Telecoms Company Calls for SAP and Cloud Capability

Under the best circumstances, installing a new SAP system at a large company is a challenge. But when the company in question is almost simultaneously integrating the financial systems of two other companies, the challenges grow exponentially. That was the case for global telecommunications company iBasis, so they called upon CSC's SAP and cloud services to help them through it.

iBasis is one of the world’s largest carriers of international voice traffic. With headquarters in the United States and offices in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, South Africa and Asia, iBasis deals with millions of transactions across multiple currencies each year. A smooth-running financial system is essential to maintaining consistent global operations.

In 2008, the company was in the process of integrating its financial systems with its majority shareholder, Royal KPN, when it also acquired the international voice business of Danish carrier TDC. Installing a new SAP system became even more of a challenge during 2009; in August, KPN began a transaction to become the sole owner of iBasis, a process that was completed in December.

Searching for SAP experience, expertise

Basis operates a highly specialized business that includes selling retail prepaid phone cards and wholesale minutes on its global network. The company has extremely high data flows and very dynamic pricing models. In addition to improving its overall billing system, iBasis needed to integrate its financial system in Europe with the system in the United States. Above all, the company was looking for expertise and experience with highly complex SAP implementations.

Not only could we provide years of experience in supporting SAP implementations, but our Cloud and hosting capabilities were exactly what iBasis was looking for. Tennant also cites CSC’s telecom industry experience and global reach as key factors that contributed to the project’s success.

Full flexibility

We were able to provide iBasis with a preconfigured SAP solution, and we leveraged our offshore capabilities and global reach to provide them with the flexibility to adjust staffing levels as needed.

At iBasis, the SAP system basically serves as the backbone for the company’s financials. The implementation of the new system has allowed iBasis to increase transparency to a multitude of financial data.

Another significant benefit is having a single system to deal with foreign currency exchanges and revaluations in multiple currencies.

The Cloud

Our highly secure hosting environment for the system is another important factor in the project’s success because it provides iBasis with reliability and flexibility.

We provide not only the application support for SAP, but also the underlying infrastructure, which is hosted in a CSC data center.

Learn more about our SAP and cloud solutions and services.

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