Maximizing business application software usage at Lowe Lintas |
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By Yuga Chaudhari, Principal Correspondent
29 Jan 2010 | SearchCIO.in |
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Accruing maximum benefits of existing IT infrastructure and application
investments has always been a challenge for CIOs. An associated
challenge has been the maximal utilization of an application's
features. To address this challenge, Pravin Savant, the CTO of Lowe
Lintas, recently conducted training sessions for optimum utilization of
Microsoft applications.
Apart from working on the strategic capital intensive projects like an ERP implementation,
Savant and his team at Lowe Lintas decided to also maximize the use of existing
Microsoft Office applications like Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel.
"What I have observed is that many a time, CIOs tend to focus on the big ticket items.
In the process, CIOs tend to neglect huge opportunities by working on some
of the basic substance within their organizations," says Savant.
Lowe Lintas' project has been driven by the fact that most Microsoft
Office users tend to use these applications on a daily basis without
basic training. Global analysis shows that although Microsoft Office
has in excess of 6000 features, organizations across the globe use less
than 5% of these features. Since the user uses only 5% of the available
features, returns
on these investments are only in the range of 5%. "I saw an
opportunity for optimization in this area, and decided to work towards
it. The objective was to have training sessions that employees across
the organization can easily relate to, and be comfortable."
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Savant expects immediate returns from this initiative, since people will save time while working on their documents. An hour long activity can be reduced to minutes.
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To this end, Lowe Lintas called in Dr Nitin Paranjape, the CEO of Max
Office Services, and one of the few Microsoft valued professionals to
conduct these training sessions. These briefings covered almost all
departments of Lowe Lintas. According to Savant, the initiative
received great support from employees, as well as the top management.
Since the CEO also underwent a training session, it provided a greater
boost for the initiative. "Our CEO personally sent out a very positive communication
to everyone urging them to attend this session," informs Savant.
Savant expects immediate returns from this initiative, since people
will save time while working on their documents. An hour long activity
can be reduced to minutes. Even if the training session saves 15
minutes for an employee, significant amounts of time will be saved
across the organization.
The entire project took about six weeks — from conceptualization to
approval. "If you talk about change
management, it is a good tool in terms of reaching out to people
and addressing their basic day-to-day problems. So when we take more
complex initiatives, there will be a sense of comfort," says Savant.
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