Affiniti Case Study

Affiniti, the communications integrator, has benefited from a pre-sales service offered by Aurora Kendrick James (AKJ) to significantly increase the success of its new sales bids. This has helped their customers save money and better understand their own telecoms estates.

Who is Affiniti?

Affiniti specialises in designing, implementing and managing intelligent communications solutions for private and public sector organisations.

By combining strong network expertise and telecoms knowledge with vast business experience and a thorough understanding of IT challenges, Affiniti helps its customers achieve tangible business benefits. By taking a proactive approach to their communications needs, it helps make sense of the vast array of products and technologies to deliver end-to-end technology and service solutions so that they can take advantage of business opportunities.

Affiniti is part of the Kingston Communications Group, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and employs over 2,700 people across the UK.

Affiniti’s Customers

Affiniti’s customer base includes: Experian, Carphone Warehouse, British Airways, Ford, Admiral Insurance, Edinburgh Telford College, Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen Hospital, Cheshire Police, Citigroup, Lloyds TSB, Scottish Parliament and TNT.

Challenge 1 – Understanding the real size of the prospect opportunity and how best to tailor Affiniti’s services to that prospect

Affiniti’s value proposition is based on creating a long term partnership with its customers to support them on the journey from legacy telecoms services through to fully converged communications. Affiniti recognises that this journey will be different for every customer and that to be successful as a managed service provider it must ensure that the customer’s telecoms estate is well managed both today and into the future.

Understanding exactly how a business spends its telecoms budget and communicates across its telecoms network is therefore critical to Affiniti’s long term success in the fixed, mobile and converged communications markets. To achieve this level of understanding, Affiniti needed a partner who could support it with the appropriate level of technical expertise, analysis skills and industry knowledge.

Challenge 2 – Identify cost reduction opportunities that could be used to fund the transition from legacy telecoms service to a fully converged communications solution

Affiniti’s value proposition is based on demonstrating best value to customers and delivering fit for purpose solutions that meet their needs for both today and into the future. By helping their customers to gain full control of their costs today, Affiniti is able to release cost savings from the legacy estate to fund the transition to the converged solution of tomorrow. The ability to fund this transition is essential in the long term strategy of the business and its customers. Affiniti needed a partner who could support them in the delivery of this strategy.

The AKJ Solution

To deliver the level of detail and support that Affiniti required, AKJ created a tailored Telecoms Audit service which went significantly beyond traditional tariff analysis audits. For each prospect we undertook a detailed and accurate analysis of fixed and mobile billing and management data to provide a clear understanding of the customer’s actual telecoms costs and how they communicate across their business.

As part of this process AKJ also created a range of Affiniti “Best Practice” metrics which highlight cost and usage issues that our consultant’s identify. These metrics are then presented in a range of management reports, which are then summarised by one of AKJ’s consultant’s in a tailored report for the account management team. Each consultant’s report is supported by the complete backing data as well as traditional savings analysis.

As a provider of managed services, Affiniti needs to become a trusted advisor to its customers. The AKJ solution enables the team to rapidly identify customer challenges and issues, (which often the customer is not aware of) which can then be managed as part of Affiniti’s ongoing solution. The aim being to identify and release cost savings from the legacy estate which can be used to fund the investment in converged technologies.

Examples of some of the issues identified by AKJ for customers include:

Incorrectly configured and faulty routers – creating excessive network traffic and costs.
Call Misuse and Abuse – from serial premium rate abuse to video conferencing systems that have remained connected for days to international destinations.
Unused Services – identifying wasted resources and legacy services that are no longer required.
Excessive Personal Usage – understanding how the customer is picking up the tab for personal mobile usage.
Billing Errors – ranging from incorrectly priced calls to duplicate billing of calls and services.

Having produced the Consultant’s report AKJ then provides a detailed briefing to the account team offering guidance on the specific issues and challenges that we have identified. By focusing on these customer challenges, Affiniti is able to clearly and objectively highlight the customer issues and needs, link these needs to the Affiniti solution and demonstrate the level of knowledge and insight expected of a trusted advisor.

The Benefits

The Telecoms Audit service delivered via AKJ is a key element of Affiniti’s proposition enabling them to quickly achieve their objectives:

1. Understanding the current customer environment and opportunity

The presale service provides Affiniti with a clear insight into a customer’s current service environment and an accurate customer profile of costs and usage enabling a more tailored commercial proposal to be prepared.
Affiniti can rapidly validate the opportunity, profile and volumes to support the internal business case for tailored pricing.
The service enables Affiniti to accurately measure the margin on an opportunity and improve sales forecasting and “booked to billed” ratios.
The service reviews the wider telecoms costs enabling Affiniti to highlight further opportunities to improve efficiency and deliver value.

2. Demonstrating the value to the customer

Affiniti is able to tailor a commercial proposition to meet the customers profile and requirements to demonstrate best value for money.
The service uses accurate analysis including call by call re-rating to ensure that the figures can be trusted.
The analysis is presented in clear and informative management reports, enabling Affiniti to clearly demonstrate issues identified and where cost savings will be achieved.
The reporting and analysis provides a benchmark against which the performance of the ongoing service will be measured.

The Results

Affiniti has used the service on approximately 15 major customer bids during the last 12 months and has achieved a success rate of in excess of 65% where the service has been used.
In one example Affiniti was able to demonstrate to a large logistics company how its approach to managed telephony could deliver savings of 49% (equating to > £350kpa) compared against their current costs.
The audit enables Affiniti to ensure that the customer receives a fit for purpose solution and competitive commercial terms and support that is targeted in the top quartile of the market.
The audit enables Affiniti to accurately forecast revenues and margin on new accounts, and as part of the service, AKJ captures much of the information required to streamline provisioning of the services once the order is secured.
The savings delivered as part of Affiniti’s managed service are just the start of the development plan. Having realised these savings customers are now embarking on the transition to convergence.
Another key objective was to increase the number of Account Managers who sell switched voice services within the group. The AKJ pre-sales service gives the Account Managers confidence and reassurance from having access to industry leading knowledge and expertise to deliver class leading service and best value to their customers.
The support service provided by AKJ is one part of a wider business development plan; however it plays a key role in helping Affiniti on its initial objective of becoming the trusted advisor to the customer and plays a significant part in identifying how the customer can release the savings to fund their next generation telecom services.

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