Genpact Cut IT Costs by Rs 50 Crore to Retain Customers

Summary:

In recessionary times, customers are dearer. Genpact knew that and to provide more value to its customers, it did something unusual: It cut IT costs.

Highlights:

Genpact consolidated 40 internally developed applications and virtualized over 1,500 desktops.Revamping the company’s entire IT infrastructure in six months

Reader ROI:

VDI improved the company’s seat utilization by 5 percentConsolidation reduced application footprint by 10 percent

The Organization:

 It isn’t surprising that Genpact is India’s largest BPO service provider. A look at its operations—spread across 17 countries—and a workforce that’s over 54,000 strong is enough. It boasts of over 600 clients including, Nissan, AstraZeneca, eBay, Hyatt, GE, Hertz, Kimberly-Clark among others.  

The Rs 8,320 crore organization was on a roll. But when the waves of recession touched global shores in 2010, cutting costs assumed greater significance.  

As the market situation unfolded, I realized that to ride the downturn, we would need to find ways to deliver our services more efficiently and pass on more value to our customers.

Business Case:  

It was around this time that Sanjeev Prasad took charge as Global CIO of Genpact.

 “As the market situation unfolded, I realized that to ride the downturn, we would need to find ways to deliver our services more efficiently and pass on more value to our customers,” says Prasad. 

Cutting IT costs was one way to get there. The company wanted to reduce IT costs by $10 million about (Rs 50 crore) annually, and pass some of these benefits to its customers.

The Project:

That isn’t a negligible amount. It would take all that Prasad had to reach that target. It meant revamping the company’s entire IT infrastructure in six months—a deadline he set for himself.  

He challenged his team to consolidate, virtualize, rationalize and optimize the company’s IT infrastructure. This strategy would impact servers, databases, storage, network, desktops, bandwidth, and telecom. 

Prasad and his team consolidated 40 internally developed applications and virtualized over 1,500 desktops.  Among other operations that were optimized, Prasad used logical partitioning to reduce the number of telecom PBX systems.  This brought the number down to six.  

The company also introduced telecom resellers—who provided better rates than principal carriers—to reduce costs without impacting the quality of service.

By December 2010—exactly six months after it was launched—the project had reached its conclusion. A remarkable feat considering Genpact’s global footprint and the scope of the project. 

The Benefits:  Prasad’s efforts raked in a bunch of benefits for Genpact. 

VDI improved the company’s seat utilization by 5 percent, directly contributing to the effective use of assets. Consolidation reduced application footprint by 10 percent, trimming support costs.

The entire cost optimization exercise freed up over 130 servers, 70 databases, 15MB of international MPLS and 150MB of domestic MPLS bandwidth, 10TB of storage space and 40 PRI lines (Primary Rate Interface). 

It also brought in more customers. The number of clients increased from 108 in 2010 to 177 in 2011.

“In 2011, we have been able to clinch more deals with our customers. It has been a remarkable year from the customer service point of view,” says Prasad.

As the market situation unfolded, I realized that to ride the downturn, we would need to find ways to deliver our services more efficiently and pass on more value to our customers.