Clear reports for qualitative network performance monitoring SAS speeds up both problem identification and solving

Proximus is Belgium’s leading mobile telecom company. Their ability to continuously follow up on network performance is absolutely essential in this highly competitive sector. Their success depends, in large measure, on their capacity to monitor the status of the network at all times, including call behavior of customers and performance indicators. Equally important is the concise - but complete - reporting of this information. And that is where SAS technology comes into play. By transforming information into crystal-clear data sheets, tables, and graphs, SAS enables Proximus staff to easily identify trends and react instantly should performance degrade.

Extensive follow up leads to better performance

Proximus is a subsidiary of Belgacom and Vodafone, and is Belgium’s pioneer in mobile telephony. With over four million customers, Proximus has the largest share of the Belgian mobile communications market. As the company expands, it is imperative to maintain a fully operational and qualitative network. To ensure this, measurements are constantly collected and analyzed for the entire country. This is how Proximus guarantees that every customer has flawless phone calls, from the instant they push the first button to the final goodbye. “To achieve the highest level of network performance, we take continuous measurements on all key network nodes”, says Marc Matthys, Manager of the Capacity and Performance Team. “All of this raw data is sent to a central database, which stores the information and prepares it for analysis. The reporting process, however, was far from optimal. We needed a much more efficient way to visualize the wealth of information throughout the different departments.”

Turning data into readable facts

Making information accessible to a large number of people at any given moment was the challenge of Matthys’ team. In the past, engineers used many different software applications to access, retrieve, and present information. Occasionally, individuals were forced to program in order to manipulate and visualize the data. Valuable time was lost since this was not their core mission. This was further compounded by the fact that various reporting islands were created and these did not produce consistently optimal reporting. Proximus needed a tool that would significantly accelerate the reporting process and eliminate all of these problems. They wanted to centralize the reporting competence and use powerful servers instead of user desktops.

The search for software excellence

“ We started looking for a professional partner that could provide us with a comprehensive solution,” explains Matthys. “After an extensive selection process, we decided to partner with SAS. We were already familiar with their expertise from previous work together and had been impressed by their technology.” A key new requirement was that the application also had to make data accessible through the intranet via a browser. This was important to minimize investment. “The SAS AppDev Studio™ and SAS® Integration Technology solutions quickly demonstrated that they would enable us to develop the reporting framework we envisaged both easily and efficiently. ”

A user-defined reporting solution

The main task was to streamline access to the central database. Since many different software tools were being used to link up with the database, Proximus wanted to create a single application that everyone could access easily. SAS AppDev StudioTM is a development environment to create Web applications. Proximus used it to develop RADAR, an intranet-based reporting framework. RADAR is used primarily by network engineers and operators but it can be accessed by anyone in the company wishing to check on the performance of the infrastructure. On the RADAR Web site, specific requests can be made, such as graphs on the availability of the network, the average delivery speed of SMS messages, or the transfer success rate between different antennas. These requests are now handled by the underlying SAS Integration Technology software which retrieves the relevant information from the central database and returns it to the user. The result can be displayed in a wide variety of tables, user-configurable charts or graphs and can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet for further data processing or integration with business data.

More than meets the eye

Behind the scenes, the central database refreshes most of the data every fifteen minutes with new measurements from all across the country. Most indicators thus provide an almost real time view. RADAR, however, offers more than just query and presenting possibilities. Marc Matthys again: “Thanks to SAS’ many features, our RADAR application is accessible by dozens of people at the same time. As RADAR contains some highly confidential information, we used the built-in capability for securing and personalizing the access.
RADAR also checks the validity and completeness of the figures, another essential feature that assures users that they are getting high quality and accurate information.

Easy and without limits

“AppDev Studio is highly customizable and flexible. It allowed us to build RADAR in a way that perfectly suited our needs. The only limit is our own imagination,” adds Matthys. “In addition, no extensive programming is needed to generate the application since SAS is graphically driven. We developed an intuitive interface based on user requirements that enabled users to get going without extensive training.

Faster and better-informed decision-making

Keeping a close eye on indicators in the constantly changing network benefits both Proximus and its customers. Matthys is unequivocal: “With RADAR, we can now represent key indicators of our mobile network in crystal-clear reports. We can detect short-term changes and compare data over long periods of time. This helps us to uncover possible structural defects. By analyzing different trends, we can even anticipate possible future malfunctions in the network.” Being aware of problems more rapidly - sometimes even before they happen - and knowing where to intervene, means Proximus staff can get things working again on very short notice. “The reports aren’t limited to just providing important information for our engineers. Management also accesses RADAR for clear KPI overviews that are generated to provide them with all the information they need to know at a single glance. The result is faster and better-informed decision-making. With these graphs, they can optimize their present operations and set benchmarks for the future.”

Expandable in the future

Matthys is enthusiastic about the cooperation with SAS. “We did not encounter significant problems during the implementation of SAS”, he reveals. “As more and more people start appreciating the usefulness of the new reporting framework, we are getting queries about expanding the application and implementing more features. RADAR also displays indicators of IT applications and infrastructure. RADAR has unquestionably proven its added value and thanks to the flexibility of the SAS technology, I’m pretty sure we have not seen its full potential yet”, concludes a highly satisfied Matthys.

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