TELUS

TELUS Operator Services Gains Competitive Edge from Longstanding Partnership with CGI

As Canada's largest provider of operator services, British Columbia-based TELUS Corporation can always count on a particularly reliable asset to maintain its competitiveness: its partnership with CGI. Since the 1980s, when Telus (Alberta) was known as AGT, these two companies have been working together on a number of innovations. Of particular interest in this string of successes is a project conducted in 2000, wherein the dynamic duo worked to implement product enhancements for Operator Services with wholesale success …

The Challenge
Created from the merger of BCTelecom and TELUS (Alberta) in 1999, TELUS Corporation is one of Canada's leading telecommunication companies, providing products and services in Western Canada and offering data, Internet Protocol, voice and wireless services in Central and Eastern Canada.
In what has become a true partnership in ideas and innovation, TELUS regularly turns to CGI for assistance in new product development and enhancements, implementations and problem solving. "If we're trying to develop something in Operator Services, such as a new application, we'll call CGI to see if they have a current product that would be adaptable. We really work together to find solutions that benefit us both," affirms TELUS Maureen Rundle, Service Specialist, Service Provisioning and Platforms Support, Operator Services.

Such was the case on a TELUS project in the spring of 2000, which required CGI to implement, in British Columbia and Alberta, new applications and upgrades to four existing products developed by CGI: Reference, Rater, Time and Change Delivery System (TCDS) and the Abridged External Rating System (AERS). The chief business goal of the project was to give the products the capability to accommodate other incumbents or carriers thereby opening the gateway to expanding TELUS wholesale and retail business through the sales of diverse services and resources.

For example, Reference, CGI's product designed to provide directory services such as dialing instructions, routing, agent information and provision of rates for certain numbers, would be upgraded for operators to access and store such data from other carriers. Similarly, Rater, which switches calls from point to point and calculates rates within the switch for the incumbent carrier only, would be improved to allow operators to access and calculate rates of other carriers, by putting the rating component outside the process. The TCDS product, which provides operators billing information on numbers, would be modified so that customers, regardless of location, could obtain charges through various channels such as fax or Internet rather than through traditional voice callback. The AERS, a rating system for pay phones, would be improved to bring greater efficiencies to TELUS pay station business.

Since members of CGI's implementation team were no strangers to the field (all had been phone operators with an average of 20 years' seniority), the project's technical aspects posed less of a challenge than those presented by the project's management, which would require CGI to time the implementation for each product with the utmost flexibility, in line with evolving requirements.

The Strategy
The CGI/TELUS team decided on a phased-in approach for each product and TELUS relied on CGI's experience and expertise when it came to making the products as competitive as possible. CGI also went "beyond the call" in terms of project management, adapting to difficult scheduling and responding to changing priorities. Project requirements were sophisticated and very high level and CGI worked hard to develop an environment conducive to adding new ideas and innovations throughout the process. "CGI's project management was excellent; any requests were met immediately. They were very flexible and able to handle, for example, the unique requirements for the Reference product in British Columbia," added Rundle.

The Technology

• Modern platform: 2 RISC 6000 servers, each equipped with 4 processors, 4 internal disks, 1Gbytes of memory and all required network adapters
• Software environment for servers: AIX 4.3.3 (IBM Unix operating system), Oracle 8.0.6, NewNet's Access Manager (SS7 software) and Adax's X.25 software
• Moved from MCA (micro-channel architecture) to widely accepted PCI bus environment

The Results
By the fall of the same year, the project was successfully completed, enabling TELUS to move closer to meeting its business goals of greater competitiveness and greater service offerings. CGI's enhanced products arm TELUS with the ability to provide different rate structures to different customers in different customer locations, opening the door to new wholesale and retail business.

More specifically, the improved Reference product, now gives TELUS the ability to handle unique call types and provides a common platform so that calls may flow freely between Alberta and British Columbia. And when the improved Rater product is fully operational, cost containment will be the chief result of enhancing the product to provide only one source for updating rate tables, where previously multiple "updating" teams were required. Data will be easier to access and share.

Benefits will also be accumulated in TELUS pay station business, (the company handles all pay stations west of Manitoba), through enhancements to CGI's Abridged External Rating System in both British Columbia and Alberta, where the rate of a coin call can now be calculated and sent back to the pay phone's digital screen for the benefit of users. The Time and Change Delivery System, upgraded in Alberta, now provides operators with the capacity to bill customers in different locations using a variety of methods.

As of January 2002, CGI continues to provide upgrading, support and maintenance services to Operator Services. In summing up the unique partnership with CGI, Rundle added, "We appreciate the open communication with CGI. They deliver in a timely manner and if for some reason they can't provide what we ask for, they'll always offer another solution."