In December 2003, IBM was selected as the integrator for Vodafone's new CRM (Customer Relationship Management), billing and provisioning systems in New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. The CRM component was to be based on Oracle Corp.'s Siebel, which is used in several Vodafone country subsidiaries.

The new systems were to cover 1,100 'heavy' users and 1,400 'light' users in the sales channel.

If anyone knows about the complexity of billing projects, it should be Vodafone's chief executive officer, Russell Stanners. Early in the 1990s he was in charge of the IBM/Telecom ICMS billing project, which led to him moving on to a senior position in IBM's international telecommunications business in New York.