Caso de Exito Microsoft - Tabacalera del Este

Windows Server 2003 Customer Solution Case Study

Manufacturer Uses Communication Solution to Boost Productivity, Drive Foreign Business

Overview Country or Region: Paraguay Industry: Manufacturing Customer Profile Located in Hernandarias, Paraguay, TABESA is one of the largest cigarette manufacturers in South America, with approximately 500 employees. In 2005, sales reached U.S.$69 million. The company has 98 desktops.

Business Situation TABESA’s Linux-based messaging solution did not support mobile connectivity and was difficult to manage. Due to security concerns, corporate e-mails were distributed manually and Internet access was severely restricted.

Solution TABESA implemented an integrated Microsoft® messaging and communication solution based on the Microsoft server product portfolio and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003.

Benefits  Integrated messaging and communications solution  Connectivity for mobile staff  Reduced IT management costs  Improved security features  Improved desktop management 

“We built a robust and secure Microsoft integrated solution that answered our communication and messaging needs, at the same time revolutionizing how I manage our IT resources.”

Miguel Orrego, IT Manager, Tabacalera del Este

Tabacalera del Este (TABESA), based in Paraguay, is one of the largest cigarette manufacturers in Latin America. It had an outdated Linux messaging solution that did not provide a secure remote connection for travelling executives who were building up international market share, or a framework through which all employees could safely enjoy e-mail access on their own computers. TABESA replaced its open-source products with an integrated Microsoft® communication and collaboration solution.

Now everyone has Internet access and TABESA can rely on a messaging solution that promotes safety for staff, both in the office and on the road. Collaborative sites on the intranet support teamwork and provide a way to manage information. The Microsoft solution is more efficiently managed, with an 80 percent reduction in firewall administration and a 70 percent improvement in desktop management.

Situation Tabacalera del Este (TABESA) processes 12,000 tons of tobacco each year and produces 1.58 billion cigarettes each month from its state-of-the-art operations headquarters in Hernandarias, Paraguay.

TABESA’s physical plant includes its 17,000square-meter factory, warehouse, labs, and administrative offices at headquarters, as well as 15 warehouses to store tobacco in Minga Guazú, Hernandarias, and Itauguá that have a combined storage capacity of 8,000 tons of tobacco.

“For midsize companies, an integrated Microsoft solution provides the best value. TABESA had little support with its open-source platform.

Now they have one number to call. That’s good for a small IT department.”

Ariel Deligdisch, Consultant, OLAM

Since its founding in 1995, TABESA has grown continuously, developing a product range of 15 different brands that are sold through a distribution chain, which, in 2005, comprised 45,000 points of sale. In Paraguay, TABESA has a market position of 48 percent. While developing its domestic market, TABESA achieved its certification for the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), which allows the company to export tobacco products to the United States. TABESA is one of three industrial tobacco companies in Latin America that is MSA-certified.

TABESA’s 5-person IT department managed a hybrid infrastructure of mail servers and firewalls built on the Red Hat Linux 9 release.

The company also used the Novell Netware operating system directory for authentication of users on the network. In addition, TABESA had 98 desktop computers that were connected via an intranet and ran a mixture of the Windows® 98 and Windows 2000 operating systems. This created extra work for IT staffers, who handled support calls, patch management, and security updates.

The disconnect between server and desktop operations systems also necessitated multiple user passwords, which reduced

employee productivity. Poor integration between business applications, mail systems, and the desktop contributed to a high burden on the IT staff, who spent too much time learning different technologies and managing disparate operating systems.

Poor Communication and Collaboration TABESA’s open-source IT infrastructure did not contribute to overall corporate efficiency, especially in the key areas of communication and collaboration. TABESA’s executives and sales staff travel extensively to develop international market share, and they need access to corporate information while on the road. Internally, staffers need secure access to the Internet, and a reliable way—other than the telephone—to share business information between management and operations and among the different plants and storage facilities.

TABESA had established an external e-mail solution in which each business department had an e-mail account under the control of a manager. This manager received all the email for that department and distributed it internally. This meant that the company had a total of 11 Internet e-mail accounts with an Internet service provider (ISP) and approximately 100 internal e-mail accounts for sending e-mails among staffers in different departments.

The “gatekeepers” of corporate e-mail messages downloaded the e-mail messages from the ISP, which did not provide any virus protection or content control filters. Without a secure firewall or company-managed content filters, a growing number of unsolicited e-mail messages added to the burden of filtering, sorting, and distributing e-mail to colleagues.

Internet navigation was limited to one

personal computer, and that was not connected to the intranet.

“This was our way of handling security issues and a fear of viruses from outside the organization,” explains Miguel Orrego, IT Manager at TABESA. “However, the arrangement did not facilitate the flow of information because employees had to rely on the efficiency of the single manager with Internet access in distributing their mail.

People were forced to pick up the phone to chase down mails they needed to make business decisions. This resulted in delayed management decisions, and reduced employee satisfaction and productivity.”

TABESA employees also had no central storage for files and no way to easily share information, other than printing out and passing around documents. Files were duplicated and stored on individual computers so that tracking document versions was extremely difficult. These problems reduced efficient teamwork and the ability of the company to respond to market opportunities.

Lack of Connection for Mobile Employees Business decisions made outside the office by executives and sales consultants visiting clients and generating new markets were also affected by an inability to access information. On the road, connections to the Internet were made in cybercafés or in airports with public terminals. Yet, slow Web mail service from the ISP, difficulty opening attachments, and the inability to access server applications at TABESA reduced the mobile employees’ ability to effectively market TABESA’s product line and provide customer service.

“My executives were asking for a secure messaging platform and a central place to store and update business information,” says Orrego. “As the IT manager for a rapidly growing company, I needed an integrated platform with centralized security and desktop management, so I could comply with their requests. Instead, I was wasting time and money using manual processes trying to keep non-integrated systems functioning, with little real benefit to the employees.”

Solution

TABESA asked Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner OLAM to help replace its open-source solution with a solution based on the Microsoft server product portfolio and a standardized desktop environment. “We wanted to build a compatible server and desktop infrastructure with integrated security management,” says Orrego. “We looked at upgrading our Linux solution, but we chose Microsoft products for their scalability and trustworthiness. Microsoft is continually innovating its products, and we wanted to establish a base infrastructure to which we could easily add solutions as our business needs evolve.”

TABESA deployed the Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 Standard Edition operating system, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, and Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2004. On the desktop, all employees are using Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003, so traveling staff members can access their e-mail while on the road. All employees now have Internet access using the Internet Explorer® 6.0 internet browser, which is integrated into the Windows® XP Professional operating system that TABESA installed on everyone’s desktop.

Ariel Deligdisch, Consultant at OLAM, recommended the environment for TABESA: “For midsize companies, an integrated Microsoft solution provides the best value.

TABESA had little support with its opensource platform. Now they have one number to call. That’s good for a small IT department.”

In order to boost teamwork, TABESA also deployed Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services, a built-in component of Windows Server 2003. Windows SharePoint Services provides a framework for intranet sites that allow teams to collaborate and share information.

“The relationship OLAM has with Microsoft gave us comfort that we had a connection with many resources and support if we needed it,” says Orrego. “And we liked the experience that OLAM had implementing Microsoft solutions of this type. We built a robust and secure Microsoft integrated solution that answered our communication and messaging needs, at the same time revolutionizing how I manage our IT resources.”

Benefits With its Microsoft integrated solution, TABESA experienced a new way of doing business based on a messaging platform it trusts and a common infrastructure that’s easy to manage. “We confronted a large challenge in opening the possibilities of the Internet to our business users,” says Orrego. “We needed a uniform, trustworthy, and easy-to-manage platform for messaging, collaboration, safe Internet access, and mobile access to business data. Microsoft delivered, empowering our IT department to answer corporate business needs without putting a strain on our resources.”

Accessing and Sharing Business Information Drives Productivity With Exchange Server 2003 providing an inhouse messaging server integrated with the Active Directory® service that comes with Windows Server 2003, TABESA is, for the first time, providing personalized e-mail for all its employees, whether they are using a desktop computer, a portable computer, or Windows Mobile® 2003 powered Pocket PCs or Smartphones. Mobile employees can rely on safeguarded access to corporate e-mail messages, schedules, and other information that is stored on TABESA’s Exchange Server 2003 using the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client or Office Outlook Web Access, which requires only a Web browser and an Internet connection.

And TABESA doesn’t have to worry about corporate information being exchanged over the Web because ISA Server 2004 acts as a gateway with enhanced security features for Exchange Server 2003 and other server products.

One of the fundamental business drivers for the Microsoft messaging and communication solution was improving the way the company handles information. Now TABESA employees are in charge of sending and receiving their own e-mails, and can share calendars and schedule meetings quickly and easily.

Everyone has access to the Internet from their desktops. Managers have become more independent and empowered to make decisions when they need to, responding more efficiently to issues as they arise.

Information is flowing freely among employees and departments as a result of Windows SharePoint Services sites, which have been set up as collaborative online

workspaces where important information can be stored and shared.

“With our Microsoft messaging solution, we have seen a 100-percent improvement in our mobile employees’ ability to access business information and make decisions on the road as well as in our ability to share information within the organization,” says Orrego. “Now we can be on-line and communicating, whether our executives are inside the office, outside, or visiting clients.”

“We needed a uniform, trustworthy, and easy-tomanage platform for messaging, collaboration, safe Internet access, and mobile access to business data. Microsoft delivered, empowering our IT department … without putting a strain on our resources.”

Miguel Orrego, IT Manager, Tabacalera del Este

“With more controlled and secure Internet access, it’s possible for staffers, on their own initiative, to search for better alternatives for prices and quality supplies,” explains Orrego.

“Now departments can share related production information such as catalogs and manufacturing specifications. We are speeding up business processes—be it in buying, selling, petitions, or sharing information used to make decisions. Today it is inconceivable to imagine management without the availability of these tools. They have been so well adopted it’s like we have always had them.”

Reduced Management Costs Drives Profitability According to Orrego, TABESA is spending a lot less time and money managing its Microsoft integrated infrastructure. A big reason for this is that the systems are designed to work together and can be managed using centralized administrative tools that also automate routine tasks. For example, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services performs unattended installation of product updates, so Orrego and his staff no longer have to visit each desktop.

“Microsoft is making a significant impact on improving our maintenance costs. By having systems that work together, duplicate and redundant IT jobs are eliminated,” says Orrego. “With ISA Server, we are seeing an 80 percent improvement in the administration of our firewall, and with Active Directory we are seeing at least a 70 percent improvement in our administration of users and our control over the desktop.”

Now that Orrego and his staff are freed from time-consuming management processes, they can work on further developing TABESA’s IT resources to directly impact the productivity of the company: “We can spend time on other things, because for the first time we have the tranquility that our environment is secure.

“As a company, our principle objective is to produce more at the lowest cost possible,” Orrego concludes. “A Microsoft IT infrastructure helps us do that by increasing employee productivity with better access to business performance indicators like machine stoppage, throughput, and material consumption. We have decreased losses and reduced plant maintenance costs, thus increasing productivity and production volume. For TABESA, our Microsoft solution is an investment that continues to give returns.”

For More Information

Windows Server 2003

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. 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

The Windows Server 2003 family helps organizations do more with less. Now you can run your IT infrastructure more efficiently, build better applications faster, and deliver the best infrastructure for enhancing user productivity. And you can do all this faster, more securely, and at lower cost.

For more information about Windows Server 2003, please visit: www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003

For more information about OLAM products and services, call 595 (21) 605074 or visit the Web site at: www.olam.com

For more information about Tabacalera del Este products and services, call 595 63122446 or visit the Web site at: www.TABESA.com.py

Software and Services

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Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition − Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 − Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004  Windows XP  Windows Mobile 2003

Partner

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Microsoft Office System − Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 − Microsoft Office Outlook 2003  Technologies − Active Directory − Office Outlook Web Access − Windows SharePoint Services

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This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published January 2007

OLAM