Prosares Solutions implemented enterprise portal for Lowe Lintas, India’s leading advertising agency. Leveraging Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007), Lowe now has an enterprise-wide platform for communicating with all employees; collaboration amongst employees; document and knowledge management; and a host of other requirements.

1. Microsoft Office System
Customer Solution Case Study
Advertising Agency Simplifies Content
Management, Gains Transparency and
Collaboration with Optimized Intranet Portal
Overview “Overall we anticipate substantial reductions in costs
Country or region: India
Industry: Advertising for specific areas. But more importantly we plan to
leverage the platform to unlock the value within the
Customer Profile
Established in 1969, Lowe Lintas is a system.”
successful agency which is inclined Pravin Savant, Chief Technology Officer, Lowe Lintas
towards quality creative advertising
and works for the benefit of its clients.
Lowe Lintas, one of India’s leading advertising agencies, sought
Business Situation
To maintain its leadership position in a to support collaboration across its business in a fierce market of
dramatically changing industry, Lowe global competition. Given the line of its business, creativity and
Lintas wanted a way to better support
its professionals. The company wanted collaboration is mission critical and therefore the company
to improve internal communications wanted to enable employees to share information and
and enable employees to collaborate
effectively. collaborate easily across business units. To do that, it developed
and deployed a central intranet portal called Lowe Connect
Solution
The company created an intranet based on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The
portal based on Microsoft® Office intranet improves user’s ability to access key documents,
SharePoint® Server 2007. The solution
supports collaboration and workflow streamlines operational workflow, and introduces greater
processes, and makes it easy to share transparency into the company’s processes. This comprehensive
up-to-date information.
and highly successful information platform is unifying
Benefits employees throughout the company, increasing the speed and
 Decreased costs with fast ROI
 Enhanced collaborative environment accuracy of collaboration and work processes.
 Increased employee productivity
 Streamlined content management
 Improved communication

2. “We soon realized that Situation The company needed a solution that
Established in 1969, Lowe Lintas, one of would make it easy for Top executives to
we needed to develop India’s top advertising agencies, believes communicate directly to employees-
the greatest service it can render is the other than the routine common e-mail
an efficient portal power of a high value idea. A community route, a place to promote employee and
environment that would of award winning talent across the team achievements, and a location that
world’s established and fast growing would allow for multiple groups to
enable us to share economies, Lowe Lintas provides manage and store information needed
advertising and branding solutions to a by employees on a daily basis.
information and host of corporate houses across various
collaborate easily within industry verticals. “We soon realized that we needed to
develop an efficient portal environment
and across business Headquartered in Mumbai, India, it that would enable us to share
inculcates advertising, media buying information and collaborate easily within
units.” house, direct marketing, public relations, and across business units,” says Charles
Charles Cadell, CEO, Lowe Lintas design consultancy, market research, Cadell, CEO, Lowe Lintas. “We wanted an
events, rural communications and intranet that all employees could handle
interactive communications. It is a easily and update themselves, and that
successful agency which is inclined would accommodate live news feeds and
towards quality creative advertising and other dynamic content. Including our
works for the benefit of its clients. interesting creative work”
Lowe Lintas prides itself on using the
latest technologies to improve Solution
operations and customer satisfaction. Lowe Lintas decided to implement a
The company has built a reputation for solution that could satisfy a range of
quality and innovative services, and it business needs. It needed to serve as a
relies on a robust information knowledge management system that
technology environment to help deliver provided the ability to easily publish
what its customers need. Unfortunately, documents on the intranet, effectively
employees were finding it difficult to search for information, and collaborate
efficiently meet the needs of the many and share information among all
business units and divisions. It was business units.
difficult to share creative work across all
offices in India in order to generate more It knew exactly what it needed to
region wise ideas, brand building, accomplish its goals - Microsoft Office
feedback, and launch national level SharePoint Server 2007. Designed to
campaign. While most of the work done facilitate collaboration and content
by creative individuals was brilliant and a management, to streamline business
huge asset for the organization, there processes, and to enable easy access to
was no central repository of the same for information from a wide variety of
future reference or any other business sources, Office SharePoint Server was a
usage. This limitation implied constraints natural fit.
to collaborate and manage the
knowledge effectively. “We chose to go with Office SharePoint
Server 2007 because it satisfied all our
criteria and we felt confident in the

3. Microsoft platform,” says Nikunj Patel, used for the application:
Director Business Applications, Lowe  MOSS Server (Server Farm): Along with
Lintas. “With Office SharePoint Server the MOSS Server farm, IIS server will
2007, we not only receive a great deal of act as the Web and Application server.
value for our investment, but we were  Database Server (Primary Transaction
also able to put effective, usable Server): SQL Server 2005 will be used
technology into the hands of our for database operations as there is a
business users.” requirement for clustering for failover
mechanism.
To implement the solution, developers  Secondary Server (Backup): In a cluster
worked with consultants from Microsoft environment a set of nodes are tied
India and strategic partner Prosares together, such that the end users and
Solutions Private Ltd. to create Lowe applications perceive the nodes as a
Connect, a metadata-based content single server resource. Every node has
storage and retrieval tool that exposes a a subsystem designed to incorporate
wealth of information, applications, and redundancy. These redundant
efficiency-enhancing tools and puts subsystems take charge when the
them at employees’ fingertips. It delivers primary system fails. The Resource
frequently updated information, Group Manager controls the clustered
including corporate and industry news, environment, and also the application
and its ease of customization enables running in it.
users to own and manage their content
from end to end. In addition to the above, the application
hosted in both the MOSS servers will
Physical Architecture interact with an e-mail server. These
Physical Architecture The following physical infrastructure is servers may be physically resident on the
Data Transaction server or the Primary
Application server.
Solution Overview
The various services provided are
channelized into following dimensions:
 Communication: It includes top
management communication, internal
news & communication, industry news
of interest & client specific and
creative library with updates on new
creative work.
 Interaction: It includes discussion
forums, blogs, office communicator
chat, polls, surveys, and brain food.
 Transactions: It includes leave records,
and links to various key applications.
From within Lowe Connect, employees
can access departmental sites, which are
individually managed by each of the

4. company’s business units. These portal “Overall we anticipate significant
sites give the company the ability to reductions in operational costs by
disseminate department-specific introducing various workflows for
information. transactions and also utilizing ready to
use features like Poll/Survey etc,” says
Nikunj Patel.
Benefits
“To us, Microsoft Office SharePoint Enhanced Collaborative Environment
Server 2007 represented a powerful, Given the line of its business, creativity
flexible means to increase collaboration and collaboration is mission critical for
and to provide our users with a highly the company. Lowe Connect is a key
efficient and cutting-edge technological platform to help facilitate the same. It is
tool to assist in day-to-day business primarily designed to give users a single
activities,” says Pravin Savant, Chief unified platform to collaborate. Being on
Technology Officer, Lowe Lintas. “We a Microsoft platform for mailing as well
wanted to leverage the features of the as office communications, it means it’s a
platform to create a unified information seamless connect from the intranet to
base which can be leveraged for business start interaction over e-mail or chat.
benefits. In the immediate phase we will
leverage the platform to capture new The discussions forums help collaborate
business leads and key customer while keeping a complete thread which
contacts. We will also use this as a can be retrieved for any future reference.
primary means to disseminate useful In addition, the regional office teams find
information with the customers. The it much easier to keep in pace with
decision to adopt a solution based on what’s happening around the
Office SharePoint Server 2007 has organization.
improved operational efficiency,
streamlined processes, and reduced The Brain Food section helps retain and
costs thereby strengthening our industry share useful information, which can be
position and encouraging ongoing eventually developed as knowledge
success.” management.
Decreased Costs with Fast ROI Pravin Savant explains, “As a company,
The implementation of Office SharePoint we’ve always felt that collaboration
Server 2007 provides better service and contributes a great deal to our success.
comprehensive functionality to the We’re empowering our users through the
company’s work force. The intranet intranet because we’ve given them an
portal helps utilize many ready to use extremely effective tool that they are
features saving time and cost. For using to share their knowledge. The
example, an organization wide survey or response has been quite positive with
poll would have demanded higher cost 100 percent unique access rate and close
and time apart from logistics challenges. to 70 percent regular access. The ease
However, with the new solution, the and efficiency with which employees can
company is able to implement it with gather information has made us more
complete ease. effective and productive as a company.”

5. Increased Employee Productivity and surveys. The CEO’s section is
With corporate communications, regularly and personally updated by CEO
documents, and employee information - Charles Cadell himself and it helps
consolidated and made easily searchable reach out to users on important
on Lowe Connect, employees spend developments.
much less time finding information and
more time putting it to use. “Valuable The unified platform and in-built alerts
time is being used to gather and pursue mechanism in Office SharePoint Server
leads,” says Nikunj Patel. “With 2007 helps the company in
employees spending less time searching communication flow. Given the single
for information, we estimate that their sign on with Microsoft Exchange mailing
productivity is up.” platform and the Office Communicator
for instant messaging, the overall
Streamlined Content Management process is very smooth for the end user.
Their key deliverable is the high value
idea which is in TV commercial and news
print format. With the Office SharePoint
Server 2007–based content management
system in place, there is a structured
repository of this content with metadata
details, which implies easy access to the
same and ease of connecting with the
quality product. This happens to be the
most frequently visited area at the portal.
Office SharePoint Server 2007 is a key
part of Lowe Lintas technical
infrastructure. With the new workflows,
content owners in different business
areas can take more control over
managing their content.
Improved Communication
Lowe Connect is employees’ primary
source for information. The company
relies on it for centralized storage of
documents and data, and as a
communications vehicle for delivering
news and alerts to nearly 600 people in
real time.
The intranet provides the ability to have
multi dimensional communication across
various offices. At one level it helps
deliver policies and other
announcements while at the other level it
provides feedback with the help of polls

6. For More Information Microsoft Office System
For more information about Microsoft The Microsoft Office system is the
products and services, call the business world’s chosen environment for
Microsoft Sales Information Center at information work, providing the
(800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the programs, servers, and services that help
Microsoft Canada Information Centre you succeed by transforming information
at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the into impact.
United States and Canada who are
deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach For more information about the
Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) Microsoft Office system, go to:
services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the www.microsoft.com/office
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 Lowe
Lintas products and services, call +91
022 6636 1577 / 6622 8900 or visit the
Web site at: www.loweworldwide.com
Software and Services  Services
 Microsoft Office − Microsoft Services
− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
2007
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2010