ComputerWorld.in

Case study: Aricent converges multiple technologies, cuts travel costs

One of the largest privately-held companies in Silicon Valley, Aricent Technologies operates in 19 countries worldwide. When you have operations crossing continents, it becomes pertinent for your company's global workforce to constantly communicate and collaborate with one another.

And that's exactly what Mike Webb, VP and CIO, Aricent Technologies, wanted to achieve. So, in April 2009 he launched a global platform called 'Aricent Connect' for all its employees to instantly connect with each other. "This was achieved with the help of many different tools. We set up a community network, an IM platform and a voice communication and conferencing platform," he says.

The community network, which is the company's social networking platform, empowers employees to establish sub-sites for their department, project, and technology interests. As a part of the company's intranet, the network hosts blogs, wikis, forums, tracks projects, shares calendars and also allows polling.  "The application also allows employees to send instant chat messages and set up voice conferences that helps them communicate effectively," says Webb.

A new in-house audio conferencing system was introduced and fully integrated with the company's e-mail platform. The system supports around 500 conference calls per week.

With Web and video conferencing in place, employees can now share presentations. Most recently, this practice enabled the company to organize a live video meeting instead of repeating the meeting at all global locations.

"It was a huge success with live questions and answers and it saved the company around Rs 25 lakh (about $50,000) in travel costs alone," says Webb.

But getting the management to invest Rs 2.5 crore wasn't easy. Yet, the team was able to convince the enterprise that the implementation of the project will bore serious long-term benefits and compensate for the overall investment.

And those benefits are hard to miss. "Travel in our company is one of the largest cost components after salaries. We reasonably expect to be able to save 10-15 percent of the company's overall travel budget on an ongoing basis," says Webb.

The framework for the community network was introduced around 9 months ago and today boasts of more than 600 websites across the globe.