United States Telecommunications Company: IT Strategy & Transformation

In its aggressive quest for market dominance through high performance, this US-based telco relied on Accenture to lead the transformation of its sales function, centered on an innovative implementation of Siebel sales force automation on the Microsoft platform.

This major US-based telecommunications company has been positioning itself to compete more effectively through the development of high-performance and innovative services and an information technology platform that will support the growing convergence of voice, data and Internet technologies. The company also places high priority on customer service and customer relationship management capabilities.

This service provider is moving aggressively to raise the quality of customer service even higher, and is transforming its organization into a model for the industry. As part of an overall strategy for improving sales and service, the company initiated a project to transform its global sales organization's information technology infrastructure by developing common sales tools and processes for sales representatives across all business-to-business channels. The mission of this project was to empower business and sales transformation by prioritizing customer service.

With an aggressive and innovative plan in place, the company looked for the right team to help design and implement a sales transformation solution to realize its vision, deploying new capabilities in a series of releases over 18 months.

Based on a strong existing relationship, the company asked Accenture to lead the work of an alliance team for this sales transformation project, which also included Microsoft, HP and Siebel.

This team combined Accenture's deep industry knowledge and extensive experience in delivering high-performance sales force enablement with leading-edge, cost-effective technology platforms and solutions. In the words of the company's vice president for enterprise CRM development, "This initiative was not just about technology; it was about business transformation."

Reducing costs and delivering increased business value through sales force automation (SFA) was a key part of this project. The imperative to cut costs is one of the reasons why running Siebel applications on the Microsoft platform is becoming an increasingly attractive choice. Because of the Microsoft price-performance value proposition, this telecommunications company believed that running Siebel SFA on a Microsoft architecture would give it both a flexible and robust technology platform, and a lower total cost of ownership. At the same time, company executives wanted to "do it right the first time." Although the cost savings of the Microsoft platform were compelling, executives also wanted proof that the platform was scalable and reliable—that it could support their most demanding performance and business needs.

This was to be the largest Siebel SFA implementation, in terms of users, ever implemented on a pure Microsoft platform, so the first step for Accenture and the alliance team was to demonstrate the scalability of the proposed Siebel system on a Microsoft-HP architecture.

To execute a proof of concept for the solution and demonstrate the viability of the Microsoft architecture using HP servers, Accenture developed the Accenture Communications Solutions Siebel at Scale Benchmarking Tool. Using actual sales transaction data for one full business day, and constructing a realistic network environment, Accenture and the company demonstrated the overall scalability of the platform. In the words of company executives: "Siebel SFA on Windows has met our expectations for performance and reliability."

Using Mercury Interactive LoadRunner 7.6, the Siebel at Scale test simulated the transactions of 8,000 virtual users. In addition, the testing team manually executed test scripts to capture end-to-end business transaction times and to analyze the experience of the end user.

The team used Siebel's Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) component to simulate interfaces; although no back office system was used, timing and latency of expected interfaces were included in the test. The test included the configuration of key user workflows as well as workflows used for simulated interfaces, further emphasizing the real-world applicability of this test.

The Siebel at Scale initiative used 10 application servers, each supporting 800 concurrent users; this allowed for 8,000 concurrent users. The number of transactions executed successfully per test grew as the number of concurrent users was scaled up. More than 220,000 transactions were completed in the four-hour window of the final test of 8,000 users. The majority of business transactions were executed via virtual LoadRunner users in sub-second time.

The test results demonstrated the overall scalability of the platform. As a result of this test, the company accepted the proposed Siebel, Microsoft and HP platform, delivered by the experienced Accenture team. With Accenture and Microsoft, this provider was able to implement the new architecture with confidence.

Accenture experience and assets were vital to meeting the aggressive timelines on this project. Testing for the proof of concept was performed at the Accenture High Performance Scalability Lab in Cincinnati, Ohio, and on site at the company's offices. The multi-location nature of this project was leveraged to test the execution of transactions over various kinds of connections, including T1, WAN and VPN. Accenture Delivery Centers were also used during the six-week implementation of Siebel to quickly establish development and testing environments.

According to the company's vice president for enterprise CRM development, "The alliance of Accenture, Microsoft, HP and Siebel presented a very compelling combination of services, software, and hardware. And with the Siebel at Scale effort, this team created a real-world environment to ‘test drive' some of the ideas presented."