Mobistar monitors, scrutinizes mobile data services with SAS® Web Analytics solution

Mobistar is part of the Orange Group and is active in both mobile and fixed telephony. With more than 2.5 million customers (market share of more than 33 percent), it is the second-largest operator in the highly competitive Belgian mobile telecom market, and it is one of the fastest-growing mobile operators in Europe. 

An electronic service for every customer
The company is also a major player in the mobile Internet domain. Mobistar offers its customers a vast range of wireless Internet and data services. This technology allows customers to tailor their mobile phones with new screen graphics and ring tones. They can also download Java games and receive updates such as news flashes, stock reports and sports results.

For any provider, careful scrutiny of the performance of these services is essential to measure their success and maintain technical quality. This information helps managers ensure that they make correct decisions regarding future offerings. As part of Mobistar's efforts to retain customers by increasing the quality of service – and, therefore, customer satisfaction –Mobistar turned to the SAS Web Analytics solution, which has proved to be an excellent indicator of network performance.

Assessing the rate of success
The profitability of these services depends largely on the volume of 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 applies to depictions of music groups and famous people and the use of popular ring tones. Non-telephone-related content, such as weather forecasts and sports pages, is also not without its overhead costs. For instance, Mobistar acquires up-to-date data from recognized Belgian meteorological stations to compose its 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 its servers. "These are more than enough good reasons to monitor the usage of our mobile services," notes Krist Deforche, IT project leader for Mobistar.

Options 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 require definitive IT excellence. That is why Mobistar sought out the SAS Web Analytics reporting solution. "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 customization 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 solution 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 number of downloaded items.

"Thanks to the SAS Web Analytics solution, we can now instantly assess the success of our e-services and at the same time evaluate the performance of the network," says Deforche.

Immediate knowledge with intuitive interface
The SAS reporting application has now been in place at Mobistar for more than 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 SAS' intuitive interface to its solution," reports Deforche. "Virtually every statistic can be researched in further detail with the drill-down capabilities. 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 extensive training courses 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 data services network. WAP pages are sometimes down because of unforeseen issues, or people are unable to download the cartoon image of their choice. All of 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."

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