Beeline will reduce the staff of IT departments 10 times and bring back-end to outsourcing

Vimpelcom continues to cut operating expenses. This time the turn has reached the IT departments of the company. According to its shareholders, the staff of relevant specialists is overstated by more than ten times, and the current IT systems are outdated.

In this regard, the head of LetterOne’s telecommunications division, Alexei Reznikovich, said that Vimpelcom (its Russian subsidiary VimpelCom operates under the Beeline trademark) needs to be revised its IT strategy. LetterOne is the largest shareholder of Vimpelcom, the Alfa Group telecommunications assets were transferred to this company.

Vimpelcom IT systems are outdated, they consist of many levels and cannot adequately work with increasing data volumes (big data), explains Mr. Reznikovich. He also said that Vimpelcom will cut IT budgets, trying to bring sales and customer service online. As a result, in some business units of Vimpelcom, instead of the current 600 IT professionals, there will be about 50.
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The Russian VimpelCom will divide its IT systems into two types, said Alexander Popovsky, Vice President for Operations, to CNews. The first type of systems - the commodity - will be assigned billing, IM-platform and other products that are not visible to the user.

The second type of systems - front-end - will combine products with which the user works directly: content systems, self-service systems, mobile applications and various future products. Their “Vimpelcom” intends to develop independently, explained Popovsky.

Translation billing outsourcing will reduce costs and staff of IT professionals.

“We have, for example, a good billing from Amdocs , but it has been installed for a long time and requires updating,” says Popovsky. “We intend to outsource the maintenance of such systems, after which the partners themselves will start updating them.”

On October 22, Megamind wrote that Vimpelcom offered for sale 50,000 towers for cellular base stations in Russia and the near abroad. The company plans to get $ 5 billion for them.
Vimpelcom is ready to sell towers in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Georgia. According to interlocutors Bloomberg, the operator thus tries to compensate for their losses.

On Friday, October 6, the RBC publication reported that the Russian VimpelCom sent out relevant proposals to potential investors. The company is considering various options for selling this infrastructure: the complete sale of towers, the sale of pillars only, the sale of infrastructure in cities and on roofs, and so on. But if an adequate proposal is not received, VimpelCom will not agree to a deal. Within a month, the operator expects to receive "specific offers" from investors.