Essar Telecom Kenya (Yu) is the 4th GSM licensee in Kenya, offering a full suite of mobile services to a rapidly growing prepaid customer base.
Yu’s relationship with Cerillion started in the summer of 2008, when Yu (then known as Econet Wireless Kenya) contracted Cerillion to implement its Interconnect Manager system to manage all of Yu’s interconnect agreements.
Following the selection of the interconnect system, Yu then chose the Cerillion Express CRM & Billing solution to fulfil its customer management requirements, including a very tight implementation timescale to meet a license requirement for commercial launch in the Autumn.
As a newcomer to Kenya, Yu operates in a highly competitive market alongside three other mobile operators, and is planning to expand to neighbouring African countries in the future. As of February 2009, Yu has in excess of 200,000 customers having launched in Nairobi and Mombasa. The company plans to extend its network nationwide by the end of 2009 through a network sharing deal recently announced with Zain.
Challenges
As the newest entrant to Africa in general and to Kenya in particular, Yu strives to offer the market's best prices, which forces organisational efficiency to minimise operational costs. Key challenges for the business support systems included:
- Comprehensive CRM solution required for all telecoms services and customers
- Four month implementation period
- Close integration with Ericsson prepaid platform
- Efficient interconnect partner management
- Support for a wide variety of price offers
- Future ability to extend to multiple countries run from a single data centre
Cerillion Solution
The solution at Yu is made up of the following components in the pre-integrated Cerillion suite deployed using the Cerillion Express delivery option on an IBM/Oracle platform:
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Revenue Manager
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CRM Plus
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Web Self-Care
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Output Streamer
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Information Manager
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Interconnect Manager
Results
Against very demanding project timescales, Cerillion rose to the challenge and successfully implemented its Interconnect and CRM & Billing solutions in time for the launch of Yu at the end of November 2008.
“The mobile-specific nature of Cerillion Express and the ease of integration it supports has been critical in enabling us to meet all of our tight project deadlines” commented Michael Foley, CEO of Econet Wireless Kenya.
Key to the successful launch was the close integration with the Ericsson prepaid platform, allowing for a much higher level of customer service to be provided to Yu’s customers than is usually offered to prepaid subscribers in Africa.
Cerillion Express provides Yu with a functionally rich, end-to-end solution which streamlines its key customer management processes and helps it to deliver an exceptional level of service in a cost-efficient manner.
Cerillion Interconnect Manager is also helping Yu to optimise its Interconnect agreements and settlement processes, achieving very high levels of accuracy in monthly reconciliations.
Essar Telecom Kenya and Cerillion maintain close partnership relations as Essar is now planning to provide postpaid services and extend its coverage to other countries in the region.
