Accelerated innovation

and digitization for a

Publishing Conglomerate

Company profile
A large publishing conglomerate with its primary lines of business in education,
business information services and consumer publishing. With its operations spread
across the globe, the company owns iconic brands in each of its product categories.

Business situation
In the last decade of the twentieth century, the client embarked on its transformation
journey. Its key businesses of publishing and information services were already getting
affected by trends that would have enduring significance—the increasing draw of the
Internet, fast growing business in emerging markets, open source content and
personalized learning experiences. The company had seen its profits fall and had a
clear mandate: To aggressively optimize on operating costs and increase operational
efficiencies. Outsourcing of functions like application support and maintenance,
product engineering, helpdesk and business operations was an option that would
help to:
• Reduce cost.
• Improve time to market.
• Improve quality and processes.
• Develop strategic IT partnership, enlist specialist help and drive significant
IT efficiencies.
• Accelerate innovation and digital readiness.
To identify suitable vendors, the client did an intensive review of 15 Indian IT service
providers.

The HCL difference

The company finally chose HCL for the its outsourcing needs convinced by its prior
experience, and its close understanding of education publishing. In 2002, the client’s
business units were geographically segregated, making it a highly decentralized and
functionally siloed organization. This meant information flows were discrete, decision
making was distributed and enterprise-wide business impact was staggered.
We share methodologies and processes that HCL adopted to ensure all-round success,
leading to clear benefits in terms of process simplication, speed of response and cost
of service.
 Well-structured engagement methodology
From the start, HCL followed a structured engagement handling methodology with
defined stages for:
• Opportunity assessment: Assess current state in terms of engagement objectives
tobarrive at means of change.
• Feasibility study: To do the as-is analysis and build the business case.
• Knowledge transfer: Acquire knowledge from the relevant team/business unit as
per defined parameters, to facilitate process simplification, standardization and
offshoring
• Steady state: To successfully transition to HCL teams and run in consistence with
SLAs.
This methodology ensured that process transition took only four months to get
The client wanted a common
web content management completed. Enthused by this performance and the quick cost gains, in early 2003, the
(WCM) system as a common company decided to entrust the product helpdesk support for its testing solutions arm,
platform across all
operating companies. HCL’s to HCL.
solution broke down the
This business unit had an enormous service reach—averaging thousands of web-based
huge scope of the WCM
system into smaller registrations per month, for hundreds of products across multiple disciplines and
components, with clear
administered across the globe. Top-quality helpdesk support for potential and existing
identification of core and
custom application areas users was thus business-critical to the organization. And HCL’s business process
and support functions. The
final approach involved outsourcing (BPO) services offered a distinctive edge—its familiarity with the
building an architecture customerface of the training solutions industry. HCL’s unique verticalization strategy
where core applications
were overlaid and meant that each of its business lines, including the BPO operations, had moorings in
integrated with custom
specific verticals in addition to standard service features like multi-lingual, 24X7
specifications.
support. This meant faster results at lower rates.

Wide applications spread and deep involvement across

the product-to customer value chain
As the impact of these successes spread, more and more business units reached out to
HCL in search of solutions. And in the course of the next seven years, HCL would
partner in a large number of the client’s enterprise reorganization and market
penetration initiatives.
• Development of a comprehensive application suite that integrated editorial,
production, manufacturing, inventory planning and paper management business
functions.
• Standardization of cross-organization, content management workflows. HCL
created an enhanced base Object model to address global and individual metadata
needs for various business units; generation of customized, unit-specific reports and
dashboard creation. To ensure complete success for this seminal initiative, HCL
selffinanced the build, test and validation efforts.
• Development of a new-age digital authoring and editorial product that converged
planning and scheduling to drive workflow processes, enabling the much needed
multiplatform support.
• Development of an e-book platform leading to end-to-end streamlining of content
creation workflows, that seamlessly deliver to a multi-platform environment across
i-Pad, CD-RoMs, HTML books and general web content.
• Full-service assessment and information analysis functionalities: In terms of
logistics tracking, user response processing, score computation and summary and
publishing of all-related reports. This was enabled across a full suite of assessment
services to states, districts and schools for all subjects and grades.
• Development of custom publishing and platform reader: Transformational in
terms of its input-output requirements and outcome, using print ready formats to
ingest, link dynamically and deliver digital content at high levels of accuracy.
HCL as a value leader contributing to the organization’s overall business vision
As a world-leading media conglomerate, the client had a digital strategy that focused
on innovation to continuously enhance user experience—in terms of new reading and
learning experiences, and new ways of communicating with and selling to customers.
The company envisaged a common web content management (WCM) system for this
purpose. Key features:
• One common platform across all operating companies, that addressed current
needs along with next-generation features.
• Make content creation and website updation free of IT intermediation so that users
could manage multiple sites in parallel; and content would be decoupled from the
web look/ feel and navigation.
• Compliance with all corporate governance standards.
• Ensure synergy with both online technology standards and Pearson’s existing
infrastructure, business applications and content management framework.
HCL’s solution broke down the huge scope into smaller components, with clear
identification of core and custom applications areas and support functions. The final
approach involved building an architecture where the core applications like web data
management, customer management, ecommerce functionalities, search management
were overlaid and integrated with custom specifications.
This initiative was kicked off with development of a common marketing interface for the
client’s publishing, language training and professional services business units. The
language training business was a fast growing segment, with high growth rates in the
emerging economies and such an integrated platform would have a strong bottom line
impact.
Additional service lines grown
In addition to the service areas already discussed, HCL also provides global helpdesk
support across the company’s North America and Europe businesses, encompassing
over 38 business units and 230 user locations. Multi-lingual support is provided, with
state-ofthe-art voice infrastructure and data connectivity and the support spectrum
covers MSOffice, VPN, Mac, in-house apps and network account management.
Deploying delivery and governance models that closely answers client needs
Committed to a “value-centered” approach, HCL refrained from using a single delivery
model for all the engagements. Rather, after closely understanding the business needs
of individual projects HCL took an appropriate route, with a view to consistently
pare costs.
• Managed services delivery model: For business units that adopted a ramp-up and
ramp-down model due to seasonal variations, a managed services staff augmentation
model was put in place.
• Fixed price, full-ownership delivery model: For the global rollout of the
documentsharing platform and the development of the new age digital authoring
platform, a hybrid delivery model that merged components of a fixed-price, full
ownership model along with the staff augmentation model, was used. During the
transition and streamlining stage of the project, the managed services staff
augmentation model was used as onsite support and knowledge absorption was key.
However, once the learning had been imbued, cost and optimization efficiencies
assumed center stage and HCL’s offshore team, with easy access to a universe of
domain specialists, took over. For this piece of the project, a fixed price model worked
better.
Further, with multiple service organizations being involved from the HCL side
—application development, infrastructure operations and BPO services—there was
virtue in having an engagement governance model that spanned all these lines, with
multiple layers of engagement evaluation and review frequency.
• Project reviews on a weekly basis and operational reviews on a bi-weekly basis.
• Relationship management reviews on a monthly basis.
• Executive Board reviews on a quarterly basis.

Business benefits
Till date, HCL’s engagement scope has touched nearly all functional aspects of the
client’s value chain. The organization has gained immensely in terms of process
standardization and overall IT governance, by virtue of HCL’s CMM Level 5 quality
assessment and process methodologies.
• Relentless cost optimization: HCL’s offshore-driven delivery mechanism helped
reduce the cost of eBook production from $3500 to $150; its process simplification
initiatives helped save over $5 million per year in paper procurement.
• Real-time response to market needs: Zero level variance for all project schedules
has meant faster go-to-market. For instance, prior to HCL’s involvement the client had
a problem responding to real-time spikes in demand that outpaced its production
forecasts, leading to slower rollout of titles and only partial fulfillment of the market
demand. All this changed, post HCL’s reengineering of publishing workflows. As a
result, online ordering via B2B channels, increased by 366 percent—from $ 150 million
to $ 700 million.
• Process standardization leads to work predicatability: With standardized workflows
in place for its integral content management lifecycle, there were significant
efficiencies in terms of creation, editorial, delivery, archiving and re-use.
• Netting those “big” ideas: Systematic capture and implementation of ideas has
meant a 360-degree improvement in the way things are done. New processes have
been developed centered around cost improvement, cycle time reduction, process
improvement, tool development and overall delivery efficiencies.

Conclusion
Over the years, HCL has become the client’s trusted partner, helping to realize its
transformation agenda and become a pioneering twenty-first century digital services
company. HCL has seen its engagement scope consistently increase taking on
assignments all across the publishing value chain—from streamlining of production
workflows, planning and scheduling mechanisms to modernizing rights and royalties
management processes.

Hello, I’m from HCL!

We work behind the scenes, helping our customers to shift paradigms and start revolutions.
We use digital engineering to build superhuman capabilities. We make sure that the rate of
progress far exceeds the price. And right now, 90,000 of us bright sparks are busy developing
solutions for 500 customers in 31 countries across the world.
How can I help you?

www.hcltech.com