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Slide 1: IBM Software Group Case Study Software Telenet Overview Challenge Telenet needed to retain its profitable customers in what is a highly competitive market. This meant being able to respond quickly to new trends in the marketplace and satisfy the changing needs of customers who otherwise might switch to a competitor. The aim was to create a phased approach to the construction of Telenet’s business intelligence environment, with reporting produced directly from the production environment, business entities defined and profitability maximized. Telenet is the largest provider of broadband cable services in Belgium. The company specialises in the supply of cable television, high-speed internet connections and fixed and mobile telecom services, primarily to residential customers in Flanders. Under the brand name Telenet Solutions, Telenet also provides services to businesses in Belgium. Challenges faced • • • Solution • IBM® Cognos® 8 BI • IBM® Cognos® 8 Planning Retaining profitable customers in a very competitive market Reacting quickly to new or changing circumstances Allowing more than 300 BI users to work efficiently in a BI environment which contains both internal and external data from more than 50 applications Key Benefits • • • • • • • Planning and performance management Real-time feedback Connection between operations and finance Greater flexibility Less dependence of end-users on IT department User-friendliness Understandable results Telenet, established in September 1996, began as a fixed telephony provider via cable. Now, thanks to a series of takeovers, including the activities of the various intermunicipal companies, Codenet, CANAL+ and Hypertrust, Telenet has quickly expanded its range of services to include internet services, cable television, pay television, professional telecom services and mobile communications. “Telenet is a rapidly growing company. We are continually launching new products and services. Our customer database is also growing quickly. That rapid growth in a market characterised by sharp competition demands a great deal of flexibility in responding to new trends in the market and the changing needs of our customers. That way, we can limit the number of customers who switch to a competitor and maximize profitability at the same time,” says Karel Verkinderen, Business Intelligence Development Manager at Telenet. Strategy followed To improve the efficiency of its operations, Telenet, already a client of Cognos for some ten years, decided to construct a powerful, flexible business intelligence environment based on IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence. Through that BI platform, Telenet’s end-users can compile and consult budgeting and planning reports.
Slide 2: IBM Software Group Case Study Software OLAP is used for analysing corporate data such as customer margins and sales trends. “We calculate the value of every customer for the company on a monthly basis. We also perform a daily telecom fraud check,” says Verkinderen. In the future, Telenet aims to incorporate all Cognos functions for OLAP, reporting and budgeting & planning within a portal, thus improving userfriendliness and efficiency even further. Benefits realized • • • • • • During the implementation, Telenet received professional support from Cognos partner iPerform. “We opted for a phased approach to the construction of our business intelligence environment. The reporting was first done directly from our production environment. Then we defined business entities. At this point in time, we are inputting businessoriented data into an operational datastore. For the Oracle applications, for example, we use the Noetix views as a meta layer. Finally, we plan to construct an Oracle data warehouse. Our data warehouse will be adapted to fit the current usage of the implementation and the future requirements of the end-user. The end-users already began working with IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence from the very first phase of our business intelligence project. Their knowledge of the business data and what they can do with it is, as a consequence, continually being expanded,” says Karel Verkinderen. Telenet’s BI environment is constructed upon an Oracle 10 Solaris database which contains some 4.5 terabytes of data. The data destined for Telenet’s data warehouse is generated by more than 50 different applications including external data sources. IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence makes use of all this information for online analytical processing (OLAP), reporting, budgeting & planning. For statistical analyses of, among other things, customer behaviour, Telenet uses SPSS software. Around 300 employees currently use the BI possibilities at Telenet. However, only a select group actually develops reports themselves and analyses the data. For a large number of users, the ready-made reports primarily serve as a rapid source of information. End-users at Telenet therefore have access to over 1,000 user-friendly and well-structured reports. • Planning and performance management Real-time feedback Connection between operations and finance Greater flexibility Less dependence of end-users on IT department User-friendliness Understandable results Thanks to the installation of IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, Telenet now has rapid access to correct, consistent and well-structured information about its business. As a result, end-users can compile reports with greater speed and ease and Telenet can respond to new developments in the marketplace or within its own organisation with greater flexibility and efficiency. An added advantage is the user-friendliness of the BI platform. It allows end-users to adapt the configurations themselves without the help of the IT department. “IBM Cognos 8 BI offers real support for our employees’ activities. We can therefore sincerely recommend it, not only because of the quality of the technology but also because it is extremely user-friendly.” Manager, Telenet “Thanks to the ready-made reports of IBM Cognos 8 Business Intelligence, we can react with even greater speed and efficiency to new trends in the market and the changing needs of our customers. That way, we can prevent them from switching to a competitor and maximize profitability at the same time.” —Karel Verkinderen, Business Intelligence Development
Slide 3: IBM Software Group Case Study Software “With IBM Cognos 8 BI we can turn our strategy into individual performance plans and budgets”, concludes Karel Verkinderen. “We can also provide real-time feedback to participants in the planning process thus generating stronger commitments. A very important feature of the BI tool is the ability to connect operations and finance by uploading both our operational and financial data into the same data warehouse. Finally, we also gain a clearer picture of our results by integrating planning within reporting and analysis. By comparing budgets with the actual figures, for instance, the enduser can conduct a thorough analysis of where we are going right and where we might be going wrong.” © Copyright IBM Corporation 2010 IBM Canada Ltd. 3755 Riverside Drive Ottawa ON K1G 4K9 Canada Produced in Canada July 2010 All Rights Reserved IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com and Cognos are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the Web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Other company, product and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others. This case study is an example of how one customer uses IBM products. There is no guarantee of comparable results. References in this publication to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them available in all countries in which IBM operates. Any reference in this information to non-IBM Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of those Web sites. The materials at those Web sites are not part of the materials for this IBM product and use of those Web sites is at your own risk. P24758 Please Recycle About IBM Cognos BI and Performance Management IBM Cognos business intelligence (BI) and performance management solutions deliver world-leading enterprise planning, consolidation and BI software, support and services to help companies plan, understand and manage financial and operational performance. IBM Cognos solutions bring together technology, analytical applications, best practices, and a broad network of partners to give customers an open, adaptive and complete performance solution. Over 23,000 customers in more than 135 countries around the world choose IBM Cognos solutions. For further information or to reach a representative: ibm.com/cognos Request a call To request a call or to ask a question, go to ibm.com/cognos/ contactus. An IBM Cognos representative will respond to your enquiry within two business days. YTC-03074-CAEN-00