Business Challenge

One of the major fixed-line telephone network, mobile and broadband operators in Ireland started their rebranding exercise in 2015. They had acquired a well-known mobile phone operator back in 2005 and had also launched another mobile phone eService in 2010 for both pre-pay and post-pay customers. Altogether, the company was operating with 3 different brands; each sub-brand with its own logo, name and customer portal. In 2017, they decided to merge the 3 brands into one.

They partnered with Torry Harris Business Solutions (THBS) to create enhanced user experiences through a single customer interface for all three brands, while keeping in mind the need for increased security and scalability. THBS was to strategize, create and consolidate each brand’s application back-end APIs into one single entity that would act as a unified web-services API ecosystem. The transition had to be smooth and faultless.

Business Benefits

  • 1,60,000 new customers
  • 145% increase in customer engagement
  • 69% increase of broadband base on fibre
  • 59% increase of mobile base on post-pay

Solution

Based on an initial study, the following areas needed to be addressed on priority:

  • Complex legacy architecture with multiple integration points in each brand
  • No uniformity in the products used and back-end application stacks - from billing and mediation to CRM.
  • No single sign-on capability to access related functionality

The overall architecture with multiple interfaces serving customers in each brand:

 
API Management for Telecos
 

THBS rolled out an API Strategy along with the customer stakeholders in a phased manner. A governance board was set-up to monitor the identify-create-reuse-retire cycle for APIs based on the functionality they offered and their reuse potential in the new setup. The governance board also put in place processes needed to enforce discipline across the design-build-test-document API lifecycle phases to succeed with the initiative.

The current architecture is the result of a successful strategy and robust governance:

 
API Management for Telecos