HanseNet: IT and Business Solutions

HanseNet's Quadruple Play service puts it on track for high performance

HanseNet, a telecommunications company that previously operated only in Hamburg, Germany, was acquired by Telecom Italia in 2003. In 2003, HanseNet had 80,000 clients and by the end of 2007, this figure had grown to 2.35 million broadband subscribers, making HanseNet the fourth-largest broadband player. The company had a 13 percent market share with revenues of €1.074 billion as of December 31, 2007.

When HanseNet had to quickly merge two disparate systems to enter the lucrative virtual mobile network market, it turned to Accenture.

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HanseNet's main objectives between 2004 and 2006 were to expand its customer base and its portfolio of offerings while leveraging the existing Alice brand and the capabilities and innovations developed for the Alice brand in the Italian market. The goal of increasing its German DSL market share led HanseNet and Telecom Italia to support organic growth efforts with the acquisition of AOL Germany.

HanseNet needed to merge the two companies quickly and effectively, and port all AOL customers onto the HanseNet/Telecom Italia systems. Another business challenge for HanseNet was to sell broadband services, under the Alice brand, to as many AOL customers as possible.

To increase and retain its customer base, HanseNet entered the virtual mobile market. The objective was to act as a quadruple play operator in the German market, offering very competitive mobile pricing and innovative products to Alice DSL subscribers.

Telecom Italia selected Accenture to be HanseNet's primary consulting, systems integration and technology collaborator, in part due to our experience in developing the Business Support Systems and Operations Support Systems (BSS/OSS) platform for Telecom Italia's broadband business abroad.

Accenture helped HanseNet significantly advance toward high performance by:

• Helping migrate HanseNet's systems to Telecom Italia's BSS/OSS platform in only six months. Accenture also provided support for process reengineering and training of front-end and back-office operators on the new customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
  
  
• Deploying HanseNet's new Internet service provider (ISP) platform, which took only five months from requirements definition to go-live. The platform currently manages the majority of HanseNet's customer ISP services. HanseNet has since started a project to migrate all of its legacy customers to the new ISP platform.
  
  
• Replacing HanseNet's authentication platform with a service control solution, a process that took only three months. The system currently manages 26,000 accounting packets per hour on average, with peaks of up to 80,000 packets.
  
  
• Assisting with the IT due diligence process during the HanseNet-AOL integration, as well as migrating the AOL customer base to HanseNet's systems two months faster than expected, with excellent migrated data integrity.
  
  
• Implementing a billing platform that now issues almost 3 million bills per month, distributed over six billing cycles.
  
  

The IT and business solution designed and implemented by Accenture supported HanseNet's successful entry into the virtual mobile network operator market, enabling the acquisition of nearly 500,000 mobile customers in the first year after launch of this service.

Accenture's support of HanseNet's service creation program helped enable the company to change from a dual play to a quadruple play market offering with fixed voice services, Internet access up to 16 mbps, Internet Protocol television (IPTV) with 100 basic TV channels and access to video-on-demand and mobile services for its DSL subscribers.

HanseNet's transformed and integrated quadruple play service offering has placed the company in a strong position to grow its service offerings, its client base and its systems, which will continue to advance the company toward high performance.