Contract With a Unit of Williams
PR Newswire
Tuesday April 20 9:08am
Keane Capitalizes on Year 2000 Relationship
BOSTON, April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading IT consulting firm Keane, Inc. (Amex: KEA) today announced it has signed a $20 million, multi-site application outsourcing contract with a unit of Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams (NYSE: WMB). The four-year agreement, which extends Keane's relationship with Williams, calls for Keane to support and maintain Williams Gas Pipeline's customer service and rates systems.
The application outsourcing contract covers four Williams pipeline systems: Transco, Northwest, Central and Texas Gas, which are based in Houston, Salt Lake City, Tulsa and Owensboro, Kentucky respectively. The engagement will be supported by teams from Keane branch offices in Houston, Salt Lake City, Dallas and Louisville.
"We selected Keane because of their expertise and processes in the area of application management," said Al Gearhart, director of Business Practices and Systems for Williams Gas Pipeline. "With Keane supporting our mission- critical legacy customer service and rates systems, we can now focus on major internal strategic initiatives."
The application outsourcing engagement relies on Keane's expertise at each site in supporting and maintaining multiple platform environments, including mainframe, mid-range and client/server systems. Keane will use its application management solution to achieve process, productivity, and quality improvements that will benefit the business.
At each location, Keane will employ comprehensive performance metrics to measure work volume, quality, cost, cycle times and customer satisfaction. These then become the baseline for future process improvements.
Keane's relationship with Williams began with Keane's Houston branch, which has been involved in all three phases of year 2000 compliance activities for Transco's mainframe customer service systems.
"Keane is thrilled to be extending its relationship with Williams," said Stephen Timmons, managing director for Keane's Houston office. "We look forward to successfully completing the Transco system's year 2000 compliance efforts and providing Williams' Transco, Northwest, Central and Texas Gas systems with the application management processes, expertise and network branch support necessary to help them achieve their business objectives."
Williams (NYSE: WMB), through its subsidiaries, is one of the nation's largest-volume transporters of natural gas and provides a full-range of traditional and leading-edge energy and communications services. Company information is available at www.williams.com and www.willtales.com/energy.
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, Keane, Inc. is a $1 billion firm that helps companies plan, build and manage application software to achieve business advantage. Keane does this by adhering to rigorous process and management disciplines and performance metrics incorporated in its core IT solutions. Keane's services include operations improvement and IT consulting, custom application development, e-solutions, customer relationship management (CRM), data warehousing, and application outsourcing. These services are delivered through a network of more than 50 branch offices in North America and the United Kingdom. Information about Keane, which was named the Wall Street Journal's Best 10-Year Stock Performer in 1998, is available at keane.com.
This release contains a number of forward-looking statements concerning the company's current expectations as to future growth. Actual results may differ materially depending on the various factors set forth under the caption "Certain Factors That May Affect Future Results" in the company's annual report or Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1998, which important factors are incorporated herein by reference. Such factors include the ability of Williams under certain circumstances to cancel its contract with Keane, the ability of Keane to perform services for Williams in an effective manner, changes in business conditions, the successful completion of software development or management projects, the availability of professional staff and various other factors which involve risk and uncertainty.
Source: Keane, Inc.
Contact: Carol DeMatteo of Keane Public Relations, 617-241-9200, ext. 1293
Source: PR Newswire
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