Ballarpur Industries Ltd manufactures over 60 % of India’s value added and specialty paper, and accounts for nearly 20 % of the overall paper production in the country. The company also sports the largest distribution network with 16 regional offices and more than 100 exclusive distributors.

The quality intensive BILT is well recognized for its products in the domestic as well as international markets. With paper exports worth 15,000 tonnes per annum to 15 countries across the world, BILT has been awarded the coveted Capexil award for highest quality export, for four consecutive years (1995 through 1999). For a production giant the size of BILT, transitioning to an eBusiness model would entail a colossal IT infrastructure and a greater need to safeguard its online transactions. But that’s exactly what iBILT finds itself doing as the technology arm of the country’s largest manufacturer of paper—BILT.

The company is taking a pioneering step by leading technology and eBusiness initiatives in an industry often termed as "traditional." But with the changing global landscape, BILT is certain that the competitive advantages of eBusiness will significantly impact their revenues and future business. With the business being mainly B2B, these advantages include automating and integrating BILT’s supply chain systems with trading partners and business processes; lowering transaction costs associated with identifying, negotiating and purchasing from multiple suppliers; cutting the use of low value-add intermediary brokers and dealers to reach customers; expanding the universe of buyers and sellers; and consolidating and customizing multiple sources of pricing information, real-time news and industry data.

BILT currently has about 1,700 desktops spread over 16 locations. Some of these locations have just migrated from dial-up connectivity to leased lines. In the next 12-18 months, BILT is going to connect all 16 locations through leased lines. Other than that a WAN, ERP and database management software are currently at various stages of implementation. This will eventually connect all its locations and give all locations access to critical business applications.

BILT has initiated a massive technology drive with a planned investment of about $10 million to adopt the benefits of the Internet, the Web and other IT applications into increased efficiencies and therefore better its bottomlines thought an e-business model. "The paper industry in India is increasingly getting IT-conscious, and being at the cutting edge of technology is always one of our primary requirements," said Amrit Sethi, manager (operations), iBILT Technologies. For an entity that produces over 270,000 TPA, this requirement is easier said than done.

Security stays on top
"E-business necessarily requires to be secure if it has to succeed. Unless you give that assurance to business partners, your business model is not going to work," says Sethi. Security stays at the top of iBILT’s list when it comes to e-business, a model that will finally link about 600 distributors, suppliers and customers online across the country and overseas—in small towns as well as large cities. This is expected to account for nearly 85% business for BILT.

It was this need that propelled BILT to look for reliable, and robust security solutions in the market. Besides, the company’s top-most concern was to completely eliminate the possibility of attacks on the network, intrusions and other kinds of vandalism once the e-business solution was ready for implementation.

"We were looking for high-quality security solutions that would be hard to break, easy to administer, implement and use, and also intuitive in nature," said Sethi. After a thorough research in the market, BILT selected 3-4 products available in the market for a final evaluation. BILT finally zeroed in on CA’s award winning security solution—eTrust. Not only did the product offer the best-of -breed functionality, tight integration and bulletproof security, it was also very easy to learn and use. "We needed an integrated product as we were opening up several doors to our partners and we needed a simple but effective solution. We also received excellent feedback on Computer Associates and its products from the market," he said.

On this $10 million initiative, iBILT managing director and CIO Ashok Tiwari says—"We are embarking on a journey to create a robust eBusiness model and understand the criticality of security in the networked environment. Only if we are secure, will it build confidence among our business partners, and provide that extra assurance to transact online and, thereby, enable us to achieve better returns. This model is a win-win situation for both BILT and our partners since it will help reduce cost of transactions and time to market."

E-trust keeps the faith
"Rather than waiting for an intrusion or an attack and then installing security solutions, we have made provisions in advance to avoid any vulnerabilities. Such an event will not only derail the implementation timetable, but also if it happens in the initial phases where we have the first few partners on board, it can reduce confidence on this business model at the very onset—both with partners and internally" said Sethi.

The eTrust Firewall helps BILT enforce security policies throughout the enterprise, safeguarding all mission-critical network resources, while eTrust Intrusion Detection will combine surveillance and alert capabilities to stop network attacks and abuses. The product works full-time to provide real-time, automatic detection of threats to the network and its resources. Finally, eTrust Access Control will provide the essential eBusiness element—regulating access to critical business assets. BILT has several applications running on its servers and access to these applications is restricted depending on the function of the employee or the nature of partnership. Access will need to be regulated as per parameters set for each of them.

BILT’s eBusiness infrastructure will have many components in the form of user databases, administration tools, and logs spanning from operating systems, to applications, Internet, virtual private network or the wide area network. It will therefore be critical to have a central management tool to monitor the entire security environment. eTrust Access control will do the needful here, by defining policies that prohibit unauthorized system access, and "harden" server operating systems.

Once the entire IT setup is rolled out as per the master plan, the eTrust security solutions will protect the company’s entire network spread across 42 locations accessed from across the world, covering all its businesses including paper, food and chemicals. The solutions will work together to provide BILT with a system that will provide defense against Internet threats, offer secure seamless access within the "extended" enterprise, and finally, manage and monitor the entire security infrastructure. The ease of use is a boon during the roll out phase. As Sethi mentioned, "it hardly takes any training for the implementation team to work on eTrust".

Managing business, building a future with eTrust
Meanwhile, eTrust—by maintaining extreme vigil across the enterprise—will ensure that BILT’s customers, distributors and employees conduct transactions and other activities with trust and that the systems, applications, and networks are safe from intruders and unauthorized access. This trust will ultimately help improve the trust among the partners and encourage them to use this model of doing business and this BILT strongly believes will translate into a better, bottom line—all managed in a strong, secure environment.

Team DQ