World Class Business Integration & Billing Support System for Nextel Communications
With rapid growth in its customer base and a desire to implement a world-class customer-facing architecture, Nextel initiated the Business Systems Overhaul project. Looking to leverage industry expertise, Nextel selected Capgemini as one of its lead system integrators.
This partnership resulted in the successful delivery of an integrated operational billing support systems application. Working with Capgemini enabled Nextel to complete this extremely large project on time, within budget, and with the highest quality of resources and services available.
Capgemini was awarded the TeleStrategies Billing World 2002 Excellence Award for Integration Project of the Year as recognition for their outstanding work for Nextel Communications.
Client Profile
Nextel Communications, Inc, a FORTUNE 300 company provides wireless voice and data services primarily to the business community.
From its base in Virginia, the Nextel National Network provides services to thousands of communities across the US including 197 of the top 200 markets, and more than 10 million customers, including 80 percent of the FORTUNE 500 companies.
Business Issues
Today, instant and reliable communication is vital. Nextel’s integrated communication services enable customers to efficiently manage both their professional and personal lives, and as such its customer base has greatly increased over recent years.
Based on the growth of its customer base and the challenges of its legacy customer care and billing system to support it, Nextel realized that a world-class customer care and billing system would improve Nextel’s ability to deliver business needs effectively in terms of cost, timeliness, or quality. A conversion of its legacy billing system was essential-and so Nextel chose to complete a Business Systems Overhaul (BSO) project.
The BSO project vision was to implement a “world class” system architecture that would be scalable to support 25 million customers over time. .
Solution
The Amdocs Ensemble System was chosen to support the BSO for future needs. Capgemini was selected to support multiple system development life cycle functions during this very large implementation, to ensure a successful conversion to the new system.
The system uses one common database to integrate ten critical business functions, supports 100% auditable disaster recovery, and has a flexible modular design to keep pace with business demands.
Nextel chose Capgemini based on its experience in program management, testing, security and workflow, billing assurance, and training, along with its good relationship with Amdocs. The Capgemini team was responsible for integration and user acceptance testing, billing assurance, supporting the integration of all systems, and also providing BSO implementation support for the new system in several key areas:
Establishment of the Program Management Office: Defined and implemented PMO tools, processes, communication methods, and standards that were used by the organization throughout the implementation.
Billing Assurance/Validation: Provided the validation of converted data in all of the revenue-generating elements as they moved and consolidated from legacy applications to the Amdocs Ensemble system. This ensured no interruption to the revenue stream, a reduction in calls to the call center, and facilitated customer retention.
Training: Planned and delivered instructor-led end user training to Ensemble users in all client organizations across more than fifty sites. Trained over 6,000 end-users in on-site training classes, and managed all logistics associated with the effort.
Management of the processes related to setting up all workflow and User Security Profiles: Defined and established group and user permissions, and user IDs.
User Acceptance and Integration Testing: Planned, managed, and executed the user acceptance testing process for each regional conversion and release of the software. Over 20,000 test cases were executed and over 2,000 defects were resolved to give an overall pass rate of 97% prior to the first release, which exceeds industry standards.
Capgemini helped orchestrate the linking of project interdependencies and developed an overarching critical path. As a result, management knew what was being reported and the business knew what its communication responsibilities were.
Benefits
Vice President at Nextel Communications remarked, “During the course of this huge transformation effort, Capgemini was a key partner, providing the highest level of leadership and delivery.”
The specific capabilities provided by the new system include:
- Integrated operational and billing system applications, therefore reducing manual intervention and subsequent errors.
- Support of Nextel’s call and account volume for the foreseeable future.
- Efficient identification and billing, ensuring revenue collection.
- Increased overall operating effectiveness in all operational areas of the business.
- Ability to launch new service offerings more rapidly.
- Enhanced decision-making through quicker access to revenue stream data.
- Improved customer service levels.
- Reduced processing errors and operational issues.
- Supports the scalability needed for Nextel’s growing customer base.
- Automated real-time provisioning for all direct and indirect dealers.
- Consolidated all customer data and product catalogue into one database.
The project has delivered full user buy-in and sign-off of one of the world’s largest billing system implementations-supporting 10 million customers. The Capgemini billing assurance team’s high quality methodologies and delivery in the testing area ensured a smooth transition for production go-live.
The combination of the right processes, tools, communication, leadership, and culture has allowed Capgemini to help Nextel keep this extremely large project on time, within budget, and with the highest quality of resources and services available.
Capgemini was awarded the TeleStrategies Billing World 2002 Excellence Award for Integration Project of the Year in recognition of its outstanding work for Nextel Communications.
Nextel Management concluded by saying “Capgemini is uniquely positioned to help a variety of clients implement and migrate to the new billing environments.”