The Client

mobilkom austria group is the leading mobile service provider in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with nearly 19 million mobile customers in eight countries. In 2007 mobilkom austria group acquired a 70% stake in Cypriot SB, the sole owner of velcom, the first operator of mobile communication of GSM standard in Belarus with nearly a 4 million subscriber base.

The Business Need

Following the acquisition, velcom faced a major overhaul in terms of business processes management to conform to European standards. velcom turned to EPAM with a request for localization of mobilkom austria group's internal policies and business processes template to be able to adopt it locally with expected delivery in 3 months' time.

The Solution

The roll-out information management system is set to support velcom's operations in line with the local business specifics, legal norms, as well as mobilkom austria group's corporate policies. The system leverages the robust capabilities of a host of SAP functional modules such as FI (Financial Accounting), CO (Controlling), MM (Materials Management), and SD (Sales and Distribution). Along with mobilkom austria group's internal policies, the solution is designed to also reconcile velcom's domestic legislation and accounting specifics with the international norms and regulations like IFRS (International Financial and Reporting Standards)/IAS (International Accounting Standards).

The Challenges

The biggest challenge was mapping velcom's existing processes to the processes defined by the SAP modules. Especially complicated was to align the accounting plans that conformed to the Belarusian legislation with the plans specified in the IFRS/IAS standards.

The Benefits

As a result, velcom has gained better control of the enterprise-wide business processes in financial and administrative reporting that fully meet the national legislative norms and regulations, as well as international standards (IFRS/IAS). The new system has excellent scalability to integrate extra applications to support growing operations of the company.

Thanks to an extended pilot testing period the team successfully optimized and integrated velcom's business processes, while eliminating errors. Moreover, EPAM's specialists provided mentoring to over 200 velcom employees helping them accelerate the learning curve. A dedicated support team is ready to address any issues or questions that may arise in connection with the system. This has allowed minimizing the risks associated with such large scale overhauls, at the same time enabling efficiency and high reliability of the system.

Customer Quote

"During the project EPAM's professionals have demonstrated outstanding project management competency, advanced knowledge of SAP architecture and its customization, deep understanding of the domestic legal norms, as well as effective communication skills. These allowed us to achieve greatly satisfying results and solidify our partnership for future projects." Denis Filazafovich Deputy General Manager, Economic Development velcom

"Thanks to the EPAM project team for the outstanding performance in this truly challenging project and for the great team spirit!" Thomas Königshofer Head of Project Office Group mobilkom austria group

Learn more in the interview of Denis Filazafovich, Deputy CFO of velcom.