4-page Case Study - Posted 6/28/2011

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WNS

Leading Business Process Outsourcing Company Boosts Collaboration and Efficiency Coupled with Reduced Costs

Established in 1996, WNS is recognized globally as a leader in business process outsourcing. A global footprint implies that management and external business partners are scattered across the globe. Getting comments and inputs for documents, especially those meant for filings with the SEC in the United States, are not just time-bound but also require 100 percent accuracy. To ease the process of sourcing and cross-checking information, from individuals spread across two continents, WNS used Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010. It eliminated sequential e-mailing of documents and managing multiple versions of the same document. External legal counsels had access to the internal information as SharePoint Foundation securely connected third parties. WNS had complete control, especially in managing over 200 versions of the 20-F form meant for foreign companies to file their annual returns. The company filed 20-F within 29 days of its year close in comparison to 75 days, the year before.

The co-ordination effort involving 26 employees across 4 locations and our legal counsel, achieved the end-result in a record time of 29 days. We were the first company to close and file our Annual Report with the SEC in our accounting cycle. Kumar Subramaniam Head- Corporate Finance WNS

WNS is a leading global business process outsourcing company. It provides an entire spectrum of vertical-specific solutions for various industries, including travel, insurance, manufacturing, shipping and logistics; apart from horizontal outsourcing services such as finance and accounting, contact center, technology, and research and analytics solutions. The parent company of the Group - WNS (Holdings) Limited - is registered in Jersey in the Channel Islands with subsidiaries spread across 13 countries. With the help of over 22,000 professionals and a network of 23 delivery centers worldwide, the company ensures best-in-class delivery of its services. The company’s annual net revenue in fiscal year 2010-11 was US$ 369.4 million*.

The management was required to sequentially e-mail important documents from time-to-time such as those required by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). For example, the 20-F, meant for reporting annual financial returns to the SEC, requires information to be collated from across the organization and submitted within six months of the fiscal year-end.

Marketing, Sales, HR, Finance, Audit, Legal and several other departments had to team up to provide relevant, current and accurate statutory information. Added to it was the complexity of coordinating across locations and time- zones. The additional effort required in a manual process meant edited versions received from multiple users had to be manually consolidated. Thus, version-control emerged as a prerequisite to save time and labor.

To serve its financial interests, and reduce time and energy spent on collating information, WNS introduced an efficient way for teams to collaborate.

WNS decided to upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, a part of Windows Server 2008. “Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 is an ideal service for working on projects, storing data and documents in a central location, and sharing information with partners, investors, clients and our internal team,” says Anand Kapoor, Vice President, WNS. “The rich-in-features system helps us work more efficiently and productively,” he adds. The upgrade process in January 2011 was handled internally.

WNS is effectively using SharePoint Foundation for consistent communication with its geographically dispersed employees. It allows for enterprise-wide news and information dissemination. Custom team-focused and project-focused sites for collaboration and sharing ideas, and expertise raise the knowledge base and productivity bar.

Finding information is easier and faster with Meta tags in search function. WNS is taking advantage of out-of-the-box support for improved lists, audit trails and custom reporting. Unlike Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2007, audit trails are not just for workflow, and apply to most events pertaining to documents. “We track all the documents, edits and updated documents to have a consistent audit trail from the moment of capture until they are archived,” says Samip Kumar Das, Finance Controller, WNS.

Online collaboration helps multiple users to open documents, edit and merge the changes, thus eliminating the need to check versions or sequential e-mailing of documents. In addition, Document Set allows many documents to be grouped together into a single working set. With online documentation of legal forms like Form 20-F on SharePoint Foundation, filling them is simple as users with appropriate permissions can access the information and compile online. 

With a global footprint and multiple customers to serve, WNS deployed SharePoint Foundation 2010 for effective communication along with document and content management. The product is highly scalable and stable. It also helps integrate and streamline business processes. It is faster and allows on-the-fly changes.

Streamlined workflows at WNS also reduce the cost of coordinating common business processes, such as project approval or document review, by managing and tracking the tasks involved with those processes.

SharePoint Foundation has enhanced employee productivity. “The coordination effort involving 26 employees across 4 locations plus our legal counsels was achieved in record time of 29 days. We were the first company in our accounting cycle to close and file the Annual Report with the SEC,” states Kumar Subramaniam, Head - Corporate Finance, WNS.

With SharePoint Foundation, it is easy to manage and revise the documents that span multiple documents as a set. The WNS approvers and legal counsels in different geographical locations need to approve a single document set where multiple related documents are stored.

The intuitive navigation and integrated search capability allows employees to quickly find what they need, share, and use the data and information.

Administrators have easy access to version history, source documents, workflow automation, and reminders when documents are due for review. “With version control, we can exercise control over changes to avoid any over-writing or loss in documentation even though multiple people may be working on it simultaneously,” says Ronald D’Mello, General Counsel, WNS.

“The document management capability in SharePoint Foundation 2010 allows us to consolidate diverse content from multiple locations into a centrally managed repository with consistent categorization,” says Amit Khanna, Vice President, WNS. Data stored in a variety of formats, such as databases, e-mail messages, and spreadsheet files are managed easily. It extracts data from a variety of sources and presents it in
ways that facilitate analysis and
decision-making.

WNS faces security risks, both from a communication and from a privacy perspective. SharePoint Foundation ensures critical data of the company is secure using sophisticated controls for secured data access. “Being a BPO company, information security is of paramount importance and MS SharePoint Foundation helped ensure security to the highest standards,” says Arup Chatterjee, Vice President, WNS.

WNS stores and protects business records in a central repository with expiration policies applied to each record. With the record management capabilities that it has, the product ensured compliance with regulations and corporate business policies, thereby mitigating legal risk. Audit trails provided proof to internal and external auditors that records were retained appropriately.

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Web.

For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010, go to:

www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about WNS services, write to marketing@wns.com or visit the Website at: www.wns.com