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 mobile-
enabled 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 mobile-
enabling 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 Lotus-
notes 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.