HCL Technologies developed a sales collaboration portal called Wikiportal using Microsoft SharePoint to connect its 10,000 global sales and marketing employees. Wikiportal enhanced productivity by providing a centralized place for knowledge sharing, faster responses to customers, and shorter sales cycles. It improved communication and increased opportunities for innovation by enabling easy expert finding and collaboration across boundaries. Wikiportal also strengthened sales processes by integrating with CRM and ERP systems and increasing the deal closure rate through an effective reference management system. The implementation was successful due to strategic guidance, executive sponsorship, and a well-executed change management plan.

1. Customer Solution Case Study
Wikiportal: Innovative Sales Collaboration
Portal Impacts Revenue and Productivity,
Strengthens Sales Processes
Overview
Country or Region: Global
Industry: Information Technology
Customer Profile
HCL Technologies is a U.S.$ 4.6 billion
leading global IT services company. It
offers an integrated portfolio of
services, including software-led IT
solutions, remote infrastructure
management, engineering and R&D
services and BPO.
Business Situation
An employee-oriented company, HCL
wanted to connect its entire sales team
on a common platform for better
collaboration, communication and
sharing ideas.
Solution
For knowledge management, content
creation and sharing across
boundaries, HCL developed a sales
collaboration portal, Wikiportal, using
Microsoft Office SharePoint 2010.
Benefits
 Enhances sales productivity
 Improves global communication
 Increases rate of innovation
 Increases closure rate
“In the very first year of launch, we had 100 percent of
the target audience on Wikiportal. Reponses to
customer queries and RFPs were faster, thus reducing
the overall sales cycle by 30 percent for a large deal.”
Krishnan Chatterjee, Senior Vice President and Head ─ Strategic Marketing, HCL
HCL has had exponential growth, and opened offices in multiple
countries across the globe. As employees are the core of the
HCL sales process, the management wanted to transform the
way its global sales force communicates and collaborates. The
goal was to enhance sales productivity, shorten sales cycle and
close deals faster. To achieve all this, its Sales Excellence Team
came up with a sales portal, Wikiportal, developed on Microsoft
SharePoint Server. The platform has proved to be an excellent
means of connecting over 10,000 sales, marketing and solutions
employees spread across 31 countries in order to share ideas,
knowledge and collaborate. Moreover, successful innovations,
such as customer reference management directly impact
revenue, while knowledge sharing and collaboration amplifies
employee productivity.

2. Situation
HCL is a leading global technology
enterprise with annual revenues of U.S.$
6.3 billion. The HCL group comprises of
two companies, HCL Technologies and
HCL Infosystems. With a presence in 31
countries and 92,000 employees, HCL’s
offerings span research and
development (R&D) and technology
services, enterprise and applications
consulting, remote infrastructure
management, business process
outsourcing (BPO) services, IT hardware,
systems integration and distribution of
technology and telecom products.
Since 2008, HCL has seen tremendous
growth worldwide. It is growing at 35.2
percent each year. The management
realized, however, that the sales team
was spending far more time on non-sales
activities such as finding content in old
emails, and finding the right experts to
create impactful request for proposals
(RFPs) that would improve their chances
of winning a contract.
HCL’s core agenda then focused on the
need to eliminate all challenges from the
sales process. It spent several months
talking to employees to identify key
challenges and imperatives, which were:
 Shorten proposal cycle by culling
suitable information to make
proposals more persuasive
 Connect experts and information
seekers on an easily searchable tool
 Quick on-boarding of sales
representatives
 Make qualified references available
that can help close deals quickly
 Build quality metrics in the sales
processes by enabling people to
connect easily with assets and experts
 Connect sales and marketing teams
working in silos
Well known for its innovative initiatives,
HCL undertook an ambitious goal to
create a platform that would deliver the
precise knowledge, content, experts and
collaboration to its large, global
workforce.
Solution
During the evaluation, HCL realized that
off-the-shelf products could not deliver
the functionality and collaboration
expected. “What we needed was to bring
elements of enhanced collaboration,
improved time-to-market, and sharing
best practices among the sales and
marketing users, all of which would
benefit the organization as a whole,” says
Manoj Kumbhat, Senior Vice President
and Chief Information Officer, HCL.
SharePoint Server Implementation
HCL’s Enterprise Information Solutions
(EIS) team developed the solution on
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007. The
first version, called Wikiportal, launched
in 2008, delivered a robust content
management system with unique
collaboration features. Says Manoj,
“Microsoft SharePoint Server gave what
our sales teams needed, which was to
improve employee productivity. So, when
SharePoint Server 2010 was launched, we
decided to upgrade to benefit from the
new functionality. Integration with Lync
and SalesForce Automation (SFA) were
other big wins for this implementation.
All this further brought Wikiportal at the
center of all collaboration.”
The migration was a big exercise. A team
of 30 people focused on various
executive, strategic and tactical roles to
implement the solution over six months.
“A well-executed change management
plan, accompanied by strategic guidance
and executive sponsorship contributed
"With 300 top customers
and more as references,
HCL was able to
influence deals worth
US$ 1.5 billion last year,
playing a pivotal role in
23 percent of our overall
booking. It resulted in an
increased bid-to-win
ratio of 80 percent over
the average HCL ratio.”
Apurva Chamaria,
Head ─ Sales Excellence, HCL

3. to the success of the implementation,”
comments Manoj Kumbhat, CIO, HCL.
The change management focused on
training the team to ensure smooth
migration, tutorials and constant
communication with employees to
ensure quick and easy adoption,
accompanied by constant feedback
through surveys and SharePoint Web
Analytics to assess adoption.
To minimize impact, HCL used a hybrid
approach. It continued to offer content
access while it upgraded the server farm.
The team deployed three SharePoint web
front-end (WFE), each also acting as a
query server ─ with two application
servers for indexing and handling core
SharePoint services. In addition, it added
a Storage Area Network (SAN) and a SQL
Server cluster for content database.
Connecting Third-Party Line-of-
Business Applications
HCL customized SharePoint to integrate
Wikiportal with line-of-business
applications, including enterprise
resource planning (ERP), customer
relationship management (CRM) and its
enterprise user profiling solution. It also
integrates with global social media tools
such as Twitter and Crush (external
vendor that provides in-depth sales
intelligence reports). “The integration
ensures that Wikiportal is the simplest
way to manage and improve the sales
cycle and benefits over 10,000
employees across sales, marketing and
other related roles,” explains Bhawna
Narula, Operations Director, Enterprise
Information Solutions, HCL.
Access control is maintained centrally
using roles-based access; therefore, the
system automatically identifies which
employee should get what level of access
across the portal.
Customizing Wikiportal
The portal is actually a combination of
nine sub-products, each contributing to
the sales process. Likewise, more than 50
teams are responsible for providing
content and ensuring veracity. “The
platform allows access to structured data
and unstructured information through
social and collaborative features such as
tagging, wikis, blogs, discussion forums,
expertise locations, social networks, and
more,” states Shakti Srivastava, Product
Manager, Sales Excellence, HCL.
Some of the major features include:
 Enterprise Search: Delivers results
using keywords, user-generated tags
(folksonomy) and taxonomy. The
portal currently holds more than 1200
GB of content and facilitates more
than 600 search queries per day. The
search sees high traffic with an
average of 140,000 visits per quarter.
 Power Search: Built on FAST search,
this facilitates a quick preview of
documents on the browser without
downloading them. There are deep
refinement options to do a search-
within-search to get fast results and
search based on social tags. Visual
“best bets” together with contextual
search creates a unique behavior. It
also enables taxonomy-based
refinement and creating a dictionary of
keywords along with their synonyms
so that people can search in the
language of business.
 My Site: One of the major business
needs of the sales organization is to
find the right people. This was enabled
for the sales community with a
platform called “My Site.” By
integration with the organization’s

4. wide user profiling system, most of the
essential properties such as the past
and present experience, projects, skills
and expertise, along with their key
milestones and future goals are
updated in My Site so that the relevant
content is available for searching. This
user profiling system is integrated with
the Twitter and blogging platforms of
the users, so that the tacit knowledge
is available for the larger sales
community.
 Reference Management System
(RMS): A custom solution, it maps
prospects with existing customers to
create a reference to help closure of a
deal. Search for references in the
second generation include 18
parameters. The stakeholders get to
know impact through SharePoint
Designer-based, workflow-triggered
emails. It also integrates with the
customer advisory forum, central
analyst team and with Customer
Relationship Management (CRM)
solution to track the total contract
value (TCV), ensuring consistency and
integrity of information on deals.
 Expert Exchange: An elite forum,
Expert Exchange brings subject matter
experts in direct contact with
employees to answer critical business
queries. It currently has 400+ experts.
It seamlessly combines with My Site to
bring information and experts
together by extending the SharePoint
discussion thread along with the
customized workflows.
“We are proud to say that Wikiportal has
won the InformationWeek 500, 2011
award for the most innovative usage of
business technology and helped us
increase sales productivity by connecting
the global sales team with the right
information and people within minutes,”
acknowledges Apurva Chamaria,
Director, Head ─ Sales Excellence, HCL.
After successful implementation, the
team at HCL is already gearing up for
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013. It is
currently creating a migration plan and
running some pilots to get a better
understanding of the new version. It
expects to complete the migration by the
end of the year. The innovative features
in areas such as search, social mobility,
analytics and records management will
be deployed to extend the features of
Wikiportal.
Benefits
Used globally by 10,000 employees
across entire sales team, sales support,
pre-sales marketing team and the senior
management, Wikiportal is the one-stop-
shop for all sales related activities at HCL.
Wikiportal captures discrete events
across the sales processes that were
missed earlier. The company
acknowledges improvement in
operational efficiency and productivity
coupled with higher revenue and faster
deal closure rate.
Enhances Sales Productivity
Sales Excellence Team at HCL internalizes
and practices the 5-pronged strategy for
effective sales enablement and
excellence. Each prong of this multi-
pronged strategy impacts a key aspect of
sales productivity management,
including revenue growth, reducing cost
of sales, cutting short sales cycle,
increasing win rate, among others. Out
of these key areas, Wikiportal directly
impacts three of them – reducing cost of
sales, cutting short sales cycle, and
improving win rate. Says Krishnan
Chatterjee, Senior Vice President & Head
─ Strategic Marketing, “In the very first
“A well-executed change
management plan
accompanied by
strategic guidance and
executive sponsorship
contributed to the
successful
implementation of
Wikiportal.”
Manoj Kumbhat, Senior Vice-
President and Chief Information
Officer, HCL
Physical Architecture

5. year of launch, we had 100 percent of
the target audience on Wikiportal.
Reponses to customer queries and RFPs
were faster, thus reducing the overall
sales cycle by 30 percent for a large
deal.”
It simplifies processes like Reference
Management across the board, adding
value at every stage of the sales cycle.
The Reference Management System
influenced U.S.$ 2.5 billion worth of deals
in the pipeline by streamlining and
providing the most relevant references
for the deals.
Improves Global Communication
The reach and use of Wikiportal is
evident from over 1.6 million page views
compared to 20,000 in 2009. As far as
user satisfaction is concerned, the Sales
Excellence Team conducts a quarterly
survey and Wikiportal’s satisfaction
reached 3.9 out of five. Apart from access
to information, the ease with which they
find and collaborate with peers and
experts is extraordinary. “Employees no
longer speculate where and how to find
the people of desired expertise,” says
Shakti Srivastava, Product Manager, Sales
Excellence, HCL. The combination of
Microsoft Lync and SharePoint
tremendously enhances internal
communication. The status and
employee contact information is
available immediately. “Employees now
communicate directly with each other
using Expert Exchange or My Site
without having to search for email
addresses in Outlook. More importantly,
with presence, they can start a chat or
call instantaneously,” he adds.
Increases Scope for Innovation
“Connected employees exchange ideas
and collaboration, thus increasing
innovative initiatives across the
boundaries,” says Apurva Chamaria.
Head ─ Sales Excellence, HCL. “We also
recognize people by sharing rewards and
recognitions, which fosters others to
excel as well.”
Key Features of Wikiportal
Search/ Find
Buddies
 Heavily customized, user friendly front end feature of the portal
 Displays information and search results
 Integrates search with CRM, makes deal information available on Wikiportal
My Site
 Integrates with user profiling system for auto profile updates
 Searches and updates essential information such as the past, present experience, projects etc. to My Site
 Integration with Twitter and blogging platforms allows knowledge sharing at large scale
Expert Exchange
 Facilitates interaction with recognized experts of their field
 Experts receive questions directly in their Inbox by following the link to Expert Exchange and respond
Gallery/ Lounges
 Uses SharePoint blogs to share and learn from win summaries, executive stories, reusable components
Reference
Management
System (RMS)
 Allows access to most relevant references for a prospect deal, e.g., customer, analyst, C-level
 References include video, text, call, and face-to-face
 Ensures mapping of a prospect with an existing client to facilitate quick deal closures
 Integration with CRM and ERP delivers status trackers to prevent overuse of account references
Other Features
 Extends out-of-the-box Information Management Policy to create automatic archival process
 Refreshes and updates the content

6. Increases Closure Rate
RMS has a higher bid to win than HCL
and the industry average. Apurva
Chamaria states, “The Reference
Management System really works. It
motivates account managers to mobilize
their customers to join the program, and
increases the bid to win by 80 percent
compared to the company standard.” He
also explains, “With the top 300
customers and more as references, HCL
was able to influence deals worth US$
1.5 billion last year, playing a pivotal role
in 23 percent of the overall booking. It
resulted in an increased bid-to-win ratio
of 80 percent over the average HCL
ratio.”
Concludes Kalle Toivonen, Global
Account Director, HCL Europe, “I find the
reference management tool on
Wikiportal very useful, both in terms of
managing reference requests and
requesting references. No more
wondering who to contact, or how to
keep track of multiple requests, lost in
emails. It is all in one place. And, best of
all, you are entitled to a reward when
providing a successful reference!” This
process of rewards integrates and brings
on board other teams like Human
Resource and Finance through
automated SharePoint Designer based
workflows.
“It really works and when
used right, it motivates
account managers to
work diligently on
mobilizing the reference.
Thanks for
implementing,
enhancing and
maintaining RMS. It is a
great tool kit for sales.”
Rajesh Venkatachalam, Senior Sales
Director, HCL

7. Microsoft SharePoint Server
2010
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the
business collaboration platform for the
enterprise and the Web.
For more information about Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010, go to:
www.microsoft.com/sharepoint
For More Information
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products and services, call the
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Microsoft Canada Information Centre
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contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.
To access information using the World
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For more information about HCL
Technologies’ products and services,
visit the website at: www.hcltech.com/
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published August 2013
Software and Services
 Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
Hardware
 Five servers with 16 GB RAM, 4 CPU
(dual core) and 300 GB hard disk
drives