Uniworld Case Study

Uniworld Communications was established in 1995 and has since grown to become one of the UK’s leading providers of telecommunications to businesses.

Uniworld have been a WLR (Wholesale Line Rental) reseller since its inception in March 2003 & have now become one of Openreach’s top customers for line rentals. Uniworld have over 8,500 business customers throughout the UK and manage over 55,000 wholesale lines and channels.

WLR3 - A Brief Explanation

For a number of years Ofcom has pressed for further deregulation of the telecoms industry, specifically to improve competitiveness in markets where a small number of Communication Provider’s (CP’s) have significant market power.

In order that competition could thrive within the calls and lines market, Ofcom wanted to create a framework that would allow all CP’s to compete on equal terms. This included the ability for CP’s to be able to replicate BT Retail’s line products.

The creation of Openreach as a business entity and the creation of the WLR3 product (which is available via the Equivalence Management Platform (EMP)) is the framework by which BT has set out to achieve this.

The Problem

Without access to a gateway to use the Openreach WLR3 ordering system, CP’s have limited choices with regards to how they can place orders. The current options available are:

In-house investment of the technology and development of their own gateway.
Licensing third party technology.
Working with a third party integrator such as AKJ.

There has been a great deal of speculation within the market place and industry specialists have estimated the cost of developing an in house system could be in the region of £500k for the average CP.

As a result, the cost of developing a stand alone system for most CP’s will be prohibitively expensive or will force CP’s and resellers to partner with businesses who will provide ordering systems on a license or per transactional cost basis which can heavily affect cost outlay.

Aurora Kendrick James (AKJ) have invested in our in-house Advanced Technology Group to develop an integrated WLR3 gateway to the Openreach ordering system.

This is being offered to our WLR2 customer base with no ongoing cost as a built in solution within our Affinity billing platform. We are pleased to announce that Uniworld are the first of our customers to test the gateway within a live environment.

AKJ Solution – Free of Charge

The outcome is a user friendly and easy interface fully integrated into the AKJ Affinity billing platform providing access to the Openreach ordering system. The WLR3 system offers many benefits over the WLR2 ordering system including real time ordering with user alerts, auto generation of billing products,a single interface for fulfillment and assurance and the removal of order forecasting, as well as little extras such as the ability to choose a number assigned to a new line and you can now pre select the period of time an Openreach engineer spends on site to give a more accurate idea of cost.

Uniworld have been using the AKJ gateway to order new lines, carry out like for like and defined transfers and for performing line tests.

The greatest benefit that Uniworld have experienced from using the WLR3 ordering system are the speed they can advise their customers of the CLI & engineer appointments for new provides, full diagnostic testing & faster response times on faulty lines and improved lead times for ADSL simultaneous provides & site lines. The top benefits of using the AKJ gateway to interact with the WLR3 ordering system are:

Integration with Billing System at No Extra Cost
Unlike other third party integrators, AKJ saw no need to charge customers for access to an essential part of WLR3 ordering. So Uniworld have benefitted from the use of the AKJ gateway completely free of charge through the use of their existing billing platform Affinity. The gateway is fully integrated to the Affinity system and does not require an additional login or web access and ordering can be completed via your regular login and standard Affinity CRM interface with no associated ongoing charges.
The Step by Step Wizard
The AKJ gateway was designed to be user friendly and to incorporate a step by step wizard which clearly and efficiently guides you through the Openreach ordering process.
Lyn Jackson, Customer Business Manager from Uniworld states “AKJ’s gateway has been a real pleasure to use. The wizard quickly takes you throughthe process from start to finish and has access to so much more functionality through WLR3 than WLR2. We’re very pleased with the gateway to the ordering system and the fact it promptly informs us of order progress via the KCI’s, having all this in one place makes it so much easier.”
User Alerts for Order Progress
With the automatic order progress alerts from Openreach being directly fed into the Affinity CRM, Uniworld have benefitted from being kept up to date with order progress at each step along the way. This information can then be passed on to the end user to ensure proactive customer engagement.

These updates covering timeframes and costs can be relayed to customers in a much more efficient manner to that of the WLR3 predecessor.

Benefits of WLR3

The key benefits to a CP in using WLR3 compared to WLR2 are as follows:

No requirement to submit order forecasting.
No system limits on volumes (removal of order rationing).
Real time ordering and proactive feedback from BT Openreach on the order status.
Single interface for ordering, fulfillment and assurance.
Access to “Dialogue Services” – providing much greater information about CLI’s (Network Features, Current Orders, Maintenance Care Levels and Type of Line).
Access to BT Openreach Appointment Diary for Engineers.
Ability to reserve new customer telephone numbers.
Regular updates to keep customers informed on orders and issues.
Option to choose a number to assign to a line.
Ability to select your own PIN and CLI.
Option to pre select period of time an Openreach engineer spends on site to avoid heavy Time Related Charges – TRC’s).
Order status is automatically updated in CRM directly from Openreach.

Summary

Bottom line, WLR3 will allow CP’s to benefit from increased revenue streams, reduced operational costs and improved customer service.

Within an industry where customer retention is paramount to success, WLR3 helps CP’s to deliver a superior service to aid customer satisfaction with progress reports and up to date information - something not achievable within WLR2.

With a project of this size it will take time to roll out, however Openreach have been extremely supportive with the integration to third parties and as a result AKJ have created an effective gateway to the WLR3 ordering system.

For more details on WLR3 or the AKJ gateway please call us on 01634 673 800 or visit AKJ’s Knowledge Centre online at www.telcoinfo.co.uk where you will find relevant best practice guides and regular WLR3 updates

Download this article in pdf format

Case Study - Uniworld.pdf