GP adopts hi-tech Business Intelligence System

. PHOTO: Star Graphics

GP has purchased this solution for better analytical capabilities and share information across the enterprise and in extranet environments, using both tools and analytic applications. The sole purpose for the system is to maintain customer call information, which is derived from several billing systems connected with switches.

"They are now capable of creating a profile of their custo-mers and customer behavior. So in this case instead of having a blanket marketing campaign they can strategically pinpoint different customers through their intelligence system and put them in different segments and then surprise them with different packages", explained Jamal Ahmed, CEO of IBCS-Primax when asked about the flexibility of the implemented system.

It has further capabilities of understanding the churn-- that assumes the possibilities that a customer would prefer to a new service provider. It can basically quantify how many of the total clients may shift to a different operator. Comparing the actual result for a period with the expected shift from customers, the application can realise the deviation from the actual model for churn. These are analyses from a dashboard portal that is presented in a graphical user interface by means of indicators.

"GP is the only client in this region that is using an end to end Oracle solution, so it's a very high profile project for IBCS as well as Oracle because no other telecom operators in this area use end to end Oracle system", mentioned Ahmed.

The ETL (Extraction Transformation Loading) tool is the mechanism by which data is extracted and put into the Data Warehouse that is called the Oracle Warehouse Silver. The presentation layer used is named Oracle Discoverer. Grameen Phone is using the latest version of the application that is the Oracle 10g.

The leading operator in GSM technology had separate standalone systems in each department installed previously, but they didn't have a unified model in front of them. They wanted to consolidate the information for a unified strategic planning and decision-making and IBCS had responded to their desire with Enterprise Data Warehouse, told Ahmed when asked about Grameen's previous solution for this purpose.

Syed Yamin Bakht, general manager, Information Department, GP, said that so far the performance of the implemented syatem is satisfactory in terms of generating analyses of customer data in different areas, when asked about the system's performance.

In terms of security the application finds the Single Sign-On (SSO) feature within the interface where the business users can identify themselves in a single account for each report they view.

Without SSO, each user must maintain a separate identity and password for each application he or she accesses, which consumes time to resolve and burden administrators with further worries if accounts get locked and even for creation and deletion.

The Oracle approach to SSO provides a framework for secure access from a browser to all types reports generated by Discoverer.