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As one of the largest cable telecommunications operators
in Europe, this company approached Unicorn having identified
a need to allow a limited number of larger customers
to interface with their legacy systems in real-time.
They needed a means of providing a high security, on-line
web-enabled interface to involve customers in the order
entry workflow and management process and to give them
access to specific information and reporting.
£Millions of business was being lost purely due
of the complexity of the ordering process for larger
customers. Some customers had refused to do business
until a more streamlined and innovative approach could
be provided.
Customers would need to be able to order point-to-point
dedicated communications services easily and flexibly
via an Internet browser. Customers should also be able
to track the progress of an order as it made its way
through the sales process from initial feasibility through
to order completion and circuit allocations. Customers
should also be able to report and interrogate their
own historical dealings.
It is worth noting that a previous attempt had been
made to provide a web interface to the existing systems
and failed. This attempt had taken over a year with
no result.
To succeed, new systems would need to be designed and
built to leverage the information contained in existing
legacy systems. There would also be a need to build
a complete high security web-enabled environment for
both customers and staff to participate in the sales
order business processes.
As specialists in data and Internet integration, Unicorn
was pleased to accept the responsibility of technical
leadership in the development of the new systems. In
partnership, We designed, built and deployed all the
required systems and held responsibility for all aspects
of the software development including design, development,
data migration, testing, integration and deployment.
The new systems are completely Internet browser based
and provide a high security environment for order processing.
Service Level Agreements with Customers for service
performance had to be maintained and the new system
graphically shows how these key criteria are being met.
Legacy systems were migrated from existing data formats
to SQL Server and a study was undertaken to determine
how legacy system logic could be incorporated into the
new system. We found that significant portions of the
existing system could be re-used and therefore development
time could be reduced.
Depending on login, the new system can serve many purposes.
If you are responsible for finding and fixing faults
in the Network Operations Centre you have at your fingertips
all of a customer's circuit data. If you are a member
of the Customer Operations Team you get to see all customer's
orders and feasibility requests as well as circuit details
and network capacity information. What's more is that
because the entire system is Internet browser based,
staff can securely access this information from anywhere,
including at home or a customer's site.
Some other features of the new system are:
- Integration with Royal Mail Postcode Searching
- Integrated Customer and management reporting and
charting
- Numerous transparent security checks.
- Team/Group oriented.
Despite the complexity of the system and time constraints
for development, user testing found very few system
errors, and the new online system now runs unattended
24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The completed system
was developed and deployed on time and on budget.
Investment in existing systems was maintained by reusing
portions in an object-oriented manner.
The new online system has provided a means to expand
the customer base for point-to-point telecommunications
services and offers a value added service to existing
customers as well as a sales point for new customers.
For the first time, the valuable corporate resource
of information is available to all authorised staff
throughout the entire organisation and can be used for
Customer Relationship Management and network fault finding
amongst many other things.
The efficiency of the Order Entry Team has been increased
by allowing data entry to be done by customers rather
than expanding the team of administrators to cope with
extra workload. Operations have become more streamlined.
Now the customer completes details of order and may
interrogate its status.
Customer enquiries have been reduced significantly.
The online system assists in meeting the Service Level
Agreement performance targets established with customers
and forms cornerstone of the eBusiness strategy.
The new systems have captured new strategic customers
and increased revenue.
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