Microsoft Office System

Customer Solution Case Study

PEM Division of BHEL Improves Team

Collaboration and Customer

Overview “We chose SharePoint Portal Server because

Country or Region: India
Industry: Engineering
it gives us a central repository for all
documents and it can be easily integrated
Customer Profile
BHEL, one of the largest
with our existing IT infrastructure such as
engineering and manufacturing Exchange 2000 Server and Windows 2000
enterprises in India in the energy
and energy infrastructure sector,
Server.”
was established over 40 years ago. Mr. Rajiva K. Sood, Additional General Manager (IT), BHEL–PEM
Today, BHEL manufactures over Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), one of the
180 products. largest manufacturing and engineering companies in
Business Situation India, has over 180 products in the energy and energy
BHEL’s Project Engineering infrastructure sectors. The Project Engineering
Management (PEM) Division
manages projects that could take Management Division (PEM) is responsible for providing
up to four years to conclude. In end-to-end solutions to their customers in the power
these projects, the company
generates large amounts of sector.
documentation and drawings, which
need to be shared internally with
the team and the customer. BHEL-PEM has implemented a knowledge management
solution for information sharing based on Microsoft®
Solution
The PEM Division decided to Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003.
implement a central data
repository, which would be
accessible to employees through a A central repository stores all business information,
Web browser. The PEM Division giving users access to relevant information in real-time.
deployed this solution with
Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal It also provides easy search functionality to find the
Server 2003 and Microsoft documents and other content that they may need. Since
Exchange 2000 Server.
the system is similar to the former paper system at
Benefits BHEL, it has found greater acceptability among
“This is important Situation
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited
especially when an (BHEL) is one of the largest
organization wants engineering and manufacturing
enterprises in India in the energy and
to deploy multiple energy infrastructure sector. The
applications on the company was established over 40
years ago. It ushered in the
intranet, to achieve indigenous heavy electrical
faster access to equipment industry in India. Today, it
manufactures over 180 products in
information for its sectors such as power generation and
stakeholders.” transmission, transportation,
telecommunication, and renewable
Rajiva K. Sood, AGM (IT), BHEL-PEM energy, among others.
The Project Engineering Management
(PEM) Division of BHEL is one of the
19 profit centers of the company. It is
responsible for bidding for
international and national power
projects, creating engineering
blueprints, procuring and integrating
all systems, and delivering a
complete project to the customer
within stipulated timeframes. This
often requires multiple teams working
in tandem together, along with the
customer and its consultants, on a
project that could last as long as four
years or more.
BHEL-PEM has amassed a huge
amount of intellectual property and
knowledge while working on projects.
The knowledge, acquired by virtue of
project experience and sustained
interaction, was earlier stored partly
on paper and partly in digital format,
and was available within the teams
for reference. At times it might also
be found stored in employees’ desk
drawers.
However, such information tends to
get buried in the maze of computers,
hard disks, and directories of the
people who have written these
documents. Further, multiple copies
of these documents would circulate,
thereby making it impossible to track
the original documents or the latest
versions.
BHEL-PEM executives realized that to
effectively manage the knowledge
within the division, it required a
central repository for structured as
well as unstructured data. All its team
members would benefit from this
information throughout the life cycle
of projects, as well as from a
reference database after projects are
completed.
The other criteria, while developing
this knowledge database, was to
ensure that the central repository
would have a control mechanism for
access by authorized personnel only.
Additionally, there was a focus to
make this repository easily
searchable based on full text as well
as keywords.
Solution
BHEL-PEM needed a robust and
flexible document management
system, which would be easy to
deploy and manage. “We chose
Microsoft® SharePoint® Portal Server
2003, because it gives us a central
repository for all documents. It also
can be easily integrated with our
existing IT infrastructure, such as [the
Microsoft] Exchange 2000 Server
messaging and collaboration server
and [the Microsoft] Windows® 2000
Server [operating system],” explains
Mr. Rajiva K. Sood, Additional General
Manager (IT), BHEL–PEM.
SharePoint Portal Server has allowed
PEM to create a divisional portal Web
site. The solution integrates the
Microsoft Outlook® messaging and
collaboration client and SharePoint
Portal Server.
The portal features a separate
knowledge section, plus a section for
each project and proposal. The
categorization has been kept similar
to the system used by PEM earlier, to
ensure higher acceptability among
employees. Separate team Web sites
were provided within the portal
solution to improve intra-team
collaboration.
Since a lot of project and proposal-
related information appears in e-mail
messages and attachments, which
are now to be shared by several team
members, it was critical to address
this information first.
The ‘New Mail Message’ form in
Outlook was modified to ensure that
each e-mail message is properly
categorized. Once sent, the e-mail
message is catalogued in the
appropriate section of the portal. To
populate the portal, the attachments
are detached and saved into the
relevant section of the intranet. A link
embedded in the e-mail message now
leads to the attachment.
A process on the SharePoint Portal
Server Web site was also created to
automatically capture all incoming e-
mail messages. It strips the
attachment and stores it in a common
document repository, embedding the
link to the document that appears
within the e-mail message.
In the future, PEM division will
categorize these attachments for
faster access.
The search abilities and version
control features allow users to access
relevant documents at any time.
Access to each folder is defined by
the existing user-based access control
and the Active Directory® directory
service found in Windows 2000
Server. Based on these predefined
access levels, appropriate access to
resources on the Web portal is made
available to the various users within
the organization.
The portal not only organizes the data
and documents, but also helps the
BHEL-PEM team to provide a single
window interface to all users for
various intranet applications that
were already developed and deployed
in the organization.
Knowledge management was taken a
step further through Windows Media®
Services (a component of Windows
2000 Server), which streams audio
and video content. This streamed
content helps to disseminate
information, such as presentations,
live talks, and training. A separate
section of the portal provides team
leaders a centralized location where
they can find and upload the
presentations with audio and video, to
be viewed by employees at a time of
their own choosing. This often
enables better learning because the
presentations may be viewed at each
individual's unique pace. The division
has also made provisions to webcast
live events, such as the company
chairman’s addresses, annual
financial results, and so forth.
Benefits
Save Cost in Integration and
Deployment Time
SharePoint Portal Server is a flexible
solution that integrates search and
document management with
everyday tools such as Microsoft
Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office
applications to help create, manage,
and share content.
BHEL-PEM’s strategy to standardize
on the Microsoft technology
environment enables the company to
save costs involved in deploying and
integrating products from multiple
vendors. “This is important especially
when an organization wants to deploy
multiple applications on the intranet,
to achieve faster access to
information for its stakeholders,”
comments Rajiva K. Sood, AGM (IT),
BHEL-PEM.
The organization was able to
integrate Exchange 2000 Server,
Windows 2000 Server, and SharePoint
Portal Server 2003 in just four
calendar weeks.
Searching for Relevant Documents
Has Never Been So Easy
With documents residing in a central
repository, BHEL-PEM has reduced the
dependency on a particular employee
—who might possess a desired
document—being available in the
office. Now, at any time documents
can be searched and referred to by
any staff member with relevant
access rights. Also, the search facility
provided in SharePoint Portal Server
creates an index of all information
such as files, Web sites, and e-mail
messages. This index is easily
searched using both keywords and
full text, thus, making it effortless to
access any information.
Built-in Security Features
Role-based access to documents
provides BHEL-PEM employees with
the flexibility of giving access to
documents only to those employees
who need and should have the
information. By creating appropriate
roles, the administrator can prevent
users from adding additional
documents to the intranet site in an
ad-hoc manner. All documents
detached from e-mail messages, for
example, are first sent to a
designated administrator for approval
before being published on the
intranet.
The portal Web site is a hierarchy of
sub-sites that enables the
administrator to add lists, images,
and documents to their respective
categories. Team-based Web sites
foster flexible collaboration between
different departments, thus
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enhancing corporate knowledge. One
compelling feature, which users have
appreciated, is the capability to
create personalized sites called ‘My
Site’. Users can customize the content
based on their business requirements,
while a consistent look and feel is
maintained centrally across the
personalized Web sites.
Microsoft Office System
The Microsoft Office System is the
business world’s chosen environment
for information work, providing the
programs, servers, and services that
help you succeed by transforming
information into impact.
For more information about the
Microsoft Office System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office

For more information about Bharat

Heavy Electricals Limited products
and services, call 011-6001010 or
visit the Web site at:
www.bhelpem.com

Software and Services − Microsoft Visual Studio version

 Products 6.0
− Microsoft Office Professional − Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server
Edition 2003 − Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. − Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Server 2003
This case study is for informational purposes only.
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IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active
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Document published February 2004