BT Ignite, the broadband business of British Telecom (BT) Group, yesterday announced the launch of Enterprise Directory, an online suite of services for managing people and systems information across large organizations.
BT Ignite says the purpose the Enterprise Directory is to link an organization’s existing internal HR and functional databases into what it calls an integrated “one-truth” online directory solution, which allows changes in one system to be automatically updated daily across all systems.
The directory is designed to facilitate the integration of new information and resources into the business and to provide users with accurate information.
Enterprise Directory is currently being used throughout BT — connecting the company’s more that 120,000 employees, which it argues makes it one of the biggest deployments of an enterprise directory system in Europe.
Colin Lilburn, head of Business Productivity Products, BT Ignite Products and Marketing, says: “As the performance of many key data, security and communications systems relies on accurate employee databases, we are seeing an increased demand from companies needing to manage their people information more effectively.”
He explains that through Enterprise Directory, BT Ignite can assist companies in meeting this need as well as helping them be achieve cost saving and return on investment (ROI).
“We estimate that the Enterprise Directory saves BT at least #88m a year,” says Dr. Heather Alexander, e-BT Information Infrastructure manager at BT.
She explains that the benefits are not just about looking up contact information as organizational details, web links, skills and expertise are also available on the directory. More recently she says integration with Outlook Calendars has enabled users to see the availability of the person they are trying to contact.
“This saves time and effort on wasted or mis-directed calls. It is hard now to imagine trying to work at BT without the Enterprise Directory,” she concludes.
