BT announced that it has signed up ‘Business Process Guidance’ software vendor Panviva to help it reduce manual errors in its order entry and processing departments.
A pilot of the Panviva SupportPoint technology in India saw an 80% reduction in error rates in complex manual order entry and processing, improved customer service and reduced costs. BT is now rolling the technology out to its BT Operate and Global Services divisions, covering 1,100 users across 20 countries.
Daryl Szebesta, director of service delivery at BT, told CBR that the technology is expected to reap payback on the initial investment within a year. The adoption of the technology was driven by the company’s stated goal of, “Being number one for customer service, and getting it ‘right first time’,” Szebesta said.
Szebesta said that order entry and processing is a people-intensive operation, and wherever people are involved there is, “Always the possibility of errors”.
The technology does not necessarily involve any changes to the business process itself. Rather, it is able to recognise where a particular operative is in their fulfilment of a business process, and push relevant information and help to those users in real-time, Szebesta said.
He said that operatives required no additional training as the technology is intuitive.
Asked whether there are any plans to roll the technology out across other areas of BT, Szebesta said, “Yes, we have done BT Operate and BT Global Services, and we are actively talking to all of the major functions to see whether they want to use the system, or how they might apply it. Those discussions are fairly well advanced.”
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How soon might Panviva be rolled out to other divisions? “We expect some of those discussions to reach a conclusion in six to eight weeks,” Szebesta said.
The software was installed on existing BT servers rather than requiring new IT infrastructure.
“The current economic situation is demanding companies do more with less. BT’s early experience of SupportPoint demonstrates how the solution can help companies drive down costs and assure customer service by improving process consistency, accuracy and quality,” said David Frenkel, CEO of Panviva. “SupportPoint can typically be implemented in three to six months, at low risk and at a cost that is relatively low when compared to alternative development programmes.”
