Leading Global Communications Outsourcer Relies on Visionael NRM to Meet Customers' High Expectations - and Contractual Incentives

Download this case study as a PDF document - 53KB

“Shared risk” relationships are a fixture in the communications and IT outsourcing industry, providing incentives to vendors to deliver services on schedule—and financial penalties if they don’t. This Outsourcer, a recognized leader in global, integrated and customized communications infrastructure solutions, recently won a multi-year, worldwide contract with a leading European financial services company valued at more than $140 million USD. While this business presented a prestigious win, it also entailed ambitious deadlines for service delivery. One of the most challenging was the scheduled launch of global voice over IP (VoIP) service in less than six months after project initiation. If the Outsourcer failed to meet the deadline with a high-quality VoIP network that delivered $5 million in monthly cost savings, it would be required to pay the financial services company $3 million per month until the cost-savings threshold was achieved.

To expedite the design and deployment of the global VoIP network and all other communications services, the Outsourcer relied on Visionael® Network Resource Manager (NRM), a comprehensive software solution that allowed the Outsourcer to automate the discovery, documentation, design, deployment and provisioning of critical network resources.

New solutions were required—fast
Visionael NRM played an instrumental role in the Outsourcer’s winning the European financial services company’s business, teaming with the provider to address significant gaps in its current network management tool set and processes. The Outsourcer had been using Visio for network design and Microsoft Excel as a makeshift database to store network information. These applications did not share the static information contained within them, causing confusion among the very high number of concurrent users in various locations.

In addition, the Outsourcer’s existing toolset could not manage the complexity inherent in the European financial services company project. Given the complexity and unforgiving timeline associated with the VoIP deployment, it was clear that any design or implementation errors would postpone the migration from switched-circuit PBXes to VoIP and lower the service quality. The Outsourcer looked to Visionael NRM to mitigate the risks of assuming and managing the inherent complexity of the European financial services company’s engagement.

Visionael NRM provides a foundation for success
NRM proved itself to be instrumental in allowing the Outsourcer to quickly gain a sense of control and productivity in assuming responsibility of the client’s network infrastructure. For the Outsourcer’s teams, the ability to share information, communicate in the same technical language, and share a single view of “network reality” from a central repository was essential in meeting the aggressive goals established for rolling out new services, including VoIP, and meeting ongoing service level agreements (SLAs) for all services.

Visionael NRM is being relied upon during all phases of the engagement:

• Design: The NRM solution speeds the design process by enforcing standards through the use of templates. This improves data consistency and synchronizes all of the engagement’s workstreams, thereby reducing the number of potential errors during the customer/Outsourcer transition. Visionael NRM allows hardware and software design activities to occur in parallel, immediately recording all modifications and changes, and making that information instantly available to all participants. Additionally, it automatically generates design documentation, and provides a unique repository for data from all of the financial service provider’s worldwide sites.
  
  
• Implementation: To keep the engagement’s various projects on track, Visionael NRM provides workflow management that enables the parallelization of design, ordering, implementation and site facility management, including rack and site facilities, and cabling/patching. The Visionael solution also provides customized and simplified documentation for each project entity.
  
  
• Operations: As the various network initiatives have come on-line, Visionael NRM has facilitated real-time, automated hand-over of project responsibility to the Outsourcer’s operations group. The completeness and integration of all network information has created an extremely accurate logical and physical network inventory, reducing mean time-to-resolution of network problems by more than 20 percent. Going forward, Visionael NRM keeps a complete inventory of installed equipment, and reports changes or discrepancies between documentation and the live network.
  
  
• Change management: By providing an accurate, up-to-the-minute view of customers’ outsourced networks, Visionael NRM establishes the foundation for efficient change management. It also supports associated work flow and provides a detailed change history.

Next steps: Worldwide capabilities and launch of the VoIP network
With Visionael NRM, the Outsourcer has boosted its worldwide capabilities, enabling it to pursue more global business. Its wide range of capabilities ensure that both legacy equipment and new services such as VoIP and other next-generation technologies can be accommodated with equal ease. Less than a month away from the launch of the European financial services company’s VoIP network, the Outsourcer is on track to deliver a high-performance communications system that meets the client’s cost-savings requirements, making the “shared risk” relationship a win-win for both parties. As a result, the
Outsourcer’s partnership with Visionael Corp. is as strong as the relationships it enjoys with its customer.

Industry/market:
Communications Outsourcing/Financial Services

The Network Environment:
A global communications network providing traditional data and innovative voice over IP services to a leading European financial services company.

The Challenge:
To meet the aggressive deadlines and terms of a shared-risk contract: If the
Outsourcer failed to meet the deadline with a high-quality VoIP network that delivered
$5 million in monthly cost savings, it would be required to pay the financial services company $3 million per month until the cost-savings threshold was achieved.

The Solution:
To expedite the design and deployment of the global VoIP network and all other communications services, the Outsourcer relied on Visionael NRM, a comprehensive software solution that allowed them to automate the discovery, documentation, design, deployment and provisioning of critical network resources.

The Benefits:
Less than a month away from the launch of the European financial services company’s VoIP network, the Outsourcer is on track to deliver a high-performance communications system that meets the client’s cost-savings requirements.

Epilogue:
Visionael NRM proved itself to be instrumental in allowing the Outsourcer to quickly gain a sense of control and productivity in assuming responsibility of the client’s network infrastructure. The ability for the Outsourcer’s teams to share information, communicate in the same technical language, and share a single view of “network reality” from a central repository was essential in meeting the aggressive goals established for rolling out new services, including VoIP, and meeting ongoing SLAs for all services.

Customer Profile:
The Outsourcer is a recognized leader in global, integrated and customized communications infrastructure solutions.

Case Studies Home