AAPT CEO Paul Broad said that while the ambitious project imspired “heart in the mouth” anxiety in terms of re creating the firm’s disparate legacy platforms, the operational efficiencies and change in culture will drive the AAPT business “like never before.” The system focuses on the provisioning of its core mass market consumer offerings across fixed, mobile and Internet.
“This company is a combination of 42 companies, since old Larry (Williams) established this place and we had 1500 different plans for mobile, which are now down to 5,” Broad said.
AAPT GM consumer and small enterprise David Watson added, the project has resulted in “a radical reduction of plans we had something like 20,000 fixed line plans, four years ago now down to 5. We now have our key services down to a handful of bespoke plans that are as simple for the customer as you can get.”
The system has also reduced consumer service provisioning time from a typical 25 minutes down to 3 minutes and once the platform is fully deployed will feature complete customer self service.
Watson said “one thing we are certain of, is that getting seamless reliable service is unique in thus industry and to then position that as something that could be completely self service is unique and where the industry will be transforming to.”
Watson said that unlike Telstra and its consumer strategy which is ‘all about confusion’, Hyperbaric is all about simplicity. “Customers will value simplicity of services as a differentiator here,” he claimed. The Hyperbaric project is based on BearingPoint’s BSS/OSS solution Infonova which replaces the carrier’s disparate legacy customer service and billing systems and has been customised for its requirements.
Watson said that while the bulk of the industry has taken most of its discretionary investment and placed it in product, “over two years we took almost all of our discretionary investment and placed it on our service platform, we think we have made an investment in a platform for growth.”
The aim of the implementation was to operate on a “like for like basis” at 50% of cost at the completion of this programme, which the executives claim is on track. 200 staff now work on the Hyperbaric service platform and the carrier is in hiring mode. Total staff across the consumer business has been reduced from 1650 number to 700. Broad said that the carrier now wants to white label the product as other carriers go down a similar path. “We believe the markets will evolve and we will white label it and we will offer it to others, leverage the investment and make a buck of it,” Broad said.
Watson said that parent Telecom New Zealand has taken active interest in the platform and may consider its adoption, but forecasts that it has wide applications throughout the industry. “We are already positioned as wholesaler of choice in the industry, we have more wholesale relationships than anyone else and we are a natural partner. This gives us the ability to value add to wholesale.
As an attacker we can afford to provide value and enhance services through this platform. So we consider this not only for our own brand but other brands,” he said, adding that he anticipated that first white label sale to take place in the coming fiscal year. “We have some business development opportunities that are early in the pipeline,” he said.
(COMMUNICATIONS DAY, MONDAY 2 JULY 2007)
