Rostelecom 2

• The implemented modules: Finance (accounting, tax, international accounting), separate cost accounting, treasury, logistics, calculations. Project management, management of the financial investments, consolidation.

Rostelecom (ERP system implementation project) - the project, largest in Europe, on implementation of a corporate information system of Microsoft Dynamics AX and the accompanying upgrade of information infrastructure of the company (more than 1000 jobs).

Solution and Contractor Selection

The accounting system had to meet requirements of company executives: the chief financial officer, the chief accountant and the CEO – the people acting as actually main customers of implementation.

According to representatives of Rostelecom, the decision to work with a management system of Microsoft Dynamics AH was made quickly. First, customers the price/quality attracted a ratio. Secondly, important factors were flexibility of a product and the specified implementation time. "The serious role was played by experience of the command selecting then a system, – Andrey Baklykov, the director of the department of information technologies of JSC Rostelecom says. – They saw before themselves really working solution and did not begin to hesitate with the choice of a system. At the same time it was obvious to all that at that time it has the fixed functions which are available for the competing ERP systems. At the global level functionality of different ERP solutions is very similar – nuances begin to be shown only at implementation at the specific enterprise".

As contractors the companies were selected AND Project and GMCS.

Project Progress

The first stage of implementation started at the beginning of 2002 and ended in one and a half years.

For implementation of a task the project team numbering 10 people consisting of the professional advisors having significant experience of implementation of ERP projects was made. Ekaterina Voropayeva who afterwards became the vice president of GMCS company headed a command.

When Rostelecom implemented a system, and the equipment was going to perform setup and the software installation in Moscow, and further already to carry on branches. But then it became clear: equipment suppliers will not be able to provide the necessary service level program and the hardware in the large cities, even in million plus cities. Therefore the centralized model was selected: all servers are in the Data processing center in Moscow. And jobs of Microsoft Dynamics AX are organized as terminal stations – also on solutions of Microsoft.

In a project deliverable on implementation a system was installed in all divisions of Rostelecom company, in all regions of Russia in the territory of 11 time zones.

To Microsoft Dynamics AX it is set on the server cores located in each federal district of Russia. The server platform of these cores is Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

As the company locates broadband channels between all the regional departments, the majority of jobs of Microsoft Dynamics AX are organized as terminal stations based on Microsoft Windows Server 2003.

Implementation was complete at the beginning of 2004.

Difficulties of the project

Andrey Baklykov: "Implementation went in parallel with restructuring of the company, and it was one of the main project risks. Everything changed: the data structure, the normative reference information, settings of a system, the procedure of reflection of transactions – were required additional modifications of a system. Respectively, the documents describing future system actually became outdated at the time of their creation as the business model constantly changed. And in the conditions of deadlines and constantly changing external factors we managed to start a system at the scheduled time".

Compliance to terms and plan of the budget

Effect from Implementation

As a result of complex software implementation of Microsoft in Rostelecom company the following results were achieved:

• transparency of the reporting and all management processes;
• uniform technology and management processes, uniform policy in all company, in all regional departments;
• centralization — an opportunity from the center effectively to manage processes in regions; expense reduction on maintenance of software due to centralization;
• the information security of the company due to use of security policies and group the politician, the security aids which are built in software and also increasing the level of security of the code of applications increased;
• performance of information systems due to use of applications with more effective code increased;
• there was a possibility of easy scaling of information systems based on properties of the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 server platform;
• there was new functionality in management, communication, document flow, such as receiving remote access to the ERP system of Microsoft Dynamics AX, a possibility of group work, etc.

Interesting Facts

Other telecommunications agencies entering into Svyazinvest holding in 2003 made the decision to implement the ERP system of Oracle. "When we decided to refuse Oracle as main system of management of databases, representatives of Microsoft guaranteed that a system will continue to work perfectly and at their platform. Negotiations on the organization of interaction were conducted at the level of the top management of the company in Europe – in negotiations Jean-Philippe Courtois, the senior vice president of corporation and a key figure took part in Microsoft on this side of Atlantic. He personally supervised questions of technical support", – Andrey Baklykov tells.

Read Also

• IT passport of Svyazinvest.

Sources

• Success tool