Laetitia’s ta-da story: migrate up to 500 sites in one go
The expertise of those who work for our company and their diverse professional backgrounds is the main reason why Orange Business is so resourceful. The wide skill set of our employees is what enables us to meet the expectations of our customers, right when they need it the most. We like to call it the “ta-da!” effect.
I take care to simplify solution delivery
"My background is largely technical: I started out managing the installation of telephone exchanges. Then, at an Orange subsidiary, I worked on website hosting during the Internet boom of the 2000s. Today, I work with a team that operates and delivers unified communications services for our international customers. My role is to identify customer needs and to oversee the proper rollout of the solution offered to meet their expectations and constraints as well as the constraints of local operators. The other part of my role consists of making life easier for teams working to automate and simplify processes."
The key to automation? A quality database
"To illustrate this point with a real-life example: a banking group wanted to migrate its branches to a telephony-over-IP solution across 11 different countries. Normally, migrations proceed on a site-by-site basis: for each site, we ask the customer for all the information needed to update the various databases (site address, number routing software platform, connections with local emergency services in each country, etc.). In this case, we set up an automation system – a single database collecting all the information for the sites to be migrated and programming interfaces (APIs) that automatically push data to our business tools. This enabled us to limit data entry operations and the associated risk of error."
In such a large-scale project, the quality of collected data is crucial and – believe me – we did not skimp on advance testing! Not to mention the legal constraints in each country, notably in terms of data collection.
5,000 numbers migrated without a hitch
"One of the challenges to overcome was to limit the impact on bank branch offices: we had to work fast and even after hours. We worked in iterative fashion with our customer by testing the automated system at one branch, then two, then ten and so on. The customer’s fast responses during the trials enabled us to save valuable time. Once we were sure the system was viable, we were able to migrate 500 sites at once, a first for me. The success of this project was also due to the wide range of functions involved: the sales team, a telephone expert and a programming interface expert from Orange Innovation. This dual mastery of voice infrastructure and API development, combined with excellent teamwork between various functions, was essential to our success."
No worries about a failure on the big day
"By shifting the complexity and amount of work to the period before the migration, we kept risk to a minimum on this project, which gave us peace of mind. All the data control and consolidation work we did at the outset of the project ensured that all went according to plan on the big day, and we soon set aside any concern about a failure."
"Since then, our customer has continued transforming its business. We are now working together to open bank branches in other countries."
"By adapting it to each customer's needs, our automation tool can be reused on other projects. I’d like to end by emphasizing that there was more than a “ta-da!” with this customer: the speed of the rollout significantly cut back on the inconveniences that could have arisen, not to mention all the hard work of a tight-knit team that always kept an inventive spirit going to serve our customer."
