US West

US WEST REDUCES OPERATING COSTS WITH INTEGRATED EMAIL AND INTRANET

To remain competitive in the rapidly changing telecommunications industry, US WEST is developing strategies to offer integrated voice, data, wireless, and Internet services both in and out of its original region, as regulation permits. One way the company is financing expansion is by reducing costs and increasing employee productivity. To help achieve these goals, the company is integrating email and a corporate intranet enabled by Netscape client and server software.

The US WEST intranet infrastructure is based on Netscape SuiteSpot server software. The company has also licensed approximately 50,000 copies of Netscape Navigator. With an average of 91,000 hits a day, US WEST's intranet provides several essential applications:

Email
- Streamlined email processing infrastructure.
- Access to documents and presentations by clicking the hyperlinks in email messages.
- Online registration for Netscape email.
Directory services
- Access to a directory containing employees' names, email, fax, pager, and physical address.
Intranet applications
- Rumor Mill, a company-moderated employee discussion site.
- Ability to check mainframe-based application for availability of telephone facilities.
- Life Situations Database, which provides employee benefits information.
- Corporate newspapers and daily news advisories.
- The company is exploring additional applications based on Netscape SuiteSpot's Certificate, Catalog, and Directory servers.

US WEST chose Netscape because of its:

commitment to open standards,
broad-reaching capabilities of the SuiteSpot family, and
cross-platform client software.

US WEST Communications Group provides telecommunications services to more than 25 million customers in 14 states. Like other telecommunications companies, US WEST is moving beyond telephone calling services to provide an integrated package of telephony, data, cellular, and entertainment services to its customers.

To compete effectively, US WEST has deployed a corporate intranet based on Netscape SuiteSpot server products and 50,000 seats of Netscape Navigator client software. Its goal is to reduce internal operating costs and improve employee productivity, and customer service. "We selected Netscape because we needed a solution based on open, nonproprietary standards to connect to our heterogeneous computing environment," says Barbara Bauer, executive director of corporate systems development.

The company uses its Global Village intranet to:

streamline document distribution by sending emails with links to documents published on the intranet,
integrate with a mainframe system to determine when new telephone facilities will be available, and
comply with upcoming government regulations by providing competitors with access to customer information.

"Netscape displayed a willingness to listen to what we wanted," says Patricia Hursh, manager of US WEST's intranet. "SuiteSpot satisfies all our intranet application requirements."

COMBINING THE PUSH OF EMAIL WITH THE PULL OF THE INTRANET

To reduce internal operating costs, US WEST is using Global Village to cut down on printing and distribution costs for documents such as employee forms and presentations. "One of our concerns in adopting an intranet as a primary strategy for internal communications was that we had to rely on employees to come and get the information," says Hursh. "Because Netscape Mail is integrated with the Web, we can combine the push of email and the pull of the intranet. We'll send out an email to selected employees letting them know they're expected to take an action, such as downloading a new presentation. Embedded in the message is a hyperlink to the information on the intranet. The beauty is that we're no longer mailing multipage documents as attachments. Instead, we send short summary messages that communicate expectations, and then employees go to the intranet and get what they need." Employees can register for Netscape Mail from the intranet.

"We expect significant time and cost reductions from this application and plan to use it to replace the benefits handbook, health care enrollment package, corporate policies and practices, various reference cards and information, and newsletters," says Hursh.

SEAMLESS MAINFRAME APPLICATIONS INTEGRATION

As business grows at US WEST, escalating requests for telephone service make it challenging for the company's 6,000 customer service representatives to give accurate information about service dates. "When we offered telephone services only, we could confidently tell customers the facilities would be available in 48 hours," says Dave Laube, vice president and chief information officer. "Now, with the great economic growth in our region and the increased demand for additional phone lines for the Internet, we can't promise the standard installation interval without verifying that facilities are available." The incentive was huge: US WEST was subject to regulatory oversight by a public utility commission that threatened to impose million-dollar fines for every month that customer complaints exceeded reasonable levels.

Although the information was available on a mainframe application, it was not accessible to customer service representatives. US WEST considered a traditional client-server solution for providing access to the mainframe application but rejected it because it would take a year-and-a-half to complete and cost $3 million. Instead, to solve the challenge, US WEST developed a Web-based facility-check application based on Netscape Enterprise Server with an interface to a mainframe engineering application.

While on the phone with a customer, the customer service representative uses Netscape Navigator to enter the customer's address into a form. Behind the scenes, a data-gathering agent written in programming languages accesses the mainframe engineering application. Various application screens are captured, parsed, and interpreted into HTML and served with Enterprise Server. The telephone facility information is then delivered in plain language via Netscape Navigator to the customer service representative's desktop. "Use of Enterprise Server enables us to make a realistic service commitment," says Laube. "The number of customer complaints dropped immediately to acceptable levels.

"With Netscape server products, we developed the application in less than three months, and training time has been reduced to five minutes of coaching. I have never seen such a large-scale system built and deployed so quickly."

The facility-check application is yielding great savings because employees are able to give out accurate information the first time, eliminating the need to rework service requests and manage customer complaints.

RUMOR MILL APPLICATION FOSTERS COMMUNITY

In addition to improving customer service and compliance with federal regulations, Netscape server products facilitate communication and collaboration among employees. "Our most successful use of the intranet for communication and collaboration has been the Rumor Mill, which is an intranet site managed by our information technologies group," says Laube. IT employees access a Web page where they use a form to ask questions, raise issues or concerns, and share rumors. Their input is then posted, along with the appropriate leader's response, on the Rumor Mill bulletin board. "We have found that this application is an effective and efficient way to communicate in a timely manner with employees across the company about issues that are currently on their minds," says Laube.

Currently, Rumor Mill runs on Netscape Enterprise Server. US WEST is considering moving the content to an Oracle database and using Netscape Catalog Server so that employees can search for topics on multiple servers.

NEW APPLICATIONS AND DIRECTORY SERVICES PLANNED

In the future, US WEST plans to add more functions to Global Village, including providing access to paycheck stubs, time reporting, and expense management. The company is currently researching privacy options.

New "interconnect" telecommunications regulations require that US WEST provide other carriers with access to certain information about its customer base. The company plans to comply with this regulation by using Netscape Certificate Server as an interface to its Oracle database. "By authenticating the identity of people who attempt to access the system and encrypting sensitive information, Certificate Server will allow us to comply with regulations without compromising the integrity of our assets," says Hursh.

US WEST is also testing Netscape Directory Server to provide companywide email directories and will implement it when Netscape Navigator 4.0 is released.

"Global Village has proven to be a valuable business tool for US WEST," says Laube. "With more than 20,000 employees accessing it, our intranet infrastructure is now in place. It has truly become one of the most important tools in our computing portfolio."

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