Case study: Uthingo
Taking no chances on technology for the National Lottery
The problem: To provide South Africa with a cost-effective technology infrastructure for its first-ever National Lottery.
The background: When it's so easy, and costs so little to buy a ticket that could make you the next instant millionaire, it's no wonder that millions of South Africans are giving the thumbs up to what is already one of the best know slogans in the country: "Tata ma chance, tata ma millions."
But behind these dreams of easy riches lies a highly complex technological solution on which the whole enterprise depends.
When Uthingo Management was given the go-ahead to operate South Africa's first National Lottery, and the first online lottery in Africa, it chose US-based GTECH as its strategic partner. The reason was simple and compelling: GTECH is the world's leading supplier of computerised online lottery products and services.
GTECH, in turn, relies on local partners to implement and maintain its systems in countries where it operates -- always provided that the necessary local capabilities exist.
In South Africa, GTECH had a choice of possible implementation partners. It chose to go with Spescom DataFusion, a provider of end-to-end data and voice solutions, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Spescom, which is listed on the JSE Securites Exchange SA (JSE).
Why Spescom DataFusion?
"Because of the high levels of professionalism we found right from their initial presentation," said Uthingo Network Communications Manager Dave Wall seconded by GTECH.
GTECH needed a partner able to provide a nationwide service, including handling all its networking requirements and systems integration. To support such a project requires skills and resources of the highest calibre. Having such resources in-house, gave Spescom DataFusion staff the confidence to get across the message that the company's ultra-reliable, cost-effective solution was GTECH's best option.
The technical solution: The contract, in total worth almost R7 million, called for Spescom DataFusion to supply and install an Avaya Definity Enterprise Communications Server (ECS) Call Centre, at the primary site in Auckland Park, Johannesburg; and a duplicated system in Bloemfontein, the provincial capital of the Free State, as the secondary site.
The first value-added reseller (VAR) of Avaya (the former Enterprise Networks Division of Lucent Technologies) in South Africa, Spescom DataFusion has established itself as the country's market leader in Definity-based solutions.
This specific solution called for the linking of two Uthingo data centres, the first in Auckland Park, and the second in Bloemfontein.
"Auckland Park was chosen as the primary site, with the whole operation and management taking place there," explained Spescom DataFusion Project Manager Ben van der Walt. "Bloemfontein was planned originally just to be a redundant, disaster-recovery site. The specified equipment is almost a duplicate of what was to be installed in Johannesburg, but smaller."
In addition, Uthingo required seven regional offices to be located in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Nelspruit and Bloemfontein. These were to be equipped with Business Communication Server (BCS) systems.
The main call centre was connected via the Avaya DCS proprietary signalling protocol, Cisco routers and high-speed Diginet lines to ensure full feature transparency and intelligent routing between all sites. As this was to form a virtual private network, there is no legal bar to running both voice and data traffic over the same system as long as they remain within Telkom specifications.
The call centre itself was to be equipped with 95 agent positions initially, 65 in Auckland Park and 30 in Bloemfontein. It was calculated that these would be able to handle some 20 000 calls a day from members of the public inquiring about anything from winning numbers to vendor locations, and from retailers experiencing problems with their terminals.
Both main and standby call centres were to be equipped with a 2Mb E1 interfaces connected to Telkom and the installed Cisco routers capable of using Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) compression techniques to ensure maximum utilisation of available bandwidth. The installed Definity ECS also needed to be able to handle ordinary day-to-day business communications by non-call-centre staff.
The implementation: Implementation began in November 1999, with the first lottery draw due to take place in March 2000.
"The logistics of an implementation as big as this require a major effort and take a lot of time, but we have got this down to a pretty fine art," said Van der Walt.
Perhaps surprisingly for a contract of this size, Spescom DataFusion's implementation team for the entire countrywide roll out totalled only six people from the company's office in Centurion, Gauteng, and four from the various regions (Cape Town, Bloemfontein, East London and Durban).
"These were people with specialised skills in the products themselves, in installation techniques, programming and training, with myself as a project manager," he said.
Auckland Park was the first site tackled and this was completed by the end of January. Bloemfontein followed and then the regional sites, with the entire project being operational by mid-February -- only a month before the first draw was due. While this was undoubtedly cutting things fine, work by other contractors was going on at the same time and this resulted in a number of delays.
This other work involved the refurbishing of the building housing Uthingo -- "meaning we sometimes had to work around other people," said van der Walt.
The refurbishment also delayed the laying of cables, causing a concertina effect as, obviously, there were aspects of Spescom DataFusion's implementation that could be started only when the cable crew had completed their work.
"Looking at all the difficulties we faced, the work we had to do in and the time frame in which we had to complete it, I think our team logged up one hell of an achievement," he said.
The results: The first draw was held on the 11th March 2000, and the event was rated a great success by all involved.
Behind the scenes, tensions that had built up evaporated.
"Any big project has tensions, and a timeframe like this is bound to take a stressful toll," said van der Walt, "but in the end the job was completed in good time."
"We learned a great deal in terms of working with people accustomed to a fast moving society and business environment. It was essential for GTECH to understand that in Africa intervening factors may slow up the overall processes. For example, we were dependent on Telkom and had to wait until they were in a position to provide the ISDN and Diginet lines.
"Early on, the people at GTECH may have had doubts as to whether we knew what we were doing, but in the end they were clearly impressed with our skills and on occasions, even asked us for advice."
The call centre operation required intensive training to ensure smooth running and is now equipped for approximately 65 call agents in Johannesburg. And while Bloemfontein was initially set up as a disaster recovery site, it is now functioning full-time with nine call centre agents on duty. To the callers, it makes no difference. Unless they ask, they would never know whether their call is being answered by an agent in Bloemfontein or Johannesburg.
The benefits: Avaya's Definity ECS delivers seamless integration of Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) functions, providing a flexible method for distributing incoming calls efficiently, intelligently and equitably among agents. Indeed, its Call Vectoring feature is widely recognised as the most powerful and flexible method of routing incoming calls and utilising agent and system resources available in the call centre marketplace. Further, its patented Expert Agent Selection (EAS) feature provides a method to match agent skills with caller needs.
Being modular, the system can be expanded as necessary. Further, its flexibility allows calls to be answered in five languages, currently.
"While South Africa has 11 official languages, we established from language experts that virtually everyone in the country can understand at least one of the five languages available," said van der Walt. "When you dial in you select the language most comfortable for you."
Another advantage of the system's flexibility is that while players can call in free, retailers (who profit from the lottery) pay for their calls.
GTECH's Wall added: "Uthingo will be able to manage the relationship with Spescom DataFusion from a single contact nationally, thus ensuring uniformity through the country. Administration of all systems can also be handled centrally, and equipment can be redeployed at any time between sites. Because the user interface remains the same for all sites, no retraining will be required when relocating staff."
And in terms of leading edge, Uthingo is among the first companies in Africa to benefit from the legal use of VoIP. By utilising its data network for voice as well, voice calls can be made virtually free.
Ongoing issues: While the system is up and running successfully, that's by no means the end of the job for Spescom DataFusion.
"We always knew that we would have to go back and tweak the system to ensure it operates at peak efficiency," said Van der Walt. "On a big system like this there is always a settling in period and a learning curve to go though"
"That said, there is already agreement with our partners that the implementation is a success. And while the players are interested only in seeing their numbers come up, the lottery clearly is a big hit."
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