Advanced Info Service

Serena Dimensions helps AIS enhance quality and efficiency as it manages change:

• Provides one central system for managing all issues
• Enhances product quality and customer satisfaction
• Improves on-time release
• Reduces errors by 50 percent after release
• Contributes to 98 percent SLA resolution
• Shortens the average time to resolve problems
• Allows the company to implement best practices and standards
• Drives efficiency that boosts profitability

“Dimensions has changed the way we manage our business processes. By tracking our change transactions and development history, we have increased productivity and improved service quality.”
- Tipmanee Kwankonchim, Assistant Vice President, Performance and Service Level Management, AIS

Automated change control shortens resolution times, reduces errors – enhancing customer satisfaction and profitability

Worldwide, the promise of wireless technology is quickly becoming a reality for millions, who now can’t imagine life without anytime, anywhere communication and information access. In Thailand, a country of more than 65 million, Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited (AIS) leads the wireless revolution. Approximately 17 million people – a full quarter of the country’s population – use AIS mobile services, making the company the top mobile operator in Thailand. Based in Bangkok, the company serves customers nationwide with 27 locations and 500 dealers.

Currently, AIS offers three main mobile products – GSM Advanced (900 mhz), GSM1800, and 1-2 Call (Pre-paid calls) – along with a variety of services to enhance communication and quality of life for its customers. Quality products and reliable service are the company’s top objectives.

To retain its competitive edge and increase market leadership, AIS rolls out new, more advanced versions of its products and services about every one to two months. With multiple releases in progress at any given time, the company must manage changes closely in order to deliver releases by target dates and keep errors to a minimum.

Previously, AIS managed change on its applications manually, keeping up with all issues with hard copy documentation. With this inefficient approach, the company was challenged to deliver releases on time, to resolve problems under the guidelines of service-level agreements (SLA), and minimize defects after releases. At times, a released version might not be the same one the company actually tested.

Flexible, scalable change management

AIS sought a workflow application that would allow teams to manage the complete development lifecycle and effectively track and distribute releases. AIS brought in Serena Dimensions, a flexible, scalable, and comprehensive change management platform. AIS was attracted to the reputation Serena Software has as an industry leader and its software’s flexibility for workflow creation, which would allow AIS to customize workflows to meet its specific and changing needs.

Approximately 300 AIS team members across Business System Integration, Development, Testing, and Services Infrastructure Deployment now use Dimensions to control every aspect of the development process across all the company’s product lines. The software simplifies and automates change management throughout the entire application lifecycle, from requirements gathering to analysis to development, coding, testing, and deployment.

Each issue moves automatically through a series of key steps until resolution. First, the issue routes to Business System Integration for authorization, then moves on to Development, and then Testing. With testing successfully completed, the project is verified as completed and then sent on to Services Infrastructure Deployment before it is closed.

The system immediately alerts individuals if anything goes too long without being addressed. This tight process control ensures that teams complete work within specific SLA parameters. Plus, it enables AIS to manage development and changes on multiple projects at once, without missing any requests. All users can determine the status of an issue at any time, and see a complete history of development and change transactions. The company can run reports to analyze the type of issues submitted and take proactive steps to reduce the number of incidents.

Increased productivity and improved service quality

As a result, the company shortens the average time to resolve problems, helping it release applications on time much more frequently. Since implementing Dimensions, it has reduced the average number of errors on each release by about 50 percent, and it meets SLA requirements 98 percent of the time.

“Dimensions has changed the way we manage our business processes,” said Tipmanee Kwankonchim, Assistant Vice President, Performance and Service Level Management at AIS. “By tracking our change transactions and development history, we have increased productivity and improved service quality.”

Ultimately, it all adds up to better customer service. Customers can use products, with fewer problems, as soon as new updates are delivered. Plus, development teams operate significantly more efficiently, which has helped the company nearly double its profitability.

Such attention to streamlined, quality operations has paid off for AIS. In 2003, Far Eastern Economic Review magazine ranked AIS number one among Thai companies as a leader for its operations. Most recently, the company earned two awards from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET). One honored the company for its financial performance while the other recognized AIS for corporate governance. Companies earning this award received the most outstanding reports on their compliance with SET’s 15 corporate governance principles.

Dimensions plays an important part in enabling AIS to meet corporate and IT governance. Next, the company plans to leverage Dimensions to help it pursue IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) standards, a cohesive set of best practices and the world’s most widely accepted approach to IT service management.