Global One Strengthens Customer Care With New Value-added Services Using Business Objects WEBINTELLIGENCE - Company Business and Marketing

Cambridge Telcom Report, Jan 31, 2000

Global telecommunications solutions provider Global One, awarded "Best Carrier 1999" by customers under the Emap Media World Communication Awards 1999, has strengthened its service offer for major worldwide customers with the launch of its new On Line Reporting Services.

Global One has leveraged its On Line Reporting Services system with web-based technology from Business Objects, the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions. The Business Objects web-based e-BI tool, WEBINTELLIGENCE, works with On Line Reporting Services to make Global One the first international telecom operator to offer its voice services customers secure, one-stop access to their traffic and invoice information. On Line Reporting Services provide the large multinational customers of Global One with access to a wide range of account information concerning their Global VPN (Virtual Private Network) invoicing, configuration, and traffic. The new service is an integral element of the Global One customer care package, and is offered as part of Global Customer Workstation, a fully web-based tool from Global One that brings the information and resources of the Global One Global Customer Support Center and Network Management Center to the customer's desktop.

On Line Reporting Services gives companies access to a vast range of account information on a secure extranet. Users can access information about site configuration, private dialing plans, and value-added services such as call centers and accounting codes. They can view invoices in 26 currencies, and break down the data by site and item. Customers can also use the extranet to access information about traffic, including call origination and destination.

Information accessed via the extranet can be filtered to a given level of detail and presented in a tabular or graphic format for easy comprehension. No matter which Global One voice services are used -- IP or switched access; local, national, and international calls; audio and videoconferencing; call centers; remote access -- On Line Reporting Services provide detailed information about them all, gathered from the six million invoicing items generated each month by the Global One Global VPN.

"At Global One, we are totally focused on customer satisfaction. As a result, we strive to offer our customers an increasingly broad range of high value-added services. This naturally led us to launch our On Line Reporting Services. The advantages of WEBINTELLIGENCE -- the cornerstone of On Line Reporting Services -- are obvious: WEBINTELLIGENCE is easy to use, easy to roll-out, and does not require the installation of client-side software. Our customers can interactively analyze their Global VPN traffic," explained Sylvain Lagarde, product manager of voice services at Global One. "For example, a Japanese company can analyze the voice traffic of its European subsidiaries at any time of the day using a web browser. They no longer have to go through customer service if they want to analyze their invoicing or usage levels. This extra level of flexibility sets us apart from the competition."

"We are proud that WEBINTELLIGENCE was chosen as a key part of the infrastructure of Global One's On Line Reporting Services," said Tony Jewitt, vice president of extranet business development. "With the deployment of this innovative service, Global One demonstrates why e-business intelligence -- the convergence of business intelligence and the internet -- is a competitive edge. The integration of WEBINTELLIGENCe in Global One On Line Reporting Services gives large Global One customers the ability to better manage their telecom investments while strengthening their relationship with their service provider."

Global One offers a single source for the provision of seamless voice, data, and IP services for businesses, carriers, and consumers around the world. Set up as a worldwide joint venture of Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, and Sprint, Global One is a fully integrated company in its own right, with over 1,400 network access centers in more than 65 countries. Global One offers the world's farthest-reaching ATM-based network, and in 1998 had revenues of more than US $1.1 billion.

intelligence (e-BI) solutions. Using e-business intelligence, organizations can access, analyze, and share information in intranet, extranet, and e-business environments. In intranets, the company's products provide employees with information to make better business decisions, and are used in environments ranging from workgroups of 20 users to enterprise deployments exceeding 20,000. In the extranet environment, the company is pioneering the use of e-BI in applications that allow organizations to build stronger relationships by linking customers, partners, and suppliers via the internet. In addition, the company's products can improve the performance of an e-business by providing reporting and analysis against the ever-expanding amount of transaction and profile data that is collected each day throughout the world wide web.