Turkcell: Service Delivery Platform

Turkcell teamed with Accenture to develop an agile service delivery platform that has positioned the company to counter additional competition resulting from deregulation as well as proliferating technology that was placing a strain on its existing IT platforms. Accenture has helped Turkcell transform the creation, deployment and management of new value-added services.

Turkcell is Turkey's leading operator, with 31.8 million subscribers. As Europe's third-largest Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operator, Turkcell's extensive market coverage is matched by a global reputation for innovation. The company was the first in the GSM Association to introduce convergent billing solutions, and in Turkey it has consistently been a market leader, introducing a range of new products and services to its customers. In August 2006 it launched its new customer portal, “Turkcell-im”, providing mobile internet services through a single point of access.

Earlier innovations include the April 2005 launch of “gnçtrkcll”, a “youth club” that brings together nine million Turkcell subscribers, offering them GSM and non-GSM benefits; "GPRSLand" (World Communication Awards winner, 2002); “MaxiMesaj” (Multi Media Services); "Turkcell-im" (a set of new value-added services combining targeted marketing in partnership with various consumer brands); “Turkcell BlackBerry”; and "TurkcellEDGE." Turkcell now has GPRS roaming agreements in place with 276 operators in 113 countries, making it the world leader in terms of number of contracted operators.

With the drive towards privatization and deregulation gathering momentum, new operators have wasted no time in entering the Turkish marketplace. For Turkcell—already offering its 31.8 million subscribers more than 300 services across several different service categories, as well as hundreds of processes—the scale of these combined challenges was immense. To maintain its market-leading position, Turkcell needed to revitalize the ways in which value-added services were developed, deployed and controlled.

Accenture brought Turkcell a clear framework and a simple approach, introducing a comprehensive taxonomy for service delivery infrastructure that could be readily understood by all involved, assisting the overall success of the project. In line with Turkcell's need for a flexible, “future-proof” infrastructure, Accenture committed to putting in place a scalable, technology-agnostic system that could readily adapt to new technologies—and this commitment underpinned Accenture's approach to the project.

By teaming with Accenture to develop a unique service delivery infrastructure, Turkcell has significantly advanced towards its own high performance—and has done so in a remarkably short period of time, considering that the new SDPA went live in August 2006. The most dramatic benefits lie in the 75 percent reduction in time-to-market for new services.