Page 3 of National Car Rental by BT Global Services

national car rental a global wide area network was rolled out linking eight countries to the leicester hub the plan was that this would support the fast and effective delivery of point-of-sale services and allow easy access to branch information work instructions and company procedures increase network capacity reduce latency save money however the system soon became overloaded creating delays in the transmission of data and the exchange of information across the network `though the network could support basic functionality for car rental management it didn t allow much beyond recording rental transactions and customer data says chris higgins european it manager national car rental the infrastructure had to robustly support its intranet facilities like email so that branches could share business intelligence be better informed and standardise working practices importantly the new networks also had to have the capacity to accommodate a potential convergence of voice and data in the future national wanted to deploy a global network infrastructure that would enable it to process customer bookings faster track its fleet of vehicles with a greater degree of accuracy manage billing provide greater visibility of costs and offer significant savings and it was convinced it could achieve all of this ­ primarily the cost savings and efficiency improvements ­ by sourcing its technology needs from a single supplier with global reach bt offers `superior network solution the network replacement was put out to tender in the face of strong competition bt secured the contract for the upgrade of the international network with a cost-effective ip-based solution offering faster transfer speeds easy scalability and a considerably improved level of service `bt had established a strong track record with national over recent years and offered a superior solution it was ahead of the field in terms of technology and service offered at a competitive price says chris higgins under a £500k contract over three years the mainland european network was replaced with the bt multi-protocol label switching mpls service seamless network changeover the network changeover was seamless ­ a priority for a firm involved in complex day-to-day vehicle rentals `the network roll-out and project management provided by bt were outstanding says chris higgins page 2 of 6 establishing the right infrastructure © bt plc 2004

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