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Customers In The Spotlight

SFR

"With BusinessObjects XI Release 2, we have implemented a true common business intelligence platform to cover the needs of all our departments and business divisions, potentially up to 10,000 users. Our productivity in BI projects has improved along with the performance of some of our application."

Jean Nembo, Business Intelligence Competency Center Manager at SFR

SFR is structured into the main business divisions of Marketing, Sales, Customers, Network, and Information Systems which are supported by the central departments such as HR, Finance and IT. Prior to 2003, each business divisions had its own business intelligence system. In 2005, the first common BI platform was implement using BusinessObjects reporting. But a large number of customized enhancements resulted in heavy and costly maintenance for this platform. In fact, SFR wanted to move to a fully web-based environment to facilitate deployment and maintenance across the user base. When BusinessObjects XI was launched, SFR was therefore eager to implement the new platform. The project commenced at the end of 2005 and 12 months later the BITOOL – the common platform – was operational along with its associated best practices and standards for development and integration. The new platform includes about fifty applications, 80 universes and 800 reports for roughly 5,000 users.

Challenge

"An innovative product with a number of remarkable functions, I consider BusinessObjects XI to be a radically new platform," says Jean Nembo. “With BusinessObjects XI Release 2, we can cover everything our departments and business divisions need. It’s a very great improvement as many users work at the same time on operational reports using Crystal Reports and Dashboard Manager charts for analysis. All of this is performed in a fully web-based environment”. Another function which is essential in the SFR environment is multi-source synchronization and OLAP access. “We have fifty or more data sources and BusinessObjects XI offers us a single access point to these sources which are relational and multi-dimensional.” SFR has especially welcomed the new functions of BusinessObjects XI, Release 2 such as widespread distribution and broadcasting for field sales executives, and integration of the Microsoft Office Live tool for example. Also worthy of note are the optimized export to Excel with enriched formatting, the BusinessObjects Encyclopedia, for better understanding of relationships between BI documents and ease of finding information and finally the new concept of collaborative business intelligence for interactive communication between users. This can be used, for example, if a user thinks that an indicator is abnormal, a colleague can be immediately alerted without the user leaving their environment.

Approach

“It’s not just a migration, I consider the move to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 as an entirely new project.” SFR was a beta site for BusinessObjects XI Release 2 which provided the opportunity to gain in-depth knowledge of the new version and be in a strong position to develop the functions tested. The migration of SFR’s platform was a two-phase operation. The first phase was to implement BITOOL, the common platform, along with the development, security and integration standards. In the second phase, existing applications were transferred in parallel with some new project developments.

The Business Objects Global Services team was on hand throughout the project: “The involvement of the software vendor is essential in a migration project of this scale. Without their support we would not have been able to keep to the project timetable”. The switchover was made on an application by application basis, after a period of running both versions in parallel. The users and the BI team worked together on acceptance testing and then agreed on the final data for switchover. Jean Nembo decided to migrate the applications on a like-for-like basis, relying on usage statistics to identify those reports which are used and those which have become redundant. 60% of the documents were able to be migrated directly using the migration tools provided by the software vendor.

To date, 40% of applications have been migrated. The first major project to be developed was the Aristote reporting project for the 5,000 users of the Customer Services department. This is both a mass and customized reporting system with hierarchies of regional users and national (head-office) users. The function of this system is to provide improved management of the activities of the 5,000 customer account managers: management of their schedules, call flows, setting up a segmented structure for their working days, resource planning etc. This project is also related to customer satisfaction as SFR wants to measure the quality of responses, waiting times and problem resolution rates.

The next application to be migrated is HR reporting with a large number of confidentiality and security requirements. “We understand the security part of BusinessObjects”, says Jean Nembo. HR is provided with a system allowing them to track and optimize the overall workforce in terms of training, career plans and salary costs.

SFR’s now has a common reporting platform that is shared by all the Business and Support divisions of the company. The BI Competency Center was created shortly before migration and provides support across the company for the implementation of projects. The BI Competency Center’s role is also to define business intelligence usage standards and best practice for incorporating new functionality, presentation standards for reports and object naming rules.

Results

Implementation of a shared platform on BusinessObjects XI Release 2 along with the definition of standards for development and integration have enabled the BI team to improve their productivity. For some applications, performance improvement is measured in double figures. In Jean Nembo’s own words, “With Version 5, access to the portal, user identification and entry to the portal took approximately 1 minute; with BusinessObjects XI Release 2, the process takes 15 seconds. The time taken to format some reports has been reduced by two thirds”.

SFR has opened its new business intelligence platform outside the company; to its partners and vendors mainly. “Some of our call centers are outside the SFR network. Their reports are accessible on our portal with no additional development work. Indicators relate to business activity, outgoing and incoming call flows, audit of call responses etc.”, says Jean Nembo by way of example.

SFR now has a true business intelligence portal and each Business Division has an expert user who is responsible for the reporting facilities provided on the platform. Longer term, 10,000 users will be able to view and see updated reports directly on the SFR BI portal.

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Quick Facts

• Industry:
  Mobile telephone operator
• Challenge:
  - A competitive market with fickle customers.
  - Need better knowledge about customers to retain their loyalty.
  - Reduce maintenance and deployment costs of the BI platform.
• Why Business Objects?
  A common platform for all of SFR’s departments and business divisions.
• Business Objects products and services:
  BusinessObjects XI Release 2, Business Objects Global Services