Microsoft Office 365Customer Solution Case Study

Yarn Manufacturer Improves Service with Cloud Collaboration Tools

OverviewCompany: Ascent Yarns IndiaCompany Website: yarnsforlabels.comCompany Size: 215+ employeesCountry or Region: India, AustraliaIndustry: Manufacturing

Company ProfileEstablished in 2003, Ascent Yarns, a subsidiary of Global Pacific Nominees, Australia, manufactures and exports specialized polyester yarns for label weaving.

Business SituationBeing multi-locational, travel is essential for the management to grow the business, but the travel was hampering productivity and accurate decision making.

SolutionAscent Yarns migrated to Small Business Premium, SharePoint Online to improve the visibility on approval processes, eliminate document exchange via email and enable employees to work together regardless of location.

Benefits Freedom to access information from

virtually anywhere Quicker decision making with access to

relevant information Pay-as you-go licensing lowers costs Aids growth

“Microsoft Office 365 enables business owners to effectively manage the business from any location with the help of workflows in SharePoint Online. These help in accessing all relevant documents, and facilitate approvals from anywhere.”

Three entrepreneurs from Ahmedabad founded Ascent Yarns India, to manufacture and export specialized polyester yarns. Today the company has multiple locations and has successfully created a global presence in the yarn market for narrow fabrics. Being a multi-locational business, it requires extensive travel but the company’s antiquated server and email solutions were hindering their ability to make timely smart and dependable decisions. To improve their collaboration and communications, the company moved to Microsoft Office 365. Ascent is now powered with the ability to make quick decisions, increase productivity, build a knowledge base for future, and be prepared for the next wave of growth.

SituationMost apparel manufacturers use woven labels on garments to highlight their brand appeal. Since woven labels are the final brand identifier on the garment, Retail Brand Owners (RBOs) are extremely sensitive about the way these labels look and are repeated over all the garments they manufacture and retail. Ascent Yarns based in Gujarat, India, manufactures such specialized yarns for woven labels. A subsidiary of Global Pacific Nominees, Australia, its yarns go into important brands such as H&M, Zara, Nike, Levis, Next, Target, Old Navy, Gap, VS, VF and many more. Customers include important label manufacturing companies such as Avery Dennison, RPAC, Shore-2-Shore, Checkpoint and several standalone label weaving units in many parts of the globe.

Ascent Yarns is a small business, with 16 employees responsible for business functions, and over 215 staff who work in the factory. The three managers responsible for the business division are based at the Melbourne office and travel extensively to manufacturing locations. Because the decision makers are not ‘on-site’, therefore workflows become important tools to manage responsibilities spread over multiple locations and time zones. Over the years, Ascent Yarns has also expanded its export business across Asia Pacific by adding offices in Sri Lanka, helping it to grow its distribution network worldwide.

With a management team of three people, supporting a global business puts acute pressure on them. Time management is the biggest challenge facing Ashvini Shekhar, Director at Ascent Yarns. He explains why it was challenging to approve sales, purchase, payments or quotations over email across

multiple time zones: “Access to information was the key hindrance. With key decision makers traveling internationally, we needed to have a full background on each purchase order or payment. For example, if I wanted to check a previous order rate or promptness of delivery, I would have to email Finance or Procurement and wait for a response. And the time difference meant that simple decisions could take up to 2─3 days.”

On any day, the team expects over 20–25 decisions from the management. Reviewing past emails to take these effective decisions was time consuming. More importantly, ensuring accurate records was quite cumbersome. Also, we needed to safeguard sensitive information. “We wanted a consistent and efficient way to manage, monitor and approve decisions without adding significant costs,” continues Shekhar.

SolutionAn integrated communication platform was the obvious choice. The challenge was to find the right solution without adding capital expenditure and to build an IT support team. This meant more people, time and financial overheads, defeating the overall objectivity of speed and agility.

Ascent Yarns explored solutions available in the market and were concerned with on-premise costs, deployment and support.

As discussions progressed, Ascent met with Bitscape Infotech, a Microsoft Gold Competency Partner and also a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate partner. Bitscape presented a Microsoft Office 365-based document management solution that provides significant advantages such as

24

“We are able to quickly decide based on historical facts available, which wasn’t possible earlier. Simultaneously, Microsoft Office 365 offers us the flexibility to search and look at the history of any purchase or approvals.”

Anup Khushu, Director, Ascent Yarns

quick deployment, flexible workflows and a central repository for all business information as well as a searchable document repository.

“We chose SharePoint Online to minimize decision making time while still providing the latest communications and collaboration capabilities,” says Anup Khushu, Director, Ascent Yarns. “Their licensing model and monthly payment option made Office 365 the ideal choice.”

Bitscape presented a plan that was easy and quick. Its approach to understand the business needs of the company and present it with SharePoint Online as a solution, along with its previous expertise on SharePoint helped Ascent to choose it as the solutions delivery partner for Office 365. It therefore deployed Office 365 with SharePoint Online as the core component for 10 users.

Ascent is using out-of-the-box templates and SharePoint designer to build sites. Simultaneously, SharePoint Online and SkyDrive Pro help to manage and share documents effectively, allowing users to share files and documents in a central place and access the information from virtually anywhere. Some of the workflows implemented by Bitscape include OOTB Approval Workflow and SharePoint Designer Workflow on Task List.

SharePoint manages process flows, quotation requisitions, purchase orders, payment indents etc, and all other workflows related to the approval hierarchy system. It now archives its documents for retrieval later on. Simultaneously, it maintains an online history of approvals ─ be it sales linked or purchase linked

approvals and also controls document versions.

Ascent Yarns is in the next phase of planning to see how it can federate external users such as suppliers and customers, giving visibility to the stakeholders. In addition, Bitscape is helping the company connect the homegrown applications, and SQL Server- based solutions for sales and production, along with SharePoint Online to create a seamless flow of information.

BenefitsFreedom to Access Information from Virtually Anywhere “Rather than physically carrying documents, we now scan and upload documents in the document repository,” states Ashvini Shekhar, Director, Ascent Yarns. “Microsoft Office 365 enables business owners to effectively manage the business from any location with the help of workflows in SharePoint Online. These help in accessing all relevant documents, and facilitate approvals from anywhere.”

Quicker Decision Making with Access to Relevant InformationOffice 365, SharePoint Online has dramatically shortened the time to take business decisions. “We are able to quickly decide, based on historical facts available, which wasn’t possible earlier,” says Anup Khushu, Director, Ascent Yarns. “Simultaneously, Office 365 offers us the flexibility to search and look at the history of any purchase or approvals.”

Pay-As You-Go Licensing Lowers CostsWith pay-as you-go licensing, the company can purchase additional user licenses against a fixed price per month as and

34

when required. This avoids the unnecessary expenditure of buying bulk licenses in anticipation of future growth. At the same time, Microsoft’s thoughtfulness of nominal pricing for SMBs as compared to other solutions available in market saves costs.

Aids GrowthManual processes inhibit speed, growth and quality of decisions. Automated business processes using SharePoint Online, on the other hand, offer consistency. “Workflows reduce time consuming, unnecessary communications,” says Ashvini. “These result in speedy, efficient and effective management targeted at growth

About Bitscape InfotechBitscape is 2013 Microsoft World Wide Partner award finalist for BI and a Microsoft technology focused solutions partner specializing in Microsoft SharePoint technologies and Windows Azure based development services. It has vast experience in delivering solutions and services using Office365 and workflow management solutions. It also offers seamless migration services from on- premise Exchange and SharePoint to Office365 based SharePoint Online and Exchange Online. It is an ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and ISO 20000 certified business and technology consulting company. Bitscape has multiple Microsoft competencies at

organizational level. To know more about current competencies and offerings of Bitscape please visit Microsoft PinPoint profileMicrosoft Office 365The new Office provides anywhere access to your familiar Office applications—plus email, calendar, video conferencing, and your most current documents—on almost any device, from PCs to smartphones to tablets.

For more information about Microsoft Office 365, go to:www.office365.com

44

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. 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 Ascent Yarns products and services, call (91) (2717) (304500) or visit the website at: www.yarnforlabels.com

For more information about Bitscape Infotech products and services, call (91) (79) (65530689) or visit the website at: www.bitscape.com

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

Document published January 2014

Software and Services Microsoft Office 365− SharePoint Online Small Business

Plan− SharePoint Designer 2013