With a workflow solution put in place with the help of IBM, rating major CARE has been able to reduce the turnaround time for its clients by almost 30%. And that’s only the beginning
By Pupul Dutta
When Credit Analysis and Research Limited (CARE), the second-largest credit rating agency in India, wanted to streamline its entire credit rating process for customers across all product lines, it chose IBM after a careful market evaluation process. IBM not only proposed the IBM Production Imaging Edition which helps in streamlining and automating customer document-related processes using the capabilities of an imaging solution, but also helped the company adopt business process management (BPM) capabilities and a content management repository.
Explaining the evaluation process, Umesh Ikhe, Group CTO, CARE, says, “We followed 4-5 stages of evaluation and testing before choosing IBM. Microsoft too was a very strong contender. Besides these two companies, we had shortlisted Alfresco and Newgen as well.” At the end of the process, CARE chose to go with IBM.
The problem
One of the primary challenges faced by the employees at CARE was managing the millions of documents collected from customers. They had to file the papers, peruse the documents, create databases on Excel sheets and then go to the next level of evaluating the data and provide them with ratings. They hence needed a solution that would digitize their documents and also provide for a workflow to streamline their processes of evaluation and retrieval of data.
Explains Ikhe, “We give ratings to companies based on their books and other related information. Hence, there is a lot of documentation that we collect from companies. We have some 10,000 plus customers and new customers are added every year, giving rise to millions of documents for CARE to go through and then rate. This made the system completely inefficient as we had to go through tons of paperwork which was not only tedious but also very time consuming.”
Answer to the riddle
IBM provided CARE with solutions like Enterprise Content Management, IBM Production Imaging Edition, IBM Datacap and IBM FileNet. This enabled CARE’s analysts to access and manage their rating processes irrespective of their locations and in turn decrease their customer response time. The solution has been used not only in the rating process, but also in their diversified business divisions like research where they have also digitized their knowledge bank and implemented the workflow solution along with an online publishing application for the division. The solution has been implemented in the HR and finance departments to automate their processes and now CARE is planning to extend this solution to their partners overseas.
Asserts Ikhe, “Since IBM also provided workflow solution for our various business scenarios, it made our rating process more automated and operationally efficient. So all our offices across the country can now evaluate and rate any company independent of the location/geographies. Given the fact that our analysts are based in various locations, it earlier made the process cumbersome for the company.”
Jyothi Satyanathan, Director, Mid-Market and Inside Sales, IBM India/South Asia, elaborates on the implementation, saying, “The solution has been deployed across nine branches of CARE in their India- based operations. They have adopted a centralized approach in the implementation of this solution. The hardware setup has been installed at their Mumbai office and access to the solution has been given to all the other branches. The implementation of the solution was completed successfully at their domestic offices over a span of 10 weeks. The global adoption is set to be completed in the next 6-9 months.”
Benefits reaped
According to Ikhe, the solution provided CARE with several tangible benefits. The turnaround time in client cases has been reduced by almost 30%, which can be evaluated in terms of the employee time invested in each case. “The solution has also helped us save on space allocated to store hard documents. By implementing the workflow solution, CARE has been able to increase operational efficiency as we have managed to streamline and automate most of our major processes,” he says.
“The benefits reaped from this implementation have given CARE an edge over their competitors,” asserts Satyanathan. The turnaround time for the customer has significantly reduced which will enable them to grab more market share. As the solution has helped them retrieve and manage older cases better and faster, CARE has been able to take on more customers, automate major processes and in turn grow their business rapidly.
Given the good experience that CARE has had with IBM’s solution, it plans to extend the solution implementation beyond its offices in India to its partners overseas as it plans to expand the business in Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and Europe. The company is also planning to build its research knowledge bank using the workflow solution so that it can take it online to its customers as a research website.
IBM too has promised CARE to extend every possible help for all its future endeavors. “In future, for instance, if CARE decides on a training division, we will also help them build it using this databank,” says Satyanathan.
