Strategic partnership makes CGI Bell Canada’s IT supplier of choice

“CGI has the combination of industry knowledge, technical expertise and commitment to client satisfaction that it takes to be an IT services industry leader. (…) They have helped me be effective as a CIO and have been a large contributor to our success (…)”

Eugene Roman, Chief Information Officer, Bell Canada

In July 1998, Bell Canada awarded CGI the largest outsourcing contract in Canada, representing a value of $4.5 billion over a ten-year renewable term. In entering into this strategic partnership, Bell Canada has made CGI its preferred provider of IS/IT services…

The Challenge
In striking this landmark agreement with CGI, Bell Canada aims to fulfill a number of key business and financial objectives that include improving IT services levels through the use of industry leading practices and processes; attaining cost savings and efficiencies; and leveraging a broader base of IT expertise. "CGI is a key partner in enabling Bell to meet our business and financial objectives," explained Eugene Roman, Chief Information Officer at Bell Canada.

As principal systems integrator, CGI is responsible for the development, management and maintenance of Bell’s application systems, help desk support and all distributed systems operations for Bell Canada.

The Strategy
Bell Canada has 40,000 employees geographically dispersed across Canada. To meet the needs of these users (and over 26,000 workstations), some 3,000 CGI personnel have been assigned to service Bell’s requests and initiatives, accountable for both enterprise-wide and business specific IS/IT projects. CGI is responsible for nearly 300 major Bell systems and applications and their supporting infrastructure.

Further, CGI is helping Bell to leverage its existing systems by integrating them into a web-enabled environment. By allowing internal users and customers to interface with Bell systems via the web browser, we are enabling Bell to improve order processing capabilities, improve responsiveness to the customer, and realize significant cost benefits at the same time.

CGI and Bell have built a strategic partnership based on trust and success. CGI’s goal is to help Bell compete in the marketplace by providing flexible choices, breakthrough solutions, identifying cost savings and efficiencies, and by delivering best-in-class service across the BCE organization.

As a function of this partnership, CGI works closely with Bell using rapid application development (RAD) techniques to accelerate the production of IT solutions. RAD is a key component of CGI/Bell’s delivery model, resulting in better products and services through improved processes. RAD means fast results, at less cost.

The Technology
The scope of services provided to Bell by CGI encompasses a broad range of skills and technology including:

• Support to 32,000 users
• Support to over 26,000 workstations
• 300 locations throughout Ontario via a fully meshed ATM WAN
• LAN includes 126 Master Domain Controllers with over 10 terabytes of DASD
• SAP Center of Expertise, including SAP Retail
• EAI middleware expertise, using Vitria
• 200 Help Desk staff manages 1 million (inbound/outbound) calls per year using advanced technology IVR and CTI technology.

The Results
To date, CGI has completed many successful projects including a multi-million dollar IS/IT Modernization Program at Bell to re-engineer the legacy systems, applications and infrastructure, migrating to a new simplified, cost-effective and interoperable standardized architecture. Among other achievements, CGI deployed a Corporate Enterprise Infrastucture project to provide e-mail and NT services to over 30,000 desktops. CGI provided an innovative solution to overlay a third area code to address saturation of the 416/905 area codes in the GTA, resulting in significantly reducing the costs. Leveraging Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), CGI mechanized order processing and data retrieval from non-integrated sales and service channels enabling Bell to quadruple productivity. CGI also designed and integrated a new system, Secured Access Resource Management (SARM), to provide multi-level security and protection for Bell Quebec Network Switching equipment.

Now in its fourth year, the contract has proved mutually beneficial for both CGI and Bell…providing CGI with a dominant level of expertise in telecommunications and Bell with a long-term partner in IT, committed to delivering breakthrough solutions for less. Added Mr. Roman, "CGI has the combination of industry knowledge, technical expertise and commitment to client satisfaction that it takes to be an IT services industry leader. These attributes have enabled CGI to build a very effective IT partnership with Bell Canada. They have helped me be effective as a CIO and have been a large contributor to our success. They are an example to other companies in this industry."