Meeting Business-Critical Deadlines at BT Mobile
Capgemini worked with BT Mobile to develop enhanced billing and customer care systems to meet increased volume.
British Telecom (BT) is one of the world’s largest communications companies and is the major shareholder for Cellnet, one of the U.K.’s top mobile phone networks. BT Mobile acts as the main customer interface for half of Cellnet’s four million customers, for everything from initial registration through to monthly billing and ongoing customer service.
Strong growth added over half a million new Cellnet customers in the last quarter -- success indeed. But success on such a scale brings its own issues. By the late 1990s, BT Mobile’s billing and customer care systems had to cope with four times the volume they were planned to handle. At the same time, OFTEL, the regulatory body for telecom services in Britain, announced new requirements that would impose fresh challenges to systems already under pressure.
Clearly it was time for a new solution, with new systems able to meet new volumes and new needs.
Business Requirements
BT Mobile had to address four critical business imperatives:
- the ability to handle current and future volumes of business in conditions of continued strong expansion
- compliance with OFTEL’s new Mobile Number Portability (MNP) requirements
- compliance with a new National Dialling Code (NDC) regime
- millennium compliance.
Existing systems could not meet these needs, so change was a necessity, not a luxury. And time was of the essence - and in short supply. The MNP requirement was 15 months away and the equally mandatory NDC change just 10 months ahead. Existing systems had to meet these requirements as well as be able to meet requirements into the next millennium. BT Mobile required new systems urgently to continue to remain competitive in a volatile market.
System Requirements
BT Mobile knew it would have to replace all the key components in its current customer-facing systems -- not only its billing package, but also its call center applications, its management information system, its bill formatting software and the hardware on which those applications ran. The challenges that BT Mobile faced were:
- eight different organizations working together on a business-critical project with no room for error
- smooth integration of all the different components
- management of a complex project, with in-house staff fully stretched to support current systems.
It was clearly time for outside help, so BT Mobile called in Capgemini as project managers and system integrators.
The Capgemini Solution
“Capgemini’s approach to project management was instrumental in turning my vision of a single, flexible team into reality. They helped to ensure that all eight vendors cooperated fully to get the job done.”
- BT Mobile’s Head of IT
Faced with ‘impossible’ deadlines, Capgemini and BT Mobile agreed from the start that the keys to the solution would be teamwork, flexibility and data migration skills. Indeed Capgemini was selected as much for these qualities as for its project management and systems integration skills. The whole scheme was given a name, Project Clearwater, and people from all eight parties moved into a new building for the duration of the project. A feeling of belonging to the Clearwater team rather than to a specific employer was encouraged to good effect.
Highly flexible working quickly became the norm, with little regard for evenings or weekends. The ‘blame’ culture, sometimes a feature of multi-vendor projects, was conspicuous by its absence.
Data migration was given special emphasis, since both Capgemini and BT Mobile agreed that ambitious systems integration projects often fail through lack of attention to this key aspect.
The technical solution incorporated components (such as the Jupiter billing system from Kingston SCL, the ICC integrated call center package from Datapoint and the Focus MIS application from Information Builders) that were already well-proven in telecom or similar high-volume businesses.
The Benefits
BT Mobile’s Head of IT reports on many benefits as a result of Project Clearwater: “The whole project has been phenomenally successful and has fully met the critical business imperatives that led to it.”
“It was completed ahead of schedule, despite the very tight timescale, enabling us to meet the demands of the Regulator and the needs of a rapidly expanding customer base.”
“Capgemini’s efficiency was a significant factor in saving some £6 million on the project’s £40 million budget.”
“Capgemini’s approach to project management was instrumental in turning my vision of a single, flexible team into reality. They helped to ensure that all eight vendors cooperated fully to get the job done.”
“Looking to the future, we now have the right systems in place to support our continued strong expansion in the mobile marketplace for many years to come.”
Written in cooperation with BT Mobile
Contact: Capgemini Telecom Media Networks
