Quickest local Heat installation enables empowerment company to service multimillion-rand BP deal

One of the fastest South African installations of FrontRange`s customer service management solution, Heat, has enabled Intaba Technologies, a black economic empowerment (BEE) company that provides forecourt and retail information technology (IT) to the petrochemical industry, to meet its service level agreements with BP Southern Africa and other customers.

The multimillion-rand BP contract, Intaba`s first, entails servicing the point of sale and other technology at BP`s 180 Express Retail convenience outlets throughout SA, Botswana, Namibia and SA.

When technology problems arise, the convenience stores log a service call with the BP Customer call centre which then forwards the call to Intaba. Intaba logs the call in Heat and sends a field agent out to deal with the problem, reporting back to BP within specified time limits on the progress of the call.

BP required Intaba to go live with an incident management system within a month of awarding it the contract at the end of March 2004. By the time Intaba had canvassed various options - including having a system written from scratch - and made the decision to go with Heat, a week was left to get the system in, configured and taking calls.

David Lees of e2e, the FrontRange business partner that tackled the installation, says: "We were prepared to try and meet what was essentially an impossible deadline because Intaba Technologies were knowledgeable and willing enough to make quick decisions. Also, BP`s requirements were explicit, so we were always absolutely clear about what end results the system had to deliver.

"We split the installation into three phases. The first was to be able to take calls and issue tickets - and that happened within the first week. The second was to build in the business rules as per the service level agreements - and that took three weeks longer. And now we`re in the third phase of building in extra efficiencies such as SMS and e-mail notification of field agents, and e-mail notification of call status to the BP customer call centre.

"The whole project proves what can be done when there is commitment from the customer, defined requirements and a willingness to break the roll-out of results into components."

Intaba MD, Guy Morgan, says the decision to go with Heat was based primarily on cost. "Most of the other options we looked at were very expensive. By contrast, Heat was a pretty much off-the-shelf package with reasonably little customisation, which meant we could save time and money. Also, we were able to rent it rather than having to commit to a capital outlay.

"The cherry on the top was e2e being prepared to be flexible in helping us go live simultaneously with implementation and then also to do customisation more or less live.

"And the end result is a system that is performing exactly as we wanted. The deadlines did turn us all a little greyer around the temples, but without Heat we`d never have made them."

Tracey Newman, managing director of FrontRange Solutions South Africa, adds that Heat`s ease of installation is in no small way due its IT International Library (ITIL) compliance. "Obviously, one can`t do without the kind of expertise that David Lees and his people bring to the party. And a little more time for planning aimed at cutting out duplication of effort is always nice. But because Heat has been designed according to world best practice for infrastructure implementation, it automatically takes into account every conceivable permutation of customer needs and technology platform. So, it`s about as plug `n play as you can get considering its wealth of functionality."