Change Management -- a Case Study of

Change Management -- a Case Study of British Telecom About CRM Theoretical Perspectives, Concepts and Practices Involved in Implementing a CRM Change Management About British Telecom British Telecom -- Implementing CRM CRM Systems -- Data Quality and systems Integration British Telecom -- A Case Study BT's Solution Analyzing BT's CRM from an Academic Perspective An Example of Systems Integration British Telecom -- Building Customer Relationships Problems with Implementing a CRM System Change Management -- A Case Study of British Telecom Today, when one thinks of British Telecom, the leading telecommunications firm in the united Kingdom, the words that come to mind are likely to be: successful company, preferred service provider, good service, market leader, reliable, financially solvent, satisfied employees.

However, this was not always the case. In 1981, the British government announced its intention to privatize British telecom with the sale of up to 51% of the company's shares to private investors. In 1984, over 50% of the company's shares were sold to the public. The company's transfer continued in 1991 when the government sold about half of its remaining shares, reducing its stake to 21.8%. 1984 regulation provided the company's privatization and terminated its exclusive privilege of running telecommunications systems, in order to establish competition.

At this point, British Telecom lost its monopoly in telecommunications systems, and faced many challenges that came with deregulation and increased competition. To stay afloat and maintain its competitive edge, British Telecom knew that it would have to increase its concentration on customer relationships or risk losing valuable customers to the droves of telecommunications companies that were eager to grab a piece of the market. For British Telecom, customer relationship management (CRM), a broad solution area that addresses a wide range of business problems or opportunities, was the answer.

The company implemented solutions in a variety of CRM areas, including call center to sales force automation, email customer service, customer analysis, telephony, campaign management, customer self-service, interactive sales and support, contact management, Web personalization, and more. This paper discusses the key aspects of CRM and change management, using British Telecom's implementation of a CRM strategy and how it improved the company's customer service, sales and marketing functions. About CRM CRM is an industry term that describes an organized way for businesses to manage their customer relationships (DeDad, 2000).

CRM consists of methodologies, software, and Internet capabilities. Through CRM solutions, businesses can build customer databases that analyze relationships in detail. Through CRM systems, management, salespeople, service personnel, and customers have increased access to various data, which can be tailored to match the needs of customers. Product plans and offerings, service requirement reminders, and customer's buying habits analyses are just some of CRM's many tools (DeDad, 2000). By implementing a CRM system, businesses can target their best customers and weed out their worst. In addition, they can improve customer satisfaction (DeDad, 2000).

Part of CRM is the ACD (automatic call distributor), which is a facility that handles incoming calls. In many cases, the ACD handles incoming calls based on the telephone number called and the database that recognizes the number (DeDad, 2000). Many companies, including British telecom, use ACDs to validate callers, make telephone calls, and forward telephone calls to the right party. A recent report from the Meta Group, an IT consultancy, reveals that approximately 55 to 75% of CRM projects are unable to meet their objectives (Benjamin, 2002).

A different study from Gartner reveals that the proportion of unsuccessful CRM projects will increase from about 65% to about 80% from 2002 to the middle of 2003. There are many reasons for this type of failure in developing and implementing an effective CRM strategy. For instance, many companies that companies implement CRM are not simply replacing existing processes, but also looking at how they can run their businesses differently. Therefore, in many cases, they do not fully understand what they are trying to achieve or how much time and effort must be invested.

Often, companies view CRM as a technology-based solution, when it is actually aimed at customer service, sales and marketing. Many experts stress that it is important for businesses to understand the meaning of CRM before initiating a CRM strategy. "The single most difficult part of defining CRM is the middle word: 'relationship',' said Ray McKenzie, director of management consultancy DMR Consulting.

"The second issue is that, because organizations are complex, they need to identify clearly the fundamentals or principles that govern their CRM strategy (Benjamin, 2002)." When describing companies as complex, McKenzie points to "legacy environments," where companies often discover that they have many customer databases operating simultaneously or that the company consists of several business lines (Benjamin, 2002). Also, businesses must address areas like privacy protection, information ownership and consumer protection, and make sure that their CRM systems comply with those regulations.

For global companies, this is of utmost importance, as these issues will be handled differently in various areas of location. For example, British Telecom, which uses a CRM structure provided by BroadVision, had the legacy of a system that operated about 160 websites, each using a range of various applications. According to John O'Rourke, e-commerce manager for BT.com (Benjamin, 2002): "This made it very difficult to co-ordinate a cohesive, workable model.

Working with BroadVision, we have already cut the number of sites by around 20 per cent and we are looking to make a total cut of 80 per cent over the course of the next 12 months." According to Sims (2000), "everybody who profits from CRM has their own definition of what it is, but they're agreed as to what it is not: CRM isn't about technology any more than hospitality is about throwing a welcome mat on your front porch (Sims, 2000)." Liz Shahnam, a CRM analyst, describes CRM as "a buzzword that's really not so new.

What's new is the technology is allowing us to do what we could do at the turn of the century with the neighborhood grocer. He had few enough customers and enough brainpower to keep track of everyone's preferences.

Technology has allowed us to go back to the future to this model (Sims, 2000)." In its proper context, CRM is simply "a philosophy that puts the customer at the design point, it's getting intimate with the customer (Sims, 2000)." CRM can be used to determine and study needs and behaviors of customers in an effort to develop stronger relationships with them. Recently there has been a strong emphasis on CRM systems because many business leaders agree that solid customer relationships are the backbone of business success.

According to Deck (2001), while there are many technological components to CRM, it is a mistake to think about CRM in primarily technological terms. Rather, it is more accurate to view CRM as a process that allows companies to utilize information about customers, sales, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness and market trends. CRM enables businesses to use technology and human resources to learn more about the behavior of customers and how valuable their customers are.

A strong CRM system will allow businesses to (Deck, 2001): provide better customer service make call centers more efficient cross sell products more effectively help sales staff close deals faster simplify marketing and sales processes discover new customers increase customer revenues" Often implementing a CRM solution can be complex, as it involves more than just purchasing software and installing it. For CRM to be optimally used, an organization has to determine what type of customer information it needs and decide what it intends to do with the data.

For example, an online bookstore might keep track of its customers' recent orders in order to understand what types of products it plans to market to them. The next step would be to examine "all of the different ways information about customers comes into a business, where and how this data is stored and how it is currently used (Deck, 2001)." Different companies interact with customers in different ways, such as mail campaigns, Web sites, brick-and-mortar stores, call centers, mobile sales force staff and marketing and advertising efforts.

Effective CRM systems can link these points of contact together, allowing data to flow easily between operational systems (such as sales and inventory systems) and analytical systems that can analyze these records to find patterns. Company analysts are then able to look through the data to figure out how to increase sales. CRM solutions allow companies to look at each individual customer and pinpoint areas where better services are needed.

"For example, if someone has a mortgage, a business loan, an IRA and a large commercial checking account with one bank, it behooves the bank to treat this person well each time it has any contact with him or her (Deck, 2001). Some of the types of data CRM projects can collect include (Deck, 2001): Responses to campaigns Shipping and fulfillment dates Sales and purchase data Account information Web registration data Service and support records Demographic data Web sales data CRM systems are not always successful.

In fact, there are many things that can cause a CRM system to fail. For instance, lack of a communication between each person in the customer relationship chain can cause a system to paint an incomplete picture of the customer. Poor communication can result in technology being implemented without proper support or buy-in from users (Deck, 2001). For example, if a sales team does not believe in the system's benefits, they may fail to input the type of demographic data that necessary for the program's success.

One Fortune 500 company failed to successfully implement a CRM system because its sale force resisted its efforts to share customer data. Theoretical Perspectives, Concepts and Practices Involved in Implementing a CRM In today's global economy, it has become increasingly difficult to manage customer relationships in any type of business. For telecommunications companies, this task is especially complex.

After decades of sales, marketing, and customer service activity based on a monopoly business model, many telecom companies, including British Telecom, realized that their previous systems would not suffice in meeting the relationship management challenges of the modern marketplace. Companies like British telecom decided that the creation of a fully integrated CRM systems environment was the answer to these challenges (Mattison, 2002). This was a smart move, as the management of customer relationships is at the core of telecom businesses. Without CRM, these companies have no business.

However, in the initial stages of CRM's popularity, many companies made the mistake of investing millions of dollars and a great deal of labor into costly, high-tech solutions that delivered little or no value. Many of these companies failed in their initial efforts. As businesses became more aware of the true meaning of CRM, they realized that certain business practices were necessary for successful CRM implementation.

The business practices include (Mattison, 2002): Creating and managing an optimal sales force Motivating sales people and teaching them to be more effective Getting more positive impact from customer service investment Invigorating and managing agent channels Fine tuning and expanding web presence Enhancing and automating customer self-service capabilities Strategically managing, cutting, and tuning overall channel interface strategy The real value and the real challenges of CRM implementations lies in understanding the implications of the changes required with implementing a CRM system and qualifying them before proceeding.

CRM implementations tend to be complex and multi-dimensional.

Each implementation involves the following issues (Mattison, 2002): Channel balance Customer channel preference Cost per customer contact Customer contact quality Customer impact 360o perspective on the customer experience 360o perspective on the corporate experience Technological implementation Employee competence Employee willingness to change Culture, values and vision Organizational impacts Financial implications While plans for a fully-integrated CRM system may look good on paper, and sound even better when a software vendor describes how effective it will be when the system has been installed, few CRM systems implementations can be made without a series of major challenges.

Each company will experience different problems and successes with the same CRM solution. However, research reveals that there are a few key issues involved with successfully implementing a CRM system that apply to most businesses (Mattison, 2002). A major challenge to any major CRM consolidation and streamlining activity is organizational and political resistance. Implementation of a new CRM solution that truly delivers high value returns on the investment must, by definition, break down barriers between departments, specialists, and legacy systems.

Of course, if those entities had wanted to be integrated and streamlined in the first place there would be no reason for the CRM system (Mattison, 2002)." Basically, any system that is designed to deliver value should address and resolve any organizational, operational, financial, political, personal, and logistical challenges that arise as a result of its implementation. Unfortunately, many businesses view CRM as a technical process, failing to realize that software and methodology can not resolve many of these issues.

"There is only one way to address this: one issue and one person at a time. That takes sensitivity, awareness, foresight, and persistence (Mattison, 2002)." To successfully implement a successful CRM system, businesses must resolve the variety of people problems that are likely to be created by the new CRM system. When this is accomplished, a second set of challenges must be addressed: the IT systems. For telecom companies, architecture is often complex, and billing systems must be tailor made.

The level of information retrieval and integration that most companies expect to get from their CRM systems deployments means that the data and systems challenges will be great. When the systems integration process is complete and the new system in place, businesses must learn new ways of operating.

"New processes, new procedures, and much new information will have to be analyzed, understood, and integrated into the way people do their jobs (Mattison, 2002)." Even when this difficult task is accomplished, there is still one more step before the benefits of the system are effective. Management's attitudes and pre-dispositions, as well as the company's core strategies and beliefs, must change, as well.

In most cases, management does not accurately predict the level of changes in corporate culture, values, and strategic direction that new, truly effective, and well integrated CRM solutions is bound to create (Mattison, 2002). In many ways, CRM systems enhance the entire organization, as the experience of new systems implementation and utilization teaches employees on all levels to look for many other ways to improve the business.

Change Management Change management is an extremely important aspect of implementing a CRM system, as CRM initiatives rely more on shifts in work processes than they do on technology (Milloy, 2002). Change management is a tool that, when used in its proper context, can help businesses integrate and maximize the potential of their CRM efforts. Effective change management involves a serious commitment of time, energy and resources directed towards preparing a business to use the new technology effectively.

In addition, change management provides a way to reduce risks of failure, maximizing return on CRM investments in the technology. Change management is often referred to as people management (Brown, 2002). While many aspects of CRM relate mainly to the process and the tools, the people are the driving force behind the success of a CRM system. Any changes made by implementing CRM are bound to have a direct impact on how people do their jobs (Brown, 2002). Businesses can expect that the majority of their employees will resist change.

However, with an effective change management strategy in place, resistance should not prevent a business from implementing a CRM system. The key to implementing a CRM system is employee acceptance. There are a number of proven techniques that are commonly used to minimize resistance and enable a company to resolve it when it occurs. The following are some of the most widely used methods (Brown, 2002): Getting all employees involved in the change process early and thoroughly.

With good change management techniques, employees often make good decisions and create plans that assist management. However, they are more likely to embrace the idea of CRM if they are allowed to be a part of it, rather than if management simply dictates it to them. Providing training and facilitation to all employees. For example, many large companies now incorporate change management as a standard training program offered through the company. Communicating effectively with employees.

One of the biggest challenges of change management is dealing with rumors and fear of the unknown. Companies can deal with this challenge by keeping the entire staff informed and up-to-date. Change management is in some ways the toughest obstacle to successfully get a CRM solution into production. A company may have many solutions in place from spreadsheets to internal databases to client-server applications.

These solutions may meet a portion of a company's requirements or they may meet the requirements for an individual group within a company, so there is typically resistance from that group when they are required to change (Reed, 2002). Managing this change is critical to the success of any CRM project. It is important to note that because change initiatives are often value-based, they may clash with cultural patterns of values, thought, and action that already exist within an organization.

For example, if set cultural patterns are inconsistent with the new values and cultural implications of change management, then defensiveness, withdrawal, and distortion of important information may be a challenge in change management (Argyris, 1992).

Schein (1992) refers to culture as "a pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to these problems. (p. 12). As organization's ability to implement a successful CRM system relies on its ability to develop and implement strategies for examining and redesigning cultural systems as an integrated aspect of change management.

About British Telecom British Telecom provides communications services and solutions for individuals and businesses throughout the United Kingdom (UK) and for corporate customers in the rest of Europe, with global access through various partnerships (British Telecom, 2003).

According to BT, it is one of Europe's leading providers of telecommunications services, and its principal activities 'include local, national and international telecommunications services, higher-value broadband and internet products and services, and IT solutions (BT, 2003)." In the UK, BT provides service to approximately 21 million corporate and residential customers with more than 28 million exchange lines, as well as providing network services to other licensed operators.

The company's group strategy is "to create value for shareholders through being the best provider of communications services and solutions for everybody in the UK, and for corporate customers in Europe, achieving global reach through partnership (BT, 2003)." British Telecom is basically made up of four lines of business: BT Retail, BT Wholesale, BT Ignite and BT Openworld, as seen in the following chart: Source: British Telecom, 2003 BT Retail is the largest communications service provider in the UK, by market share, to the residential and business markets.

In addition, it is the prime channel to market for theother businesses in the BT Group. The delivery of customer satisfaction is the cornerstone of BT Retail's strategy, and its key objective is to provide a significantly better service experience than any of its main competitors. BT Ignite is BT's business services and solutions business. Basically, it is an information and communications technology (ICT) service provider, offering integrated data and value-added services for global multi-site corporations.

BT Wholesale provides comprehensive network services throughout the UK to more than 500 communication companies, network operators and service providers, including the other BT businesses, BT Retail, BT Ignite and BTopenworld. BT Wholesale seeks to build complete communications packages working with its customers to help them succeed in their business. BT Openworld, BT's mass market Internet division, and is one of the UK's leading internet service providers, delivering broadband and narrowband services to more than 1.7 million business and consumer customers throughout the UK.

BTexact Technologies " creates value and competitive advantage by combining deep knowledge of networks and networked applications with proven skills in business consulting, change management and innovation." As a whole, British Telecom focuses on seven strategic priorities (BT, 2003): to deliver the highest levels of customer satisfaction performance and reduce the number of dissatisfied customers each year to achieve organic profitable revenue growth, while constraining capital expenditure to put broadband at the heart of BT, expand the market for broadband services and create a media-enabled network to provide solutions and other value-added services for multi-site corporate customers in Europe to place all UK networks under a single management structure and to limit investment in legacy voice and data platforms, while migrating operations to new platforms to use the strength of the BT brand to move into broadband services for consumers and also into related markets, such as communications solutions and business mobility services for major business customersand information and communications technology for SMEs; all delivered by diverse, skilled and motivated people" During the past few years, British Telecom has made strategic changes, introducing many new customer relationship management procedures "to address a current paradox that BT believes exists in business today (BT, 2003)." British Telecom -- Implementing CRM According to BT, many experts believe that there is a "systemic" failure in CRM solutions (BT, 2003).

However, many senior decision-makers say that customer relationships as key to their success. Therefore, BT made a decision to increase the availability of potential customer solutions, "so addressing some of the challenges identified in a recent Gartner report 'Moving from disillusionment to real value' (BT, 2003)." To implement a successful CRM solution, BT needed the appropriate technologies, systems and change management to transform its customer data into business decisions. Without this, BT would not have adequate information regarding customer priorities.

Therefore, the company would be limited in its ability to maximize skills and investments to benefit its customers. British Telecom formed a variety of partnerships to implement a complex CRM solution that incorporated people, process and infrastructure.

According to BT, "From the initial point of contact with a customer, to the ultimate end ability to evaluate return on investment, this ecosystem provides customers with operational and financial benefits (BT, 2003)." The following is a breakdown of BT's CRM system implementation plan (BT, 2003): An extended collaboration between Siebel Systems and BT, enabling local authorities around the UK to offer their citizens the same tailored multi-media contact options. This makes them the most customer-focused business in the public sector.

A strategic alliance with Eckoh Technologies, to provide speech recognition technology via BT's Contact Central solution. The first new "pay as you go" contact center service, developed in conjunction with BT's CRM partner Corex Networks. A significant CRM client win - a ten-year, £18 million contract with Capita.

BT will provide managed network and telecommunications services across three contact centers and regional offices, which will be key to Capita's delivery of its BBC licence fee contract." As a result of its CRM system, British Telecom became one of the first companies in the UK that was capable of delivering across the whole CRM scope, including "call center infrastructure, multi-media contact centers, outsourcing, systems integration, professional services, self-service, multi-channel integration and business intelligence (BT, 2003)." According to recent research, "Unless companies like BT act to bring together CRM capabilities....70 per cent of businesses may fail to realize their potential in this area (bt, 2003)." The company believes that a strong CRM solution has increased its ability to attract partners and solutions providers.

When discussing his belief that companies must focus more on CRM, Pierre Danon, chief executive, BT Retail said (BT, 2003): "We know that 75 per cent of companies do not understand the CRM opportunity, 61 per cent have no CRM strategy, yet 87 per cent of industry captains cite customer relationships as their key focus. This seems a paradox. With more grasp of the CRM solutions available, we can help companies meet concerns, control costs, and maintain their competitive edge. The priorities of the CEO are not removed from those of the technology decision-makers.

Joined-up they can be a very strong route to commercial investment and profitable return." According to Danon (BT, 2003), "We, at BT, are our own case study. For example, we handle 30 million calls a year to National Rail Enquiries, the busiest UK number.

We've established more than 100 call centers worldwide, employing more than 100,000 professional call handlers, dealing with a billion calls per year." According to a recent report published by BTexact Technologies (BT, 2003), "Customer Relationship Management Best Practice 2001," "to get customer loyalty, you need employee loyalty." This best practice report is designed to summarize the state of thinking and thought leadership in the customer contact arena and addresses the areas of customer service, e-commerce, call centers and other interfaces including the Internet - that a company has with its customers.

Customer loyalty and retention are the new Holy Grail for businesses, however all too often efforts made to secure it fail to address the real issues," said Peter Thompson, director of consulting practices at BTexact (BT, 2003). "Organizations need to positively brand themselves both inside and outside. In order for a customer to experience excellent customer service, the employee must exude the positive energy and assurance that can only come from an inner feeling of company loyalty and self-belief, while being supported by efficiently provisioned customer oriented information.

Dissatisfaction as a result of being dealt with by de-motivated, unsupported people will result in lost revenue and negative brand perception." Nicola Millard, the principal customer relationship management consultant with BTexact and author of the report, said (BT, 2003): "CRM is becoming one of those overused phrases that everyone purports to understand but everyone interprets differently. That said, if a business is to succeed it is essential that it invests in customer service.

This report, which is backed by five years of research, looks at all the aspects of customer service and offers sound, practical advice." CRM Systems -- Data Quality and Systems Integration critical aspect of CRM is data integration is critical to CRM. As CRM systems become more and more popular, an increasing number of businesses are embracing CRM strategies that strategy that make the customer and managed interactions with the customer a top priority.

According to Tucker (2002), "The vision and scope of CRM systems has widened to embrace not only marketing and sales but also workflow, customer service and multiple channel management in order to provide organizations with a holistic view of their customer relationships." To optimize the benefits of a CRM strategy, including longer customer retention through better customer service and using sales and marketing strategies that up-sell and cross-sell products to targeted customers, businesses today rely on the availability of accurate and timely customer and transaction information and on using this information to commercial advantage (Tucker, 2002).

There are many obstacles to implementing a successful CRM system that go beyond failing to implement a good front-office software packages. Often, companies have adequate software yet are still unable to tap into the rich internal and external information sources held in incongruent IT systems. In order to maximize a CRM vision, systems must provide access to internal and external information and deliver it to different internal and external users throughout the company (Tucker, 2002).

Often in CRM systems implementation, companies place too much emphasis on the features of the front-end application and not enough on interfacing with existing information sources. According to Tucker (2002), "The whole approach to CRM systems implementation should be reversed.

It should not start with accessing the features and selecting a front-end software package but with a detailed analysis and assessment of the quality of the data available internally and externally and what would be required to enhance and enrich this information." Most of the best and easily accessed customer information can be found within a company's internal systems, including accounting, administration and ERP systems on different IT platforms. Therefore, internal and external sources must be integrated. In addition, the CRM front-office applications must also be integrated.

All information sources must be analyzed, quality audited, harnessed and integrated to effectively drive the CRM implementation, targeting and customer marketing, sales and contact strategy (Tucker, 2002). An effective, data-driven, CRM system cannot be designed and implemented until this process is complete. The next step in systems integration involves deciding where all the CRM information should reside (Tucker, 2002). For telecom companies, the ideal location for customer data is a SQL database in which some of the data would be real and some virtual.

Front-end systems are able to access the information by using either client / server, Internet browser or mobile devices. The use of a proprietary SQL database such as Oracle, SQL Server or Sybase to store customer information provides the advantages of an industry standard platform (Tucker, 2002).

According to Tucker (2002), "A standard approach of defining a relational schema to hold and manage the customer information can be used and the customer data warehouse can be surrounded by a choice of "best of breed" front-end tools for data mining, analysis and reporting." When analyzing and mapping customer data to populate and update the customer data warehouse, there are many issues to consider, including (Tucker, 2002): In what IT system or systems is customer information currently held? How frequently is it updated? What is its quality, structure and content? What gaps are there and what data enhancement strategies are required? What information do we want to hold in the CRM system? Does this information need to be real or virtual? Are there external data sources to consider? What degree of detail is to be held in the CRM system, a straight copy or a summary? It is important that the CRM system does not attempt to replicate an existing transaction processing system Is the integration only at the back-end or is there a requirement for front-end integration? How will initial data migration and database population be achieved? What are the data merge and de-duplication rules? What is the strategy for managing transactional updates? What are the privacy/security requirements for the data? What are the resource and timing implications of the selected data management strategy? What sort of data should be included? Names and addresses from all sources (internal and external), merged and reformatted into a single file that contains both customers and prospects, de-duplicated and PAF enhanced Named contact information Profile information Financial information Product order and purchase information Other transactional information Service and support information The following display shows a basic systems integration for a data warehouse: Source: Tucker, 2002.

For large companies, a CRM system may need more than one method of integration, interface, data population and update techniques for different data sources.

There are a variety of different techniques available for Front-end and back-end integration including the following (Tucker, 2002): Front-end integration using DDE or OLE Intelligent middleware for batch integration Online triggers and stored procedures Shared tables Import and automatic de-duplication and enhancement from external data De-duplication and merge of data captured from Internet sites British Telecom- A Case Study As a large company with many different divisions and various technologies, BT had a strong demand for an integrated system (Zipperer, 2001).

However, its size did not allow it to switch over to a single platform. One of the problems we had was that the use of synchronous and asynchronous technologies was something that had to be designed in from the start," said Jon Calladine, BT's applications integration consultant (Zipperer, 2001).

"Some technologies fit more comfortably with a synchronous model and some fit better with an asynchronous model." BT had a lot of asynchronous MQSeries technology and a lot of synchronous technology using Java, and it wanted to standardize on XML while still letting its people develop in the environment with which they are comfortable. Its MQSeries people were using their own serialized data formats, and others developing lots of EJB's or CORBA objects used other interfaces.

BT was basically looking for a new technology that would address its many need and serve as an effective CRM solution. The company turned to Cape Clear, a software company, for a solution that provided the flexibility to leverage its existing investment in technology. The new Cape Clear software provided BT with a variety of new Web services, including Java front ends and browser interfaces, in addition to other things that could use an XML structure (Zipperer, 2001). However, Web services were not the reason for implementing this technology.

BT selected the vendor's Cape Connect Web services runtime platform because of its ability to take legacy components and turn them into Web services without writing code. BT is a large organization made up of many divisions that have disparate systems that have to talk to each other," said Andy Grove, business manager of Cape Connect (Zipperer, 2001). "They needed a technology that allowed them to talk to these areas," and could do it quickly.

BT felt that it would take too much time and effort to keep up with the fast-moving new technologies of Web services. "We're not specialists in that area," said Calladine. Instead, it allows its vendor, Cape Clear, to serve that function.

"They are fast-to-market with supporting new standards; we were able to buy that speed-to-market (Zipperer, 2001)." How can a network operator retain market position in the face of growing and maturing competition? This was the question that faced British Telecom following deregulation of the UK telecommunications market place (IPL, 2003)." At the time, BT realized that the residential telephony market was oversaturated with service providers offering similar products and services as they did. The first few years following deregulation concentrated mainly on competitive pricing, which was pulling customers away.

As competition grew, the products and services expanded and marketing became much more sophisticated. "The problem facing BT was twofold; not only did they need to reduce the rate of churn but they also wanted to pull back some of their previous customers who had moved across to competitors (IPL, 2003)." BT first lowered its prices to remain competitive. It then decided that sales, marketing and customer service should be their market differentiators.

The main point of direct contact between BT and their customers was the 150 service, which dealt with customer enquiries and orders. BT based its new CRM strategy around improving this 150 service aspect of the business. The company aimed to develop a system that would decrease the number of errors that occurred during the processing of a call, and also act as a powerful sales tool to promote BT's products and services (IPL, 2003).

Due to the fact that labor costs took up most of the overall operating cost, there was also a demand to reduce the call handling time and limit the length of training required by the Customer Service Agents (CSA). BT's Customer Service System (CSS) held the data that forms the basis for the 150 enquiry service and the single logical database for CSS was held on a number of mainframes, geographically distributed over 29 databases. These databases formed the largest data warehouse in Europe.

BT's CSS was originally designed for taking orders and inquiries, not as a sales tool. Therefore, various tasks required the CSAs to call upon a large number of different CSS processes. BT's main challenge in implementing this new CRM system was automating the processes as much as possible to provide a fast and effective new service. To do this, the CRM system needed to be combined with a user-friendly front end and reliable links to the CSS databases.

BT's Solution The solution was a three tier distributed system, which combined the principles of data mining with Object Oriented development techniques (IPL, 2003). Basically, the CSAs would have personal computers running Windows NT on their desks. Customer profiles would be generated automatically when the customer identified him or herself. These profiles would serve as a sale prompt indicating any new or updated products or services that could possibly appeal to the customer.

When a call was finished, the updates would be passed to the middle level while the CSA moved on to the next call. The middle level of this system would consist of the intermediate databases and the communications systems, providing immediate access to the necessary data along with remote access to the CSS databases. It would also serve as a temporary store for updates to CSS. The third level would be the CSS itself and the associated databases.

IPL, the company called upon to design and implement this aspect of BT's new CRM system, worked with BT to implement the new system. Initially, the project began at one of the BT sites in London, but the IPL team, which undertakes design, development, project management and QA functions, soon developed a separate office. Frequent meetings were held by the IPL and BT project managers to ensure adequate communications and progress, as well as to identify potential problems before they came up.

The KANA iCARE suite used by BT now allows for agent-assisted service, automated e-mail, Web, and instant messaging request management (IPL, 2003). In addition, a SQL database was designed and implemented on a Unix Oracle platform, and links were implemented to the transaction systems using intelligent middleware. As a result of this implementation, BT now has 5,000 CSAs working out of 34 customer service centers, which deal with millions of customers' calls annually. In addition, the project "has delivered a reduction in call handling times, improved sales performance and reduced system-training times.

Future developments will take the service even further providing greater opportunities for both BT and its customers." Analyzing BT's CRM from an Academic Perspective In the past, British Telecom's corporate library was basically a huge room filled with paper and reports, where everything was checked in and out in person and where a dozen librarians dealt with the research needs of several hundred British Telecom sales, marketing and strategy professionals (Compton, 2002).

Analysts who did not have time to wait for the research to arrive via mail had to go to the office in person to find their materials. In many cases, this involved taking a long journey to the corporate headquarters in London. This solution was not designed to keep up with the fats pace of today's market so obviously a great deal of changes had to be made.

The company had to learn to respond to competition from a group of new telecom companies, which was not easy task for BT, which had been a monopoly for years. According to British telephone regulator OFTEL, as of June 2000, BT serviced more than 8.5 million of the United Kingdom's 10 million business lines (Compton, 2002). While BT still held a good market share, it was much less than the complete dominance BT held until 1992, when the company's status as a monopoly was removed.

With new competition and increased technology, the modern BT implemented a CRM function called Intellact," which took many of the resources of the old research library, added a few more sources, organizes them and puts the entire database online, to be used by the company's worldwide employees (Compton, 2002). It's used by BT people in just about every job function and at every level, including sales, service, marketing, the CIO and help desks," said Peter Woolf, Intellact manager (Compton, 2002).

For these employees, the Web-based system allows them access to global information, including sales data, news and research on every aspect of the BT corporate radar. Intellact consists of sources ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to regional telecom journals, as well as proprietary research from analyst companies, such as Forrester Research and Gartner (Compton, 2002).

As a result of Intellact, about "2,000 to 3,000 daily stories are divided into 100 different topic channels, including roughly 40 competitor profile sites, 20 vertical market portals, and dozens of technology and regionally focused centers (Compton, 2002)." The idea of Intellact was developed from the increasing needs of corporate librarians to obtain competitive information to the field as quickly as possible. The library, in the past, provided a paper-based news clipping service for competitive research. However, this system could support only a few hundred BT users.

Searching for a way to provide research access for more people, the Information Resource Center (IRC) staff started producing a weekly e-mail newsletter in 1991 (Compton, 2002). While this method accessed a broader audience, the e-mail service did not provide interactivity. When the research moved online, the librarians, which were now referred to as Intellact staff, were finally able to provide knowledge workers immediate and thorough access to the entire library.

As a result, the system is now able to support about 7,000 user sessions per day, with an average duration of seven to eight minutes (Compton, 2002). In addition to this online service, Intellact continues to send its traditional weekly newsletter, and many Intellact users also receive a daily e-mail briefing that includes the top 10 news stories in their specific areas of interest. The core Intellact news feed is derived from Factiva's Reuters Business Briefing Select (Compton, 2002). Through Factiva.

BT gets more than 250 sources from the news feed out of a possible 7,000 publications offered. This content includes newspapers, magazines and news wires, such as Dow Jones and Reuters. We can cover requirements from Australia to North America and get anything from very specific U.K.-focused telecom research to something as broad as the global pharmaceutical industry," according to Woolf (Compton, 2002).

"It's not perfect, it hasn't got every single source you'd want, but in terms of its scope and flexibility, it's very effective." BT also licenses feeds from analyst companies such as Forrester and Gartner and includes proprietary research.

An Example of Systems Integration With assistance from its research arm BT Labs, the Intellact staff "designed and built the portal interface, integrated the outside sources with the primary news feed and incorporated a Verity search engine to drive both automatic sorting and manual queries (Compton, 2002)." One of the first major steps was organizing content. The group gave each major topic, including major competitors, industry customer groups and some technology areas, its own page.

These pages are automatically populated by the news feed and BT's content management system, but the Intellact staff members add a personal touch to the system by organizing the pages and give the most important stories top priority. According to Woolf, the IRC team's responsibilities evolved as Intellact grew (Compton, 2002). For example, instead of going through paper, the staff must now make educated judgments to determine which information should be prioritized. The team is now focused on categorization of content," said Woolf (Compton, 2002).

"Editors are responsible for liaising with customers inside the business, figuring out what their requirements are, dealing with external research vendors and then putting a portal page together which automatically posts the latest relevant research from each supplier." In addition, the site editors must ensure that vital reports are given prominent and long-term placement on particular news channels, rather than automatically removed when newer but less important stories come in.

If users are unable to find necessary data on the edited topic pages, Intellact offers a straightforward search page that enables its users to search on keywords, time frame and sources. This search engine ranks and summarizes the results. According to Woolf, Intellact has proved to be a major enhancement to BT's CRM system (Compton, 2002). In many different areas, Intellact has provided the necessary details to expedite or close a particular deal or obtain the attention of a targeted customer.

For example, according to Woolf, a "company survey in which one account director reported his sales team generated 1 million pounds (about U.S.$1.5 million) in new business by using Intellact briefings. The most compelling hard ROI thus far comes from a 1999 survey of Intellact users, conducted as part of an ongoing internal marketing campaign to boost the system's popularity. The 800 respondents indicated that Intellact was saving them a total of 12 full-time employees (Compton, 2002)." In October 2000, Intellact was relocated from BT's U.K.

Retail division into the enterprisewide Business Services unit, reflecting an appreciation for Intellact's role in the company's global portal. In addition, this relocation made it easier to market intellact as part of BT's knowledge management offerings, from which BT's CIOs choose when planning resources. Until the switch, Intellact users were basically enjoying a free ride on the research and technology funds the U.K. Retail division spent on the system. The move to Business Services put an end to this process, and Intellact now charges each BT groups it serves.

The ultimate goal is to get users to completely fund Intellact's operations. Due to the fact that users are now charged, Intellact has been pressured for increased content selectivity (Compton, 2002). When Intellact was a free service, there were few complaints when the staff added another news feed. However, division managers are now insisting on about closing the gaps between what they pay for and what they use. Accommodating these selections seamlessly presents a major problem for Intellact.

Now that Intellact has a working revenue model in place and a popular information destination behind it, BT is considering opening the service to a select group of suppliers and customers. Over time, we believe the service may have potential outside of BT," said BT Business Services CIO Tudor Rees (Compton, 2002). British Telecom, one of the world's leading providers of telecommunications services, recently implemented Archive for Servers ClarifyCRM Edition to manage data growth and maintain service levels avoiding the need for costly hardware upgrades.

Using Archive for Servers ClarifyCRM Edition, BT was able to archive approximately 50,000 cases an hour and save the data to Archive Files, where the data can be easily researched and restored when needed.

British Telecom -- Building Customer Relationships After many years in service, British Telecom's Network Billing System (NBS) was no longer able to meet the demands of its rapidly international customer base (British Telecom Web Site, 2003) that it needed to make some changes to keep up with both its traditional competitors that were expanding their service offerings and new competitors that were just entering the market.

The first step that BT took in implementing a CRM system was locating a key, strategic information technology system that, with the proper enhancements, could present both historical and profile billing information to BT's call center staff and online users. At the time BT's system allowed only a superficial, top-level view of the company's customers, which restricted the call center's ability to efficiently serve its customers. BT decided on a Web-centric enterprise relationship management (eRM) solution (Lustig, 2002).

BT selected Kana's eRM system, which supports complete management of interactions and relationships among customers, partners, suppliers, and the enterprise. BT selected this solution partially because the vendor's eRM software integrated well with BT's legacy systems. A eFORCE, a global eBusiness Integrator and Kana Solution Partner, was brought in to deploy the system. EFORCE consultants worked with BT to analyze the company's business.