Dell won a preliminary contract to supply 300 new PCs to the
Woolwich, a decision based initially on low price. Then Dell
impressed with its on-site technical support, build-to-order
capability and product quality
With over 400 branches spread across the UK, the Woolwich had
quite a task on its hands when it made the decision, in 1997, to
overhaul its IT systems. A self-confessed "IBM Shop" for many
years, the financial services company made the decision to work
with a new partner that would allow it to maintain more control of
the upgrade process. While using Dell's project management skills
and unique "direct" method of doing business, the Woolwich was able
to make huge cost savings.
The Woolwich is one of the UK's leading providers of personal
financial services and products, with more than 7,000 employees and
assets of £30 billion. Founded in 1847, it is today a fast-paced
financial services operation working in areas such as savings,
pensions and property. It went public in July 1997 and is fighting
hard in a competitive market where a company stays ahead by being
the first to offer the latest promotional incentives such as
mortgage cashbacks, interest-rate discounts and low priced fixed
rates.The Woolwich has long been a pioneer of IT. It led the way
back in 1979 by computerising its branch network. The NIMROD system
used then was based on IBM4700 series terminals and represented one
of the first customer-facing branch IT systems in the UK. David
Benaron, director of the Woolwich with responsibility for IT,
explained that technology enables the company to be agile in
working with customers. "IT underpins the whole of the Woolwich's
business. Everyone is dependent on IT."Significant changes in
customer needs have changed the role of IT in recent years. The
rise in popularity in telephone banking services and the increasing
time pressures on customers have meant that branches have become
one of a range of "interfaces" between the company and its
customers. But far from being superseded by telephone banking, the
branch has taken on a new and critical role in differentiating the
Woolwich from its competitors. Efficient, customer-focused branches
provide an excellent environment to meet customer needs
face-to-face.This means that branch IT systems need to help staff
serve customers a wider range of products seamlessly and very
quickly. "At peak times, queuing was becoming a problem," says
Peter Newton, principal technical specialist at the Woolwich and a
key member of the implementation team. "We knew that if we could
'up' the performance of our branch systems, we could make the
branch experience a better one for our customers."The need for
longer opening hours, in particular Saturday opening, also had
serious implications for IT. "While we wanted to upgrade, we had
little time to do it," Continued Newton. "Our systems in the
branches are critical to the service they provide. We could not
afford any business-hours downtime during the upgrade of the
infrastructure."Woolwich had used IBM hardware, software and
networks as the basis of its operations for many years before it
started to re-evaluate its requirements in 1995. The company has a
sizeable IT department consisting of 330 people who manage
everything from mainframes to WAN, PCs, applications, support and
maintenance. Many of the systems used IBM technologies, with PCs
and servers running the OS/2 operating system and the branch
networks being based on Token Ring. The objective of the
re-evaluation was to look at costs and therefore alternative PCs.
Because all the IBM systems were sold via a reseller to Woolwich,
the company asked the reseller how it could cut out cost from the
purchasing and installation process, but did not receive a
satisfactory response. "The IBM account manager traditionally only
provided information on forthcoming products and when we tried to
approach them on the issue of costs, we were told to talk to the
reseller," says Benaron. "We therefore decided to explore the
possibility of using a direct vendor where we could get more
accountability."Dell won an initial contract to supply 300 new PCs,
a decision based initially on low price. As the rollout developed,
the Woolwich also became impressed with Dell's on-site technical
support, build-to-order capability and product quality. "This gave
us the opportunity to put our toe in the water in terms of using
non-IBM PCs," explains Benaron. "It also sent a clear message to
IBM and its reseller."By 1997, the Woolwich had put out to tender a
series of major contracts covering 2,500 PCs for branch and
regional offices and 800 branch servers. IBM could not compete on
price and Dell beat Hewlett-Packard to the £5 million combined
deals based on service and roll-out support. According to Newton:
"One key requirement from our IT partner was its assistance to make
the roll-out seamless. We also wanted help to make the branch
servers manageable remotely."Dell supplied the Woolwich with
OptiPlex GS and GN PCs over a four-month period and PowerEdge 2200
and 4200 servers for the follow-up server project. Dell provided
full project management assistance and designed the supply of the
systems around a roll-out plan devised jointly with the Woolwich IT
team. According to Newton, this plan had a number of priorities.
"First, we wanted pre-configured systems that needed no additional
installation routines on site, apart from data transfer. The
engineers would not have time to do complex configuration in the
branches because much of the roll out had to happen after 5pm in
the evening once the branches closed. Second, we wanted the
hardware to be delivered direct to each branch at a precise time.
We didn't want to store hardware at headquarters for onward
distribution and we didn't have space in the branches to store
boxed systems that were waiting to be installed."Dell provided a
tailored service under its DellPlus program. Because of its direct
model of operation, Dell could build the systems to Woolwich's
order and then ship each individually configured system to the
branch where it was to reside on the day it was to be installed. As
Dell's technical project manager, Mark Smith, explained: "Because
of Dell's unique direct model, we could tailor everything to the
Woolwich's requirements. We had no inventory to 'shift' and we had
the processes in place to feed requirements right back to the
production planners. Essentially, Woolwich can get what they want
on the day they need it."Under DellPlus, each system was fully
configured at Dell's factory in Ireland. The PowerEdge 4200
database servers were configured and tested as OS/2 machines so
they could be merely unboxed and booted on installation before data
transfer began. The PowerEdge 2200 servers, running NetWare, were
data-blasted at the factory and fully configured down to individual
branch code, IP addresses and other Woolwich-specific information.
Likewise, the OptiPlex PCs were configured with OS/2 Warp 4.0,
Token Ring network cards, as specified by the Woolwich, and the key
application software required.Dell co-ordinated this configuration
process and the logistics of shipping systems to the correct
destination on the correct day. For both the desktop and server
rollouts, the plan called for the systems to be delivered to the
branch before midday on the days of installation. These days were
scheduled over a four-month period at the rate of between seven and
nine rollouts per week.Installation on site would begin at 3pm when
the Woolwich engineering team would create a mini LAN during the
two hours before the branch closed. By end of business, at 5pm,
they confirmed that the connectivity and system units were working,
after which the systems would be fully installed, data transferred
to the new servers and the old IBM hardware removed. On average,
the installation would be completed by midnight and Woolwich was so
confident with the process that it did not provide on-site IT
support at the branches on the first morning of operation. "It
wasn't necessary to provide on-site support," says Newton. "Out of
the first 140 branches, only one had a serious problem the next
morning ( a 99 per cent plus success rate and a massive cost and
time saving for the organisation." Statistics back up Newton's
claims. According to the Woolwich's post-project internal customer
satisfaction survey, only seven out of 222 branches had major
issues over the quality of installation ( a 96.8 per cent success
rate. "While there is always space for improvement, such levels of
user satisfaction are unprecedented in a branch IT installation
project," continues Newton.End users have also enthused about the
performance of the new systems. Over 90 per cent of branches rated
system performance improvements as "good" or "excellent". According
to Newton: "Some user tasks were cut from two minutes down to 45
seconds. Because users are operating familiar software on new
desktop hardware, the performance improvements have been very
apparent. There has been a vast reduction in queuing in the
branches which made the IT department very popular indeed."The
other Woolwich priority ( remote server management ( has been made
possible by the integration of Dell PowerEdge servers with a number
of manageability packages. Because IT support is not resident at
the branches, Woolwich wanted to have full control of its servers
remotely from its headquarters in Bexleyheath, London. The dual
operating systems employed led to the integration of HP OpenView,
IBM NetFinity and Novell ManageWise to provide a series of feeds
into an overall management console called MAXM. For example, the
three disks and the RAID 5 storage configuration on the PowerEdge
4200 servers can be managed across the WAN. All of the Dell servers
provide drive failure alerts, temperature monitoring and a range of
other features designed to predict and pre-empt hardware
failure.Woolwich has also chosen to configure the OS/2 PowerEdge
4200 systems with "out-of-band" management where, for example, if a
system hangs, the engineer at Bexleyheath can dial the server up
with a modem and diagnose the problem, even if the network is
down.From a resource perspective, Newton believes the rollout has
been far more efficient than any other in the company's history. It
brought project rollout time down from one year to 14 weeks, with a
huge impact on IT costs. "This rollout has not even approached 50
per cent of the time and costs involved in previous installations."
The board endorses this view. According to Benaron, "With the
actual rollout costing between £400,000 and £500,000, Dell's offer
of people and direct delivery helped the Woolwich reduce costs
considerably. Dell is one of the best third-party companies we do
business with."
Geoff Marshall