AA slashes £2m a year off voice and data costs

Motoring and breakdown organisation the AA has cut its network costs by almost £2m a year by migrating to a managed voice and data platform.

The AA was running an old BT frame-relay network for its data and wide area network and using Energis for its voice network and call centre management but has now switched to a three-year managed services deal with Cable & Wireless (C&W).

The AA's director of information systems, Trevor Didcock, told silicon.com the intelligent call manager system is a vital part of the new network.

He said: "We are a big call centre operator. Voice is the lifeblood of the AA. If you are at the side of the road and can't get through, that's critical to us."

The network contracts were reviewed after the AA was bought by a private equity consortium in 2004 and it was decided the company could get a better deal by putting voice and data together into a single contract.

Didcock said: "It came down to a straight fight between BT and C&W. In financial terms they were very close but we went to C&W on the basis of quality of service."

C&W was also the lower risk option for the AA through the Energis connection, having bought the telco for £674m in 2005 - because voice was more critical than the data network.

The whole project cost £2m and took nearly a year, though the actual technical implementation and migration onto MPLS only took about five months.

Didcock said: "There was a fair bit of planning and contract negotiation. It's worth spending the time on the contract because it's going to be with you for a few years, and get the SLAs right. Don't skimp on the time putting the contract together."

Savings are now expected to be £1.9m a year off the old annual operating cost of £8m, against the original business case projection of £1.4m a year savings but Didcock said it wasn't only about cost reduction.

He said: "We have a very resistant and reliable network now. The network just doesn't go down."

The AA started the migration in its less critical business functions such as driving schools before rolling it out to the breakdown call centres.

The new converged network also provides the AA with a roadmap to voice over IP (VoIP). Before the AA's recent £6bn merger with Saga a VoIP pilot for internal voice was planned for this year, but Didcock said this is now likely to happen next year.