Windows Azure Customer Solution Case Study

Business Intelligence Firm Attracts New Customers with Cloud Solution

Overview

Country or Region: India Industry: Information Technology

Customer Profile BusinessIntelligenze, a pure-play SaaS provider, delivers a new generation of business intelligence solutions for information workers and enterprises. The company is based in New Delhi, India. Business Situation BusinessIntelligenze wanted to offer its customers an out-of-box analytics solution that could manage the complete lifecycle information of suppliers starting from their registration, on-boarding, and diversity compliances. Solution BusinessIntelligenze used the Windows Azure cloud computing platform to develop, run, and store data for its product, called BEYOND. Benefits

With all supplier information available in a central location, our customers spend less time discovering supplier information. We have helped our customers reduce 25 percent or more of their time spent on supplier registration and selection processes, diversity compliance, and overall supplier management.
Rahul Sethi, President, BusinessIntelligenze

Reduces time spent on supplier information management by 25 percent Tracks supplier non-conformance Avoids capital expenditures

Focused on providing excellent solutions to its customers, BusinessIntelligenze created BEYOND, a self service supplier portal to overcome all supplier registration and diversity compliance issues. It is an out-of-box supplier analytics solution for medium to large enterprises. Based on the Windows Azure platform, the product provides a centralized repository of supplier information, which helps the companys customers manage their supplier database effectively and save up to 25 percent of their time otherwise spent in managing the same process manually. As a result, BusinessIntelligenze has expanded its customer base, while saving significantly in capital expenses with a reliable, scalable, and highly secure cloud platform.

We significantly lowered our expenses, which gave us more flexibility in our business model.
Rahul Sethi, President, BusinessIntelligenze

Situation

BusinessIntelligenze is a dynamic SaaS company that provides analytics solutions and strategic information tools to help customers better manage their supplier database. It engages with clients procurement team assisting them achieve their diversity objectives. Founded in 2010, the company has its presence in India and United States. In a sustainable procurement model approach, BusinessIntelligenze empowers decision-makers with critical insight at the right time and place. The company realized that their customers needed a tool that could manage complete lifecycle information about their suppliers along with compliances, and also meet diversity objectives. Presently supplier information was received on emails and managed on Excels and file storage. It was a completely decentralized scenario. Rahul Sethi, President, BusinessIntelligenze says, We work with several large companies. During our engagements, we realized that there was a genuine need for a system that could completely manage supplier registrations, diversity, and also enable customers to meet their diversity objectives. There was no product with this focus in the market. This niche requirement motivated the company to create a product that would cater to these needs and at the same time also contribute to the process of its clients diversity objectives in United States. The product would also address the companys customers in South Africa to meet their black economic empowerment contribution in a meaningful way.

Solution

Determined to overcome the challenges of its customers, BusinessIntelligenze created BEYOND, a supplier management solution to empower its customers achieve operational excellence to manage suppliers effectively. While deciding on options to host the product, the company decided that cloud computing was a perfect way to meet all the needs. It chose the Windows Azure platform as its cloud computing and storage environment, as it offered an integrated and complete service set. Windows Azure is a cloud services platform that provides on-demand compute, storage, bandwidth, content delivery, middleware, and marketplace capabilities to build, host, and scale web applications through Microsoft data centers. The architecture of BEYOND takes complete advantage of Windows Azure, which serves as the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. The data center is located in Seattle, with three backup copies of data stored in data centers across the world. The company uses SQL Azure for its relational database needs. SQL Azure is a cloud-based relational and self-managed database service built on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. BEYOND offers a platform where prospective suppliers can register and manage their corporate profile along with their products and services. This supplier self service portal provides a centralized repository for all suppliers and also takes care of supplier management and tracking.

BusinessIntelligenze takes advantage of the pay-as-you-go-model that Windows Azure offers, ensuring that it only pays for the services that it uses. This gives the company an affordable, right-size infrastructure - an infrastructure that is neither under-utilized nor over-taxed. With Windows Azure, we know that we have a scalable, secure, highly reliable, and highly available environment, says Rahul. With less administrative overheads, we have more time to focus on our core competencies..

our customers reduce 25 percent or more of their time spent on supplier registration and selection processes, diversity compliance, and overall supplier management. Tracks Supplier Non-Conformance BEYOND offers increased compliance to established process and procedures. supplier information such as contacts, financial information, certifications, IT and logistics, past audit findings, and scorecards gets scattered across multiple systems and is frequently inaccurate. Further, it is hard to keep this information updated. A key benefit of the Windows Azure platform is that Microsoft performs a large share of the routine IT infrastructure tasks required in a hosting environment. As a result, BusinessIntelligenze can increase its focus on its core competencies. You no longer have to worry about supplier details like company information, primary contact information, secondary contact information, relationship with licensee, and minority status, says Rahul. All information is automatically and constantly updated reducing high-touch, high-follow ups or miscommunication in our supplier selection process. Avoids Capital Expenditures With Windows Azure, BusinessIntelligenze was able to expand its customer base while still avoiding capital expenditures. A venture that normally would have cost enormously in infrastructure expenses yielded no capital expenditures because the company was able to take advantage of Microsoft data centers. We significantly lowered our expenses, which gave us more flexibility in our business model, says Rahul.

Benefits

BusinessIntelligenze began experiencing dramatic benefits almost immediately after the launch of BEYOND on the Windows Azure platform. It was able to improve supplier management processes, lower costs, and mitigate risk by delivering supplier master data across the entire company from a central location. Reduces Time Spent on Supplier Information Management by 25 Percent BEYOND is an easy-to-use, supplier self service portal that customers can use to improve their supplier management processes. Rahul explains, With all supplier information available in a central location, our customers now spend less time discovering supplier information. Tasks such as 360 degree view of supplier information, non-conformances, updated product or service category management, suppliers ratings, eradicating duplicate and repetitive processes, and preferred supplier tracking, which used to earlier take hundreds of hours a month by procurement specialists can now be done in matter of few minutes by simple search on BEYOND. We have helped

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Center at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about BusinessIntelligenze products and services, call+91-11-40540703 or visit the website at: www.businessintelligenze.com

Windows Azure Platform

The Windows Azure platform provides an excellent foundation for expanding online product and service offerings. The main components include: Windows Azure. Windows Azure is the development, service hosting, and service management environment for the Windows Azure platform. Windows Azure provides developers with ondemand compute and storage to host, scale, and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft data centers. Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft SQL Azure offers the first cloud-based relational and self-managed database service built on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 technologies. Windows Azure platform AppFabric. With Windows Azure platform AppFabric, developers can build and manage applications more easily both on-premises and in the cloud. AppFabric Service Bus connects services and applications across network boundaries to help developers build distributed applications. AppFabric Access Control provides federated, claims-based access control for REST Web services. Microsoft Codename "Dallas." Developers and information workers can use the new service code-named Dallas to easily discover, purchase, and manage premium data subscriptions in the Windows Azure platform.

To learn more about the Windows Azure platform, visit: www.windowsazure.com

Software and Services

Windows Azure Platform Windows Azure

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published February 2012