|
 Background
Aliant Inc.
is Canada’s third-largest full
service telecommunications business
with more than 2 million customers
and over 800,000 enterprises. To support
its mission of providing its customers
with world-leading communications
solutions, Aliant discovered a need
for an application that would integrate
with its existing system and would
support its team in delivering exceptional
network performance and customer service.
Aliant chose
Baseline Business Geographics Inc.
to provide this application. Aliant
has been a long time user of MapInfo
technology. Baseline worked with its
RF Engineers to deploy a software
application, called deciBel Planner,
for RF Engineering and network planning
and visualization. deciBel Planner
is an RF (radio frequency) propagation
and network planning tool that Aliant
has found invaluable in developing
its network services. Because of its
cost-effectiveness and ease of use,
as well as a recognizable return on
investment, deciBel Planner was selected
as Aliant’s network coverage
system.
deciBel Planner
seamlessly combines RF prediction
capabilities and spatial analysis,
enabling telecommunications companies
to effectively build and optimize
complex wireless networks. The planning
team can quickly pull together various
types of data, such as terrain and
clutter maps, streets, towers, and
demographic boundaries, in order to
accurately design networks and achieve
optimal coverage at the lowest cost.
Aliant’s RF Engineers use deciBel
Planner to predict high-resolution
terrain models and provide a variety
of visualization schemes for analyzing
results. This application is very
precise in checking signal strengths.
This means the planning team can quickly
rule out inappropriate sites and focus
on generating signal predictions for
those sites with the best potential.
The Aliant
planning team understands the important
role that geography plays in deciding
where to build and expand its network.
Aliant’s contact centre management
also realized the value of an integrated
mapping system. They identified a
need for Customer Service Representatives
(CSRs) to be able to have a better
way of referencing customer location
to their physical wireless coverage.
Aliant’s
contact centre management team went
to its Business Analyst and stated
that it needed to find a tool to help
them do this. They then contacted
Baseline Business Geographics Inc.
after the referral from the RF Engineering
group. This initiative was a significant
step towards a total enterprise approach
to sharing coverage information within
Aliant Mobility and strengthened the
relationship between Aliant and Baseline
Business Geographics Inc.
The
Business Problem
When Aliant’s
CSRs were posed with a customer question
relating to geography, they had to
leave their desks to examine the roadmap
of the province and identify location
as best they could by trying to find
the corresponding location on a hard
copy coverage map on the wall. Often,
the maps were of different scales,
and it was difficult to be accurate.
Not only was the information passed
along to the caller questionable,
but the process was slow and cumbersome.
Even if the information given to the
customer from the CSR was accurate
according to the maps, there was a
great possibility that the maps were
outdated. There was no way of knowing
if the maps reflected the most current
coverage. The CSRs’ confidence
level of providing callers with accurate
information was questionable.
The
engineering and marketing departments
had no control over who was using
what version of the company’s
coverage mapping, which left the efficiencies
of the whole organization vulnerable.
Aliant’s
Business Analyst wanted a mapping
solution that brought the roadmaps
and the coverage maps together and
was capable of performing searches
by municipal name, street address,
postal code, or any other appropriate
data. Baseline Business Geographics
Inc. provided this solution to Aliant
with Coverage Mapper.
The
Solution
Baseline had
developed a desktop version of Coverage
Mapper for a client and had just completed
the Internet version of Coverage Mapper.
Aliant presented different needs and
functionality than the previous versions
of Coverage Mapper offered. Realizing
that all of its clients needs’
are unique, Baseline Business Geographics
Inc. easily customized Coverage Mapper
for Aliant Mobility’s specifications.
Aliant’s
customized Coverage Mapper application
accommodates coverage layers for multiple
technologies (e.g. digital, 1x, TMR
and paging). Aliant has also included
EAS boundaries and cellular site locations
in the application.
In addition,
Coverage Mapper is capable of providing
information about planned new sites,
date of their activation and areas
within the expanded coverage. All
of this information is regularly updated,
enabling CSRs to satisfy the customer
requirements for latest information,
available on a 24-hour basis.
Coverage Mapper
enables CSRs to answer queries immediately
and consistently, making each customer
contact productive and meaningful.
For instance, when a customer calls
to report a dropped call, the CSR
can identify whether the caller has
entered an area with coverage problems
or whether there may be issues with
the site serving that local area.
Coverage Mapper
can assist planners in analyzing network
quality to help the company model
demand and plan expansion in the most
cost-effective and profitable manner.
Coverage Mapper
is also capable of tracking and providing
location information. For example,
Coverage Mapper provided coordinates
to trouble tickets and recorded other
inquiries for products and services
with a location coordinate. At the
time, Aliant was not looking for that
particular functionality, but the
company saw the value in it and will
consider it in future releases of
the software.
The software
solution was designed so that CSRs,
selected marketing staff and dealers
were able to use the application.
Now, engineering has control over
which version of maps the CSRs use.
When sites are added, the Engineering
Department is able to get the information
to customer service right away.
Because
Aliant saw the value in implementing
Coverage Mapper, a deal was negotiated
for Atlantic Canada, in which 300
CSRs would implement Coverage Mapper
into their business processes. It
was rolled out within Aliant’s
budget and on time. The system was
officially launched in February 2003
and was deployed in call centers in
all 4 Atlantic Canadian provinces
by the end of March 2003.
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