CIOIN

Rajkumar Upadhyay

Deputy GM-IT, Bangalore Telecom District

Executive summary

As a cricket-crazed teenager Rajkumar Upadhyay never managed to get  an  easy autograph. But that  was in 1977. On a different wicket, almost 30 years later, his luck with signatures changed as his IT team combed through more than 10 lakh subscriber signatures in BSNL's Bangalore Telecom District's Oracle 7 systems, scanning for database use.

Project Falcon  was the back breaking effort of scanning each signature would allow them to trace and check a customer's details on the run. "It took us not less than three months," says Upadhyay, deputy general manager- IT at Bangalore Telecom District.  This would  enable a faster and more seamless IT-powered mechanism for   BSNL's customer service centers (CSC).

"Most of my time was spent in fetching signatures from past files, which was made harder because of old hardware. Oracle 7 does not store as many signatures as Oracle 9 or 10. The newer versions store signatures as a part of a record. However, Oracle 7 would store a signature as an individual file. This made fetching signatures difficult," he recalls. It was the most mind-numbing aspect of Project Falcon, designed to deliver BSNL services through a single window. But the signature-campaign of sorts has made all the difference.

For customers in Bangalore, the application has reduced a month-long verification process to get a new line to less than a day. For CSC officials, the signature-driven feature of the Web-based application entails access to 12 area servers that store customer information, thus empowering them to authorize customer requests at a faster clip. "The clerk has suddenly become empowered in a sense. He only has to check for the signature on the database. It will come with all corresponding details," notes Upadhyay. The single window application itself came into operation in August 2006.

Developing the application in-house worked for two reasons: the inhouse IT team could best understand the needs and limitations of the front-end. Secondly, it was best placed to tap the benefits of BSNL's large existing infrastructure and resources. To begin with, the Bangalore Telecom IT team connected all its area servers using optic fiber onto one network, yet allowing them to function independently. This would form the core architecture. Then, they brought the commercial office, call center operations, network management system and central directory enquiry onto the same platform to enable an integrated view from a single location. And all dumb terminals working in the system were replaced by PCs.

The back-end infrastructure has removed the practice of depending on divisional heads and their subordinates for status reports on works and projects. In addition to the CSCs, the IT organization also devised two routes for customers to access service and information: an SMS server and the Bangalore Telecom website. Customers can get information and avail services, like complaint booking, complaint status, bill enquiry, outstanding bills and changed number enquiry, by sending a message to the SMS server. The information is also available on the website, in addition to billpay online.

Bangalore Telecom has begun to generate a higher  revenue through its services. "In terms of money, because of reduced timelines, we record additional rental and revenue because we can provide a service to customers faster than before.  There are process efficiencies," Upadhyay points out.

With online management reports on the  performance of critical parameters, which impact delivery of services to the customers, the application has created greater transparency in the system. The result is that Bangalore Telecom is now able to report, classify and compare performances of area managers. It has given management a handle to hold division heads accountable about areas to focus on, to monitor.

The success of the single window application is expected to pave way for a model that will be developed and managed by a vendor. This will consolidate the 12 servers in Bangalore. "We will begin that shortly, and are inviting tenders from April," he says. Another component of the project that is on the anvil is disaster recovery.