NG Pillai integrates operations with Microsoft's SBS

The company’s new infrastructure helped it launch a new business and save on costs

NG Pillai is a Delhi-based customs house agent (CHA) that caters to MNC clients such as LG Electronics and American Express. Started in 1993, NG Pillai has 35 employees and is approved by the Ministry of Finance to handle customs clearance for a variety of products on behalf of companies based in the National Capital Region (NCR). The company works closely with the customs department to get clearances for import consignments.
The process adopted by NGP is that it uploads customs clearance documents over the Internet to NIC's (National Informatics Centre) servers tapping into NIC's electronic data interchange (EDI) infrastructure. These documents include import/export declarations, manifests, bill of lading, invoices and packing. The customs department, in turn, responds will the bill of entry and shipping bill, which the CHA uses to clear cargo. This set-up is called the Indian Customs Excise Gateway, a single-point interface between the computer network of the customs department and its partners in the customs community system.

Wanted, an upgrade

NGP has a Remote EDI System (RES) on its front-end terminals since 1995. It lets the company fill in documents and upload them online into the NIC server instead of physically sending them to the two inland container depots authorised by the customs department in Delhi for this task. To begin with, these operations were conducted using different computer terminals with individual dial-up connections that rendered the TCO to be very high. Secondly, in a highly competitive environment, with around 600 CHAs in New Delhi the system needed to be upgraded.
The trigger for switching to a more robust infrastructure was the plan of N G Pillai, the CEO of the company, to set up a service-centre that would cater to smaller CHAs in the NCR, which would run alongside its existing CHA business. As the company's infrastructure wasn't equipped to manage a huge number of customers (the smaller CHAs needed to file and upload documents using NIC's RES) a complete revamp of the IT set-up was in order.

A quick deployment

Early 2004 found NG Pillai opting for a solution based upon Microsoft's Small Business Server 2003, which provided Windows 2003, Exchange Server 2003 and SQL Server as a bundle.
In the first phase, a LAN connecting 20 PCs with a high-speed DSL connection to the Internet was put in place. In the next phase, the company created a client-server network based on SBS 2003. A file share on the server lets users store and access documents. Some CHAs catered to by the service centre are small and lack e-mail, therefore, confirmations are often faxed to their offices or printouts are provided. Keeping this in mind, shared fax services have been deployed.

Starting a new business

The company was able to get its new IT infrastructure up and running in a short span of time. "It has been easy to start our [new] business as SBS offers an integrated solution that met our requirements," says Pillai. The company was able to deploy SBS in a day. Online license activation was used to simplify the proecss.

A scalable set-up

The new infrastructure helps in managing the network, inventory and reporting better. It has helped the company standardise processes. The company has a secure and reliable infrastructure that is equipped to take care of the large number of CHAs and confidential information handled by its service centre. NGP has internal firewalls and third-party external firewalls for greater security. The centralisation of data and application access has improved employee productivity by ensuring that employees can locate relevant information from their desktops. This has resulted in cost savings for the company.