NCTA: Telution announces Shaw win

SAN FRANCISCO--Telution today announced Canadian cable company Shaw Communications is using its order management software for its multiservice offering that includes broadband cable TV, high-speed Internet, direct broadcast satellite and digital telephone services for 2.9 million customers.

The Telution COMX system has been in use for a period of months to enable Shaw to streamline the increasingly complex process of managing all the separate pieces of delivering new services, such as the digital telephone service Shaw recently announced. While much of the early convergence attention is being paid to combined billing, Telution "is trying to look at the big picture and all the front-and back-office issues that are involved," said Kent Steffen, the company's CEO and chief architect. Especially as cable companies move into voice and often have partnerships and reseller relationships, there are multiple steps involved in getting customers connected that need to be tracked and executed in a timely fashion.

"The IP network is working for VoIP, so now the issue is, 'Can we scale it' and 'Can we scale it operationally,'" he said.

Shaw uses the Telution COMX Order Management software to integrate to external partners, and to tie together billing and customer care systems to support its new voice services. COMX also allows Shaw to monitor activities around delivering on orders, including order capture, fallout and provisioning.

"Something has to happen at every step of the way in order fulfillment, whether it's telling a CLEC partner to port a number or telling a softswitch to turn on a customer," said Steffen. "We make sure the order is successful or fails and for failed orders, someone is notified."

The end goal is on-time delivery of service. Telution's software connects billing systems, trouble and service management systems, back-office middleware, and sits between the customer ordering process and the network activation process.

"We provide a back-office workbench that shows all tasks required to deliver on a service and overdue ones get routed to a desk, to get the person moving who has to act on that task to keep it on track," he explained.

The processes only get more complex as cable companies look to add services, such as gaming or other applications, and to develop more personalized service offerings and a greater level of interactivity.