O2's Companion halted

3 years?

It's a bit more than 3 years - it was already a year or so into development when I joined O2 as a developer nearly 6 years ago...

Bunch of f00kwits

I can't belive they are adding yet another billing system, they had loads when I was last there.

Typical of a telco to not really give a rats ass about the customer service.

Companion : Balls....

""... that O2 has been working on for the last 3 years at least ...""

I left the employ of O2 just over three years ago.....

I was a PM for Companion, and had been for the previous two years. The programme, even as far as I knew, had been running since just after the Y2K work.

It was a shambles then and frankly, is still a shambles now. I have friends who still work for O2.

The primary issue was that O2 never really scoped the project properly, there was no SOR [Statment of Requirments] other than 'one billing system to replace the 11 [yes, 11] current billing and invoicing systems.'

IBM, the supplier, knew a bad SOR when they saw one, and milked it for all it was worth.

TSO, Technology Services Org' within O2 are the brains behind the whole kit and cabuddle.

Hey ho.

O2 support?

Hey this is O2, count yourself lucky they even answered the phone.

Don't you think

This could have been a blessing in disguise for the poor guy, after all, if his crackberry wasn't working he could have done something more worthwhile with his time.

I reckon the O2 billing system was trying to do him a favour :)

RE:companion

I left working for o2 in their collections dept in june last year so have had to work with their computer systems. They originally had a system called DISE which is a text based program built decades ago and worked brilliantly. They then spent close to £100 million (AFAIK) developing the companion system in-house. Most new (consumer) customers were on companion and they started migrating people onto it from DISE. They then realised companion was crap and bought the new DISE 3G which was basically a single-window-based GUI planted on top of the old system. They then started migrating customers back onto DISE! Now you say they migrating them again!

Just to give an example of how crap companion is,, these are the steps required to see how much a customer owes:

1 - Log onto kana (deals with workflow and stores customer notes)

2 - Click on a button that brings a dialogue box asking for an email address.

3 - Click on search customer which brings up the companion window.

4 - Enter search details (eg mob number)

5 - If found right account the window will fill with some customer details (basically just name and address)

6 - Click on security tab (this brings up details such as date of birth and password - needed to verify customer)

7 - Click back on prev tab.

8 - Click customer verified button.

9 - Screen will close and email address will go into box mentioned in 2. Click OK

10 - Dialogue box will close and it will show in kana as having a msg in inbox. Click on a button on toolbar.

11 - A new window will open. Scroll to the bottom and select view bill.

12 - A new window will open (This is EBPP system) showing bill as it appears on customer's statement (ie doesn't show whether it has been paid etc).

13 - Click on payment history and finally view what is owed. Bear in mind this will show full balance owed, even if only part of the bill is late

Between 8 and 13 can take up to a minute if system running slow. As I was in collections, I was getting calls that were getting automatically diverted from custs who owed money and it took ages to even find out how much.

Now on DISE:

1 - open DISE

2 - navigate to search screen. (about three/four key strokes)

3 - Enter search data

4 - see main page with all security details and arrears.

Big difference.

BTW sorry for long post. The system made me so mad, I just needed to vent!

Another ex-o2 employee speaks

As another ex-o2 employee - I left in late 2004 - I'm astounded that they are still persevering with this system. It was a standing joke how long it was taking to develop in Feb-01 when I started there, and still was when I left.

This was a disaster from the start, and when o2 were already using a brilliant system (comparitively) in DISE, that was all-but developed in-house in the first place, it beggars belief why o2 have continued to pour money into this black hole. How many more high-profile failures before the rest of it gets ccanned?

Billing probs

I've had to call up every single month since I upgraded my phone in October to have my bill corrected. It's a different random problem every month. Never had any problems before and it's getting very annoying.

not quite so old

@Cowards - people with hazy memories of Companion in 2001 may not realise the work was suspended for a while back then before re-starting properly a couple of years later. It hasn't been in continuous development for all that time.

There have been multiple releases over the period which, because they have been successful, have not been reported. "Computer system works as expected, delivers some benefits but suppliers wanted paying for it" isn't a great headline.