CASE STUDY: The ITC Solution

In early 1999, the Indian tobacco division of ITC, located at Virginia House

in Kolkata, got in touch with SpiceCell and expressed their desire to get a

tailor-made, comprehensive mobile solution for their cigarette factory at

Kidderpore, which would ensure mobility, better accessibility and connectivity

in the factory. In a nutshell, getting in touch with the factory people was a

major issue, as they would at any point of time be in different corners of the

shop floor. Moreover, it was even more problematic to get in touch with those

working in shifts. All this led to major inconvenience in their functioning and

thus loss of productivity.

The only answer to this problem was to give mobile phones to various levels

of the factory personnel. This solution, however appeared to be rather

expensive, as they felt that it will lead to a lot of misuse. Moreover, there

was a specific requirement wherein they wanted some members of the team to speak

only amongst themselves for internal coordination and were not to be allowed to

make any external calls. There was yet another requirement where some of the top

officials wanted to send fax and data through their mobile phones both while on

the move as well as from office.

To address all the above requirements, Spice came out with a solution wherein

it decided to have different mobile user groups with differential access. This

meant, the mobile user groups were categorized as follows based on the type of

access

• Group A: Mobile to mobile
  
  communication only.

• Group B: Mobile to mobile and
  
  local calls only.

• Group C: Mobile to mobile, local
  
  and STD/ISD calls.

• Group D: Mobile to mobile, local,
  
  STD/ISD and data calls.

The above user groups were not just restricted to the

Kidderpore factory but the facilities were extended to the mobile users in the

head office as well. So the entire tobacco division, at any point of time,

remained connected irrespective of where the user physically was, so long as he

remained within the coverage area.

Since the calls within ITC were very high, Spice gave them a

solution based on the Closed User Group (CUG) concept with differential access

and differential tariffs. This meant that the calls within the defined group

were charged at a discounted rate while calls outside the group were charged at

full rates. In addition to this, the DoT charges and the other fixed monthly

charges were charged as usual.

Also, they wanted an alternative to their landlines that were

connected to their PBX board. And that their fixed line extensions to be able to

contact CUG and vice versa. To address this, Fixed Cellular Terminals (FCT) were

installed on the PBX board and the FCTs were also made a part of CUG. Each FCT

was like one mobile line, which served as a backup for the landlines. The other

facilities provided were call divert and call conference facilities and roaming.

To sum up, a mobile EPABX system was thus developed for ITC,

the first of its kind in the entire country. Its key advantages are mobility,

accessibility, reliability and accountability. These advantages, in turn, have

led to a high level of satisfaction, ease of communication and thus increased

productivity. Another major advantage that ITC has experienced is that by making

STD/ISD facilities available on mobiles and withdrawing the same from the PBX

board has made the users individually accountable, this has led to a tremendous

fall on their STD/ISD expenses.

The ITC solution has turned out to be a mega success and

today, it is in high demand from smaller corporates as well. It has been a

learning experience for us at Spice and we look forward to provide many such

tailor-made solutions to the corporates of Kolkata.

Courtesy: SpiceCell, Kolkata