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Novartis revamp pays off

Johannesburg, 16 Apr 2008

Pharmaceutical company Novartis SA's R10.1 million IT communications infrastructure revamp is paying for itself in terms of reduced costs and improved staff productivity, it says.

The company recently completed an upgrade of its local and wide area networks and migrated its telephony to a voice over IP system.

"In terms of a reduction in problems with non-standard equipment and improving productivity, it has been a success," says Novartis SA service delivery manager Brigitte Thompson. Included in the price is a three-year maintenance contract with vendor KSS.

She says the revamp was pushed by local growth and the need for the South African operation to better integrate with the company's global network.

"Due to growth and change, our LAN and WAN networks were not functioning optimally," says Thompson. "We needed to connect with two branches in Cape Town and an additional two in Durban, but found our network to be slow, unreliable and lacking the functionality that we required."

She adds that a problem with the old equipment suite was a multiplicity of vendors and a lack of ownership. "We have a stable environment now and since the system is much faster, we get better productivity from staff. In that sense, we've had return on investment, although financially, with the amount involved, it will take a bit longer."

KSS account manager Corne Sassenberg says the implementation, which also included Novartis' global technology partner, BT, had to be carefully planned to ensure minimal impact on the operations through downtime.

"The first phase of the implementation took place at the head office in Johannesburg," took three days "and was relatively free of challenges and hitches". The Durban implementation was next, followed by Cape Town.

Thompson says future upgrades will include video conferencing.

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