Eicher’s EPIC solution

The Eicher Group has set up an integrated portal called Eicher Portal for Information and Collaboration (EPIC) to improve employee productivity. This unique initiative won EPIC the Intelligent Enterprise Award at Technology Senate 2003. SHIPRA ARORA finds out more

THE challenge for the Eicher Group, the automotive engineering major, was to be able to meet its growing information and collaborative needs in a user-friendly and cost-effective manner.

An integrated portal named EPIC (Eicher Portal for Information and Collaboration), based on the Lotus Domino platform as a single point of service for all these needs, improved efficiencies in terms of collaboration and employee productivity.

In terms of workflow, the portal covers most of the employee-centric processes such as travel management, reimbursements and appraisals. Dealers, customers and the field force also have access to the portal.

Widespread presence

The group has business interests across the design, development, production and marketing of tractors, commercial vehicles, motorcycles and automotive components. It also has interests in cartography, GIS, engineering services and management consulting.

In terms of information access, employees could not easily consult manufacturing documentation, company procedures and quality standards. The information was spread across different sources in structured and unstructured formats. No convenient collaboration forums or corporate information repository workgroups were possible. There was no easy way to check the status of expense reimbursement claims and travel requests, or to clarify a salary issue.

Around mid-2002, the company conceptualised a self-service portal that integrated all its requirements into a single solution. It had to take care of the need to inform partners and collaborate with them effectively.

A powerful document library (with in-built approval workflow) and a content management tool provides the platform for knowledge management in EPIC, which integrates all the facets such as intranet, workflow automation, collaborative and knowledge management tools into a single unified architecture.

Eicher already had applications such as SAP which provided the transaction processing, Microsoft Exchange for messaging, and Crystal Decisions for business intelligence. Creating a single interface to access these was the next step.

Portal solution

After conceptualisation, Eicher evaluated various vendors for providing the portal solution including IBM, BroadVision and Microsoft. IBM was then chosen. The application development was outsourced to IBM business partner Pre-emptive Systems, a Lotus Domino developer.

The solution was integrated with the backend SAP ERP using XML and the Microsoft Exchange messaging platform. A browser was chosen as the access mechanism.

Workflow automation

EPIC brought better workflow automation. Today the group has enabled most of its employee-centric business processes over EPIC, and side-stepped paper-based processes. Employee leave, reimbursements, travel management, appraisals, and annual work plans are all done in real-time.

Eicher has deployed internal services (HR, IT, finance) and external services (customers and dealers) on a comprehensive Web-based system. This is accessible through SMS as well as a call centre. Eicher’s customers also have an interface to know their order status in terms of history, problems and resolution.

Collaboration and Knowledge Management

EPIC provides a content publishing tool for knowledge management. In addition, the portal provides document libraries. These libraries have been created as secure areas where one can define access rights for different people. Eicher has created document libraries for different areas, functions, and business units within the organisation, thereby creating a huge centrally-accessible information repository.

The Eicher Executive Information System (EIS) tool provides executive information on sales, purchases, production and receivables. The knowledge management interface proactively provides self-service capabilities to dealers, customers and the field force. On the collaboration front, EPIC provides a Domino-based Instant Messaging (IM) tool. It allows users to send chat requests to others.

In addition to IM, there are features such as surveys, polls, discussion forums, and team rooms.

Benefits

The implementation of the portal solution has resulted in a number of benefits. The turnaround time of key employee-centric processes has been reduced by 30-40 percent; there is also considerable reduction in data entry errors and administrative costs by minimising the need for telephone follow-ups, printed forms, and manual data entry.

Most of the employees require SAP access for authorising and approving transactions, and for viewing HR-related information of interest to themselves and their subordinates. Enabling this through EPIC has resulted in cost savings on the number of licences. In addition, benefits have also occurred in terms of a rise in employee satisfaction and productivity.

In an online survey conducted three months after the implementation, more than 75 percent of the employees reported improved productivity due to elimination of time-consuming and paper-based processes.

One window to view them all

The ultimate vision is to make EPIC the single-window gateway for all of Eicher’s information and collaboration requirements. In phase two, the company plans to widen the framework with catalogues and auctions formats with complete RFQ cycles. This project is under its final phase of development and testing, and builds on e-procurement concepts internally marketed as e-source.

shipra@expresscomputeronline.com