As a long-time AT&T Wireless supplier for activation services, Synchronoss Technologies faced a situation every vendor dreads when its largest customer gets acquired. But according to a success story released by Synchronoss today, Cingular Wireless bought into the managed activation concept and has become Synchronoss’ largest customer.

Synchronoss began deploying its ActivationNow software platform at Cingular in 2004 after the merger. Today, the vendor can say that the platform has helped Cingular reduce its customer transaction costs, gain greater visibility into its e-commerce channel, and automate the delivery of new services.

The ActivationNow software platform automates, synchronizes and simplifies electronic service fulfillment and order management of advanced wireless, IP and wireline services. Cingular is using the platform across all business-to-consumer and business-to-business e-commerce transactions.

“Our ability to scale to this magnitude will help us address this need across industries as well, said Stephen Waldis, president and CEO of Synchronoss Technologies.

Waldis said Cingular online customer transactions have grown considerably between 2005 and 2006, proving the ActivationNow platform could scale to meet the largest requirements. The platform also is automating other business processes.

“There’s not a product or service we support that isn’t now at a high level of automation,” Waldis said. “It now takes us one hour to do what it previously took a whole day.”

The platform’s Workflow Manager module has streamlined Cingular’s procurement processes, including pre-order activity through service activation and billing, which reduced the cost and time of delivering products and services to end users.

Waldis said the results Synchronoss has been able to deliver to Cingular support the vendor’s goal of supporting additional services.

Although Synchronoss’ platform is a hosted software solution, the company provides professional services as well, particularly in converting manual processes into automated ones. Bob Steelhammer, vice president of e-commerce at Cingular said his company chose Synchronoss for its willingness to help it achieve its long-term business goals.

“We will automate the transactions for every service they have and support every manual process until we get it automated,” Waldis said.

Waldis said that most manual customer transaction cost approximately $20 to $50 per transaction, but after automating it as much as possible with his platform, that cost is reduced to about $8 to $10 dollars.