Oracle Customer Success—PosteMobile

PosteMobile Optimizes Billing Process, Ensures Business Continuity, and Reduces Call Establishment Time by 80%

In the mobile communications industry, online credit recharging platforms for prepaid packages must have the fastest possible response time, in order not to impact the clients’ customer experience. Thanks to our platform migration to Oracle Exadata Database Machine, we dramatically reduced authorization and call charging times to provide our customers with world-class service.

— Alberto Corradetti, Head of Mobile Network Department, PosteMobile

PosteMobile is a mobile virtual network operator in the Poste Italiane Group since November 2007 and has more than 3.3 million active customers. In addition to providing complete and convenient traditional mobile services for private and public sector organizations, PosteMobile offers a range of mobile services that are integrated with mobile-payment, mobile-banking, and mobile-commerce services available via the Italian Post Office Group. PosteMobile is the first solution in the Italian market to provide mobile payment, banking, and commerce capabilities. PosteMobile users can pay with their subscriber identity module (SIM) card and payment is automatically debited from their credit cards.

Business Challenge

Migrate the company’s communications service online credit recharging and billing platform to a robust, integrated, scalable hardware platform to reduce response times, decrease costs, and support increasing data volumes to enhance customer service
Reduce customer complaints related to delayed billing information

Provide marketing and sales departments with real-time information about network traffic updates and pay-as-you-go card consumption data, to monitor mobile services sales and support new business strategies
Ensure business continuity and database performance to support the group’s 24/7 communications services
Reduce the time that IT team members spend managing and maintaining the billing platform, allowing them to focus on other strategic projects
Reduce downtime in the event of scheduled maintenance
Streamline monthly management processes and non-real-time activities by using redundant architecture

Replaced legacy hardware with Oracle Exadata Database Machine and five SPARC T4-4 servers running Oracle Solaris, reducing billing query response time by 30%
Migrated Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management to Oracle Exadata Database Machine to streamline and stabilize all billing processes, creating a robust and scalable architecture

Eliminated commercial and administrative customer complaints by 30%, thanks to the new Oracle infrastructure that provides communications network traffic information in real time
Reduced from 350 milliseconds to 70 milliseconds the time of establishment of a voice call, due to the significant reduction in response time of the billing platform for credit verification
Made customer traffic data available in real time—including voice, short message service, internet usage, and credit recharging information—enabling the group to monitor traffic and act quickly to address emerging issues
Achieved disaster recovery times of less than two hours with a second, remotely-located Oracle Exadata Database Machine, safeguarding data integrity
Enhanced communications service quality by monitoring system performance in real time and enabling proactive intervention in the event of system failure, using Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c
Improved stability of billing environment and reduced maintenance requirements, enabling the IT team to focus on creating new customer loyalty features
Increased customer satisfaction thanks to improved service quality
Improved business continuity in the event of a problem, with Oracle Active Data Guard ensuring dual redundancy at PosteMobile’s primary site

Oracle is a leading provider of hardware and software solutions for the communications industry. Its technology enables companies focused on rapid business growth to scale and support increasing usage volumes.

— Vincenzo Imbriani, Head BSS, PosteMobile

Execution

After a very thorough planning process, PosteMobile began implementation in May 2012 and completed the migration in October 2012. PosteMobile worked with Oracle Consulting throughout the process to avoid risks and ensure business continuity.

“PosteMobile is the first European telecommunications operator to successfully migrate Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management onto Oracle Exadata Database Machine. Oracle Consulting helped us to manage the migration safely and as quickly as possible while maintaining data essential to PosteMobile’s core business. With an Exadata cluster at PosteMobile’s primary site and the advantages of Oracle Active Data Guard’s capabilities, we are able to use very advanced business continuity practices. The success we’ve achieved with this project has enabled us to extend our relationship with Oracle Consulting and achieve a disaster recovery platform that ensures business continuity,” said Vincenzo Imbriani, Head BSS, PosteMobile.