The company streamlines its communication system for its stakeholders and deploys video conference to cut down on travel cost which helped increase employee productivity, among other benefits.

Spark Minda - Ashok Minda Group manufactures different lines of automobile parts under safety, security and restraint system, telematics, interiors, and more. The group has 27 plants in India and five plants outside India. They are one of India's leading manufacturers of Wiring Harnesses, Couplers & Terminals, Instrument Clusters, Sensors, Die Casting, Interiors, Keys & Key Duplicating Machines, that caters to all major two, three, four wheeler & off-road vehicle manufacturers in India and overseas. In order to run their business smoothly, the company have a mechanism of various reviews and meeting, thus frequent travelling of employees was required especially for the senior teams for various reviews meetings. Because the company is spread out across India, they faced several issues related to connectivity, availability of systems, access to in-house mailing, etc. The group had a mix of self-hosted messaging solutions across companies. However, employees, customers, and vendors were facing lots of challenges in communications arising out of frequent breakdowns in messaging related to spam, virus attacks, connectivity issues, server breakdowns, etc. The other challenge they faced was the cost of travelling of senior management for various training sessions, customer meetings, vendor negotiations. The cost incurred in travelling was very high. With a network of around 400 + dealers, 7000 + retailers, it was difficult to reach out for updates on price, product, events and schemes which affected their business. The solution deployed In order to overcome the problem, the first thing they wanted was to cut down on the travelling of the senior management. They decided to have a real presence based video conferencing solution in place which will be as good as face to face meeting and which will allow people on the move to attend meetings. As a pilot project, nine major locations were selected - two outside India and seven head offices of business segments, to start with. ‘A video conferencingsolution with voice sensitive camera which auto focus on person speaking along with dual systems of 65” were deployed having a concurrent capacity of 35 persons joining the meeting in one go,’ says Sanjiv Kumar Jain, Group Chief IT Officer, Spark Minda, Ashok Minda Group. Recording facility was also ensured to review and compliance of board meetings, etc. Trainings were conducted using VC for participants from various locations. In fact, MIS reviews were held more frequently which brought in transparency along with employee productivity improvements. More customers meetings brought improvements in customer relations. Mobile Application To keep their field staff and distribution networks updated with latest products and pricings, they have launched an Android app. This helped them provide information to customers to find the product based on OEM/Model along with locating their dealers or tier 2/tier 3 distribution partners, for any given location. Previously, the update system was manual and time-consuming. This Application called ‘SPARK MINDA’ is made available on Google Play Store and is free of cost. The overall cost the company incurred for the development and implementation of this project is Rs 470 lacs. Business benefits The implementation resulted in many different benefits for the company. Employee Productivity: Employee productivity is increased by 10% for all senior management and 4% for junior team. Cost reduction: Recurring savings of Rs 70 lacs (approx.) per year is envisaged by the company. Improved Customer ability:  Due to uninterrupted mail and video conferencing facility vendor and customers could be reached in time for business needs. Uptime: The systems were available with 99% uptime. Plus, employee engagement in business has increased due to video conferencing setup with more employees could attend training and workshops across groups. Future plans ‘In the Phase I, the solution was implemented in 10 locations out of 32 and we are expanding it to 10 more locations in phase II. Mobility has been introduced by extending the solution on handhelds such as tablets,’ adds Sanjiv Kumar Jain.