Business Challenge
iGATE provides full-spectrum consulting, technology, business process and product engineering outsourcing services. The multilocation global organization delivers effective solutions to over 300 global clients, including a large number of Fortune 1000 companies. Their customer footprint spans across verticals like banking & financial services; insurance & healthcare; life sciences; manufacturing, retail, distribution and logistics; media, entertainment leisure & travel; communication, energy & utilities; public sector; and independent software vendors. A diversified, well-trained and motivated talent pool of 27000 people works cohesively to deliver solutions based around a mature global delivery model to their clients across the Americas, Europe- Middle East-Africa (EMEA) and Asia-Pacific.
Given the company’s geographic spread and customer base, the IT team was challenged to aid its internal teams in quick decisionmaking and improve workflow efficiencies, while also bringing down the travel overheads and reduce carbon footprint. Concerns about efficiency and the need for employees to juggle many tasks compelled the top management of iGATE to seek a solution that would improve productivity of various groups while reducing costs.
While looking to create a better delivery model the company realized that collaboration was critical to keep customers happy. Since most of the process delivery employees were spread across multiple geographies and not physically close to customers, the organization decided to deploy a state-of-the-art video conferencing solution to enable efficient communication.
However, issues like disconnections, slow speed & poor quality of video were common complaints. Therefore the company decided to go for a complete overhaul of the infrastructure and deploy high-definition video to meet the business objectives. iGATE decided to implement an easy-to-use, high-quality and scalable video collaboration system & felt that Cisco Tandberg Solution was the best fit because the system had proved invaluable for collaboration between various stakeholders spread across the globe during the iGATE and Patni merger process.
Network Solution
The IT team evaluated different video communication solutions available in the market and chose the Cisco solution. In addition to the peer references, Cisco was chosen due to technical advantage, ease of management and cost component. The quality of products and the support offered by Cisco were unparalleled by any other vendor. Since Cisco was the existing vendor for the underlying network, it added to the overall value of the implementation. iGATE opted to deploy Cisco Tandberg video conferencing solutions across its offices in Bengaluru Chennai and Noida besides facilities in Fremont (USA). The solution consists of an end-to-end scalable video architecture. From a product specification standpoint, Cisco TelePresence MSE 8000 Series, a high-capacity voice and video conferencing media services engine, was deployed. The solution has different modules; including an all-in-one multipoint conference unit (MCU) IP / ISDN gateway which facilitates placement of IP calls to ISDN based video conference units across the globe. It supported 10 simultaneous calls/15 video screens. During the integration with Patni Computers, the Video Conferencing was beneficial in cutting down a lot of travel and thereby significantly reducing costs. Patni Computer Systems’s IT team was using the traditional Standard Definition systems, whereas iGATE used Video Conferencing extensively. Post the integration of the two organizations, all the older systems were integrated seamlessly into the Tandberg / Cisco Video Conferencing environment. The equipment from various vendors like Polycom, LifeSize, Sony was also registered to the Tandberg / Cisco Gatekeeper system. This setup removed the dependency on international calls on ISDN lines and replaced that with IP based connections from all the India rooms to the USA and ISDN from USA to the client locations.
The solution is used extensively by the sales, production, finance, IT, HR and also administration teams. Telepresence rooms are utilized for review meetings and quarterly board meetings across the globe on a regular basis. Post merger of iGATE and Patni, the combined entity which initially had 18-20 video rooms across the country has now expanded to 60 video rooms, spread across 19 India offices & 12 overseas offices.
The Cisco TelePresence System Codec C40 helped to transform the workspace into an HD video collaboration room– be it a conference room, team meeting room, or executive office. In phase one of the project, about 30 video rooms were created across 10 locations. iGATE did not have to invest much on leased lines as the company had dedicated bandwidth of 45 mbps running it’s WAN. On Cisco’s recommendation, iGATE decided to go with Dimension Data as its integration and implementation partner.
“By deploying a high-definition video conferencing solution we have been able to facilitate effective communication between sales, production, finance, IT, HR and administration teams across various locations. This has helped improve our collaboration capability many times over and also meet our business objectives,” says Chella Namasivayam, CIO, iGATE.
Having chosen the solution, the immediate task was to get the designated rooms modified to suit Telepresence and video conferencing. The primary task was to look at high definition end points, create a Telepresence bridge and establish an ISDN bridge at Fremont.
Allocation of bandwidth was also a challenge, particularly when it involved communication between overseas teams. Deploying the video-conferencing tools at the Fremont office had some logistic issues in terms of product delivery. However the Dimension Data team evolved an effective unified communication development framework to do the integration process and overcame all technical glitches.
The implementation of the Cisco solution has enabled employees at iGATE to collaborate more effectively with their peers and the management. It has also helped them to reach out to their customers more easily, understand their concerns and resolve the same in a much more effective manner. For the management, the solution provides a platform to interact with their employees and customers in a much better way.
In terms of percentage benefits, the company has achieved
sIncreased employee collaboration capability by nearly 12 fold. Average number of video calls routed through VAS stands at 700+ per month sReduction in travel costs by nearly 28% sSignificant improvement in employee productivity because data sharing is simplified sVideo is used to collaborate effortlessly and resolve various customer issues thereby improving customer satisfaction levels sSeamless communication between globally distributed teams, partners and customers Post implementation, employee productivity has improved tremendously, meeting times and travel costs have come down, and the company has gotten closer towards achieving its ‘green initiatives. Customers feel that they can now reach out to company representatives easily and resolve any issues of concern collaboratively. The objective to increase operational efficiency while reducing costs and improve employee/customer experience has been completely realized.
