Corporate Intranet and Knowledge Management System

The Challenge

ITC Lifestyle Retailing Business Division (ITC LRBD) is amongst the largest Lifestyle Retailing businesses in India with popular brands such as Wills Lifestyle, Miss Players, John Player and other brands.

The KM Portal was built for the following brands/businesses:

  1. Wills Classic – New Age Formal wear for men & women, made of choicest fabrics; crafted meticulously.
  2. Wills Sport – Premium relaxed wear offering fashion forward styles for men & women
  3. Wills Clublife – Premium evening wear, comprising edgy styles in bold colours
  4. Essenza di Wills – Range of Personal Care Products

Convergent Technologies was to develop an Knowledge Management portal for ITC LRBD.

The iKnow Knowledge Management portal was built to help Designers, Merchandisers, Product Managers, Stores, Technical , Finance, Accounts, HR teams to manage organisational. departmental and competitive information, and share information with the right target audience.

It was expected of Convergent Technologies to build a system which ensures that one Brand/Business doesn’t see the information of the other, but the top management had filtered views of critical business information shared across businesses and departments.

 

The Solution

The ITC Lifestyle Retailing Business Knowledge Management Portal was developed on the MOSS (Microsoft Office Share Point Server) 2007 platform. User Authentication was done using Windows Authentication.

Departmental Sites were built for:

  1. Design:  Team of Style and Textile Designers structured around Brand offerings and fabrics e.g WLS Sport Wovens Design Specialist
  2. Buying and Merchandising: The function has a responsibility to deliver high ‘Quality’ product sourced at the best ‘Cost’ possible and ‘delivered’ ‘On-time In-full’. Sub-functions included:
    1. Buying and Category Management:  Divided between WLS and JP teams
    2. Technical Services: Responsible for Construction and Fits of Garments
    3. Quality: State of the art in –house R&D Lab to ensure Fabrics, trims and Garments are of really high quality
    4. Production
  3. Marketing and Retail
    1. Retail Development
    2. Logistics
    3. Retail Operations
    4. Marketing Services
    5. Sales and Distribution
  4. HR
    1. Recruitment
    2. Training
    3. Performance Management
    4. Reward & Recognition
    5. Employee Engagement in line with Business need
  5. Finance
    1. Merchandising Accounting
    2. Finance operations related to the buying and merchandising function
    3. Operations Accounting
    4. Finance operations related to Retail and Sales operations
    5. Financial Accounting and Operating Policies
    6. Budgeting, CAPEX , Business P&L etc
    7. Export Accounting
    8. Finance operations in exports
    9. Divisional Audit
    10. To handle Internal audit of processes in LRBD
  6. Exports Does Product Development, Manufactures and supplies product to European and American Brands including Espirit, Next, Debenhams, Calvin Klein, Memo Fashions, M&S.
  7. IT

Life at LRBD Included:

  1. Mitr
    1. Introduce a Friend – LRBD’s Employee referral Scheme
    2. Email profiles as and when you receive them
  2. Induction and Training
    1. Cross functional HO Induction
    2. GENESIS for campus recruits
    3. Induction of front line employees at stores
    4. Nominated trainings
    5. ITC Trainings
    6. Performance Management