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	CenturyTel Case Study [PDF]*


	CenturyTel

	Overview "As our business continued to grow, we needed to better control our material master," Cam Nolan, Director - SAP Support for Material Management for CenturyTel, said. "Optura gave us an on-time, on-budget solution." CenturyTel, Inc. provides communications services including local, long distance, Internet access and data services to more than 3 million customers in 22 states. The company, headquartered in Monroe, Louisiana, is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol CTL, and is included in the S&P 500 Index. CenturyTel is the 8th largest local exchange telephone company, based on access lines, in the United States. Challenge With operations in 22 states, CenturyTel generates 14,000+ purchase requisitions each year across a base of more than 6,500 requestors. As any requestor may need a new SAP material, the number of requests to set up new materials exceeds 500-600 per month with 45,000 materials defined to SAP. Recognizing the need for central control, CenturyTel established a Central Data Group (CDG) to manage these requests and to control data quality. Data quality is critical in order to avoid duplication and to assure consistency. When CenturyTel implemented SAP in 2000, it also implemented a packaged middleware application to control its material master set up. But problems emerged: there was limited visibility of material requests, no ability to escalate "stalled" requests, inflexible routing and a troublesome IDOC (or intermediate document) interface to SAP which required a full time resource to manage. Requests for new materials came in a variety of forms from email to faxes, and the entire burden of duplicate checking, data validation etc., fell directly on the CDG. Phone calls to the five people in the CDG mounted as they spent more and more time expediting and chasing stalled approval requests and addressing data problems. And because of limitations in routing functions, errors could not be easily routed back to end users. Optura Solution CenturyTel chose to replace their middleware solution with a product tightly integrated with SAP and especially oriented to companies using distributed requests for materials - Optura's Material Data Management� (MDM). "We wanted a company that had a proven, packaged solution and one that was willing to invest the time to really understand our needs," Nolan said. "Optura introduced us to their top solutions architect who worked with us at the detail level so we became very comfortable with our choice. The caliber of the people was exceptional. They are experts in solving these types of problems." MDM from Optura automates data capture, editing, approval and creation of SAP material masters from start to finish. The product supports a complete business process within SAP that begins with a request and completes with the automatic creation of the SAP master data records with full control and status visibility. With Optura's solution, users create requests for new materials using specialized SAP transactions provided by Optura. These documents are fully edited and validated at the time of entry with the product putting the request into pending status as it moves through approval and completion steps. Once approved, the request is then used to create the SAP material master records without re-keying. Nolan remarked, "Our users especially like the idea of being able to get immediate edit feedback and the ability to re-submit the same document after corrections are made. This means that errors are corrected before they are routed to the CDG. The functionality is very popular with our users." The product also gives immediate, real-time status visibility to all material requests so users can track the status of their own requests. And, the CDG gets reporting which shows the progress of documents and those that may be stalled. The product gives them the tools to manage the overall business process. Making it Happen At the onset, the project had clear goals. Implement a new solution in time for the company's upgrade. Eliminate IDOC interfaces to SAP. Empower requestors to be more self reliant. Re-allocate CDG resources to allow time to manage data quality. Improve reporting to facilitate management of the business process. To implement MDM, Optura deployed a small, focused team of technical and functional experts supplemented by the project management skills of a Client Services Manager (CSM). Building on their understanding of the requirements gathered during the sales cycle, Optura conducted onsite whiteboard sessions to "blueprint" CenturyTel's exact process flow and data validation needs. The result was a written depiction of exactly what was to be implemented before any configuration began. "Optura developed an extremely detailed functional design document which we used as a basis for our sign offs and configuration of the product," Nolan said. "It took time, but it was worth every bit of effort. It was also key to Optura's very effective knowledge transfer. Now we use it as a standard for other vendors to match." With the functional design completed, the application was configured along with a modest amount of ABAP programming using "z objects." These programs are used to perform CenturyTel-specific activities such as approval routing. "Our timeframe was tight and our budget cap fixed," said Nolan. "The Optura CSM kept us focused and really helped us manage scope. Our entire project had one modest change order and it was a very fair one. The Optura team was very efficient and the regular status calls with the CSM helped proactively remove obstacles." Optura understands that knowledge transfer is critical so customers are self-sufficient right away. Nolan remarked "Optura did a very effective job with knowledge transfer. It started early in the project and was based on the detailed functional and technical design documents. My people got comfortable fast, and Optura was very generous with their time to make sure we were ready." The go-live process was straight forward as users had ample time to test and integrate the new business process. "Our users readily embraced the product and we encountered no major issues during the go-live process," Nolan said. "The project came in on time and on budget." Bottom Line Cycle Time. Major improvement as re-work, back and forth shuffling, one-way routing and IDOC interface are eliminated. Rework. Rejection rate reduced from 20% to 8% as users get immediate feedback on errors at time of entry. Accuracy. Accuracy improved as better edits and duplicate controls are real time. On time and on budget are always expected, but ongoing results are what matters. CenturyTel has seen dramatic changes in resource utilization in the CDG and reduced IT costs. Nolan explains - "The full time resource we had managing the interface of the legacy application has been re-assigned and my people are now free to really manage the business process Now we have the time to do such things as looking into the reasons for duplicate material requests and looking hard at data quality. We have also been able to include tax code set up in our process with a 24-hour turn around - previously we set this on a spreadsheet at the end of the month. It's a more inclusive process now and much more effective."

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