Wireless service provider talks turkey with SarasAmerica about Sharepoint

The company was growing fast and needed an efficient, secure way to share key information with all stakeholders, including clients.

The Client :Wireless broadband personal communication services provider based in Southern US

Number of Employees:300 (Head Office)

The Challenge

The company was growing fast and needed an efficient, secure way to share key information with all stakeholders, including clients.

The Challenge

The Tools

The Solution

The Tools

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007 (MOSS)
MOSS Enterprise (Extranet) Oracle Server
Nintex 2005 Installation

The Solution

SarasAmerica provided personnel to create custom components in Sharepoint 2007 that would match business needs.

The Results

Drastically reduced hardware requirements, easy-to-use interfaces to critical data, and faster processing times.

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Wireless service provider talks turkey with SarasAmerica about Share- point

What do you do when your business becomes one of the fastest growing in the industry and spreadsheets are growing exponentially across your organisation as you try to keep track of sales? That’s what one wireless broadband firm was asking themselves as their customer base grew by 40% over one year and network coverage more than doubled in area. Word was spreading quickly among consumers about the company’s winning formula, and their customer base grew to over 3.6 million subscribers by the end of last year. Today, the wireless service company reaches customers from 500 retail locations in the major metropolitan areas across the US, over the phone from their head office in Texas, and online from their website. To manage their business, they are using mostly spreadsheets containing vital data about their business and their customers.

Decentralized processes slowing things down

“Everything is done manually,” explains Babu Karuppusamy, a Web portal administrator and SharePoint developer for the telecommunications firm from Saras America. “They use mostly Microsoft Office software to create documents containing information such as marketing activities or regional performance figures, and then pass that information around in PDF format via email.” While the MS Office tools were efficient in conveying information, their methods of distribution were a problem. Each region required its own server to handle these documents. With over 14 regions to serve (and growing), this scenario was becoming costly; security was becoming a serious concern; and most importantly, it made providing important information over their website prohibitively expensive. “Each region had to go to various servers to get the information they required,” Babu says. “And there wasn’t always consensus as to whose version was correct.”

Sharepoint Solution centralizes key information

That’s when the telecommunications company decided last year to implement Microsoft SharePoint 2007. They contracted Saras America to create applications on SharePoint that would satisfy their business requirements, including special reports as well as easy-to-use interfaces to data for both internal and external audiences. Fifteen people are currently working on the six-month project under the direction of the marketing department. Babu provides the SharePoint expertise the team requires to both ease the migration and create the functionality they need. The company now uses two servers: one development server and one production server. When all is said and done, the company will host SharePoint on four servers based in their head office. Two servers will be dedicated to the extranet and two to their intranet.

Getting the most out of built-in Sharepoint tools

The mobile phone company also required several reports, which Saras America created in SharePoint using the provided tools. “Managers can now review performance for the different regions monthly, especially the customer activity levels that show how much customers are using their unlimited call service,” Babu explains. “They were doing this all manually before. Now, they can collaborate on SharePoint to input and review this information.” The company is also using the centralised database to standardise processes within the company. The Human Resources department now requires all employees to register for training programmes on SharePoint, where employees can check the course schedule and register according to their availability. Training requests are automatically sent to managers for their approval, who provide their approvals directly in SharePoint to complete the registration process.

Reports that say it all

The mobile phone company also required a number of reports, which SarasAmerica created in Share- point using the provided tools. “Managers can now review performance for the different regions monthly, especially the customer activity levels that show how much customers are using their unlim- ited calls service,” Babu explains. “They were doing this all manually before. Now, they can collaborate on Sharepoint to input and review this information.” The company is also using the centralized database as a way to standardize processes within the company. The Human Resources department now requires all employees to register for training programs on Sharepoint, where employees can check the course schedule and register according to their availability. Training requests are automatically sent to managers for their approval, who provide their approvals directly in Sharepoint to complete the registration process.

Self-service for customers and stakeholders

The company is now in a really exciting project to create a user interface that will allow external users to access data from Sharepoint themselves. Customers will be able to view their own files, while other stakeholders such as shareholders and partners will be able to view key company data. The Sharepoint application will provide all this information over the company website while maintaining strict confidenti- ality and security. “Using permission levels, Sharepoint provides the security you need to be able to provide this kind of access to information,” Babu confirms. “We set up the groups and the processes for managing these groups, and Sharepoint takes care of the rest.” With Sharepoint consolidating critical data, it looks like this mobile phone company will be the talk of the town as they continue to expand their business.