Mobile E-services monitored and scrutinized

Mobistar rings in the SAS® Web Analytics solution

Mobistar is one of the major players on the Belgian telecommunications market, active on mobile and fixed telephony and on markets that demonstrate a high growth potential. One particular ‘high-growth’ market is mobile data transmission, also called ‘mobile multimedia’, like WAP and SMS based services. These services allow, for example, Mobistar customers to tailor their mobile phones with logos and ringtones, to download specific content such as news flashes and sports results, etc. Careful scrutiny of the performance of these services is essential to measure their success and technical quality. This information helps management ensure that they make correct decisions regarding future offerings. Mobistar turned to SAS and its Web Analytics solution, as the Web Analytics solution offers major strategic advantages and has proven to be an excellent indicator of network performance.

An electronic service for everyone

Mobistar is part of the Orange Group and is one of the fastest growing mobile telephony operators in Europe. With over two and a half million customers (market share of more than 33%), it is the second largest operator in the highly competitive Belgian mobile telecom market. The company is also a major player in the mobile Internet domain. Mobistar uses WAP — the Wireless Application Protocol — to offer their customers a vast range of wireless Internet services. This technology allows them to easily download mobile phone content such as logos, ringtones, JAVA games. Mobistar customers can also consult news pages, weather forecasts, soccer results or play online games.

Assessing the rate of success

The profitability of these services depends largely on its usage. The use of proprietary images in mobile phone logos, such as cartoon characters, is subject to international copyright laws and royalty agreements. The same goes for depictions of music groups and famous people, and the use of popular ringtones. Non-telephone related content, such as the weather forecasts and sports pages, are not without their expenses either. For instance, Mobistar acquires up-to-date data from recognized Belgian meteorological stations to compose their weather forecasts. Another important aspect is capacity management. If a particular service becomes a huge success, Mobistar may have to increase the capacity and redundancy of their servers. “These are more than enough good reasons to monitor the usage of our mobile services,” notes Krist Deforche, IT Project Leader for Mobistar.

Sandbox option for full customization

The measurements carried out to determine the actual number of downloaded items constitute a very complex data pool. Organizing these huge chunks of data and transforming them into understandable and crystal-clear reports requires definitive IT excellence. That is why Mobistar turned to SAS and its Web Analytics reporting tool. “We were looking for a partner that could offer us a fully customized solution”, says Deforche. “We needed a reporting tool that supported an extensive ‘sandbox’ option. Such a function would enable us to create reports exactly the way we need them: easy-to-access and concise, yet complete and understandable.” The SAS Web Analytics reporting application covered these demands perfectly.
Equally important, the tool could be implemented rapidly. SAS Web Analytics was installed throughout the entire company and was generating ‘out-of-the-box’ static reports in only two weeks. These included overall graphs such as the total amount of downloaded items. The reporting tool was then relayed to Ariane II, a SAS partner in IT solutions, for further deployment and exploitation.

More than just WAP reporting

Ariane II combines many years of IT and ETL experience with a profound knowledge of SAS code. This is the direct result of a close ten year partnership. Ariane II engineers initially fine-tuned the Web Analytics tool SAS had installed at Mobistar. Since then, Ariane II has programmed a vast number of additional features into SAS Web Analytics. These modifications were based on specific requests by Mobistar. For instance, Ariane II took full advantage of the sandbox option to generate reports on the use of Mobistar’s voice mail service.
This reporting immediately contributed to a successful assessment of the voice mail service and facilitated the formulation of forecast enquiries. Ariane II also added a feature to the SAS solution to generate reports on Mobistar’s m-banxafe service. This service allows customers to reload their Mobistar TEMPO credit by simply sending an SMS. For Mobistar, the knowledge of how many people actually use m-banxafe is essential input for an accurate evaluation.

Immediate knowledge with intuitive interface

The SAS reporting application has now been in place at Mobistar for over two years. During that period, its functions have been expanded to the point where almost every aspect of the e-services can be monitored. “The answers to all performance related questions can be easily retrieved, thanks to the intuitive interface SAS equips their solution with,” reports Deforche. “Virtually every statistic can be researched in further detail with the drill-down option. We can then merge this very specific information with other statistics into one conveniently arranged report. The information is easily accessible on our intranet through any Internet browser, thus minimizing installation and maintenance cost. The best part is that our employees don’t even have to go through an extensive training schedule to perform such tasks. The solution is completely self-evident.”

Operational follow-up of the network

The reporting tool also reveals technical malfunctions within the WAP network. WAP pages are sometimes down due to unforeseen issues or people are unable to download the cartoon image of their choice. All these statistics show up in the SAS reporting tool. “This allows us to follow-up on the performance of the network,” explains Deforche. “We can immediately pinpoint a problem and dispatch our engineers to solve the issue. SAS Web Analytics significantly speeds up the entire process of technical problem solving. This added value for our IT specialists also makes it an indispensable tool for the marketing department and middle management.”

Clear reports for diverse services

Mobistar and Ariane II are continuously exploring various ways to utilize the full potential of the SAS application. One plan consists of expanding the reporting processes of Mobistar’s ‘Info SMS’ service. This service allows customers to order and receive additional content via SMS. Mobistar also asked Ariane II to extend the reporting for the technical follow-up of the quality and usage of the Mobistar data network (e.g. WAP or GPRS). Deforche confirms that the three-partner collaboration – SAS, Ariane II, and Mobistar – still has a lot of arrows left in its quiver. “Ariane II’s account manager told me recently that he’d been around here for nearly two years, continuously adding new features to the already extensive SAS engine. I’m quite sure that we’ll be celebrating more of these anniversaries for many years to come.”

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