The Company Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. (TDS) is a rapidly expanding
telecommunications company comprised of a family of affiliates offering
various telephone and telecommunications services. The principal companies
within TDS are: TDS Telecommunications Corporation; a holding company for
over 104
telephone companies in the United States; United States Cellular Corporation,
a cellular phone service provider in over 140 markets; American Paging,
a radio based paging service company; and Aerial Communications, a Personal
Communication Services (PCS) provider in six major markets. TDS is a public
company with annual revenues of approximately $1.1 billion.
The Problem
TDS maintains and operates geographically dispersed management centers in various regions around the country, including Chicago, Minneapolis, Madison(Wisconsin), Knoxville and Tulsa. These management centers have been generating multiple financial, customer and internal reports in connection with the operation of the business. The reports were being printed on paper and microfiche, produced from servers running SAP and from legacy systems running on an IBM mainframe system. On a regular basis, the paper reports and microfiche were being distributed to the various TDS departments for use by employees. TDS' costs for producing and distributing this data were minimally $50,000 per month ($600,000 per year).
In 1995, TDS set goals to increase employee productivity, enhance access
to data, reduce costs and take advantage of the latest technology. To accomplish
these goals, TDS embarked on a search for software technology that would
allow TDS to centralize the processing of COLD data, allow access to data
over the TDS
company network, reduce the use of paper and fiche, and reduce costs.
The Solution
TDS selected a technology solution from OTG Software, a division of Optical Technology Group, Inc. of Bethesda, Maryland. Specifically, TDS utilized OTG's DiskExtender for data storage and management on optical disk under Windows NT, ApplicationExtender for document imaging and COLD report viewing, ColdExtender for COLD data indexing and archiving and OTG's Imageware utilities for scanned image enhancement.
TDS required a network based solution that would provide support for
both scanned images and COLD report indexing and viewing. After installation
of the OTG software in December, 1995, TDS implemented its first application
to support the scanning, retrieval and display of scanned documents within
the TDS Corporate -
Madison tax department. The successful implementation of the tax application
in January 1996 provided significant benefit to TDS by improving the productivity
of its tax staff and by increasing the availability of the tax data.
Between January and April, 1996, TDS implemented support for the SAP
financial software by providing online access to SAP generated reports
through OTG's ColdExtender and ApplicationExtender software. Such implementation
significantly reduced TDS' use of paper and fiche for data distribution.
The next set of TDS' applications, developed during the summer of 1996,
provided online access to external vendor invoices and employee reimbursement
forms. During the remainder of 1996, report data from other departments
was similarly brought online.
Benefits
Today, a total of 58 applications have been implemented by TDS utilizing
the OTG Software technology. Approximately 300 concurrent users across
TDS access data online daily via the company network. In short, TDS has
achieved its goals of reducing fiche and paper, increasing the availability
of data, improving employee productivity, and reducing costs.
This success story courtesy of OTG Technology Group.