Customer stories


US West

FileMaker Organizes Telephone Directories for US West

US West is a leading broadband and communications service provider, with more than $13 billion in annual revenues. In addition to servicing 25 million customers in 14 states, the company also provides wireless services to over 500,000 customers and data services to over 800,000 customers nationally. US West also provides multimedia advertising services, including Internet and print directories.

Providing directory and publishing services to such a large constituency is challenging under regular circumstances, but can become down right daunting after a 50% reduction in headcount. This was the challenge that Chuck Pelto and the Book Configuration group at US West was facing.

'We are charged with managing the production of the telephone directories and graphic appearance of selected graphic, non-listing/non-advertising, items in the white and yellow pages.' Mr. Pelto said.

'There had also been a number of published errors that were attributed to human error on the part of the people generating the graphic items or making errors in entering data into the publishing software we use. Furthermore, we had recently had a reduction in head-count, reducing the staff to 50% of what it had been.'

Mr. Pelto knew that a database solution could help ease some of the difficulties that the group had been facing. After considering 4D as a potential development environment, he decided on FileMaker Pro, explaining 'It was easier to develop in and provided sufficient power to meet the needs of the situation.'

Expanding on this, Mr. Pelto continued 'Reliability, robustness, networking and Apple Event-awareness were also key factors in the decision. We wanted to let the machines do the dirty work of holding data, checking the data with other sources, flagging potential errors and maintaining statistics. In addition, we wanted to use AppleScripting techniques to drive the interaction of applications and generation of graphic items to appear in the directories.' As part of their efforts, the team even internally developed techniques in FileMaker to interact with an in-house application called MRGraphics, a graphics program with extensive Apple-Event awareness used to enhance productivity.

When the solution was completed, Mr. Pelto knew that their efforts had paid off. 'We could now live with the reduction in head-count, without having to work overtime and we reduced published errors by 98%' he explained. 'We now have less overhead, and there is greater stability within the workgroup. We can also respond to ad hoc requirements in relatively short time.'

Going forward, the Book Configuration group plans on continuing to put FileMaker to work. Mr. Pelto explains 'Under the Communications Act of 1996, we are required to share our information with Competitive Local Exchange Carriers and Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers. We are working towards that objective by planning to offer up the information they need to interact with us via a web site which will be driven by the data held in our FileMaker databases. We are also seeking new ways to automate recurring work, allowing others to have more time to focus on reducing errors in their particular area using the techniques developed in ours.'



Contact information

Contact Info for Customer:



Filemaker Contact:

Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com


Overview
  • US West, a leading broadband and communications service provider with over 25 million customers, needed a database to coordinate its telephone directory development and publishing services. After considering 4D, US West chose FileMaker Pro for its power and ease of use.
Industry
  • Telecommunications