramod Kumar, Head - Center of Excellence for New Products and Solutions, Newgen Software informs us that ICICI Bank was awarded the Asian Leadership Award 2012 for the ‗Best use of Mobile Technology in Financial Services‘ in the BFSI Award segment.

7. Mobile-enabled business apps: Essar Essar Group has been one of the pioneers for BYOD in the Indian industry. The group is cashing in on the increasing trend of smartphone equipped workforce by mobileenabling some of their business applications on the employee smart devices. Jayantha Prabhu, CTO, Essar Group tells us that apart from mobile-enabling official e-mails for managerial employees, the company has mobile-enabled Microsoft Lync Collaboration Solution and PolycomRealpresence for video conferencing, which is integrated to corporate bridge for the senior management employees and sales teams. The group has also mobile-enabled business apps for sales team of its two retail outlets, The Mobile Store and Hypermart. ―We have now enabled the JDA Sales Team app for BlackBerry. The sales teams today are able to take the consoles for this business app right on their BlackBerry devices, look into the orders, understand the sales communications and do all the sales-linked operations on the field. They can also take critical business decisions while on the move. One of the initiatives at Essar is now to enable this on the iPad as well,‖ Prabhu says. Essar has also used mobility to address a business need felt by the sales team and senior management to access certain specific corporate videos during business meetings with clients and management level training and leadership videos respectively. ―We deployed Drona mobile solution from Deltecs, which enables us to push various required videos to the mobile devices of sales team and senior management,‖ says Prabhu. In fact, Essar has tied up with Bizpunditz, a company providing a digital library of video clips of 3-7 minutes, for pushing leadership development and corporate training videos to the mobile phones of senior management employees using this technology. It has also taken another initiative to cut call roaming charges for the senior management employees, who travel extensively. About 6-8 months back, Essar implemented the BlackBerry Mobile Voice System (MVS) and integrated it with Corporate PBX Avaya solution. This enables widely travelling senior

management employees to make and receive calls from anywhere using Wi-Fi and route it through the organization‘s phone system with a single number, enabling the group to save on roaming costs.

8. Remote fetal monitoring system: Manipal Hospital By leveraging the mobile platform for fetal monitoring, Manipal Hospital, has set an example of how mobility can transform the delivery of healthcare services. Fetal monitoring is a critical process that needs to be undertaken regularly by expectant mothers to enable their consultant gynecologist to monitor the baby‘s heart rate using ultrasound and ECG. As is the standard practice in most hospitals across India, Manipal Hospital was also conducting the fetal monitoring in the traditional process where a medical staff constantly monitored the fetal heart rate by standing near the fetal monitor and then this report was relayed to the concerned gynecologist for review. In order to decrease the time lag between fetal monitoring and the consequent review by the doctors, Manipal Hospital recently implemented a remote fetal monitoring system using which the concerned gynecologist can review the reports directly on their mobile devices. ―All our gynecology consultants have fetal monitoring solution enabled on their smart devices. With wireless fetal monitoring, doctors can now view all the requisite parameters, like recordings of maternal and fetal heart rate and uterine activity from the expectant mother with their smart devices and take the right decisions without jeopardizing baby or the mother,‖ informs Dr. H Sudarshan Ballal, Medical Director, Manipal Hospital. Dr. Ballal tells us that apart from this, Manipal Hospital also has a Picture Archival Communication System (PACS), which is a computer network system for the storage, retrieval and display of radiology images, which can be accessed using smart mobile devices. ―The PACS system enables the doctors and radiologist to actually look at X-rays from any location using their laptops and smart devices,‖ he adds.

9. Accessing desktops on tablets: Thermax Thermax is a Pune-based company that provides a range of engineering solutions to the energy and environment sectors. Last year, in August the company implemented desktop virtualization and by October rolled it out to about 750 users who initially started accessing the XenDesktop through traditional thin clients, desktops or laptops. Thermax made most of the non-engineering apps available through Citrix XenDesktop. This includes Thermax‘s two ERP apps — Oracle ERP and Baan ERP from Infor Global Solutions, taxation software, Project Lifecycle Management app, HRMS and attendance management system. Leveraging on desktop virtualization technology, the company encouraged employees to bring their own tablets to access their virtual desktops and work on various non-engineering apps from anywhere, anytime. This in turn led to improved and timely decision making. Anil Nadkarni, CIO, Thermax, says, ―Today, there

are about 20 tablet users within the company who are using Citrix receiver to access their desktops on their own tablets. I also use my personal iPad to connect to XenDesktop.‖ The company is now encouraging the BYOD trend within the organization. ―With the success of this project, we are seriously contemplating not to give desktops or laptops to our employees from now on. They can bring their own computers and tablets to work. I am less worried about the security issues now because at the end of the day my data is protected, as it is only the image which gets transmitted on to the network and the device,‖ Nadkarni adds.

10. Collaboration on the move: Hero MotoCorp Hero MotoCorp, one of the world‘s largest two wheeler manufacturer is another company that has used mobile technology to its advantage. In 2012, Vijay Sethi, CIO, Hero MotoCorp did a formal mobile maturity assessment and used the assessment results to refine the company‘s mobile strategy and its roadmap. The study enabled Sethi to sense the emerging needs amongst the employees to mobile-enable certain specific business apps, which were essential for smooth functioning of the business operations. This included e-mails, apps for leave approvals, material gate pass approvals, approvals for vendor master creation, purchase order approvals, etc. Apart from this, he also understood that the senior management needed dashboarding and decision-making capabilities on mobiles along with video conferencing abilities on their tablets and smartphones to ensure fast and efficient decision-making. Once this need was identified, Hero MotoCorp started extending various such workflow apps and Lotusnotes based apps on the mobile devices of employees. ―We are one of the first organizations to provide e-mails (Lotus Notes) on a variety of phones to our employees — and we are the first one in India who provided this on Nokia phones,‖ says Sethi. Talking about the benefits this has brought to the company Sethi says, ―The result is that employees do not have to wait for approvals/decisions when their seniors are not in office or are travelling. Time delays are weeded out of the system, and both employees and business heads have chanced upon a win-win.‖ Apart from this, Sethi also leveraged a video conferencing solution for senior management employees to aid collaboration and quicker decision-making even while on the move. ―We leveraged a third-party video conferencing solution to enable laptop, tablet users and some of the latest smartphone users to perform multi-party video conferencing with each other. The system is compliant with all legacy video conferencing tools already used across the enterprise.‖ In addition to this, Sethi also spearheaded a project that has enabled reporting of business-critical data through dashboards for the ‗C‘ level employees to drill and dig into.

11. Mobile-enabled inventory management: Future Group Future Group, India‘s biggest retailer and owner of numerous successful brands, such as Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and HomeTown, has demonstrated how mobile technology can be used effectively for inventory management. The retailer wanted to improve the inventory management process by enabling central visibility into the inventory at the store level and the front end for the sales and stock audit teams to review, while on the move within the store. To achieve this, the group created a mobile app, which was integrated with the back-end ERP system for inventory, price and stock checks. The group also set up a secure Wi-Fi store infrastructure that consisted of Cisco access points at the store and a back-end Cisco wireless controller. This app is now utilized by the stock audit team for physical verification and counting and is used by the sales team to look at real-time information on the sales within the store. Today, the Group has improved the efficiency of its stores. For example, employees have quick access to information related to stocks and sales, which in turn has helped in immediately resolving price and EAN discrepancies. After introducing the app, the group has registered 20 percent increase in inventory availability and management, 10 percent reduction in travel costs and 5 percent reduction in new employee training costs.