Telecom transformation: Smarter outreach through AI-driven marketing

While most telecom subscribers share the same basic need to stay connected, it’s Telekom Srbija’s ability to go beyond the basics that has made it the No. 1 operator in Serbia – and one of the leading telecommunications providers in Southeast and Central Europe. Several years ago, Telekom Srbija made a bold move beyond its core services by expanding into content creation – a significant leap for a telecom company. Today, it produces TV series, movies and documentaries, and has become the region’s leading content producer.

“The former Yugoslavia region has a huge diaspora scattered all over the world,” says Natali Delić, Telekom Srbija’s Strategy and Digital Officer. “What we’ve found is that this demographic really wants high-quality content that connects them back to home. That’s where we saw an opportunity – not just to grow in our local markets, but to expand our presence on a broader scale.”

Telekom Srbija’s unwavering drive for innovation led the company to team up with SAS to take its customer engagement to the next level.

Unifying the organization under one MarTech stack

With more than 8 million customers nationwide, Telekom Srbija faces the complex task of personalizing marketing at scale – all while ensuring a consistent and relevant experience across every customer touchpoint.

“Previously, we had nine different teams creating campaigns – and none of them knew who was executing what or when,” Delić says. “Some customers were receiving direct emails from marketing with one campaign, while door-to-door sales teams were offering something totally different. This disjointed effort diminished the customer experience. And from an operational standpoint, it was an inefficient and expensive process that didn’t yield the ideal outcome. We needed to take a different, unified approach.”

With SAS Customer Intelligence 360, Delić is confident that Telekom Srbija will have all teams working together to coordinate and automate campaigns in one MarTech solution. The first step in this process has been the implementation of SAS Customer Intelligence 360's strategic planning capabilities.

“SAS enables us to centralize our campaigns, ensuring that our messages are not overlapping,” Delić says. “We avoid spamming customers and aim to deliver the right messages through the right channels.”

Democratizing analytics

Delić also advocates for expanding data access to more teams across Telekom Srbija.

“Data and analytics should not solely be the responsibility of the IT team,” Delić emphasizes. “We want staff throughout the company to use data and gain insights to better understand our customers. To truly foster a change mindset, it’s essential for everyone to become more data- and insights-driven and to learn how to use analytics tools to achieve that.”

That’s why Telekom Srbija is proactively getting more employees on board with SAS’ Martech solution. “We have more than 60 people from different parts of the organization learning how to use SAS so they can conduct their own analysis,” Delić says. “Not only does this help staff become more self-sufficient, it also reduces the load on our Data and Analytics Center of Excellence, allowing the CoE to focus on more complex tasks.”

Personalizing campaigns, increasing efficiency

While personalizing marketing messages for every customer might sound daunting – if not impossible – to many companies, Telekom Srbija has found it entirely feasible with SAS.

“We believe SAS Customer Intelligence 360 is a more efficient way to manage all our campaigns,” Delić says. “It will help us move from broad campaigns targeting large segments to highly refined messaging and offers for micro-segments, even down to individual customers.”

Equally important as delivering the right message is ensuring the message reaches the customer through their preferred channel and at their preferred time.

However, it requires analyzing vast volumes of complex data at scale to make that happen. That’s why Telekom Srbija plans to modernize from the SAS Real-Time Decision Manager solution to the newer, AI-driven SAS Intelligent Decisioning solution.

The right messaging at the right time through the right channel

Context is everything in customer experience.

While a commercial text message might seem like an intrusion first thing in the morning, that quickly changes when it’s a message offering additional data to prevent overage fees.

“Combined with SAS Customer Intelligence 360, SAS Intelligent Decisioning will enable us to react in real time and take the appropriate action at the right moment via the right channel,” Delić says. “Today, we use SAS Real Time Decision Manager to execute trigger-based SMS campaigns. These include campaigns that allow customers to purchase additional data before they reach a threshold, and a disruption in service or fee assessment occurs. In the future, with SAS Intelligent Decisioning, we will be able to apply similar logic to additional channels, such as web or the self-service app. By better understanding customer motivations and interests, we will launch the appropriate responsive engagement in the context of each individual inquiry.”

Keyword: automation. No employee intervention required. Just one fully integrated MarTech stack powered by SAS, seamlessly working in the background to enhance the customer experience.

SAS Viya: A technology platform for now and the future

“A couple of years ago, we deployed several machine learning use cases,” Delić adds. “We realized that we needed a platform that is scalable – and cloud native – that can unify all our analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence use cases. That’s why we decided to deploy SAS Viya.”

As Delić discovered, Telekom Srbija has only begun to uncover what SAS Viya is capable of.

“The possibilities with Viya keep expanding,” she says. “At first, we were focused on scalable infrastructure and integrating with different programming languages. Now, we’re excited about connecting it to large language models and AI agents. We want to take full advantage of all the new features Viya offers.”

From its roots in telecom to its evolution as a content creator and data-driven innovator, Telekom Srbija continues to redefine what’s possible in customer engagement. Its collaboration with SAS isn’t just about upgrading tools – it’s about unifying teams, unlocking insights and scaling smarter, more personalized experiences across the board. And while the technology is powerful, Telekom Srbija knows it’s how you use it that counts.

“As we continue this journey, our focus is simple,” Delić says. “Use data and technology to create more meaningful connections with our customers – and do it in a way that’s smart, seamless and scalable.”