In what is seen as the first step towards the establishment of a group-wide electronic communications infrastructure, the local office of Alstom has implemented Lotus Notes for internal and external communications between suppliers and customers.
Dan Pienaar, group IT manager at Alstom, says the initiative was put into place to get everyone talking, and to see the benefits of a collaborative electronic communications medium in action.
"We have installed the product at 26 companies in South Africa so far. Notes is being used extensively to communicate inter-departmentally wherever there is a need for discussion groups or project collaboration," says Pienaar.
Typically users work jointly on spreadsheets, tenders and other documents, saving time and money.
"In our pre-Notes days we took advantage of an army of couriers to deliver information between the group, its customers and suppliers. This was then followed up by a number of telephonic and fax consultations - you can imagine the expense involved and the inconvenience this caused."
The long term plan is to strike up communication and workflow processes world-wide. Pienaar envisages the local members of the Alstom group taking advantage of the Internet and electronic commerce to do business globally.
"We have often worked closely on overseas tenders and this means we will be able to pass on and share business and technical information and work jointly on projects," he says.
Another important requirement for the system was that Alstom users should have easy access to shared documents such as statements of policy, procedures, telephone directories and the like. Using all the Notes databases and replication technology will help the company move towards the much coveted `virtual office` environment.
Commenting on the company`s recent adoption of Lotus Notes, Steve Dunbar, marketing manager at Lotus Development in South Africa, says the product "clearly has strategic benefits for the organisation."
"Notes` support of a global in-tray comprising e-mail, Web documents, faxes and data files, coupled with its groupware and workflow capabilities, will offer enhanced support for Alstom`s business objectives now, and in the future."
To date, the company has around 100 South African users and it is believed this number could grow to 500 in the next two years. Typical users include top management and IT departmental staff. It is not uncommon for the latter to dial in remotely while working on projects off site.
Prior to its adoption of Notes the company had been using a handful of Internet accounts to access the Web for global communications and cc:Mail for internal usage.
"In addition to Notes we are now using ISDN to connect to the group`s global 110 000 user WAN," he says.
Alstom`s sales, marketing and engineering departments have since been targeted for future implementations once a permanent overseas link to the group`s VPN (Virtual Private Network) has been established.
Following this, the intention is to launch a fully interactive Web site that will allow customers, suppliers and interested parties to share products and project information as well as interact in discussion groups in real time.
"We will grow Notes to the point where every employee will have access," concludes Pienaar.
Share
Editorial contacts