Brandix featured in Microsoft Global case studies

Leveraging on technology to support and indeed boost business processes is an unending challenge for many medium to large corporates.

But exactly what tangible benefits are achieved by these companies becomes a bit diffused over time, creating an unsettled feeling amongst the senior decision-makers in the companies about whether their substantial investment in complicated information technology (IT) processes and systems is being well spent.

In this context, the Microsoft Sri Lanka-Brandix case study comes as a breath of fresh air. As Sri Lanka's largest apparel exporter, the IT needs of Brandix are vast and called for the services of an agile IT partner that could streamline and pre-empt future technology gaps while delivering genuine value for money.

True enough, Brandix looked to the expertise of Microsoft Sri Lanka to provide it with best of breed solutions that would enable process integration and enhancement to manage the apparel giant's value chain.

As a result of this fruitful partnership, Brandix has become the first Sri Lankan company to be showcased in the Microsoft Global case studies' site for use of world-class technology.

Slated to post savings of US$200,000 annually as a result of Microsoft's comprehensive solutions, these impressive statistics have made companies globally sit up and take notice of Microsoft Sri Lanka's solutions. By investing in Microsoft products and technologies, Brandix has experienced returns on investing in a strategic IT partner.

Head of Group ICT, Brandix Hiranya Gunasekara, explains that the problem faced by the company: "It took employees a long time to acquire, create and share information on market trends. We could not upload information efficiently with our previous intranet system and employees could not update shared documents and make it available for everyone without IT involvement."

At the outset, Microsoft recommended that Brandix deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 collaboration software and the InfoPath Forms Services to help manage all the information it needed for its business and allow users to easily upload information on their own.

As a Microsoft Enterprise customer in Sri Lanka for the previous three years, Brandix was aware of SharePoint Server 2007. "Our assessment for an information portal started four years ago. We discovered the capabilities of the environment while being an existing Microsoft Enterprise customer, but we were also considering other alternatives such as content management software," says Gunasekara.

Additionally, SharePoint Server 2007 was chosen because it had all the features of a collaboration and content management portal and proved easy to install. SharePoint Server 2007 was installed on an HP ProLiant 350 Server.

The first portal, Brandix Market Watch (BMW), was deployed in February 2007. BMW helps marketers within the company by giving the most upto-date information on the market.

"BMW is for all internal employees to view as we publish information on current market conditions on the portal," adds Gunasekara.