Strategic Review

Client Overview

This client is aiming to break the mould in the UK broadband services industry. 10 years ago, the broadband industry grew quickly as a result of the growth in Local Loop Unbundling (LLU). Today, fixed wireless access (FWA) is the innovative technology chosen by this high growth internet services provider.

Challenge

Despite having been in business for 10 years, the company had a great vision, but its processes and systems had not evolved to cope with large volumes of residential and small business customers. Several disparate systems and manual processes were constantly going out of sync resulting in poor customer service and a high degree of rework. The company needed a new set of systems (or one integrated system) that would synchronise its data so that there was only one version of the truth. Manual processes needed to be automated. A simple easy to understand, fully on-line, web-based, future proof, innovative, flexible system was needed. However, these systems normally would demand a ticket price that would far exceed the companies’ IT budget.

Solution

A total of 10 core processes that caused the most amount of operational pain were agreed to be the priority and a total of 40 off-the-shelf software options were evaluated against these requirements. It was clear that not any one system could serve all the business needs. In the end 6 core systems were chosen that required an element of integration to make them synchronise their information; financial reporting, service management & usage based billing, sales, field engineering, radio link performance, and authentication and accounting all had to interact with the newly designed website providing a complete on-line experience for current and future customers. A systems integration tender was formulated and a suitable partner was identified. The new systems were configured, integrated and a small amount of bespoke development was done to achieve the desired service offering. The overall project took 12 months from concept to full launch and now serves as the bedrock for our client’s future plans. Cost-wise, the entire systems solution was delivered for a 5-figure sum that now easily delivers a 6-figure capability.

Benefits

The systems were launched in the second halve of 2014 in 2 stages. Initially just for new clients, then by migrating all existing customers off their manual processes and support systems. The systems and new business processes were sized for hundreds of new orders per month. This was put to the test as in the first month nearly 100 orders were placed quite unexpectedly. A roadmap has also been prepared that has identified and prioritised a large number of further improvements that can be made over the coming years.

In delivering the solution, a number of methods were adopted, developed and refined; sourcing off-the-shelf software, system integration tendering, low cost SaaS and Open Source API interfacing and systems integration, evolving and delivering technology-led business transformation  without a detailed specification, rapid user acceptance testing, training, launch and transition with minimum customer impact. These methods can now readily be transferred to other projects also.