A significant player in the Indian automobile industry, the Eicher Group manufactures and markets tractors, trucks, buses, motorcycles, engines and power generators. It also makes automotive gears and other auto components. With more than 4,000 employees spread across seven manufacturing facilities and 33 marketing offices, Eicher works with 800 vendors that supply components and sub-assemblies. The company sells its product lines through a strong network of approximately 950 dealers and distributors spread across the length and breadth of the country.

The Challenge: Enabling Information Access for a Country-wide Business

Eicher’s manufacturing and marketing operations are dispersed geographically, which created obstacles to effective planning and execution. Prior to adopting a Citrix solution, the company’s remote offices could only share information via e-mail –- an extremely cumbersome process. Similarly, although mobile users were able to access information from Eicher’s network via designated Web pages, the process was very slow and inefficient. Hence, the company needed an efficient way to collect and disseminate information across the organization, including to its mobile sales staff selling tractors in remote, rural locations.
 
The group was scouting for an efficient and cost-effective technology solution to orchestrate its information flow from factories to offices and vice versa. Besides, the company wanted help in managing application deployment at remote locations and in maintaining its mobile users with the least effort and cost. Cost savings were particularly important to the company as it aimed to maximize its investments in its IT infrastructure, based on the belief that an enhanced infrastructure would in turn improve productivity and contribute to the overall bottom line.

Said Mr. Manoj Gautam, Senior Manager, Technology Solutions at Eicher, “We needed a solution which would enable access to business applications for our employees any time and anywhere, while reducing the costs of manpower, hardware and communication.”

Implementing a Citrix Solution for Remote Office Connectivity

Eicher Goodearth partnered with system integrator Wipro Infotech to deploy a solution using Citrix® Presentation Server running on Microsoft® Windows Server™ 2003 servers. At present, more than 300 users in all locations across the country connect via WAN to this centralized information system, to access business applications including SAP R/3, Messaging EPIC (an in-house collaborative workflow and messaging system), a supplier management system and a customer service management system.

Any time, anywhere access to centralized applications running on Citrix Presentation Server has enabled users to provide inputs and retrieve information about production, inventory and sales processes in real time. With Citrix technology, users can expedite business processes which range from entering information about leave and travel to conducting complex business transactions with suppliers and dealers.

Commenting on the implementation, Mr. Gautam said, “Citrix has not only helped us in making important information available to all users irrespective of location and time, but its software has also aided in eliminating delays in updates and inter-office communication, thereby making it real-time information. For instance, the delay in internal messages reaching users due to periodic updating of remote servers has been reduced from two hours to zero, making it a true instant-messaging system across all locations.”

Substantial Cost Savings by Efficient Information Access and System Management

Currently, all business applications at Eicher are being managed through the centralized administration capabilities of Citrix Presentation Server. The challenge to reach all employees at all locations with an efficient and cost-effective solution has been met. The task of deploying new applications and upgrades has been reduced from a weeklong affair to a couple of hours.

The Citrix solution saved considerable manpower efforts and reduced the costs of deploying and updating applications. The company no longer needs to maintain IT staff at all locations, nor require its IT staff to travel to remote locations to provide support. The company also achieved substantial savings in its communication and IT infrastructure costs.

“Our Citrix solution has taken a major pain away from us in managing unending requests for higher bandwidth and upgraded desktops. The solution has enabled us to maintain zero escalation in our bandwidth budget for the last two years — translating into a 35 to 40 percent savings on communication expenses,” explained Mr. Gautam. “Moreover, during that same period, the company saved Rs. 50 lakhs (US $100,000) that would have otherwise been spent on upgrading client hardware configurations.”

The solution enabled the company to save a major chunk of its annual IT budget, which was then invested in important strategic IT initiatives. Moreover, considerable savings in time and efforts of the IT staff allowed Eicher to reassign these employees to more important and strategic application development. “We have a fixed annual IT budget. Savings from the Citrix solution allowed us to invest our time and money in areas that could enhance the business value of IT in the company,” said Mr. Gautam.

“Apart from enabling uniform information access, Citrix helped in improving productivity and reducing IT infrastructure and management costs. Citrix software today plays a strategic role in Eicher’s information management,” added Rajesh Mishra, Head-IT at Eicher.

© 2005 Citrix Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. Citrix® and are registered trademarks or trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Microsoft® and Windows® are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.