Camunda BPM at freenet.de

Technology Category

Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Sales & Marketing

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance
Process Control & Optimization

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

The Challenge

freenet.de, a subsidiary of freenet Group, aimed to efficiently support key sales processes with software solutions. These processes were in the areas of contracting, upgrading, and termination of services of the product lines freenetMail, single.de, and portal (freenet.de). While these processes were largely automated, the solution for process support had to be reevaluated due to the outsourcing of billings for the offered services to a specialized service provider. The existing solution, which had been developed individually for a decade, was efficient and offered many features. However, the expenses for maintenance and modification of the solution were high, necessitating a more cost-saving model. In this context, OPITZ CONSULTING was commissioned to select an appropriate architecture and support with its implementation.

About The Customer

freenet Group is the biggest network-independent telecommunications provider in Germany. The company is also well established in areas which aren’t directly related to telecommunications, specifically in the digital lifestyle sector, where they provide solutions for customers’ home. freenet.de GmbH, a subsidiary of freenet Group, is a provider of various Internet portals and services. The company aimed to efficiently support key sales processes with software solutions. These processes were in the areas of contracting, upgrading, and termination of services of the product lines freenetMail, single.de, and portal (freenet.de).

The Solution

freenet.de adopted the Camunda BPM platform for the automation of key sales processes. The platform was used to automate the calling of a variety of both internal and external back-end systems in long-running processes. This covered areas such as the credit check, billing for chargeable services, client administration, and the provisioning of new customers’ mail accounts. The Camunda BPM platform and self-developed services run in the JBoss Application Server 7 – on a cluster with three nodes. Tasklist and Cockpit access the process engine via a REST interface. New orders are first created via a service call in the database. Afterwards, a further service is used to start the process instance. The link to the saved order is thereby made via the ID. The use of Camunda Cockpit facilitates maintenance: Errors in background processing can be rapidly identified and, after correction, the process can be progressed from the point where the error occurred.

Operational Impact

The use of Camunda BPM promotes transparency and supports the typical development approach of freenet.de.
The use of Camunda Cockpit facilitates maintenance: Errors in background processing can be rapidly identified and, after correction, the process can be progressed from the point where the error occurred.
Business errors can be maintained by a business user.

Quantitative Benefit

Two and a half years after launching of the first processes, a total of 73 processes (main and sub-processes) have been deployed.
The main processes start an average of 6,500 instances per day.
Combined with the sub-processes that are started from the main processes, it’s an average of 27,600 instances per day.