WOW! Internet, Cable, and Phone - Legacy modernization with Attachmate Verastream makes transaction processing five times faster for WOW cable company. Creation of reusable services from mainframe-based CSG billing system enables the company to streamline business processes and improve customer service.

1. Cable Service Company Improves Performance by 5x
Verastream legacy modernization solution helps to streamline critical business processes
CUSTOMER STORY
Cable Service Company Improves Performance by 5x
Verastream legacy modernization solution helps to streamline critical
business processes
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Problem
Core legacy application was hard to access
and integrate.
Solution
Used Verastream to service enable
mainframe-based billing system for reuse
in new business processes.
Results
• Accelerated processing by a factor of five.
• Eliminated expensive per-transaction fees.
• Improved customer service.
• Leveraged investment in legacy systems.
• Established a rapid application-
development platform for ongoing projects.
The critical nature of this account-lookup
process – and the frequency of its use – meant
WOW! Internet, Cable, and Phone is a leading U.S. provider of competitive it must perform flawlessly; slow response times
bundled services to both residential and commercial customers. The company or down times would inevitably result in an
has been serving communities in Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio since unsatisfactory customer experience. But due to
1996. WOW! has been consistently recognized for excellence in product increases in the number and nature of customer
quality and customer satisfaction by Consumer Reports, J.D. Power & requirements, the existing interface was at risk
Associates, and Broadband Reports. of being consistently overloaded.
A WOW! Customer Experience Scoping the Project
WOW!’s strong competitive advantage can be attributed to a simple philoso- WOW! needed to modernize this time-consuming
phy: deliver a customer experience that lives up to its name. WOW!’s recent and potentially expensive interface system. In
decision to purchase Attachmate® Verastream® Host Integrator was in effect, they wanted to build fast, automated
complete alignment with that goal. processes on top of real-time integration, in a
way that the resulting business functions could
Rex Kennedy, vice president of applications and software development at be reused across applications.
WOW!, knew the company could improve existing and future customer service
applications by streamlining access to their billing program. “It’s a mainframe- They had already tried a traditional screen-
based application, with no open APIs, so our internal systems were having scraping product, but it could not dependably
to access billing data in a manual and non-traditional fashion,” he said. keep up with expanding demand. Furthermore,
its proprietary coding language limited mainte-
Because the billing system is a core application and houses critical data, the nance responsibilities to just a few internal team
ability to perform increasingly difficult navigation had become problematic. members. “What we needed was an industrial-
With multiple WOW! business interfaces spanning a variety of applications, strength, bullet-proof solution, that didn’t
quick account lookups and expanded customer self-service were becoming require a lot of maintenance,” Kennedy said.
more and more elusive.
Modernizing Legacy Assets
The Need for Speed
A satisfied user of both Attachmate® Reflection®
WOW! customers needed to log in whenever they wanted to view their email, and Attachmate® EXTRA!® terminal emulation
account information, or online content included in their subscription services. products, the company found out about
Necessary authentication called for multiple and extensive billing-record Verastream from Don Koretos, WOW!’s manager
lookups to ensure a given customer had the requisite access rights. of software development. He and his team build
and maintain applications for dispatch and

2. Cable Service Company Improves Performance by 5x
Verastream legacy modernization solution helps to streamline critical business processes
“ With Verastream, field-related processes. Following a rigorous And they can keep per-transaction fees
product evaluation, they chose Verastream to a minimum because Verastream Host
when you service- Host Integrator to expose their mainframe Integrator has enhanced and created
enable one app, you billing data and logic as web services that efficiencies in the way users access data.
have actually done it
could be mixed, matched, and reused.
The old WOW! solution had required IT to Reuse, Don’t Reinvent
for a bunch more.”
build one-off routines that would access According to Shah, all WOW! business
– Amol Shah the billing system for each new type of data processes – from customer self-service, to
Director, Application and the provisioning side, to the dispatch side –
request. But with Verastream Host Integrator,
Software Development rely on fast access to data residing on the
WOW!
the development staff was able to centralize
business context and logic so it could be billing system. So his IT teams have begun
more manageable. creating other applications, using those
original Verastream-generated services, for
Automatic Conversions with Verastream Web Builder both internal and external users.
Director of Software Development Amol Shah reported that his teams Shah said he likes Verastream’s ability to
mapped out the 3270 screens using Verastream Web Builder, a tool that “divvy up the application” and use selected
automates the deployment of web applications, component interfaces, and functionality because it helps WOW! work
web services from abstracted legacy functions. Responsible for teams that toward a services-oriented architecture.
build and maintain applications for marketing initiatives, order management, “Now we have a really strong foundation
and fulfillment processes, Shah said that Verastream Web Builder brings a to build on,” he said. “With Verastream,
“UI-driven” focus to the development cycle. when you service-enable one app, you have
actually done it for a bunch more.”
Because all of the applications at WOW! are built in .NET, Verastream Web
Builder delivered another benefit by automatically translating all modeled As an example of this functionality, Shah
screens to the .NET platform. “Having an interface that converts it for you talked about a PDA application that one of
is so beneficial,” said Koretos, who also pointed out the value of a lighter his teams built for technicians in the field.
footprint on the user side and easier accommodation of different kinds of “Their familiar workflows are available to
clients including Windows applications, web sites, and PDAs. “The Verastream them, whether they’re dispatching on a
standards-based process lessens the relevance of the end-client platform,” job, closing a job, or referencing customer
he said. data,” he said. “The navigation complexity
is hidden, while in the back end the mobile
More Control, Speed, and Simplicity web app uses Verastream-based transactions
“From a development standpoint, Verastream gives you more control over to access the mainframe data.”
your applications, without relying on a third-party interface sitting on the
desktop,” Koretos said. “Now, the right hand knows what the left hand is A Flexible Solution
doing.” He explained that there are numerous steps in an order transaction With Ongoing Potential
where input and retrieval of data are required. “In the process, systems Meanwhile, Koretos has already looked
integration is happening and it’s all passing through Verastream,” he added. beyond WOW!’s mainframe systems to
Thanks to the speed and simplicity of Verastream Host Integrator, WOW! successfully run scripts on some of WOW!’s
accomplished their first production rollout within 60 days after purchasing the Unix-based applications. “We plan to convert
solution. “It was 100-percent ready to go,” Shah said. They were also able all of all our applications to this services
to eliminate their applications whose sole purpose was interacting with the approach,” he said. “It’ll all be integrated.”
3270 terminals. Kennedy concluded by saying, “We’re big fans
Shah reported that Verastream’s unique and intelligent session handling of Verastream, and we’re using it everywhere
made transactions five times faster than WOW!’s previous solution. That’s an we can.”
obvious benefit for WOW!’s 1,000 skilled internal users, but it’s all part of
the drive to a better customer experience.
See This Solution in Action
A Welcome Surprise Explore the service options at
Now, with streamlined account lookup, all of WOW!’s high-speed data and wowway.biz/chicago-small-business-
phone customers (and a good portion of video customers) are enjoying the technology.html
results. When customers log in to check email, for example, the speed of
You’ll see how Verastream enhances the
the new authentication process is noticeable – and welcome.
customer experience by interfacing, in
WOW! is also cutting costs as a result of the Verastream implementation real time, with WOW!’s back-end systems.
because they can now minimize use of third-party service providers.
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