Case Study: Vodafone

Fintech Consultants - in conjunction with BT Wholesale - delivered a comprehensive multi-channel customer acquisition and provisioning orchestration solution for Vodafone UK. Launched in January 2007, Vodafone At Home is Vodafone's fixed-line rental, calls and broadband service. Our solution enabled Vodafone to make its first move into the fixed-line communications market within a matter of months.

Key points :

• Complex provisioning orchestration made simple
  • Support for broad product portfolio spanning line rental, calls, equipment, internet services and broadband
  • Zero-touch automation of most orders
  • Automated jeopardy monitoring and management
• Encompasses three fully-branded channels - online, customer service centre and retail
  • Online (end user) portal accessible 24x7 to millions of Vodafone UK mobile customers
  • customer service portal in use across multiple sites by 500+ agents
  • Retail portal in use within 348 Vodafone High Street stores
• Enterprise integration
  • Credit vetting/eligibility checking in real-time
  • Billing & real-time payment processing integration
  • MIS integration
• Industrial strength technical implementation
  • Underpinned by BEA and Oracle technology

Our solution spans three key channels - online, customer service centre and retail - for customer acquisition and order management. Each channel is supported by its own integrated web-based portal which links back into the other channels. Underpinning the solution is a SOA-enabled back-end provisioning/fulfilment engine which provides the complex automated orchestration of provisioning activities across a broad service portfolio encompassing:

• Line rental (WLR2 - Wholesale Line Rental)
• Dynamic calls packages (Wholesale Calls)
• Broadband
• Email/internet services
• Customer equipment (eg routers/modems/microfilters)

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Above: Fintech Consultants delivered an integrated multi-channel online capability for Vodafone At Home. The solution comprised an online customer sales channel integrated into Vodafone.co.uk plus a call centre capability for hundreds of agent positions. A retail channel spanning over 350 High Street stores integrates into the call centre channel for real-time customer service across channels.

• Multi-channel online/offline service - engage with customers on their terms
  • Customers can choose when, where & how they place orders - online, through the customer service centres or in-person in 348 Vodafone stores on the High Street. And they can change their minds mid-order.
  • Sophisticated multi-site caching & replication enables Vodafone's customers to 'channel hop' in real-time throughout the order placement process.
  • At every step of the process, the solution maintains a complete view of customer and provisioning activity so enabling a high quality, informed customer experience.
• Fully-branded customer experience - don't just talk the brand, walk it
  • Each online channel - including the in-store til-points - is fully Vodafone branded. Each element of the corporate style guide has been painstakingly & faithfully implemented to ensure maximum brand consistency.
• Enterprise integration - consistent credit risk management & billing
  • Each channel also integrates into Vodafone corporate SOAP web-services for credit/eligibility vetting and single sign-on. This ensures a consistent approach to customer credit risk across Vodafone's mobile & fixed-line services whilst also providing elegant single sign-on for customers using Vodafone's online end user portal.
  • Our solution fully integrates into billing and real-time payment processing solutions, including Convergys Geneva for enterprise single-billing. Data sources are also provided for onward management reporting and MIS purposes.
• Sophisticated-yet-flexible provisioning orchestration
  • Our solution incorporates Magellan, a sophisticated SOA-enabled product package-driven provisioning/fulfilment engine.
  • Magellen orchestrates the fulfilment of complex orders from start to finish ensuring that orders are completed correctly in the shortest possible time across over a dozen external trading partner interfaces. These electronic interfaces are of varying complexity and technical implementation from flat-files to sophisticated web services using SOAP/ebXML.
  • Magellan can provision (and orchestrate the order placement) for any variety of orders on-demand - from simple one-off orders for upgraded equipment (eg DSL modem to wireless router) to the most complex packages combining line rental, calls, equipment, internet services with simultaneous broadband provisioning.
  • At each stage of the provisioning cycle, Magellen monitors the progress of each in-flight order, providing real-time jeopardy alerting and management capabilities designed to keep orders flowing.
• KCIs - keep customers informed
  • A key part of the provisioning cycle is keeping customers informed. Event-driven, pro-active, templated advice notifications are automatically sent to customers by email and SMS to keep them in the loop. This reduces inbound customer service centre call volumes and costs whilst maintaining a light-touch contact automatically with customers during those crucial early stages of in-life service.
• Scalable and reliable
  • Our solution was designed from the ground-up for industrial strength - scalablity and reliability are vital to customer confidence. The solution runs 24x7 from BT Wholesale's enterprise-grade data centres and uses established enterprise middleware BEA WebLogic and Oracle data-servers.

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