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Omni Case Study

Engineering & Construction Company Uses Omni to Share Information Across Continents.

Users in the Engineering, Construction & Contracts division of a major Manufacturing and Engineering Conglomerate are accessing updates and details of 150 projects located at 250 different worksites via the Web. In addition, the solution has improved supply chain management process by connecting more than 5,000 of the company vendors based in 150 locations. The Customer executes industrial and infrastructure projects in civil, mechanical, electrical and instrumentation engineering and is one of IndiaÂ’s Premier Brand-names in this space. With no concrete IT solution available for the construction industry, the challenge was to streamline the company's business processes by effectively using technology. The solution is based on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with Microsoft Exchange 2007 Server, Microsoft SQL Server 2008 using .NET 2.0.


Situation

No Established IT Product for the Construction Industry: The biggest challenge faced by the Customer was that IT usage in the Indian construction industry was at an incipient stage. There was no established IT product or solution to meet the specific requirements of managing information and projects on a large scale and spread over a wide geographical network. Typically, projects last between six months and a year. The traditional enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions available were rigid and catered to a limited number of people and projects without collaboration between stake holders. This proved to be an obstacle for customization or flexibility when working with the large scale requirements and processes of the construction industry.

Project Sites At Remote Places: The Customer had a huge task at hand with 210 worksites and 350 turnkey projects spread over a vast geographic area. With no clear system to track job status or generate relevant MIS reports, resource optimization and corrective action was delayed in several projects. This resulted in increased costs and slippage on the schedule and a consequent reduction in return on capital employed (ROCE).

No Vendor Collaboration Network: With more than 5,000 vendors spread over 150 locations, the Customer procured construction & equipment material and services worth $1000 million and generated over 50,000 purchase orders in a year. The absence of an efficient supply chain management system did not enable our Customer to use its huge purchasing power.


Solution

OMNI© Increases Efficiency: To tackle these inefficiencies, the Customer decided to opt for the implementation of an ERP (OMNI ©) based on Microsoft® technologies. We rolled out our flagship product OMNI © based on Windows 2008 Server and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 at the back end, and built with .NET 2.0

In past our Customer had this to say: "To succeed in today's highly competitive environment, there is a need to manage the Infrastructure business processes as efficiently as possible. Information technology (IT) offers many options to optimize our business processes. However, in the past, IT systems had only created disjointed islands of information. Consequently, we were not able to achieve higher levels of value optimization across disciplines in the construction process."

But today, OMNI provides a solid backbone for project execution by providing real-time information of the progress of projects across all sites. This has helped speed up access to all information including financial status seamlessly across all business processes. In the words of our Customer: "OMNI has provided us with the right solution. It has brought together different phases of construction cycles: design, development, tendering/ bidding, budgets, planning and scheduling. By bringing together stakeholders such as architects, designers, vendors, sub-contractors, clients and us on a single platform, the OMNI is fast emerging as the most powerful ERP solution for our construction division."

The Key to the Customer’s Smart Procurement Procedure: The Customer also opted to implement our Web-based supply chain management (SCM) solution (built as a separate add-on to OMNI). This solution not only enabled the company to streamline its entire vendor network but also to build an effective system for the request for quotation (RFQ) process to Reverse Auction. Today, all a vendor has to do is log on to the vendor registration window and put in a request to place an order. The entire process, from request to payments (except for delivery of products and construction equipment), is conducted online. The SCM solution also integrates into the financial and back-end systems, streamlining the accounts and purchase process.


Benefits

Effective Project Monitoring System: OMNI can now provide a complete view of projects, ranging from planning, quality, cost and schedule to implementation, including details such as project deadlines, milestones and resource allocation. This has helped the company identify in advance problem areas that might delay the implementation period plus mission-critical data on project financials.

A Customised Knowledge Portal For Employees: By using Exchange Server 2007 and SQL Server 2008 at the back end, OMNI has converted the information portal into a knowledge portal for its employees across different project sites. It serves as the ideal solution for sharing key learning and best practice on project work methods and implementation across various sites.

Simplified Supply Chain Procedure: The SCM solution provides a simplified and streamlined e-procurement procedure. This solution helps the company to deliver a systematic requisition process, including customer order and material visibility, plus logistical tracking by customers, vendors and engineering and construction personnel on site. This is an efficient system where the Customer controls purchase orders and project delivery, leading to volume benefits both in terms of time and costs.

One operating Executive says "Our construction company has projects spread across the entire length and breadth of India, over the Indian sub-continent and the Middle East. With a company like ours, it was absolutely essential that a system was developed where the geographical distance between the offices, projects, clients and vendors was significantly reduced.

The CIO of the company says " OMNI is a one-stop net kiosk where information ranging from individual project performance (physical and financial) to divisional performance can be exchanged, monitored and controlled. This surely will be a trend setter for the construction industry."

Mobile Computing on Android Window Base Mobile Phones: To use the existing application infrastructure and increase productivity of the mobile workforce, critical business applications are currently being developed on Microsoft .NET technologies using .NET components for mobility.

OMNI will give the workforce the ability to conveniently access relevant information through cellular phones and Smart phones: anywhere, anytime, on subjects such as mission-critical project progress execution, project materials ,(P&M) equipment, customer feedback, quality and schedules from any project location.

Integration with Exchange Server 2007 and SharePoint Portal Server 2007 will provide technology that gives users real-time mission critical information of their choice to the handheld and desktop.

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