Telecoms Company Calls for Global SAP and Cloud Capability
Client: iBasis, a leading international voice carrier
Challenge: Implement and host a new SAP system that integrates financials in Europe and the United States.
Solution: CSC’s full range of IT support and services, including technical consulting, industry expertise, training, and Trusted Cloud and hosting services.
Results: Significant cost savings, increased transparency and consistency in financial reporting, better staffing flexibility and enhanced infrastructure security.
For more information, visit www.csc.com/SAP and www.csc.com/cloud.
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by Jim Battey
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
iBasis 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.
Richard Tennant, chief financial officer at iBasis, says his company needed a provider that could support all areas, including specialized technical consulting and infrastructure hosting. “We needed an organization that had the depth to deal with the issues we could foresee and possibly some we couldn’t foresee, he says. Having someone with a broad range and a broad scope was critical to us in making our decision.”
Not only could we provide years of experience in supporting SAP implementations, but our Trusted 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.
“Having somebody that has some insight and an understanding of the particular requirements and problems in your industry is very important. CSC brought a lot of that expertise to the table,” Tennant says.
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. “A combination of our SAP expertise with a cost-efficient support model allows them to increase or decrease baseline support,” says Mike Antoniazzi, CSC’s account executive for iBasis.
“The implementation enabled us, in a relatively short period of time, to position the company to scale,” adds Tennant. “We believe the company can continue to grow both organically through our traditional wholesale trading business and our outsourcing business and through transactions. Having the systems and support that allow us to do that is of critical importance.”
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. “It has enabled us to condense and gain better insight on our current financial status on an ongoing basis,” Tennant says.
Another significant benefit is having a single system to deal with foreign currency exchanges and revaluations in multiple currencies. “In general, it provides us with better and more effective controls,” Tennant says. “Also, it has enabled us to reduce our expenses quite a bit, and allowed us to eliminate cumbersome manual processes.”
The ‘Trusted 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. Paul Coughlin, a CSC hosting executive, says, “iBasis is getting a reliable, mission-critical approach to infrastructure hosting. They simply have to close their books on time every month and we provide all of the experience and expertise in security and hosting that CSC brings to the cloud infrastructure.”
We provide not only the application support for SAP, but also the underlying infrastructure, which is hosted in a CSC data center. Coughlin adds, “CSC’s Trusted Cloud has layers of security wrapped around it. Our clients can rely upon it for the high level of security and service that CSC brings to the table.”
Jim Battey is a writer for CSC’s corporate office.