Sybase application Example: Portuguese Telecel Mobile Telecom Co., ltd

Business challenge: To become a leader in Portuguese mobile communications by improving customer service and innovation. Establish a data warehouse to understand the business situation in detail, know what customers are interested in, what they are buying, which products are the most profitable, how efficient the sales channels are, and how the distribution of the sales is different, and so on.
Solution: Sybase Adaptive Server IQ, Sybase Adaptive Server Enterprise, Sybase Replication Server, Sybase PowerDesigner
Implementation effect: Sybase's Data Warehouse enables Telecel to quickly and effectively analyze what customers are interested in, what they are buying, which products are the most profitable, how efficient the sales channels are, and what the geographical distribution of sales is, and so on. The query speed was shortened from the previous 3-4 hours to 3-4 minutes. Through the implementation of Data Warehouse, Telecel in the number of customers, revenue, profit level and so on are more than the previous leader. In 1991, Telecel was allowed to become Portugal's second mobile telecoms provider. As the market continues to open up, the company has gradually achieved a leading position in the competition. The national monopoly, which had entered the mobile telecoms industry three years earlier, knew that the government would soon allow a third company to enter the sector. It would then have a year to build its network infrastructure and accounting system throughout Portugal, consolidating its position for six years.

When talking about competition in the market, Telecel's data Warehousing manager, Luciencasta, said: "We are a private company from scratch." We decided that we would put our customers first, and compete with the quality of service and innovation.

The only way to capture the market quickly and effectively is to know as much as possible about the business of your business, what customers are interested in, what they are buying, what products are most profitable, how efficient their sales channels are, what their distribution is, and so on. Data Warehouse is one of the most important tools that our company strives to develop in order to win the leading position.

The success of the Telecel strategy has been proved by facts. Costa said that when the company started in 1992, our goal was to achieve a break-even in six years or so, but it took us only three years to achieve it. Sales are doubling every year; two years ago we surpassed our previous leaders in terms of customer numbers, revenue, and profit levels. We owe success to the implementation of the Data Warehouse, which is the most important of many factors.

"We started using data warehouses to make decisions," Costa said. "The first challenge is to ensure that the quality of the network we provide is better than that of our competitors, so we use geographically distributed data to ensure that capacity is increased as early as possible in the areas where the demand is greatest." "Since then, we have used the database to achieve three key goals: reducing drastic changes, targeting the most profitable products and focusing on the demand for new products, and targeting the most effective customers--these three points determine the success or failure of our companies." "

Data warehousing Infrastructure

"In the beginning, we used COBOL to generate reports and run our Dec DBMS network database." Because these reports are the lifeblood of our company, we soon have a backlog of intolerable reports, and we need to use a lot of valuable development resources to run them. So we used Microsoft access to handle the data extracted from the database. It's a good idea, but in just three months we're too big to use MS Access. So we turned to Sybase SQL Server and still took Microsoft Access as a front-end. We chose Sybase because it provided the ODBC connectivity we needed, the performance we needed, and our confidence in the company's technical support services. "

Multiple data sources that provide data to the Data Warehouse

What we never thought of was our growth rate, "Costa says," We've seen new services grow by leaps and bounds, and apps that support those services are constantly being updated. Finally, we adopted a multiple database environment that supports a variety of applications. The commissioned system for our agents and direct sales teams is based on Sybase, the telephone center software is based on Informix, the accounting packages are based on Oracle, and the customer service and accounting systems are based on Sybase. We have adopted many of the products in the Sybase Enterpriseconnect product line to integrate these data sources so that we can supply data to the Data warehouse. "We use Reflication server to replicate real-time hierarchical data back to the data warehouse, running very well and not feeling the impact on the product system." "

Create a total data model

"When the number of data sources increases, we see redundancy in our data, which requires us to create a hyper-model for the entire data to control the environment," says Costa. We made an assessment of the tools on the market with the help of Gartner Group consulting firm. In addition, because we want to instill in our designers and developers the idea that they need to provide instructions for his system, we also pull them over to participate in the selection process of model design tools. They chose Sybase PowerDesigner unanimously because it was easy to use and the quality of module integration was high. Moreover, it is the only product that can provide a data warehousing module. With the rapid growth of data warehouse requirements, Sybase IQ provides a solution. "

When talking about this rapid growth, Lucien Costa said: "We started with the Web database, quickly turned to Sybase SQL Server, and we now add Sybase IQ." Sybase IQ is Sybase's data warehousing solution that uses unique indexing techniques and data compression techniques. Sybase IQ can be 100 times times faster than a typical complex query in a regular data warehouse. "If we put the 8GB data on the IQ on the database, it would be 40GB."

"We need technology like IQ," Costa says, "Before IQ we use the Multidimensional database (Arbor Essbase), using the powerplay of Cognos as the front end." It works well in the case of a finite number of dimensions, but the scale of our development is very rapid and soon it will not apply. "" In a very large number of data for high-quality complex query, IQ provides us with a perfect ROLAP method. It can still get lightning speed even if it queries in high cardinality fields, such as name and address fields. Using IQ, a query that took 3-4 hours to run in the past is now only 3-4 minutes, "Costa said," and Sybase IQ is a miracle. "

When it comes to the speed changes that the data warehouse must face, Telecol's Sybase database administrator, Rui Romulu, said: "As we move the Data Warehouse to Sybase SQL Server, we turn to a more powerful HP 9000 UNIX." We have only one processor, just over three years, we now have two such machines, each machine has six processors, 2GB of memory. We have 500GB of data, can support 30 employees to run complex special analysis query, 50 users run report processing, all the customer service staff through a browser-based system in the Data Warehouse source query customer profile, so that each customer service personnel do not need to purchase Microsoft Access software.

Managing Telecel with Data warehousing

"Telecoms is the fastest growing industry in the world," Costa said. "If you can't react quickly, you can't adapt to market competition." Reacting quickly means getting new products and services faster than everyone else, and implementing new fees, otherwise it will be passive. "" Through the accounting system of information we know that there are millions of calls a day, two years of communication means 100GB of data, so we have a large amount of information wealth. By using information from a real-time analysis system, we can reduce the risk of fraud. The system will show any very expensive calls, and then we can check the caller's track record to see if the call meets its usual usage. If not, then we will have the opportunity to investigate in time. "

When talking about Telecel's future plans for Sybase IQ, Lucien Costa said: "Our data Warehouse services will continue to grow." We are likely to extend the scope of this service from decision support to day-to-day business. Service personnel often receive checks that do not indicate the amount paid, and we can use the IQ to check the cheque information with an outstanding account, and we can do many things with it. "

From the database administrator's point of view, Romulu adds: "Sybase has a product that works just right for this kind of work, and these products are complex (sometimes easy, sometimes difficult) but they are useful and functional. The most convenient thing for us is Sybase's service. I'm dealing with a variety of database environments, I can call Sybase's service staff, and I believe they can help me solve the Oracle or Informix problem in addition to Sybase's problems, which is invaluable to me. "