Watching the Television Figures

TVB implements a Marketing Information System with SAS software for improved reporting Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) is Hong Kong・s leading television station. In an extremely fast moving market, the company faces aggressive competition in the fight for viewing figures. Accurate, timely information is essential for monitoring ratings and advertising figures, and for making future projections. Historically, TVB・s Marketing Research and Information department was responsible for providing the company・s senior management with daily and weekly reports. Data was stored in a mainframe database and SAS software modules used to access the data for cleaning, manipulation and reporting. Print outs of viewing figures, advertising expenditure and a variety of commercial information were then provided in paper format. "Due to the number of reports required and the vast amounts of data involved, this was a very expensive and time consuming process," explains K.C. Leung, TVB・s Marketing Research and Information Manager. "It was also inflexible. We would produce basic reports each day but our sales managers would often need additional information. Even for the simplest requests we would then have to write a program specifically to show the extra results they wanted. In such a fast moving environment this meant that the information they were seeing was not always the most up-to-date and that our response to fluctuations in the market could be slow." In order to improve the speed of delivery and quality of its information, TVB turned again to SAS Institute. TVB realised that the first stage in upgrading its reporting procedure was to improve the way in which its data could be accessed. The company therefore decided to introduce a new, 3-tier system to allow data to be stored and accessed more efficiently. The mainframe database was kept, but a Unix system was added. At the beginning of each day before the TVB office opens, 2 gigabytes of data are now downloaded from the mainframe system to the Unix box and converted from DB2 format into a SAS data warehouse. By the time Sales and Marketing Managers are sitting down at their desks at 9:00am the data from the previous night is ready to be accessed at their desktops. The next stage was to allow users to view basic reports on-line and to be able to produce their own ad-hoc reports without the need to go through the Marketing Research and Information department. Last year TVB introduced its Sales Information System, a Windows application designed using SAS/AF software. This provides an easy-to-use front-end graphical user interface (GUI), which gives the company・s Sales and Marketing Managers access to the huge variety of information stored in the data warehouse. Basic reports are produced automatically each day, which the management team can view on-line over the company・s Intranet as soon as they arrive in the office. Graphical capabilities enable users to track ratings, advertising expenditure and other information more easily, while drill down functionality means that they can look at individual products, advertisers or media as well as viewing the overall picture. K.C. Leung describes a number of benefits that the new system provides. "One of the main things is simply habitual usage," he says. "Now that the reports are on-line and available first thing in the morning our users are far more likely to view them than they were when they were presented with a stack of paper reports. As a result they have a better picture of what is going on. They have also started to use the information more for planning purposes, rather than just for tracking." "The system also means there is less pressure on the Marketing Research and Information department. Because they don・t have to spend so much time producing reports for management our researchers are more able to add value to the analysis they provide." In the near future, TVB is planning to expand the application to 40 users, in order to deliver a lower level of information to its advertising sales team. "Our aim is to enable them to gain a better understanding of their clients and to be able to facilitate and monitor sales more effectively," concludes K.C. Leung.