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NetCologne

 

Background
Three partners founded NetCologne Gesellschaft für Kommunikation mbH in Cologne in 1994: the utility company GEW (Gas-, Elektrizitäts- und Wasserwerke Köln AG) and the savings banks Stadtsparkasse Köln and Kreissparkasse Köln. A regional fixed-network operator, the company provides the city of Cologne and the surrounding region with communication technology geared to the future. Following the liberalisation of the telecommunication market, NetCologne was able to offer a range of telephone and Internet services throughout Cologne in 1998. To date, more than 100,000 telephone customers and around 90,000 Internet customers have been won over by the favourable NetCologne rates and services. NetCologne's products range from telephone services to Internet and data services right through to complex corporate networks and special solutions for the media sector. In addition, about 75,000 broadband customers benefit from the high-quality TV and radio channels and the innovative telephone and Internet services provided by MultiKabel. Thus, within a short space of time, NetCologne has developed from a high-performing telecommunications provider to an innovative multimedia provider.

The Task
Thanks to its strong growth, NetCologne has become the second largest telecommunications provider in the Cologne/Bonn economic region after Deutsche Telekom. In particular, this growth has brought new tasks for the IT department. Because IT supports more than 80% of all services and business processes, it must keep pace with the growth. Transparency and efficiency are a must when it comes to developing and maintaining the systems because they keep the company manageable and ensure that the customer service retains its competitive high quality.

These were the reasons that led NetCologne to decide in August 1998 to expand and systematise its existing IT architecture. It joined forces with two other regional carriers to develop an IT strategy for small and medium-sized telephone carriers on the liberalised market. This collaboration resulted in the implementation of a hybrid customer care and billing system. The central system, "Clarify", controls and processes all the data in line with the specific requirements for each case with the help of the relevant subsystems. This architecture is considerably more extensive and complex than the original stand-alone solution and it is intended to grow as the company grows. But it still has to stay transparent and manageable in order to ensure that the employees can work efficiently and the customers receive good and swift service. So the questions were: How can business and IT processes be defined in such a way as to make them economically efficient? How can they be designed so as to ensure customer and staff satisfaction? How can systematic software testing and software quality management be developed for this purpose?

The Solution
For software testing and software quality management, NetCologne uses external support. SQS Software Quality Systems AG has been NetCologne's partner for software testing and software QM tasks since 1999. In particular, SQS experts test the areas where errors are expected and force those errors to the surface. In addition, they gradually introduce defined processes for software testing that are closely linked to the business and other IT processes.

SQS performs the following tasks for NetCologne:

  • Software quality assurance
  • Functional system testing
  • Documentation testing
  • Application testing
  • Integration testing
  • Security testing
  • Test automation using SQS-TEST®/Professional
  • Business-process optimisation
  • Configuration management
  • Implementation of project management procedures

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benefits for the Customer

  • There is less IT development and support effort required because errors are detected early and eliminated before system implementation
  • Quality-assured services and stable systems increase customer satisfaction
  • Cost transparency for management
  • The product-management team can control product development more flexibly
  • There are fewer burdens on developers and staff in the business departments, thus improving the results in the company's core processes
  • For NetCologne, outsourcing quality assurance is cheaper in the long run than performing those tasks themselves. The results are better because SQS can provide specialists for all of the different tasks, and NetCologne staff do not have to undergo time-consuming training
  • The software testing is carried out systematically and at an early stage resulting in more, better and cheaper testing with less time required
  • All business-critical business processes can be identified and tested using the test scalability