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| Case Study |
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A global Hi-tech company ensures high application availability and performance by outsourcing Application Maintenance to Patni
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By leveraging Patni's global delivery model for application support and maintenance, the GPS division
of a global hi-tech company ensured high- availability and performance of its mission critical
application.
The Client
The client is the Global
Procurement Services Division
(GPS) of a hi-tech company that
operates in more than 170
countries around the world with
products ranging from laptops,
PDA's, Printers to High End
Servers. GPS sources
components directly from the
client's suppliers and manages
the actual flow of material
between its component suppliers.
The Challenge
The company's procurement activities are supported by a global procurement
intermediation platform. It is an integrated systems infrastructure constituting
of an ERP system, a financial planning system, and other applications capable of
managing B2B functions like e-Sourcing, EDI etc.
The platform facilitates GPS in its day-to-day transactions with 700 suppliers and
400 contract manufacturing sites worldwide. Its significance to the client's
business can be estimated by the fact that in the year 2006, it accounted for
direct procurement worth $22 billion, out of its total direct-material spend of $43
billion. Any downtime of this business-critical platform has an adverse impact on
the top-line. Considering that 99% availability is a business imperative, GPS
cannot afford an unplanned downtime of more than four hours at any point of
time.
However, maintaining this platform is extremely challenging due to the
complexities associated with the number of underlying multiple applications.
The constantly changing business processes keeping in tune with the dynamic
market requirements, compound the challenges of maintaining the platform.
The Solution
Patni conceptualized a complete solution that ensured high uptime, reliability and aggressive
service levels. Patni adopted an approach that seamlessly blended together support,
development and maintenance with a detailed level of contingency planning for guaranteeing
that the application was robust and scalable to meet demanding user needs. This approach
included the following:
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Preventive Maintenance: By carrying out routine maintenance and monitoring activities such
as file system clean up, database archival and security patching, Patni assisted the client in
preventive maintenance. Patni also setup an automated alert mechanism for handling critical
jobs |
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Predictive Maintenance: Patni assists the client in carrying out periodic infrastructure reviews to make sure that the application was capable of handling future business volumes |
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Adaptive Maintenance: In order to keep the application current, mandatory software version and service pack upgrades are constantly carried out by Patni Level 1, Level 2 & Level 3 support for incidence management: A 24/7 SLA based follow-thesun support model located in the US and India ensured quick response and resolution time. Service levels were constantly enhanced through call trend analysis and action plan to
improve overall service quality. Maintenance service requests were effectively handled through well defined prioritization and justification process for enhancements |
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Release Management: Patni provides round the clock execution support to minimize application downtime during production release |
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Calculate Service Plan - Determines the applicable Service Plan components based on effective date periods, charge factors based on various dates, profiles, seasons, tariff prices and contract prices; Calculates the charge amount for each Service Plan component applicable |
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Disaster recovery and Business Continuity Planning: Patni established disaster recovery processes and procedures with the respective documentation to facilitate quick response time during disasters. |
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Knowledge Management: Patni established a comprehensive knowledge repository that included architecture diagrams, application landscape and business flow diagrams. Periodic documentation reviews and updates were done to keep the knowledge repository updated. |
Patni is also involved in providing maintenance and support services for the production environment associated with the EDI workflow and IT controls for SOX and other audits.
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The Technology
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webMethods |
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Crystal Enterprise |
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Oracle 9i |
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HP/UX |
The Benefits
By partnering with Patni, the client significantly improved the performance and availability of its mission critical procurement application. Key benefits include:
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Reduced cost: 35% reduction in the total cost of operations within the first three years. This was done by reducing the high cost of supporting and maintaining the procurement application through efficiency gains and maximizing offshore leverage. For instance, offshore leverage increased from 60% in the second half of FY04 to 80% in the second half of FY06. Similarly, FTE count reduced from 40 in the second half of FY04 to around 25 in the second half of FY06. There was also significant reduction in transaction costs as over 65% of message volume was automatically routed electronically through EDI |
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Improved reliability: This was made possible through year-onyear progressive SLA advancements. For instance, when Patni started providing services with respect to the procurement application, the SLA for uptime for the application was fixed at 92%. Today, the uptime has been scaled up to 99.8% |
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Improved productivity: A streamlined process helped the client improve the speed and efficiency of handling support calls. The average call resolution time has decreased to 4 hours from 6 hours. |
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Client Testimonial
"Patni has been always adaptive, flexible and commited to our needs. Many successful projects have been completed without generating any disruption on the business side and deliver value quicker to customers. Patni's broad experience on Buy-Sell process ensures that the program is setup for success.
Our just finished FY07 SOX audit has been very well managed and executed by Patni. Our management and audit team recognized how professional and competent this audit has been passed. Keep up this good work !"
- Client's Application Support Manager
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