India Cements achieves zero downtime and saves upto 10 hours a week with Zoho Workplace

The Company

India Cements is one of the leading cement manufacturing companies in India. With a strong presence in the southern and eastern parts of the country, it has a total production capacity of 15.5 million tonnes per annum. Established in 1946, the company has a rich history spanning more than 75 years, and it’s played a significant role in the growth and development of the Indian cement industry.

In addition to its strong presence in the cement industry, India Cements is actively involved in various social and community development initiatives. The company has set up schools, hospitals, and other facilities in the communities where it operates, providing education and healthcare services to the underprivileged. With its commitment to quality, sustainability with its green growth initiative, and social responsibility, India Cements continues to be a key player in India's growth story.

The challenges

For 15 years, India Cements relied on Lotus Notes as its primary mailing solution. While it initially met their needs, the company's rapid growth exposed significant challenges with this legacy system. As an on-premise solution, Lotus Notes struggled with scalability, making it difficult and costly to support an increasing number of users.

Maintaining and upgrading Lotus Notes demanded substantial IT resources for hardware maintenance, software updates, and system security, which diverted resources from strategic initiatives. It also lacked essential collaboration tools, offering only basic email functions without integrated options for file sharing or real-time collaboration. This limitation hindered productivity and led to information silos, where data was confined to individual users or departments. These challenges ultimately drove the company to seek a more robust, scalable, and integrated solution.

The solution

Faced with the challenges of their legacy mailing system, India Cements began evaluating modern communication and collaboration solutions, considering options from major providers such as Microsoft, Google, and Zoho.

Throughout a comprehensive evaluation process spanning a year and a half, the company meticulously assessed the solution based on features like interface design, responsiveness, and menu layout. These features were evaluated to minimize disruption during the transition from their existing mailing solution.

Another major challenge that India Cements faced was migrating data from Lotus Notes, specifically NSF files, to the new cloud-based platform. At the time, no other mailing solution provider could offer a viable solution for migrating the NSF format files to their system.

Zoho Workplace distinguished itself by providing a comprehensive tool specifically designed to address this challenge. With the help of the tool and the support team, they were able to export the NSF files easily, facilitating a seamless transition to the cloud-based platform. This capability played a pivotal role in the company's decision-making process, solidifying Zoho's position as the preferred choice among competitors.

On top of this, Microsoft and Google solutions were expensive. These providers also frequently increased their pricing, which complicated the company's budgeting and long-term planning. In contrast, Zoho Workplace provided a flexible pricing plan, allowing the company to pay only for the features they actually used. This tailored approach was appealing because it offered cost-efficiency without sacrificing functionality. India Cements valued the Zoho customer-centric service model, which perfectly aligned with their needs.

Migration to Zoho Workplace

The organization had over 800 users with mailboxes containing 15 GB of emails each, accumulated over 15+ years. To ensure a smooth and efficient migration, the IT team adopted a two-step approach:

1. Proof of concept for higher management

Recognizing the importance of user experience and buy-in from management, the IT team conducted a targeted migration of a smaller user group. They strategically chose 10 mailboxes belonging to senior management and migrated them to Zoho Workplace. This provided a hands-on experience for the decision-makers. They could directly interact with the new UI, explore the features, and assess its usability for their daily needs. Following higher management’s positive experience with Zoho Workplace, the IT team gained their confidence and proceeded with the full-scale migration to Zoho Workplace.

2. Migration drive for the remaining employees

After the initial proof of concept (POC), the IT team began the full-scale migration of the remaining users to Zoho Workplace. Within a week, all 800 mailboxes were created and operational, allowing employees to start using the new mailing service promptly. However, migrating more than 15 years of data required a more gradual approach and was completed over a phased period of four months.

During this extensive data migration, Zoho Mail's support team provided exceptional assistance, guiding India Cements through every step. Through calls, chats, and emails, the support team was consistently available and responsive, ensuring a smooth migration journey. This high level of support left a lasting positive impression on the company, reinforcing their confidence in choosing Zoho as their new mailing and collaboration solution.

Favourite features of Zoho Workplace

As part of its digital transformation journey, India Cements is using various Zoho Workplace apps to enhance productivity and collaboration. By adopting tools such as Zoho Cliq, Zoho WorkDrive, and primarily Zoho Mail, the company has streamlined communication and improved document management across teams.

Zoho Mail

The company was impressed with several features of Zoho Mail, which have significantly enhanced their email management experience. The extensive search option stands out, allowing users to search not only by email ID, date, and subject line but also by the content of the email and attachments. This advanced search capability is unique and immensely useful for finding specific information quickly.

Another favourite feature is Streams, which acts as a virtual notice board where messages and information can be posted for all group members. The inclusion of likes and comments facilitates structured discussions around the posts, ensuring that everyone stays informed and engaged.

Another feature the company loves about Zoho Mail is its ability to allow attachments of up to 500 MB. In contrast, other software, including the previously used platform, limited attachments to just 25 MB. This increased capacity has significantly benefited employees of the company by enabling them to share larger files seamlessly, reducing the need for external file-sharing services and streamlining communication.

Zoho WorkDrive

The company uses Zoho WorkDrive extensively to share larger files with both internal and external members. For internal collaboration, Zoho WorkDrive provides a secure and efficient platform where employees can easily access, share, and collaborate on documents in real-time. When sharing files with external members, they particularly appreciate Zoho WorkDrive’s ability to create external links. These links can be customized with passwords and expiry dates, ensuring secure and controlled access. This feature has been invaluable in maintaining the security and confidentiality of shared documents while also simplifying the process of distributing files to clients and partners.

Zoho Cliq and Zoho Meeting

The IT team at India Cements uses Zoho Cliq extensively for internal communication, finding it much easier and more efficient than sending numerous emails for internal discussions.

The company previously used Zoom for their virtual meetings, but it has now transitioned to Zoho Meeting. They found that Zoho Meeting offers features that are on par, if not better, than Zoom's, making it an easy transition for their team. The main advantage of Zoho Meeting is its integration within the Zoho Workplace suite, eliminating the need to purchase additional software. This consolidation has simplified their workflow and enhanced productivity by providing a comprehensive solution for all of their collaboration needs.

Benefits and ROI

Before migrating to Zoho Mail, the IT team faced significant challenges and disruptions in managing the company's mailing service. They had to schedule downtime for 30 minutes to 6 hours every week to run backups of their data, causing considerable interruptions and hindering collaboration with clients. This regular disruption impacted productivity and led to frustration among employees.

Furthermore, the process of managing employee transitions was cumbersome and time-consuming. When an employee left the organization, tasks such as running backups and removing the employee from the system required substantial manual effort and often resulted in delays.

However, since adopting Zoho Mail, these issues have been eliminated. The company no longer experiences any downtime for backups. This has led to uninterrupted service and improved collaboration with clients. Managing employee transitions has become much simpler and more efficient, saving the IT team valuable time and resources.

Looking forward

The team is excited to explore and integrate more Zoho products into their workflow, particularly Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, and Zoho Writer. This shift to cloud-based solutions is expected to streamline document management, enhance collaboration, and improve overall productivity. By leveraging Zoho's application, the team aims to drive efficiency gains and stay ahead in technology adoption, positioning India Cements for continued growth and success in the future.