BT Teams Up With Outsourcer

READING, U.K. -- Xansa, the international business process and IT services company, and BT, one of Europe's leading providers of telecommunications services, announce they will combine their expertise to offer Xansa clients enriched service centre functionality as part of a fully-managed and end-to-end service to support Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) propositions.

Under a five-year contract, BT will provide Xansa with a bespoke implementation of Agile Contact Central, part of BT's suite of Siebel-based Contact Central CRM solutions, and multimedia voice over IP connectivity services. Hosted in the UK, the service desks will support Xansa's operations in India and the UK via a functionally rich, fully end-to-end managed service. Xansa is building potential capacity for 10,000 seats in India within its established technology centres in Chennai, Delhi and Pune.

BT's multi-channel and hosted solution is scalable and will enable Xansa to meet growing demand for business processes that require robust voice or data services that are inbound or outbound, onshore or offshore. It will enable Xansa to integrate all the contact channels its clients use in a way that minimises risk and initial capital expenditure.

Xansa has a reputation for managing industry-specific, complex and high-value back-office business processes through its integrated UK and India delivery capability. It currently does so for major Financial Services, Telecommunications and Utilities companies as well as its own Finance, HR and IT Customer Service Desks.

Steve Weston, Xansa's UK Managing Director says, "Even when managing complex back-office processes, which is what sets Xansa apart from its competitors, there is an element of voice interaction. Agile Contact Central provides Xansa with this ability for client-facing interactions and on demand as required. For example, when managing Accounting & Finance helpdesk processes, Xansa takes around 2,000 calls per day from employees and suppliers. Our clients appreciate the ability to resolve issues quickly this way. They also want to be able to ramp up the scope and scale of service at speed. BT is a natural choice."

Joint Innovation, Skills and Strong Relationships

"This deal is a great example of how by integrating our hosted Siebel-based applications and connectivity services, we can offer customers a flexible and scalable CRM solution," says Steve Ackling, Director of Marketing and Channels, BT Major Business. "BT's CRM solution delivers specific functionality to specific agents as Xansa's business requires, without having to release significant capital investment for unused functionality or capacity. Xansa, in turn, is able to increase the speed, quality and complexity of the business processes it delivers for its customers."

Xansa Chief Executive, Alistair Cox, says, "The win-win for BT and Xansa is being able to create compelling solutions that improve our clients' business performance. This involves our joint innovation, the skills of our people and our strong relationships with clients. We are both focused on managing delivery of solutions that allow our clients to focus on their own core skills and capabilities. We look forward to continuing a close business relationship with BT to further our complementary aims."

In a separate release:

LONDON -- In 2003, BT Global Services, BT's business services and solutions division, "cemented its credibility as an international outsourcing partner" according to the latest European Carrier Scorecard published by industry analyst The Yankee Group. BT's customer care strategy was also singled out for praise.

The report - Part 2 of the analyst's European Carrier Scorecard - examines the approach of key suppliers in the European corporate market to serving European multisite organisations with international communications needs.The focus of the report is on supplier strategy and structure, with eleven suppliers being evaluated.

Yankee Group commented: "For BT, key public sector wins in Germany and Spain signalled the successful replication of expertise developed at home. The combination of network and IT-centric skills now housed within BT Global Services are being taken into key European countries, where strong local teams are being established."

The analyst also observes that BT's plans to revamp its customer service are starting to yield results. " We determined that BT Global Services' customer care strategy, encompassed in its standard operating environment (SOE) initiative, is the most comprehensive from a European customer-, business- and network-centric perspective," said Yankee Group research director Camille Mendler. “Internal performance measures affect staff at all levels, and are an important way to strengthen supplier accountability to customers."

Andy Green, chief executive officer of BT Global Services, said: "It is always encouraging to have your efforts recognised by one of the leading industry analysts. Key contract wins such as Unilever, the Bavarian State Government, the Ministry of Public Administration in Spain, Honeywell and the Financial Times have really put BT's name back on the international map. We have also seen positive improvements in our customer satisfaction tracking surveys- a return on our £80 million investment programme to consolidate and integrate customer service processes and systems globally."

The Yankee Group report identifies BT Global Services, T-Systems, and Infonet as the most ICT-oriented suppliers with BT also being commended for having one of the most stable management teams.

BT Group plc