Buyer's market helping TPSA secure low price for IT system

Telekomunikacja Polska (TPSA) could pay less than originally planned for a new billing system for its corporate clients, taking advantage of the dearth of big contracts on the IT market, a company official said last week. "The current market situation is bad and there are simply no contracts that are so big in Europe - that is why we think it will be possible to reduce the price," he said. The project originally had a zł. 200 million ($50 million) base price. Last December TPSA canceled a zł. 500 million ($125 million) tender to standardize all its billing platforms when it decided to develop a system specifically designed for corporate clients in order to reduce tech-related operational costs.

At present TPSA has seven billing systems for corporate customers and wants to replace them with a single one by 2003, said the company official who declined to be identified. TPSA also has three separate billing systems for individual clients and will select the one that serves the largest number of customers to handle all the data. TPSA could make the decision about this system, which also must be operational by 2003, this week, he added. TPSA will have to integrate the new corporate billing system with its customer relationship management (CRM), data-collection, and individual client billing systems. The company plans to launch an Internet module along with the corporate billing system to enable key customers to access their accounts via the Web, although they can already do so with the current one, the TPSA official said.

Together the new billing systems would provide a much-needed overhaul for TPSA, enabling it to process calling charges and invoices more quickly. The company's lack of an integrated billing system has driven unhappy customers to other operators. Companies on TPSA's shortlist for the corporate billing system include Hewlett-Packard (HP) Polska, IBM Polska, Amdocs, EDS Poland and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. Sofrecom, the French company that has worked with TPSA on its CRM system, also submitted a bid although it was not invited to do so, according to a news report. The shortlisted firms will make presentations to TPSA this week, some of the companies said. Sofrecom would not confirm if TPSA invited it to make a presentation. The shortlisted firms' proposals are valid until May 31, but some have been asked to extend them, according to the companies.