Customer Solution Case Study
/ / MCI Consolidates Portals, Saves Company Time, and Reduces Maintenance Costs
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Telecommunications
Customer Profile
Virginia-based MCI is a global communications company with offices in 65 countries on six continents. Its expansive IP network spans 100,000 miles and more than 140 countries.
Business Situation
MCI was using a variety of portal technologies to provide information to both employees and customers. User experience was inconsistent, and maintenance and licensing were expensive.
Solution
MCI hired Microsoft® Services as a primary contractor to provide a single portal. Microsoft Services worked with Accenture to create a customized solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003.
Benefits
Streamlined development
Provided consistent architecture
Eased content management
Improved customer experience
Reduced portal support needs by 75 percent / “I would absolutely recommend not only the portal solution, but also Microsoft Services to anyone looking for a similar solution.”
Vinnie Clements, Senior Director of IT, MCI
Communications company MCI, Inc. offers voice, Internet, and data services worldwide. For several years, MCI used numerous Web portals to provide information and services. However, company departments frequently developed portals independently, using solutions that required different logon procedures. By 2003, MCI had more than 100 different customer-facing portal sites. Users were frustrated, and the disparate technologies were expensive to maintain and license. In 2004, MCI worked with Microsoft® Services and Microsoft Strategic Alliance Partner Accenture to migrate the portals to a single solution based largely on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003. Microsoft Services oversaw the project, provided technical expertise, and trained MCI IT staff. The new solution has saved MCI an average of 600 hours of development time annually and cut licensing and maintenance costs.
Situation
MCI, Inc., based in Virginia, is a world leader in the communications industry. Founded in 1968, the company provides Internet, data, and voice communication services in more than 140 countries across six continents. It owns and operates one of the largest and fastest IP networks in the world, offering services to individual customers as well as to major enterprises and governments. MCI has offices in 65 countries and generated more than U.S.$20 billion in revenues in 2004.
As the company expanded its services around the world, it increased its implementation of Web portals for both internal and external sites. Among their many uses, the portal sites provided access to ordering, e-bill paying applications, and internal company information. Eventually the number of portals at MCI became unwieldy. “We conducted a high-level survey of just the customer-facing portals and found 117, and most of them were developed by different organizations,” says Vincent Clements, Senior Director of IT, MCI. This created a chaotic and expensive support environment. “We were running on different hardware and software platforms and had to pay maintenance and licensing fees to different vendors,” says Clements.
In addition to maintenance and licensing fees, the disparate portals offered less-than-ideal customer experiences. For example, there were 66 different applications that were accessible from the MCICustomerCenter. But because not all of the applications integrated well, users would have to log on repeatedly during a session. “Some applications were accessible from the portal authentication, whereas other applications required a separate user ID and a second logon,” says Clements. The portals also often looked and performed differently, resulting in an inconsistent user experience that was not necessarily in keeping with how the company wanted to be perceived and recognized. Moreover, any changes to any of the portals had to be made by the IT staff. “Our users were creating the content for the portal sites and then having to get a work request and wait,” says Clements.
MCI decided to find a single-portal solution for the entire enterprise that could combine all the different portal functionalities and offer new features. The company wanted a solution that not only could work as a whole, but also could be divided into reusable components (Web parts) for easier development and design work. MCI also sought a solution that would provide easy content management. “We wanted a solution that would let users take control of the process and manage it on their own,” says Clements.
Solution
In December 2003, MCI created and released a request for proposal (RFP) to several IT companies, including IBM, BEA, and Microsoft. MCI evaluated the proposals both in terms of cost and of performance. In April 2004, MCI accepted the proposal presented by Microsoft that offered a solution based primarily on Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003—part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software—and Microsoft Content Management Server 2002. The solution would be created and implemented by subject matter experts from both Microsoft Services and Microsoft Strategic Alliance Partner Accenture. Microsoft Services is the consulting, technical support, and customer service arm of Microsoft. The team from Microsoft Services included:
Enterprise Strategy Consultant
Engagement Manager
Solutions Specialists
Infrastructure Consultant
The first phase of the project was a requirements analysis conducted in May 2004. During this phase, the team collaborated with MCI to determine the detailed needs of the company and design the best possible enterprise architecture for the new solution. Following the analysis phase, Microsoft Services and Accenture began bringing the separate portals into SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
The first major project, completed in September 2004, was switching the customer-facing MCI.com site to the new solution. Following that successful implementation, MCI migrated other portals, including the business-focused CustomerCenter, to the integrated SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Content Management Server 2002. By June 2005, about 70 percent of the company’s portals had been migrated. Ultimately, the entire enterprise will be working from the single-portal solution
Throughout the engagement, Microsoft Services worked closely with MCI to make sure that the solution suited the company’s needs and that MCI would be able to take full advantage of it. Microsoft Services created product documents and provided training for the MCI IT staff. “My staff members were all WebLogic developers, so we weren’t familiar with the technology that was being deployed,” says Clements. Microsoft Services helped set up initial classroom training for the staff members and then continued to train them on a mentoring basis. The combination of the two training methods quickly got the MCI group working with and understanding the new system.
The Microsoft Services group also had access to experts in SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and related technologies and brought them in as needed. This helped ensure that the project went smoothly. “When we needed a subject matter expert, Microsoft Services had the technical expertise that was so critical to our success,” says Clements. “Microsoft Services always brought in someone that added tremendous value.”
Benefits
The Microsoft Services–led SharePoint Portal Server 2003 project has helped MCI simplify its portal environment, save IT costs, and boost customer satisfaction. The relationship between the company and Microsoft Services has also been a great advantage to MCI. “By offering technical expertise, training, and support, Microsoft Services helped reduce both our risk with this project and our time spent completing it,” says Clements. “I would absolutely recommend not only the portal solution, but also Microsoft Services to anyone looking for a similar solution.”
Streamlined Development
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 consists of components—Web parts—that can be worked on independently, helping developers manage the portal. As defined by MCI and Microsoft Services, the new main portal has 16 individual Web parts that can be customized independent of the solution as a whole. This has helped the company save costly development time and eliminate the need for developing similar areas on the portal multiple times. “We can work on the solution without taking the entire portal offline, and after we’ve developed a Web part, we can reuse it somewhere else in the solution,” says Clements.
Provided Consistent Architecture
By switching from multiple portal systems to a single-portal architecture, MCI has been able to eliminate the disparate applications and reduce costs. “Instead of having a tangle of vendors and models and sizes and shapes and operating systems and system administrators, we now have a consistent architecture and a consistent support organization, saving us licensing and annual maintenance costs,” says Clements.
Eased Content Management
Content owners can now manage content materials on their own. This was difficult in the multiportal environment, but SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Content Management Server 2002 haveprovided easy tools for the owners to manage their materials. This has saved both the content owners and the IT staff valuable time. “Now if there’s something urgent the owners want to put on the portal, they don’t have to try to track us down,” says Clements. “Once they author content, they use one of the content tools to put it right into the portal itself. If they want to change it today and promote it this afternoon, they can do that.”
This new flexibility is a time saver as well. MCI estimates it has cut down the time associated with content management 40 to 50 hours a month, a figure it expects to grow as more portals are blended in.
Improved Customer Experience
MCI customers no longer use company applications and sites that are inconsistent and they don’t have to enter more than one user name and password. With the new solution, the procedures are consistent, and a single password authentication grants users access to all appropriate applications. The customer response has been overwhelmingly positive, as evident from the 163 percent increase in customer utilization of the e-billing capabilities. “We received some very favorable feedback from customers,” says Clements. “They really liked the overall user experience because the solution is more intuitive and much easier to use.”
Reduced Portal Support Needs by 75 Percent
As the previous portal solutions are retired, the company’s IT support staff is able to shift its focus. “We currently are using about a quarter of the portal support staff that we had been using,” says Clements. “As we switch more applications to the new single portal, we'll be able to maintain that savings and continue to redeploy resources to other responsibilities.”
Supports Future Plans
As MCI works with both Microsoft Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and sees what they can offer, the company has begun looking for new ways to use them. One future plan is to create a single enterprise-wide site incorporating access to all the information on the portal. “We're planning an MCI team site where every employee across the company will have access to all SharePoint sites from a project site to a team site to a departmental site,” says Clements. “We anticipate lots of savings because instead of spending time sending and resending documents out across e-mail, people will post them to a central site everyone can access.”
And MCI has other projects in the works that will involve the new solution. The company is bidding on a major government project and is planning to include Microsoft Services and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 as part of the proposed solution. “Essentially, we plan to take advantage of our new customer portal and make that part of our solution and part of our response to the RFP,” says Clements.
Microsoft Services
Microsoft Services helps customers and partners discover and implement high-value Microsoft solutions that generate rapid, meaningful, and measurable results. As the consulting, technical support, and customer service arm of the world’s leading software company, Microsoft Services enables the successful adoption, deployment, and use of Microsoft solutions and technologies for all customers, from the individual to the enterprise.
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