Reliance Communications (RCOM), India’s foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider, is facing a massive increase in subscriber numbers, as it adds more products and services to improve the customer experience. The company recently upgraded its Amdocs CRM system. As a result, RCOM has improved service level agreements by 30 percent, more than doubled CRM system case, interaction and process capacity, and reduced unavailability of the CRM system during planned and unplanned outages. RCOM, by custom developing a unique 'bridging' solution for streamlining the upgrade process for its huge 2.5TB database and multiple associated business applications, was able to deliver 100 percent business continuity throughout the process. The upgrade was successful and the company is confident in undertaking the next one, to the latest version of Amdocs CRM.

INDIA’S FOREMOST AND TRULY INTEGRATED TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICE PROVIDER INCREASES CUSTOMER SERVICE PERFORMANCE WITH AMDOCS BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION SERVICES

At-a-Glance

RELIANCE COMMUNICATIONS, LTD. (RCOM) Headquarters: Mumbai, India Website: www.relianceada.com & www.rcom.co.in Stock Exchange: RCOM (Bombay Stock Exchange & National Stock Exchange of India) Revenue: US$ 4.8 Billion (March 2008) Business Units: Wireless, Global, and Broadband Subscribers: Customer base of over 48 million (as of March 2008) including over 1.5 million individual overseas retail customers. RCOM’s corporate clientele includes 1850 Indian and multinational corporations, and over 250 global carriers. Challenges Company is India's foremost & truly integrated telecommunications service provider Company continues to grow rapidly; adding new products and services to meet market demands High volume contact centers Continued rapid subscriber increase expected to reach 100m across all lines of business Huge 2.5TB database & multiple associated business systems Solution Tie together all lines of business, interaction channels& customerfacing processes to deliver a consistent & intentional customer experience Utilize Amdocs Product Support entitlement to new releases to take advantage of new features, technologies & efficiencies by upgrading Amdocs CRM Custom develop a 'bridging' solution to: > Ensure business continuity during the upgrade phase involving a 2.5TB database and multiple ancillary systems > Reduce time needed for post-update application synchronization Results Improved ability to meet service level agreements by 30 percent Increased CRM system case, interaction & process capacity by 2.5 times Greater system reliability, simplified maintenance & less complex processes Reduced unavailability of the CRM system during planned & unplanned outages Business function continuity during upgrade Technical Environment Amdocs Products & Services: Amdocs Intent Driven Contact Center solution, which includes Amdocs Call Center, Amdocs Support & Amdocs Process Manager; Amdocs Product Support Services; Amdocs Consulting & Professional Services; Amdocs Customer Business Executive Number of Users: 10,000 concurrent users growing to 15,000 in three contact centers & more than 2,000 retail outlets across India Interaction Volume: More than 15 million customer interactions a month for over 500,000 customers. Able to support more than 10,000 customers at any time. Operating System: Sun Solaris 10 Database: Oracle 9i DBMS Middleware: BEA Tuxedo & BEA Weblogic Integration to Backend Systems: Tibco EAI Layer

Reliance Communications Ltd. (RCOM), founded by the late Shri Dhirubhai H Ambani (1932-2002), is the flagship company of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group.

Rated among "Asia's Top 5 Most Valuable Telecom Companies", RCOM is India's foremost and truly integrated telecommunications service provider. The company, with a customer base of over 48 million (as of March 2008), including over 1.5 million individual overseas retail customers, ranks among the Top 10 Asian Telecom companies by number of customers. RCOM's corporate clientele includes 1,850 Indian and multinational corporations, and over 250 global carriers.

Reliance Communications has established a pan-India, next generation, integrated (wireless and wireline), convergent (voice, data and video) digital network that supports best-of-class services spanning the entire infocomm value chain, covering over 20,000 towns and 450,000 villages. Reliance Communications owns and operates the world's largest next generation IP enabled connectivity infrastructure, comprising over 165,000 kilometers of fiber optic cable systems in India, USA, Europe, Middle East and the Asia Pacific region.

To support customer services and management, RCOM has contact centers at Navi-Mumbai and Chennai, in addition to more than 2,000 retail outlets all over India. In one day, RCOM services over 500,000 customers with Amdocs CRM, and is able to support more than 10,000 customers at any one time.

RCOM leverages Amdocs

RCOM has deployed several modules from the Amdocs portfolio of CRM product solutions. The Amdocs Contact Center solution is helping RCOM tie together all its lines of businesses, interaction channels and customer-facing processes to give agents the information they need to deliver a consistent, intentional customer experience. The solution includes Amdocs Process Manager and Amdocs Support. RCOM is using Amdocs Process Manager to make its business processes more efficient and streamlined by, for example, identifying time-saving process workflows and removing unnecessary actions. Amdocs Support is being used to control and manage the various levels of RCOM's customer support operation.

Facing a potentially massive increase in subscriber numbers from 40 million to 100 million across all its lines of business. RCOM wanted to upgrade its Amdocs CRM system to take advantage of new scalability, features and functions.

Amdocs Consulting and RCOM's IT leaders developed an upgrade plan that was appropriate for its complex environment and unique challenges. RCOM's challenges included a huge 2.5TB database and the desire to upgrade its Oracle database at the same time as the CRM system. Another challenge was RCOM's desire to do it right the first time, with a foolproof anytime-rollback strategy, so if unanticipated challenges occurred, the company could immediately revert to its previous system with no downtime.

As Mr. Nihar Rao, CIO of RCOM's Consumer Mobile Business and an internal customer, says: "Changing a CRM system used across thousands of customer and channel touch points, while the business is running, is an extremely tough challenge. By partnering with Amdocs we managed to successfully upgrade with no disruption to the tens of thousands of processes critical to our complex environment." RCOM's IT Team architected and developed a unique ‘bridging' application to ensure critical CRM business processes continued during the upgrade and remove the need to synchronize data after the upgrade. Using Java struts framework and Web and Java technologies, it runs on a back-up database and is capable of managing critical processes in the event of operational issues. Initially designed to help manage the transition during the CRM upgrade, it proved so effective that RCOM has adopted it as its on-going back-up solution for critical processes. "My Enterprise Business users did not even know that the CRM system got upgraded," said Mr. Chandrashekhar Deshpande, Head – IT Engineering and Development, Reliance Communications.

Significant busines and customer service benefits

"With this upgrade, RCOM has seen significant improvements in customer service levels, business operations, and business continuity," said Mr. Prem Prakash, Development Head – CRM, Reliance Communications. "Amdocs Product Support provided the right attention during this critical period, through Support Account Manager services, effective request prioritization, and around-the clock case handling. This personalized support approach helped to ensure a smooth upgrade process."

Amdocs is helping RCOM manage the expected huge leap in customers by upgrading its CRM system and improving processes. Implementing the Amdocs solution has also helped RCOM handle 2.5 times more case, interaction and process capacity than before, and achieve a 30 percent improvement in meeting services level agreements. Greater system reliability, simplified maintenance and less complex processes have helped RCOM reduce unavailability of the CRM system during planned and unplanned outages,further increasing customer service level reliability. In addition, RCOM was able avoid completely the anticipated seven-day down period for the upgrade – expected because of the database size and multiple application upgrade– which meant no deterioration in customer service and no negative impact on RCOM's reputation.

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