Virgin Mobile, a joint venture between Virgin Management and Cell C, opened its doors in South Africa in June 2006, launching a new cellular service into the local market that has seen competition 'hotting' up between mobile service providers.
With a unique approach to the market - four simple packages, no hidden fees, or high rates - the company needed a BI solution that would provide visibility into its operations, products and services in order to optimise its performance. Cognos 8 Business Intelligence (BI) has delivered this and more.
Virgin Mobile offers voice services, SMS, MMS, GPRS and EDGE, and international roaming through its own stores as well as a network of retail outlets. It has a global footprint with an entrenched presence in the UK, Australia, Canada and the US.
Establishing a presence in South Africa meant opening a new office and developing the infrastructure to support its offering. Applications needed to be implemented to create the foundation for business operations and a data warehouse and BI solution were needed to provide insight into business performance.
As Cognos' BI solution had proven successful at Virgin Mobile's other operations, Cognos 8 BI was chosen as the preferred BI solution for South Africa with the solution to be modelled on the Australian Cognos implementation.
The organisation chose the Cognos 8 BI's reporting suite, which includes analytics, developer and modelling tools.
"It was important for the organisation to have BI cross-functionality across all the business areas - ie, sales, marketing, product management, finance and the supply chain. Our users and executive team required visibility into the performance of various areas of the business, ensuring we have an up-to-date picture of how the organisation is faring. Cognos 8 BI provided us with a platform that spans our entire organisation, delivering an enterprise-wide view of our business," said Nomaciko Ngoasheng, head of the BI division at Virgin Mobile.
Cognos created a key performance indicator (KPI) 'cube' within the BI architecture, allowing Virgin Mobile to analyse various business areas and highlighting performance issues in terms of revenue-based accounts and telco measurements. This enables users in the organisation to understand how the business is doing and whether corrective action needs to be taken. This also significantly shortens 'time to decision' for the company.
In addition, the authoring tools allow 25 of the 50 users to create their own reporting and analysis functions. The other 25 users have reports 'pushed' to them, allowing them to view relevant and timely information in the required format and context. Dashboards are also used extensively, allowing executives and users to easily interpret information in an instant.
Meeting deadlines
The implementation was not without challenges, the biggest of which was meeting the launch day deadline. Staff worked long hours to ensure systems were up and running and reporting was available. In addition, the data warehouse, which was not built from scratch but modelled on the Australian version, had to be tailored to the South African office's requirements. It required considerable innovation from the Cognos team to refine the model to suit the local office.
Said Christo Nel, Services Manager at Cognos South Africa: "Virgin Mobile required that we take the Australian application and replicate it with a very strong solutions focus. It was vital for us to use the framework they supplied and link it to the information sources at the South African head office. To add to the complexity, the Australian framework was based on our previous software version - Cognos Series 7 - with analysis cubes. An innovative approach was required to take this software version's framework and refine or optimise it into a Cognos 8 BI environment."
"Cognos assisted us greatly with the implementation and, together with our partner Cell C, provided a proof of concept that ensured a smooth project. They made the effort to really understand our business and its structure and, based on this, recommend the appropriate solution," added Ngoasheng.
Cognos 8 BI has proven a success, delivering information that allows staff to fulfil their responsibilities more efficiently. Not only has the solution delivered results but the response from the staff has been extremely positive - an important ingredient in the successful adoption of any solution.
Said Ngoasheng: "Training was provided to ensure our staff were equipped with the necessary skills to understand and realise the value of the BI tools provided to them. We have received many calls from staff requesting more advanced training as they realise the power of Cognos 8 BI. As the solution is Web-based, it allows our staff to break out of the boundaries of the office, allowing them to tap into information-rich reports and dashboards wherever they are via the Internet."
A significant factor that contributed to the success of the implementation was the overall strategic 'buy-in' from various levels at Virgin Mobile. This resulted in a unified and focused vision, enabling better delivery of business outcomes rather than regarding the implementation as yet another BI functionality tool.
Virgin Mobile is reaping the benefits of using the Cognos 8 BI solution, namely improved efficiencies, transparency across the organisation and access to information that empowers the appropriate levels of management to understand performance issues and make faster, better decisions.
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