Microsoft and Thakral One: A Philippine Success Story
The story of Thakral One’s Microsoft business in the Philippines is one of exemplary partnership. The company’s Philippine operations date back to 1997 when Thakral One entered the market with IT support services. Partnerships for hardware distribution with global firms including IBM, HP, Lenovo and Microsoft followed.
In the 10 years since it began, the relationship with Microsoft has grown from strength to strength such that the business contributes almost 40% of Thakral One Philippines’ revenues, and is a major reason for the company’s leading position in that market.
Credit for this success is due to the Microsoft Center of Excellence, and its constituent core teams offering sales, technical, functional, implementational, and support expertise for Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics and Infrastructure Services. Starting out in 2007 with enterprise solutions based on Microsoft technologies, with a tilt towards healthcare and retailing, the suite of offerings has expanded to include infrastructure and collaboration solutions like SharePoint, Active Directory and Unified Communications. Today, Thakral One serves myriad industries in the Philippines ranging from manufacturing and distribution to logistics and banking, the last with specialized solutions for Core Banking, Anti Money Laundering and Business Intelligence.
Another reason for Thakral One’s success in the Philippines market is their vast and versatile global partnerships and strategic alliances with leading Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) and System Integrators (SIs). This ensures that the Philippines consistently receives the latest and best of breed solutions and technologies from around the world.
Behind all this stands a fine and committed team of professionals. 85 Microsoft certifications awarded to Thakral One employees around the world is testimony to their technical capability.
Thakral One’s Microsoft business has several success stories to its name. A utilities major wished to enhance collaboration among stakeholders. It realized that it needed to improve the storage and management of documents and records, which as a result of being done manually, was hampering both collaboration and service delivery. Thakral One proposed their Microsoft Sharepoint technologies-based Document Management System as a solution for managing the client’s document lifecycle from end to end. They supported the implementation of this solution with comprehensive services covering project management, planning, execution, testing and deployment.
The results were impressive. Collaboration between departments improved dramatically. Document access was streamlined through better governance and Information Rights Management. The client was able to comply with legal and regulatory mandates. Last but not least, the Document Library eased the storage and management of documents and sped up retrieval with the help of search tools such as full-text indices, and better workflow management. The success of the pilot project led to the award of three Documentation Management System projects to Thakral One.
In another case, a leading Philippine conglomerate were seeking to overhaul their internal portal and put in its place a single platform of business communication and a single window that would provide employees access to information. One of their conditions was that the new portal mesh seamlessly with the existing document management solution. Thakral One redesigned the internal portal, improving look, feel and overall user acceptance. They migrated Microsoft SharePoint 2007 to the 2010 version to ensure greater adaptability of new development tools and standards. Through seamless system integration and information flow, the client’s network fileshare and scanned documents were migrated to a document center within the portal.
The portal’s acceptance by users improved collaboration and the exchange of information. Document management went paperless to reduce cost of operations and storage. And there was overall improvement in business processes and productivity.
Besides glowing references from clients, Thakral One has also received commendations from partner Microsoft for demonstrated excellence in both consulting and delivery. In 2012, the Philippine business was designated “Microsoft Partner Network Gold: Portals and Collaboration”.
Says Lyn Antonette Reyes, VP and Regional Lead – Microsoft Business Unit, Thakral One, “The company draws upon its local strengths as well as that of the Group when required, to do its utmost to exceed clients’ expectations. Therefore our success in the Philippines is an extension of our track record of cross-country excellence in markets like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Cambodia.”
In addition to Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics and Infrastructure Services, Thakral One is also continuously building its capabilities around Cloud, Business Productivity, Core Infrastructure and Business Analytics. The company also is focused on offerings services surrounding Active Directory and Microsoft Exchange to its client base.
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