Case Studies

Vodafone’s reputation as a global communications provider relies on the quality and availability of its network. Vodafone needed an IT resource services supplier with the expertise, experience, and capability to support the network. With idpp, Vodafone has a partner that is helping to enhance its brand image and deliver a trusted, value-driven service.

Location: London, Newbury, Manchester, Cardiff, Glasgow, UK, and Ireland
Size: 436 million customers, 89,000 employees
Industry: Telecommunications

Challenge

Vodafone is one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies, with around 436 million customers across 26 countries and partnerships with networks in over 50 more countries.

Most recently, Vodafone has been spearheading the development of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications. One of Vodafone’s most important assets is its telecommunications network, which supports millions of customers using voice calls, texts, and mobile internet connectivity.

To ensure that this and other aspects of its IT operations continue to function effectively, Vodafone decided to centralise its European network and IT operations. The company uses a number of resource suppliers to support this and other critical business operations. As part of its centralisation strategy, Vodafone wanted to improve the way it selected and managed these suppliers, moving away from solely focusing on cost reduction toward efficiency and value for money as well. The strategy involved bundling together similar and complementary operations and bringing in the best suppliers to service these bundles. This approach has allowed Vodafone to reduce the number of suppliers while driving greater value from the remaining ones. idpp has been providing resource services to Vodafone in the UK since 2011. Along with idpp, some of the world’s leading IT resource companies also tendered for this work.

Solution

idpp is providing a range of resource services to support and maintain Vodafone’s network infrastructure—including the mobile communications network and Vodafone’s internal enterprise data network—and IT operations. idpp works with Vodafone to provide fixed-price (work package) and contract resources.

Under the agreement, idpp also supports several one-off projects, such as firewall and network upgrades, and provides seven on-site engineers, a service delivery manager, and a technical consultant at Vodafone’s headquarters in Newbury. Vodafone also has access to idpp’s affiliate bench of IT experts. The idpp service covers over 50 office locations and hubs across the UK. The success of the existing partnership between idpp and Vodafone has led to a significant expansion of the relationship in Europe. Vodafone has extended its contract with idpp to include network and security infrastructure resource support for Vodafone data centers in the UK and Ireland. idpp has supplied over 300 resources over the past two years in Enterprise Systems, Security, Infrastructure, Architecture, Delivery, Project Management, Cloud, Operations, and Data, significantly reducing Vodafone’s time to hire and associated agency costs.

idpp worked closely with Vodafone on-site at their HQ in Newbury, identifying areas of particular challenge for Vodafone and offering the correct resource solution. This is a free-of-charge service that embeds them into the IT Services team as a partner committed to enhancing not only their brand image but also delivering a trusted and value-driven service. The success of the partnership has allowed Vodafone to achieve consistent and considerable cost savings across the UK and its global OPCOs.

Benefits

For Vodafone, the quality of service and innovation that idpp delivers is one of the standout features of the partnership. Carter says, “Our partnership with idpp is different from the typical supplier-customer relationship. They provide a single account and services team, which is unique. idpp is also very flexible, so if I have an operational issue, I can count on the idpp team to work on that problem with no fuss.”

idpp’s flexibility was exemplified by an incident that could have severely disrupted Vodafone’s service delivery. There was a technical issue at one of Vodafone’s core data centers, outside of idpp’s scope of responsibility. idpp sourced replacement resources and even flew an engineer out to the location to resolve the problem.

One of the other key benefits of the idpp service has been its ability to help Vodafone reduce costs. idpp’s IT service capability means it can support complex resource requests, outside of traditional agency recruitment methods. idpp’s ability to take responsibility for parts of Vodafone’s recruitment strategy, which were previously handled by several suppliers, further increases efficiency and reduces costs. Carter says, “idpp started in the UK as a third-party supplier, eventually expanding resource offerings across the UK and Europe. On the back of that success, we now work with idpp as our number one multi-resource vendor.”