May 29, 2007

Down Under Vodafone CRM Brown-Out 'Expected'

By David Sims, TMCnet Contributing Editor

Industry observer Howard Dahdah in Sydney reports that Vodafone's CRM brownout was expected: "A customer relationship management (CRM) upgrade that caused Vodafone Group's (News - Alert) pre-paid service to brown out for more than a week was totally foreseen," according to company officials.

Starting May 17, Dahdah said, the company was upgrading its Oracle's (News - Alert) Siebel system handling its Australian pre-paid billing system.

So for over a week Vodafone couldn't provide such new products or services as voicemail or moving customers to new propositions, or change the rate plans or even churn customers to or from pre-paid phone accounts, Dahdah says, noting "there was no impact to the telecom company's post-pay business."

"This was scheduled as a piece of work. It was not as though we thought it would take a day and it has taken longer. It was certainly a nine-day brown out period that was factored in," Dahdah quotes Greg Spears, Vodafone's head of corporate communications as saying.

Spears added the work is part of the final phase of a three-year upgrade to the company's new CRM system.

The upgrade hasn't gone smoothly. In April, after "years of delay and huge cost over-runs," according to industry observer Randal Jackson, Vodafone said it would roll out its new combined billing and CRM system for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific about now.

Project Sam, as it is known, was "originally budgeted at $200 million," but Jackson says the cost is now pegged between $500 million and $600 million.

One source told Jackson that New Zealand had chosen one of two billing system options for the project, but Vodafone corporately decided subsequently to run with the other. Maybe they should've listened to the Kiwis, huh?

The core problem seems to have been one of scalability, Jackson says, "that as the business grew, the billing system wasn’t able to scale up… It’s understood the introduction of PXT was offered free for six months, simply because it couldn’t be billed."

This reporter can't say he's surprised. Last summer Vodafone's massive trans-Tasman (Australia-New Zealand) infrastructure project was described as "running late, with a potential large cost overrun," according to Wellington, New Zealand-based industry observer Randal Jackson:

"In December 2003, IBM (News - Alert) was selected as the integrator for Vodafone's new CRM, billing and provisioning systems in New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. The CRM component was to be based on Siebel, which is used in several Vodafone country subsidiaries."

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMC (News - Alert) Net.  For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

(source: http://news.tmcnet.com/news/-crm-new-zealand-vodafone-/2007/05/29/2667304.htm)