CASE STUDY: SYSTEM TELECOM1 Introduction Throughout this book, we have included examples of how principles are put

into practice. The applications used to illustrate the practice include hospital systems, customer systems of various kinds, a library system, student enrolment in a college and others. This diversity also serves to emphasise the wide application knowledge often required of systems analysts. As a contrast we have included a case example so that there can be a more comprehensive treatment of one application. The example we have chosen is the customer services function from a European telecommunications company. Its not a real company of course, but it is rooted in practicality, with data and ideas drawn from several telecommunications companies and the experience of analysts working in this business area. The material here is some narrative describing the company, some of the dataow diagrams for the required system, and a data model. There are exercises based on this case study at the end of most of the chapters. Company Background System Telecom is a large European telecommunications business with a turnover in excess of 4000m making prots before taxation of just over 20%. It has maintained a record of continuously rising prots since it was established. Its latest annual report says that System Telecom is positioned to achieve above average levels of growth. It is in one of the worlds fastest-growing industries, where the pace of change is likely to accelerate. It believes that it is now where the motor industry was in the 1930s, with many decades of growth and opportunity to come. To perform strongly in the future, however, it will need to implement a continuing programme of new business development, and from the range of opportunities presented to it, it must select those that give it the optimum return. System Telecom is in a capital-intensive business, and always has to balance the income from existing businesses with investment in new businesses. Reducing the investment in new business enables prot to be maximised in the short term, but to the detriment of future growth. Over-investment will reduce immediate prots and cash ow for the benet of the long term. The shareholders in System Telecom pay particular attention to this balance and to investment in research and development, and new technologies. The company spends between 2% and 3% of its turnover on R&D. It believes that the introduction of new services based on technological as well as market research gives it a

(Ref: System Analysis & Design: Donald Yeates & Tony Wakefield)

competitive edge. It views new systems in the same way, and expects new computer based information systems to support business goals and generate competitive advantage. The shareholders in System Telecom are unusual. Unlike most European telecommunications operations, which are state run, recently privatised or on the way to privatisation, System Telecom was set up deliberately to take advantage of the opening up of the European telecommunications market. This followed highly controversial and bitterly contested legislation introduced by the European Commission aimed at breaking down the protective and nationalistic stances of many EU members. System Telecoms shareholders have pledged longterm funding to establish an aggressive and highly competitive technologically based business that will generate a growing prots stream as their own original businesses plateau or decline. Strategically, System Telecom intends to be the European leader in three core sectors: premium and business services, mobile communications, and basic telecommunications. Central to its premium and business services is EUROCAB, a transnational data highway linking together Europes major business centres. Services offered through EUROCAB include Bandswitch, the worlds rst variable-bandwidth data transmission network. This allows companies to transmit high volumes of data at great speed to many distant sites without the cost of permanently leasing large amounts of transmission capacity. Also offered to major companies is the equivalent of a private network and, for individual customers, an international charge card that allows customers to make domestic and international calls from anywhere on the System Telecom network and have the cost of the call billed to a single account. Future products under consideration include personal numbering, a service already available in parts of the USA, which allows users to redirect their calls from home to ofce or to wherever they are at particular times of the day. System Telecoms innovative and entrepreneurial approach has led to a number of highly publicised and commercially successful ventures outside the European Union. It has joined with four substantial Japanese corporations to offer premium services in Japan, with the intention of linking these to Hong Kong and Singapore. In the former Soviet Union it has set up several joint venture companies, including one with Intertelecom, the leading local carrier, to provide international telecommunications as the countries of the former Eastern bloc move towards commercial, market-led economies. The mobile communications business is still largely conned to the UK and Germany, where it is experiencing rapid growth in subscribers and number of calls. In the UK the service operates mainly within the M25 ring. A new service has just been launched in Germany in the industrialised areas along the Rhine corridor. Like most hi-tech companies, System Telecom relies enormously on the skills of its people, and places great emphasis on motivating, training and developing people in an international context. It has founded System Telecom University to be the focal point for development and training in technological and Business skills. Although the company has a hard and aggressive

business prole it prides itself on being a responsible corporate citizen, and it supports a wide range of charitable, community and cultural projects across Europe. Systems Background The System Telecom Board recognises that the success of its business strategy is largely dependent upon its procedures and systems. The effective use of IT systems will be critical in giving the company a competitive edge. A strategic study was commissioned, and the study report identied specic functional areas where automated systems are essential to the efcient running of the organisations. These functional areas are: customer services; management information; personnel; payroll/pensions. The customer services function is the area to be considered here. This function provides the administrative basis for the services offered by the company, and will be fundamental in achieving business success. The main task areas within this function are: customer registration; call logging and charging; billing; payment recording; number maintenance; pricing policy. Customer registration Customers may be from the commercial or domestic sectors, and are accepted subject to various credit checks. Customer identication details are held and maintained by the system. Once customers are registered they may subscribe to services, such as fax and telephone, and may have numbers allocated for their use of those services. They then become responsible for payment for all Calls logged to those numbers. They may request new numbers or cancel existing numbers as required. Customers who have cancelled all of their numbers continue to be maintained on the system for two years. This widens the customer base for mailshots regarding new services, promotions, etc. Call logging and charging Calls are logged by three factors: duration, distance, and timing. Various combinations of bands within those categories are used to calculate the cost of each call. System Telecom operates a number of tariff and subscription schemes that provide

nancially advantageous facilities for both commercial and domestic customers. The applicable tariff plans are taken into account when calculating charges. System Telecom aims to provide an efcient service at the lowest possible cost to the consumer, and therefore customers are constantly reviewed for inclusion in suitable pricing schemes. Billing Bills are issued on a periodic basis. This is usually quarterly but may be monthly, halfyearly or yearly, subject to negotiation with the customer. The bills itemise all charges, both for service subscriptions and for call charges. Tariff plan discounts are also shown. Reminder bills are issued a fortnight after billing, and payment must be made within one month of the issue of this bill or the services are automatically disconnected following issue of a disconnection notice. Payment must be made in full, plus the reconnection charge, prior to the resumption of services. Customers are not eligible for reconnection following a second disconnection. Bad debts are passed to the debt collection department on issue of the disconnection notice. There is also a set payment scheme whereby customers make regular xed payments that are offset against their bills. These payments are shown on the bills. Any credit/debit is carried forward to the year-end reconciliation, when a nal bill is issued. Payment recording Payments may be made in various ways: by cash/cheque at specied outlets; by standing order; by automatic deduction from credit/debit cards; by direct debit. Payments are made subsequent to bills being issued. The method is recorded for each customer. Number maintenance Numbers are held on the system and are either allocated to customers or available for allocation. New numbers are specied periodically and set up so that they may be allocated when required. Pricing policy The company has several approaches to pricing and uses a number of tariff plans. These are regularly reviewed and updated in order to ensure their continuing competitiveness. Customers subscribe to services via tariff plan agreements. Additional information about System Telecom is shown on the following charts and diagrams and in the accompanying narrative.

Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) The Level 1 DFD shows the required system that is, the areas of processing that are intended to be automated. The system will support the customer services function within System Telecom, and the DFD identies six distinct areas of processing within this function. These areas are dened as the following: 1 Maintain Customers. 2 Record Calls. 3 Issue Bills. 4 Record Payments. 5 Maintain Rates. 6 Maintain Customer Facilities. Process 5 Maintain Rates is shown with an * in the bottom right-hand corner: this indicates that there is no decomposition of this process into smaller areas of processing. Processes marked in this way are explained instead by an Elementary Process Description, which is a textual explanation of the process. Every other process on the Level 1 DFD would be further decomposed by a Level 2 DFD, and they are therefore not marked with an asterisk. Examples of Level 2 DFDs are provided for processes 1 and 4. There are seven sequentially numbered datastores. Each datastore represents a grouping of stored data items. The same datastore may be shown more than once on the diagram if doing this makes the DFD easier to read. An additional line at he left-hand side of the datastore box indicates where this has occurred and that he datastore appears more than once. There are nine External Entities shown on the diagram: each one represents a source and/or destination of data. An additional line across the top left-hand corner of the external entity box shows that they have been included on the diagram more than once, just as with datastores. The arrows on the diagram represent the ow of data. Data may be entered by an external entity a Customer provides Payment/Bank details to Process 4; read from a datastore by a process Process 3 reads Tariff amounts from datastore d3; written to a datastore Process 1 writes customer details to datastore d1; output to an external entity Process 3 informs the Debt Collection Department of bad debtors; output to one process from another the Level 2 DFD for Maintain Customers shows Process 1.1 sending details of an accepted customer to Process 1.2. The Level 2 DFDs are enclosed by a boundary box. This separates

the processes from the interfaces to the external entities and the logical data stores.

System Telecom Level 1 DFD Required System

Level 2 DFD Maintain Customers

Level 2 DFD: Record Payments

The DFD denes the processing that the system will carry out but not how the system will work. There is no sequence implied in the numbers allocated to the processes or the datastores; they are merely labels. In essence the DFD shows the means of triggering an area of processing and the data that is input, updated and output while the process is carried out.

1. The case study information you have shows a level 1 DFD and two level 2 DFDs for System Telecom. Using the level 2 DFDs as models, and the other case study information, draw a level 2 DFD for the process Issue Bills. 2. Having drawn the level 2 DFD for Issue Bills write the elementary process description for one of the process boxes.