HCL BPO Achieves Zero Downtime

"We started from scratch and today we have managed to reach 99.99 percent uptime. Every single minute counts in the BPO industry; downtime is an absolute no-no at HCL," says P.V. Ramadas, VP-technology, HCL Technologies BPO Services. "In order to achieve this, back-end processes need to be completely in sync and we need 24x7 monitoring so that we can proactively cater to queries and issues."

Ramadas and his team had already created a platform called eNSURE IT. But to get to the level of day-to-day efficiency the company was aiming for, it became necessary to have a process-oriented approach. Towards that end, Ramadas and his team followed IT Service Management (ITSM) processes. He also says incident management was crucial. "99 percent of desktop related incidents are resolved within 60 minutes and stringent SLAs have been developed to respond to and resolve issues," he says.

"It was a major challenge to bring together all activities into one centralized system, and work in consonance," he adds. "For this platform to be an effective customer-service-friendly application, process innovation and change management played a major role."

He also watched out carefully for any changes. Any modifications to infrastructure he says has to follow a change management process. "This is very useful," he says, "any change that is raised is analyzed before it is approved."

The Rs. 1.8 crore spent on the platform, which went live in January 2008, has been already recovered says Ramadas. Services are available continuously and the team now has multiple parameters to watch out for. Take for instance how his team does a monthly analysis of the top-five contributors to disruptions in order to resolve them faster. The new system also allows remote access support and all critical devices are monitored in real time. The culture of working in silos is also discouraged and this adds to the productivity of processes leading to enhanced process capabilities.

The Person Behind It

P.V. Ramadas

VP-Technology HCL Technologies BPO Services

“A turnaround time of 60 minutes for resolution is a key differentiating factor.”