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With an annual turnover of Rs 580 crore, iGate Global Solutions is a fully integrated technology and operations firm with a global services model. It provides services like consulting, IT, data analytics, enterprise systems, BPO/BSP, contact center and infrastructure management to clients like GE and ING Vysya Bank.

iGate's services are delivered by a unique pay-by-the-drink pricing model directly linked to the business value delivered to clients. This model helps clients avoid huge upfront technology costs, and reduces IT expenditure to small and predictable instalments. One of iGate's most prestigious clients is a world leader in the delivery of electronics manufacturing services, with annual revenues of billions of dollars.

iGate's Requirements
When iGate was selected by its client to provide Accounts Payable Services, iGate saw its role in maintaining and improving the client's vendor relationships. This would involve providing timely and accurate responses to emails from the client's vendors and vendor managers.

Sample query: "The shipment was delivered on Monday. When are you releasing the payment?"

In their very early engagement, iGate found that one single query would span several e-mail exchanges, and that it was critical that its customer support associates be able to track all emails pertaining to a single query in one place.

Further, iGate's client had two classes of vendors, critical accounts (CAs) and other accounts, who had two different service level agreements (SLAs). Thus, each CA would always be serviced by the same dedicated associate, whereas, Other Accounts would be serviced by any associate from a pool of twenty, based on availability. Reflecting their higher importance to iGate's client, CAs are entitled to faster Turn Around Times than Other Accounts.

Most importantly, as befits a company with a pay-by-the-drink philosophy, iGate wanted its Customer Interaction management (CIM) system to help constantly measure and improve its delivery against SLAs. Thus, the CIM system had to provide about 25 configurable real-time reports, which measured everything from Turn Around Time to number of First Time. Plus, the CIM system had to make escalations to managers easy, in case queries were not getting resolved in time.

Talisma Solution
Looking at iGate's CIM requirements, Talisma recommended its e-mail response management system, which enabled organizations to professionally manage large and growing volumes of e-mail. Engineers from Talisma's professional services team first concerned themselves with finding a way to synchronize iGate's client's accounts payable e-mails with the e-mail accounts of iGate's CSAs. Given the client's stringent e-mail security policy, they architected a solution by which e-mails (and contacts) are routed to iGate through an intermediary e-mail server, without a need for iGate's servers to directly hit its clients.

Talisma's e-mail management solution could easily be configured to meet the different SLAs required for CAs and other accounts. When an e-mail arrives from one of the CAs, Talisma intelligently routes it to the dedicated associate, who is fully aware of the CA's case and also has a personal rapport. On the other hand, an e-mail from an other account is routed on a real-time basis to the associate with the least number of open (or unresolved) interactions.

When a query arrives by e-mail, the associate uses Talisma to place it under one of several pre-defined categories. He consults iGate's client's ERP system, and prepares a response with the aid of pre-configured canned responses, a powerful feature in Talisma which allows an associate to send timely and consistent responses.

Further, built-in tools like auto correct and spelling checkers make it easy for the associate to write a professional-looking response. If a vendor was to reply to that response, Talisma is smart enough to group all interactions of that vendor in one place, regardless of which associate the reply gets assigned to. Not only it allows the associate to give a more studied and meaningful reply, but also makes the response process independent of any one person.

Results
Talisma helps iGate's associates to get a 360-degree view of the customer, with complete details of all messages in the interaction, regardless of the individual responders-a difficult scenario in Outlook/Lotus Notes, e-mail systems that preceded Talisma at iGate.

This 360-degree view saves the vendor the hassle of repeating his query multiple times, allows the agent to give a considered response, and, in general, helps enhance vendor relationship. Further, Talisma presents all open cases pertaining to an associate in his workspace, allowing him to be more productive. Talisma also provides clear escalation paths for unresolved queries, and empowers managers by making it easy for them to stay on top of things using reports and analytics.

Finally, Talisma helps iGate deliver on its SLAs, thereby enabling it to execute its pay-by-the-drink strategy in the Accounts Payable domain. Now they are considering using Talisma's CIM solutions for other domains.