Operation of the first release of the master system based on Oracle E-Business Suite has been started in another five branches of North-West Telecom – Pskov, Novgorod, Vologda , Kaliningrad and Arkhangelsk. Before that the General Directorate , the Murmansk, Karelian and Leningrad Oblast branches of the Company had been connected to the system. Thus, by today, about 1500 employees of OJSC N.W.Telecom have been connected to ERP, which makes about 80% of the planned number of users of the first release of the system.

It should be reminded that the strategy of stage-by-stage connection of branches to the system was adopted in connection with the large number of end-users in regional branches of the Company .   

The functional content of the first release includes modules of fixed assets management and personnel management in respect of timekeeping and personnel records.

A specially gathered project team worked on implementing the project of introducing the first release in OJSC N.W.Telecom . The team included about 100 representatives of various divisions of the Customer, the Open Technologies company, the contractor of the ERP Introduction Programme and subcontractor organizations. The goals of the project team included organizing and carrying out several cycles of the master system testing , preparation of data for transfer into the system to be introduced and support of users during the pilot operation period.   

At the moment the technical architecture required to ensure a high-quality operation of the ERP system based on Oracle E-Business Suite has been already created in N.W.Telecom : a data processing centre (DPC) has been built and a DPC information security complex has been created, the workstations of end-users have been equipped with computer facilities and the required software .   

For the time of introducing the first release of the master system, all users of the ERP system have undergone special training. In the General Directorate of N.W.Telecom , a Local Competence Centre has been created, which is a division for the support of the ERP system and for the servicing of end-users.  

According to Alexandr Mamontov, Director of the Enterprise and Document Flow Management System Development Department, "building a single information space on the basis of Oracle E-Business Suite will make it possible for our Company to optimize the operation of its divisions, to minimize the amount of manual information input and to reduce the paper flow."