Faster, more accurate business forecasts improve Telefonica O2's business planning and management

In today’s competitive communications market, accurately forecasting customer demand and market trends is critical to growing and sustaining a competitive edge. As a result, Telefónica O2 Germany implemented SAS Forecast Server to deliver more accurate and timely insight to support the critical business decision-making needs of division and executive management.

Before implementing SAS, Telefónica O2 performed its forecasting on individual workstations, using a different vendor's software, that failed to deliver timely forecasts, produced poor analytical models and impeded collaboration.

According to Markus Heimann, Vice President, Business Intelligence, Telefónica O2, "The switch to SAS has proven to be a strategic step, enabling the company to expand its analytical expertise and substantially advance its business planning and management."

The company at a glance
Telefónica O2 Germany, which belongs to Telefónica Europe and is part of the Spanish telecommunication group Telefónica SA, provides private and business customers with postpaid and prepaid mobile telecom products as well as mobile data services based on GPRS and UMTS technologies. In addition, the integrated communications provider offers DSL fixed-network telephony and high-speed Internet.

Forecasting at a new level
"Competitive pressure and management requirements demanded that we be more responsive," explains Thorsten Kühlmeyer, Head of Business Intelligence Analysis at Telefónica O2. "Requests for sales forecasts come from all technical areas of the company. We use SAS to support various analytical tasks – from short-term, critical, ad hoc analyses to complex forecasts for service departments and corporate management."

The types of information Kühlmeyer's team provides include current sales performance, product utilization, tariff migration trends, contract extensions, terminations, churn and call center utilization. He says results from using cutting-edge and flexible forecasting from SAS have been impressive, helping the company increase its forecasting accuracy by 18 percent: "Accuracy of short-term sales forecasts used to be around 80 percent," explains Kühlmeyer.

Centralized, accurate and accessible data warehouse
Unlike the past, when data sets were stored on individual workstations, the company can now access a centralized enterprise data warehouse, built using SAS Data Integration Server and maintained in Telefónica O2’s Business Intelligence Center (BIC). Using SAS Forecast Server, and additional software such as SAS Enterprise Guide – for data preparation, quality checks and ad hoc analysis – analysts access data that is consolidated from all areas of the business to uncover hidden connections and deliver viable business insight.

"Thanks to the consistent, centralized data environment, we are now three times faster at developing and delivering forecasting models than we used to be," says Andreas Gimber, Senior Project Manager in the BIC Analysis Department.

The key to success
Kühlmeyer says a key factor to ensuring the solution's success was involving users, such as those on the sales team, in the early stages of planning the forecasting environment: "The introduction of a new environment always requires a change in thinking for users. That's why it's essential to get buy-in early, by emphasizing the benefits for individual users."

The results illustrated in this article are specific to the particular situations, business models, data input, and computing environments described herein. Each SAS customer’s experience is unique based on business and technical variables and all statements must be considered non-typical. Actual savings, results, and performance characteristics will vary depending on individual customer configurations and conditions. SAS does not guarantee or represent that every customer will achieve similar results. The only warranties for SAS products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements in the written agreement for such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Customers have shared their successes with SAS as part of an agreed-upon contractual exchange or project success summarization following a successful implementation of SAS software. Brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

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