Problem: A large media company had rapidly purchased a very complex, global telecommunications network.  As a result, many short-cuts were taken with the intent of correcting the small problems later.  Magnified over the entire network these "small" problems were costing millions of dollars every year.  A few of the problems included: Failure to renew discounts from vendors when initial discount terms ended Labor-intensive request and activation process Inability to allocate costs internally to the correct business owners Failure to cross-check provisioning promises with billing realities Failure to escalate urgent issues within the organization Failure to hold vendors accountable to SLA commitments

Solution: After reviewing the current state of records and provisioning processes, a web-based circuit management system. This system included three main components: Data consolidation and migration Workflow and business rules Adaptive interface controls Data Consolidation and Migration. A central data repository was established, with consistent data structures and reporting capabilities for all circuits.  Circuit data was collected from all of its various hiding places, including personal spreadsheets, emails, and paper records.  Repeated passes of data grooming were required, resulting in greatly enhanced data quality. Workflow and Business Rules. Once management established their desired workflow and business rules, these were encoded into the overall provisioning system.  Provisioning steps are strictly enforced, allowing individual accountability at each part of the process.  Escalations are automatically issued for any circuit that is departing from business rules.  As a result, circuit data comes in clean and stays clean. Adaptive Interface Controls. Recognizing that different user groups were interested in different parts of the system, an adaptive interface was designed.  This interface changes to reflect the way each user interacts with the system.  As a result, users are able to find the information they need more quickly, and do their work significantly faster than with traditional interface.

Benefit: Within 4 weeks of activating this system, the customer experienced cost savings of more than $500,000 per year, an ROI many times the one-time investment required to install and activate the solution.