4-page Case Study - Posted 1/26/2009

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Swisscom

Swisscom Reduces Proposal Cycle Times by 20 Percent with Unified Communications

As Switzerland’s largest telecommunications provider, Swisscom has a challenging environment for internal communications. Teams are typically spread across several of the company’s 300 sites and depend on Microsoft® unified communications technology to work effectively. Swisscom wanted to upgrade its solution to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to take advantage of new capabilities for instant messaging, conferencing, voice, and mobile users. Adding these capabilities to its current solution will simplify the communications environment, resulting in a single user interface for employees to access all of their communications needs. The simplified environment will also result in lower costs for the organization.

Situation

With more than 100 years history as Switzerland’s leading telecommunications provider, Swisscom does not take its legacy for granted. Since giving up a state-sanctioned monopoly status by privatizing in 1998, the 20,000-employee company now faces the challenge to grow in new business areas.

To continue its leadership, Swisscom aims to provide the market with the most innovative and comprehensive range of communications services available. These include fixed, mobile, and Internet Protocol (IP)–based voice and data services for residential and business customers. Despite growing competition over the past decade, Swisscom still has a sizable customer base of more than 5.3 million fixed lines, nearly 5.1 million mobile subscribers, and more than 1.6 million broadband customers. Together, these customers generated CHF11.1 billion (U.S.$10.6 billion) in 2007 revenues.

Swisscom has sharpened its competitive edge through the use of unified communications. The organization currently has 17,000 employees who can access presence information and send instant messages using Microsoft® Office Communications Server 2007. Office Communications Server 2007 is one of the cornerstones of Microsoft unified communications solutions, providing instant messaging, presence, voice communications, as well as audio, video, and Web conferencing. The company has 500 employees participating in a pilot program that grants access to the additional capabilities for conferencing and software-powered voice over IP (VoIP).

The Swisscom IT team distributed Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 client software to its pilot users, all of whom have portable computers. The tight integration between Office Communicator 2007 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, including the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client, meant that users did not have to learn a new working environment. Yet they gained access to all the advanced collaboration and productivity features of Office Communications Server 2007.

All current users can take advantage of Office Communications Server 2007 to quickly check the availability of coworkers and the best method for contacting them. With a click of a button, they can initiate an instant message conversation, a phone call, or a video conference. They can also hold Web conferences while sharing presentations and other materials. To enhance this capability, Swisscom deployed eight Microsoft RoundTable™ devices in various conference rooms.

The Microsoft RoundTable communications and archival system delivers an immersive meeting experience to all involved, providing a real-time, 360-degree panoramic video of everyone in a conference room and automatically focusing on the current speaker. Even more, it can record the audio and video of the content, synchronizing it with presentation content, so Swisscom employees can quickly fast-forward or rewind the recording to review the most relevant content.

Eventually, Swisscom plans to extend the collaboration capabilities to its business partners and customers through the federation feature of Office Communications Server 2007. Federation makes it possible for two or more organizations to communicate in real time in an encrypted, authenticated, and managed environment. Swisscom is already federated with customers and partners, including Microsoft Switzerland and Microsoft Corporation. “We often collaborate with Microsoft to give feedback in the technical adoption programs or get engineering support,” says Andreas Arrigoni, Head of Collaboration Services for Swisscom. “Federation with Office Communications Server 2007 can help us include partners in meetings as easily as if they were onsite or fellow Swisscom employees.”

Swisscom planned to roll out this solution across the company in 2009. However, the pending release of Office Communications Server 2007 R2 led Swisscom to investigate the additional capabilities available with the upgrade. Integrating additional capabilities, such as audio conferencing, desktop sharing, Office Communicator Mobile 3.0, and additional voice capabilities, would make the existing solution even more valuable. “With Office Communications Server 2007 R2 we will have better conferencing options and can deploy mobile integration,” explains Arrigoni.

Swisscom wanted to integrate additional conferencing options into the unified communications solution. “At the moment, we have to reserve a conference bridge and then send out the dial-in number and the PIN,” notes Arrigoni. “Most people use an administrator to set up conferences, and I would like people to be able to do it on their own.” Arrigoni would also like to deploy the solution to users’ mobile phones. Everybody at Swisscom uses a mobile phone and he estimates that 50 percent of users would take advantage of the mobile capabilities.

Solution

Swisscom joined the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) to gain early access to Office Communications Server 2007 R2. This access allowed the organization to test the software and prepare for the upcoming deployment.

Swisscom and its recently acquired IT services organization, webcall, deployed a complete test environment to evaluate the new capabilities. This solution included an Edge server for external user access and a Web Access server to allow testing of Office Communicator Web Access 2007 R2.

Our employees will save up to 20 minutes a day using the presence, instant messaging, and conferencing capabilities of Office Communications Server. Roger Wuethrich-Hasenboehler Head of Marketing and Sales, Swisscom

Swisscom tested the desktop sharing option in Office Communicator 2007 R2 with its help-desk staff. With desktop sharing, a participant in a conference can display his or her entire computer desktop to the other participants. Frey explains, “Before, the desktop support and application support, teams used a third-party tool to view the display and show users what to do, but now we no longer need it.”

Frey expects desktop sharing to be used by people outside of IT as well. “Today we have to escalate from Office Communicator to Microsoft Office Live Meeting to share data. Often we have small conferences with three or four users. For these circumstances, desktop sharing is a great feature. It’s very easy and very fast. You can also include external users with Communicator Web Access.”

Swisscom used Response Group technology in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 to deploy two support workflows and one hotline workflow. A response group queues incoming calls and then routes them to designated agents based on predefined routing rules. Swisscom also tested the Office Communicator Attendant, an intuitive, integrated call management application that facilitates accurate and rapid call handling and routing for front-line business professionals. Swisscom expects to deploy this function to all receptionists.

Swisscom has about 1,400 assistants who will take advantage of the delegation functions. These functions allow a manager or executive to select one or more assistants to receive his or her phone calls. Delegates are contacts who can answer the manager's calls, make and transfer calls on the manager's behalf, and update the manager's call-forwarding settings.

These voice functions in Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will make it easier to deploy voice capabilities to small offices and then remove the existing Private Branch Exchange (PBX) equipment. “In the long term, we can transition to a heterogeneous environment around Communications Server,” notes Arrigoni. “We are designing the larger rollout to 5,000 people, to allow us to remove distributed PBXs.”

Benefits

Deploying Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will make the upcoming rollout of the unified communications server even more valuable to Swisscom.

Saves up to 20 Minutes a Day per Employee

Roger Wuethrich-Hasenboehler, Head of Marketing and Sales for Swisscom, estimates, “Our employees will save up to 20 minutes a day using the presence, instant messaging, and conferencing capabilities of Office Communications Server.” For example, a Swisscom employee working in Office Outlook 2007 can send an instant message directly from an e-mail message. And that employee can quickly escalate to voice or video with a click of the mouse.

Wuethrich enjoys the daily timesavings and at-a-glance control that he gets from unified messaging in particular. “What I really appreciate is that I have control over all my conversations during the day―my instant messaging, my calls, and my voice mail,” he says. “In my Outlook inbox, I can see the unanswered calls and voice mail along with my e-mail.”

The new audio conferencing and desktop sharing capabilities will add to this savings. “With the new audio conferencing capabilities, it is so easy to set up a conference. Now users can schedule a conference in Outlook or start up an ad-hoc conference with one click,” explains Wuethrich.

He adds, “We still have a lot of users who send files back and forth for reviews through e-mail. Desktop sharing should help them to be more efficient by working together.” Users can even share their desktops with external partners through Office Communicator Web Access.

Reduces Proposal Cycle Times

By using the unified communications capabilities of Office Communications Server, virtual teams have reduced the time needed to generate customer proposals. This not only lowers the company’s costs of developing proposals but also improves its responsiveness to customer requests, giving it a competitive advantage.

“Before, we would send a proposal draft via e-mail to all participants and then wait two or three days for a response,” Wuethrich explains. “Then we would have to get the team back together and make a new version of the document, which then was e-mailed back out for another review. With Office Communications Server 2007, we can invite people to a conference to directly discuss a document and fill in the feedback. Reviews are faster, with big benefits of reduced time and iterations. We can produce proposals up to 20 percent faster.”

Swisscom already reduced the need to e-mail documents, and desktop sharing should improve the process even more. “If we need an assistant to clean up a document, we don’t have to mark it up and send it off, we can just share the desktop and get it done immediately,” explains Wuethrich.

Provides Greater Flexibility and Responsiveness

Office Communications Server streamlines collaboration by making it easier for employees to communicate from wherever they are. Previously, team members who worked at different locations could lose valuable time waiting until everyone was available for an in-person meeting. “It could take three to four weeks to get a meeting organized,” says Arrigoni. “Now with Office Communications Server, we can meet much earlier and avoid the traveling. In a recent survey, almost 50 percent of the users reported a significant reduction in travel between locations.”

The RoundTable devices help make these conferences productive because they provide an experience that is “almost like being there,” says Arrigoni. “With RoundTable and Office Communications Server, I can conference with four people in Zurich, then bring four more from Berne, and they can all see one another, with document sharing, IM, and other features all available.”

Arrigoni also sees benefits from deploying Office Communicator Mobile 3.0 to employees. “With Communicator Mobile, employees will have presence available at all times and with the one-number feature, they will not need to distribute a new number to customers or partners.” The one-number feature enables one phone number to be used for all of the user’s telephony devices.

Even if employees are in a meeting or working from home, they can be contacted through IM for a quick reply. “If a colleague is in a meeting and I need brief information so that I can make progress in my work,” Arrigoni says, “I can see if he or she is online and, if so, send an instant message with Office Communications Server. And if it’s the evening or weekend, and I can see that colleagues are working, I’ll contact them.”

The response groups and attendant console will help to improve customer service because callers will be routed to a coworker for an answer if the person they are calling is not available. Callers will often receive an immediate response, rather than leaving a voicemail.

Reduces Operational Costs

With the new solution, Arrigoni sees the possibility of eventually retiring many of the company’s 120 PBX systems. “Eliminating PBXs is the cost savings part of this project,” he says. “We think we can save operational and management costs by simplifying our landscape.”

Swisscom will save additional telephony costs by reducing administration costs and the cost of setting up or moving telephones. Swisscom estimates that it moves 2,000 phones a year. Users pay a charge of CHF200 (U.S.$170) for each move and CHF25 (U.S.$21) a month to cover telephony administration costs. “Each time Swisscom moves a user onto Office Communications Server, the savings are passed on to their business unit,” explains Arrigoni. “This savings will be more than 90,000 Swiss francs per year.”

Beyond telephony, the rollout will help Swisscom reduce the cost of third-party Web conferencing services. Currently, Swisscom uses Netviewer and Webex, but hopes it will no longer need to pay for these services after the deployment.
 
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For more information about webcall products and services, call (41) (44) 325-6633 or visit the Web site at:
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For more information about Swisscom products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.swisscom.ch/corporatebusiness