Telecommunications: €50 million billing, customer management and middleware systems replacement

“Pelicam has been instrumental in the successful launch of the biggest programme ever undertaken by Meteor. Pelicam has provided invaluable, independent assurance working with the programme and has supported the delivery by providing quality, experienced practitioners who have made things happen.”
Brendan Lynch – Managing Director Group Technology, eircom Group.

Our Client

• Meteor, a wholly owned subsidiary of the eircom Group, is a major mobile telecommunications operator with over 1 million customers and 40 retail outlets.
• Their core revenue and customer management systems were at the end of their life and were not suitable for the future needs of the business and recognised as a constraint to ongoing growth of the company.
• The challenges facing Meteor associated with replacing these systems were very significant. In setting up a programme of this scale a new team of over 200 people had to be assembled including internal teams, a project location and a management team. There was also the challenge of presenting the business case for the project to the parent company eircom. In addition, there was the selection and management of more than five external suppliers.
• The project, which impacted upon every part of the business, was the largest ever undertaken by the organisation and was critical to the running of the business.

How We Helped

• Governance: Pelicam was initially brought in to offer some quality programme assurance with a senior managing practitioner from Pelicam reporting to the Group CEO on the development of the project. Pelicam continued to offer guidance and leadership throughout the duration of the programme.
• Health Checks: Pelicam carried out five health checks over an 18 month period throughout the programme. These were carried out before supplier selection and requirements gathering, during contract negotiations, build, test and finally prior to implementation. The recommendations were taken on board and early remedial action was taken to keep the programme on track.
• Project Intelligent Processes: As part of the health check process Pelicam was able to highlight some change management processes that were not in place and implement some Pelicam best practice processes that would set up the programme for success.
• Coaching and Leadership: The Pelicam team was able to advise and support the Meteor team in the key areas of benefits realisation, testing, reporting, business engagement and business transformation.
• Delivery: Pelicam supported the latter stages of delivery of the project by providing some key personnel to work closely with the Meteor team including a Programme Director, Head of Business Engagement, Head of Architecture, Head of Testing and Quality, Communications Management and Cutover Management.

Benefits Achieved

• The new Intec billing, customer management and middleware systems were rolled out across the business on time.
• As a result, Meteor has a business systems technology platform that is reliable, flexible and a road map for future releases.
• Meteor is now in a position to deliver new products to market quickly for their customers.
• The new release had a minimum disruption to over 1 million customers and 40 regional stores, an important factor for the profitability of the business.

“Pelicam offered an independent view of the programme and pointed out weaknesses that have been accepted and taken on board. Their style has been unobtrusive, the feedback has been extremely useful and they have identified gaps and loop holes that would not have been picked up until later.”
Johnny McMahon - Director of Operations, Meteor