PCL comes alive with Internet

Desktop leading light, PCL Limited, a company which has remained low key in the past one year, has suddenly come alive with a spate of announcements including expansion plans for the Internet and WWW markets.

The company has floated a separate division for the Internet business which will soon be converted into a new subsidiary company targeted at the Internet and internet market.

The company is creating a nationwide internet, which will finally go commercial as PCL becomes an Internet Service Provider.

The company has set up a PCL-SCO Excellence Centre and recently also been awarded the ISO 9002 for customer support operations, by the DoE’s STQC Directorate.

For the year 1995-96, PCL is expecting a 100 percent hike in turnover, compared to the previous year.

In quest of Excellence
Pertech Computers Limited (PCL), has set up a Technology Excellence  Centre together with the Santa Cruz Operations (SCO).  The Centre is expected to be significant resource for technological benchmarking, betatesting, solution prototyping, system integration and trouble shooting.  “With the Excellence Centre fully operations, customers will benefit from the systems integration expertise which is available through PCL,” said Alok Mohan, president and CEO, SCO, Inc.

In addition, PCL is also adopting the Internet strategy of SCO in order to deliver Internet solution to Indian customers.  SCO’s Internet and internet solutions combine its Unix server with key enabling technologies from leading internet/intranet technology companies such as Netscape, Oracle, Jayasoft, CyberCash, Morning Star and MCS.

Said Dadan Bhai, chairman, PCL: “We have found SCO’s Internet strategy to be one of the most comprehensive, addressing the Internet/intranet market with its firewall, database and electronic commerce solution.  By combining the SCO’s Internet family of products and services with commodity Intel-based servers, we can offer complete and most cost-effective Internet solutions to Indian corporate users as well as developers.”

Making of an ISP
PCL has recently set up an Internet division in New Delhi, and is working towards becoming an Internet Service Provider (ISP), in the hope that the Government will soon also the private service providers to enter into the Internet market.  The company, at the moment, is busy putting up the basic infrastructure for  creating a nationwide network for its own business, which will finally be connected to VSNL through a 10MB link for providing the Internet service.  According to Sammer Kohhar, national marketing manager, PCL: “As per the current plans, the company will be using a SCO-based Web server over a VSAT backbone to reach out to even B and C category towns.”

Also, in the PCL-SCO Excellence Centre, the company has started a multimedia and WWW section.  According to Arun Madan, country manager Internet, the company has bought a domain in the US, for the purpose of putting up its own Web site as well as the sites of others. 

As part of the new venture, the company is hiring a variety of professionals including Web designers, copy writers, visualizers and graphic designers.  Training is also being imparted for HTML and VRML languages.

Customer support rewarded
According to PCL, the company in the first in the industry to be awarded the ISO 9002 for customer support operations (CSO).  PCL has received the certification from the STQC (Standardization Technology and Quality Control)  Directorate of the Department of Electronics (DoE).  The STQC’s audit of the company’s CSO lasted six months, though STQC also checked the company’s previous year’s performance in the area of customer Support.

As a matter of fact, the company has been following the ISO 9002 norms for more than two years.

As part of its customer support strategy, PCL adopted the Hub and Spoke Concept (HSC), which has been largely adopted by the courier companies.  Under the HSC, PCL’s corporate office at New Delhi has been connected with all the metro offices, which are further connected to 14 officers, called the decentralized hubs.  In addition, the company also has 100 service franchisees under the name of “TechCare”.