A consortium of companies from outside the UK, operating cable franchises in the UK.  With members such as Southwestern Bell, Videotron and five other companies, this consortium had extensive experience in both cable and telephony, but none had experience in both sectors.

Project Summary

Project Director, for the development of a common system specification

Background

The UK was de-regulating the telephony industry breaking British Telecom’s monopoly on domestic telephone service.  Cable TV companies, with existing infrastructure that technically could support the business opportunity, were being acquired by overseas cable and telephony operators to develop experience in the market of delivering both the services.

Each member had installed AS400 subscriber management software from their own background, be it cable or telephony, to operate their businesses, but there wasn’t a single solution for both cable and telephony – an essential for cross-selling and account management.

Requirement

Develop a function specification for a system that consolidated the two businesses, so that the specification could be the basis of an RFP to two software suppliers.

Approach

• Tours and demonstrations of members operations and It departments.
• Review functional specifications of both systems. Documentation of each was very different.
• Analysis and comparison of the two systems to determine commonalities and differences.
• Workshops with members’ marketing representatives, engineering and provisioning management and IT representatives to develop additional requirements.
• Documented upgrades required to each system, and upgrades to be considered for both system.
• Documented detailed specifications for estimating.
• Produced a single Functional Specification for target system.