A sunny outlook for customer service

Life without the internet or smartphones? Inconceivable in today's world. Millions of customers rely on Sunrise for these essential everyday companions. That's why Switzerland's largest private telecommunications provider has now laid a solid foundation for its services by rolling out the Doxis ECM platform. A company-wide digital information management system makes first-class customer service a cinch for Sunrise Communications.

With over 3 million customers in 2017 – and rising – Sunrise Communications AG is the largest private telecommunications provider in Switzerland. From Sunrise TV and the internet to fixed-network and mobile communications solutions, Sunrise is a one-stop shop for all its customers' communication needs. For Sunrise, providing excellent service is just as important as delivering excellent products. Its outdated IT systems, however, used to make this quite a challenge. Employees had to manage mobile phone contracts, invoices, customer correspondence and more without the technical support of workflows or automated deadline management. Documents were processed and exchanged between departments in hard copy or using filing systems. No easy task considering that up to 50,000 new documents are generated every day. Add to that an archive of some 200 million documents and it was clear that Sunrise needed a new solution – one that allowed employees to respond to customer inquiries rapidly, shortened lead times and complied with legal retention and deletion periods.

In 2000, Sunrise chose SER as its ECM partner. This was the beginning of a long-standing and trusting working relationship. Since then, Sunrise has rolled out the scalable Doxis ECM platform across the entire company and phased out the legacy system landscape. The overarching goal is to enhance efficiency and customer orientation using cross-functional digital processes and a secure information base across the company. To achieve this, the SER archive and Sunrise's CRM system were integrated right from the outset. As a result, data can be retrieved from all systems quickly and stored in accordance with compliance requirements throughout all stages of processing.

Before the transformation, service employees would spend a great deal of time searching through unstructured folders in the file directories for the relevant information. On top of that, the different offices located across Switzerland had named their directories variously in German, French and Italian, which made finding the right information doubly difficult. Now, Doxis lets everyone access uniformly structured digital customer and project files via the multilingual ECM platform as well as via the CRM system. Working on documents is also easier than ever. Sunrise employees still use Microsoft Office, but now Doxis is integrated seamlessly into the applications, giving users access to additional DMS functions, such as search commands, annotations and versioning. The ECM solution transparently archives all versions of the documents, so there is no doubt about, for instance, whether an offer is up-to-date and who worked on it last. New tasks are managed using digital workflows with full traceability. The move from floating files, chaotic directories and an outdated electronic archive was easy for Sunrise.

The digital information management system now allows Sunrise employees to respond to and process customer inquiries rapidly. Sunrise has also linked its MySunrise customer portal to Doxis to make communication with customers better than ever. Contracts, invoices and much more are made available to customers automatically and can be accessed via a protected area of the portal. This new service is a win-win situation for everyone: Customers can view their documents 24/7 instead of having to wait for opening hours or rely on documents to be sent by regular mail or email. Meanwhile, Sunrise employees benefit from reduced workloads, which allows them to dedicate more time to one-on-one Consulting.

Sunrise uses photocopies of passports to identify customers when they place orders. This kind of sensitive data needs special protection. Doxis gives Sunrise the assurance that it complies with all the relevant legal requirements, such as the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and with full traceability. Not only that, but the ECM system is also utilized for legally compliant invoice retention: For instance, vendor invoices from the integrated SAP system are stored centrally in Doxis, archived in an audit-proof way, and deleted automatically once the twelve-year retention period comes to an end. In the future, SharePoint internal document archiving will also be made audit proof thanks to Doxis. Another goal is to roll out digital inbound mail processing with the ECM system, which will automatically forward inbound mail to the right employees and archive it in the right place. By rolling out its company-wide ECM strategy step by step, Sunrise is pushing ahead with the digital transformation that is essential for its customer-oriented business model.