16:15 – Fancy rolling out a converged voice and data network to 120,000 users? That’s what Lee Ayling is in the process of doing with the Department of Work and Pensions (he’s a consultant at Deloitte). There aren’t many companies with 22 million customers (as the DwP has), but there will no doubt be a lot to learn from Lee’s presentation. (Curiously, the lighting in the CIO Briefing room is now blue, a change from this morning’s red. Fortunately, the ‘bouncy castle’ is still inflated.)
16:17 – Some more stats. The DwP has 26,000 call centre seats. That’s a lot… So far, there are 75,000 users on the new voice platform.
16:19 – Just as a bit of background, DwP’s legacy network was a mish-mash of technologies. The network transformation programme overseen by Deloitte has moved the organisation onto the new infrastructure. The voice solution is hosted and managed by BT; the network infrastructure is Cisco-based; the voice platform and phones are from Nortel; Genesys provides the call centre and workforce management platform. BT oversees all of this.
16:22 – The contract is ‘an active unit based service’. In other words, you pay for what you use.
16:22 – The new network isn’t just about increased bandwidth; it’s also enabled new applications such as presence management, and will be able to do more in the future, Lee says.
16:23 – In the grand scheme of things, this has been a rapid IT project, given the scale. Deloitte got involved in 2005.
16:24 – Lee stresses the need for a project of this size to have a “robust platform and service acceptance process”. The latter is crucial - he advises any project like this to go beyond asking the techie guys and girls if they accept the technology. Get out into the business and talk to the users, seems to be his message.
16:26 – ‘Leave your suppliers to do what they do best’ is another piece of advice from Lee. Again, more wise words – for example he let BT do the rollout out of the new pipes; Deloitte handled the executive communications at the highest level within the DwP. Indeed, communications strategy is absolutely crucial in any outsourcing or managed service programme.
16:31 – Lee admitted that the network didn’t always work as expected during the pilot stage of the project. But hey – that’s the point of a pilot, as Lee says. You learn from it and don’t make the same mistakes when you roll it out in anger. 62 out of 1,400 sites took part in that pilot. Deloitte’s approach was to go from ’simple to complex to volume’ – and the project’s on track to hit its contract deadline, so that clearly worked.
16:33 – There are always ‘issues’ in any project. Lee stresses (again) the need for good communication. This includes when things go wrong – let the business know (and that includes end users). It paid dividends for Deloitte, as it built trust during the pilot phase. He also referred to the perception that voice quality is a problem with IP. Many users said (and I paraphrase) ‘my mate uses Skype, and it’s rubbish’. This isn’t Skype, Lee says. Some users did complain about the change in the sound, but crucially not the quality. It may sound different, but voice over IP is not worse than voice in the anologue world.
16:38 – Lee gives a quick ‘where are we now’ overview. The call centre solution is finishing the pilot stage, and will be rolled out soon. The voice platform is in use by 75,000 users.
16:40 – He concludes with four key learnings. “Have the right commercial mechanisms [in place] but balance them with a pragmatic partnership. Communicate, communicate, communicate. Understand the supply chain [of the suppliers you're working with - that may be particularly relevant for consultants like Lee but will enable every link in the chain to understand each other better and ensure the success of the project]. Not everything can be cookie cut, but most of it can.”
16:42 – One last word from Lee. Around 5,500 users are being added to the platform every week. Which is rapid.
