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Creating competitive advantage eircom Group & Meteor are first-to-market with next generation telecommunications

CUSTOMER STORY – TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Company: eircom

Location: Dublin, Ireland

Industry: Fixed-line and mobile telecommunications services

Annual revenue: € 1.3 billion

Number of employees: 3632

The Background

eircom is the largest provider of fixed-line and mobile tele- communications services within Ireland, with just over two million customers to date. eircom first engaged SQS to provide Quality Test Services for a major mobile programme shortly after eircom acquired Meteor Mobile. We subsequently entered into a long term managed service partnership in 2011, and extended the agreement for a further three years in 2014, spanning across all of the eircom Group including Meteor.

2011 saw eircom begin a major programme of work to revitalise its core IT systems, build an extensive Next Generation Access fibre network and introduce 4G LTE and quad-play service offerings for TV, fixed-line, mobile LTE and next generation access (NGA) fibre broadband. The investment would cement its position as a leader in the Irish market and serve as a plat-form for growth in both customer numbers and revenue. The SQS partnership provided eircom with leadership, guidance and governance across a full range of software quality and testing services.

The Challenge

In the fiercely competitive telecommunications sector, being first-to-market can lead to a significant boost in revenue and customer numbers. Speed of delivery has always been a high priority and the client and the market demand quality excellence.

Five of eircom’s key programmes – LTE (4G), NGA Wholesale & Retail (FTTH/FTTC), IPTV and a new Billing & CRM imple-mentation – represented a substantial, multi-year investment requiring major restructuring of business-critical core systems: from billing and CRM to mobile and fixed operations support systems (OSS) and business support systems (BSS).

Ensuring reliability while rapidly delivering new services pre-sented a complex testing and quality assurance challenge. A large, experienced telecoms testing team would be required to develop a quality solution that would deliver timely and cost efficient results. A multi-layered quality management strategy was required: at programme level, issues such as vendor gover-nance needed addressing, while individual projects required

“ In 2012, having restructured our debt, we embarked on a major capital investment programme. Today we have already success-fully delivered the core IT capabilities to enable the launch of our NGA network, a TV service and first to market with 4G in Ireland. ” Ashley Morgan, Director Service Creation, eircom

Customer Focus

Restructured Debt

Capital Investment

Organisational Transformation

Debt restructuring

Reduced by 40 % from 4.1B to 2.3B

Acquired 4G Spectrum

€100m cost saving target within 2 years

First to market with 4G services

Launch of FMC bundles

Combination of fixed line, broad- band and mobile

Launch of fibre services

By both Wholesale & Retail

Launch of Prepay Billing Platform

To support new pro-positions, offers and

churn reduction

700k premises passed with eFibre

30 % coverage

Launch of IPTVEnabling unique

quad play

Launch of new Billing and CRM

system Enabling quad play

with a Single BillLaunch of

Business Mobile Mobile product

offerings for eircom fixed line business

customers (Corp/Gov)

eircom Business Imperatives enabled by SQS

Jun-12 Aug-12 Oct-12

May-13

Sep-13

Feb-14

Nov-12

Jun-13

Oct-13

Mar-14

Jun-14

Feb-13

Aug-13

Dec-13

Apr-14

Sep-14

Early achievement of €100m cost saving target

1m premises passed with eFibre

44 % coverage

Corporate actions

eircom & SQS delivery partnership

functional, performance and automated testing. In the current digital era mobile apps and associated devices required thorough testing to prevent any damage to the brand image.

The Solution

Building upon their existing partnership, SQS and eircom agreed that the quality management requirements of the programmes needed a bespoke quality and managed testing service solution.

eircom and SQS worked closely to deliver a wide range of testing services across the five programmes, pulling test strategy, test management and test execution into a coherent and comprehensive package alongside requirements manage-ment, environment management, data management and non-functional testing services.

SQS provided strategic input to the programme governance board on the programme testing process and vendor per-formance. Working with eircom’s technology partners the SQS team was instrumental in introducing quality gates for external providers, improving vendor governance and linking

supplier performance to programme deliverables. Within the programmes, SQS employed delivery methodologies ranging from Waterfall to Agile and managed the activity using the SQS Delivery Management framework.

To support increasing demands for testing in revenue assurance, billing and rating within the 4G LTE programme, SQS was able to deploy additional resources by using a proven outsourcing model. SQS’ blended onshore/offshore delivery model provided flexibility, enabling the team to rapidly adjust the scale of testing resources to respond to changing demand at eircom. Offshore resources facilitated round-the-clock testing, leading to reduced testing costs while increasing the pace of delivery. Test automation and regression solutions were executed offshore with teams building reusable test assets and using test optimisers and accelerators.

“ eircom have taken a measured approach to offshoring test execution. Having achieved a target of > 50 % by end June 2014 we now aim to get to > 80 % by end April 2015 ”

• Delivery accountability & shared risk

• Test industrialisation – max offshoring and high performance automation

• Organisation wide quality improvements

• Delivery assurance & health checks

• Time to market reductions

• Trusted advisor

• Output based pricing

• Core team with flexible resource model

• Offshore & near-shore on demand delivery from India and Belfast

• Quality solutions & automation

• Thought leadership & innovation

• Continuous improvement & cost savings

• Shared risk

• PractiQ® delivery methodology

• Independent oversight & governance

• Tools expertise

• Global service delivery through South Africa offshore centre

• Extensive Telecoms domain experience & knowledge

Vendor to high performing partner

Time & Material Managed Service Trusted Partner

“ Our company has been through some significant and exciting changes, from acquiring Meteor to introducing new game-changing services. Throughout this period, SQS has been a trusted, reliable and pragmatic partner that has worked closely with the eircom testing practice and the organisation to support the most significant change in our company’s history. Together we delivered outstanding quality with minimal impact to customers and operations. SQS’ software quality expertise, knowledge of the telecommunications sector and ability to scale to meet programme demands gave us full confidence in all programmes during our merger and subsequent release of new services, including the accolade of being the first to market with 4G and quad-play bundling. ” Ashley Morgan, Director Service Creation, eircom

The Bottom Line

Successful delivery of the transformation programmes and partnership with SQS gave eircom a clear market edge. This resulted in the following successes for eircom:

• Not only were its 4G LTE and quad-play services the first to reach the Irish market, but services went live with minimal disruption to customers and existing operations.

• The comprehensive and coherent end-to-end testing service reduced the challenge of managing and delivering testing while also improving quality and reducing costs.

• SQS’ ability to ramp up and down and flexibly deliver resources helped ensure that eircom controlled costs and received the right level of quality assurance support in a timely fashion – helping the company meet deployment deadlines across its programmes.

• SQS’ expertise has enabled eircom to cement its position as Ireland’s leading telecommunications provider, win new customers and continue to gain revenue.

• Improved quality through comprehensive end-to-end testing managed service

• Cumulative savings of over two million euros were achieved through offshore delivery.

• Improved business and IT agility through flexible service based model and on/offshore resource model

• Test automation reduced regression test elapsed time by 50 %

• Regression testing effort reduced by 95 % through test automation

• Cumulative productivity, efficiency and volume savings of over 1.5 million euros

Looking forward

• Maintain high quality project delivery to enable eircom group 2015 investment strategy

• Continue with aggressive automation and offshoring strategy to deliver improved business value

• Implement continuous improvement through innovation;

• Deliver process improvement and test automation to improve eircom products’ time to market

• Expand test and quality scope to inject quality in areas not currently under the remit of QA & Testing

Transforming the World Through Quality

If you are interested in SQS’ service offering regarding testing and quality management for the Telecommunications industry, please do not hesitate to send us an e-mail: info@sqs.com

Contact

Benefits of SQS’ partnership with eircom and Meteor

Improved business and IT agility through on/offshore

resource model with

65 % of delivery offshore

An onshore/ offshore delivery model

resulted in savings of over

€ 2 million since the start of the partnership

in 2011

eircom’s 4G LTE and

quad-play serviceswere the to

reach the Irish market

1stRegression

test effort reduced

through

automation

by 95 %

SQS provided a flex up/down

resourcing model and flex-up by

over a short period of time.

400 %

Cost savings through managed

service of

€1.5m

Test automation reduced regression test elapsed time by

50 %

Quality increased by expanding

regression test coverage

8-fold