Telstra measures up with Enterprise Business Intelligence

Telstra Corporation has chosen Seagate Software`s Business Intelligence solutions as the technology supporting a major new Enterprise Business Intelligence roll-out in its Commercial & Consumer Division. Under this multi-million dollar project, over 1500 users will access critical business performance information via Telstra`s Intranet.

The project replaces an earlier effort and has resulted in 95 percent savings in deployment costs for analytical applications such as Balanced Scorecard, according to Telstra. It aims to provide Telstra C&C Sale`s managers and team leaders access to accurate, consistent and timely information on customer satisfaction, revenue generation and staff development to assist with strategic business decisions.

Dragan Jovanovic, director Business Intelligence Program, C&C Sales, said: "We need to be able to better measure our performance and increase customer service." Performance measures cover the gamut of Customer Satisfaction, Revenue Generation and Cost Containment.

"This is a priority for Telstra as we develop our sales division to be more customer focused, offer better levels of service and maintain the premier position in the telecommunications sector.

"What we have established is a C&C Sales Business Intelligence system that delivers a common source of information for all C&C reporting and consistent presentation of information" he adds.

This project is key in Telstra`s efforts to maintain it`s leadership position as a full service telecommunications company in the Asia / Pacific region. Telstra C&C Sales` call centre accounted for nearly 30% of Telstra`s $16billion revenue last financial year. The upcoming integration of Telstra`s mobile telephone business into C&C Sales is expected to increase this to almost 50 percent of revenues.

According to Jovanovic, the Seagate Software solution for enterprise reporting and analysis beat other vendor bids through its comprehensive integration of Web-based Query and Analysis, enterprise OLAP, and Balanced Scorecard, and had superior scalability and ease of use. Of particular importance are its web capabilities as this is a strategic direction for delivering information throughout Telstra. The solution has delivered significant savings over previous approaches with savings of up to 30% in the analysis phase, 60 - 90% in the development phase, 20% in the testing phase and 95% in the Web deployment phase, according to Telstra.

In addition to multiple analytical applications developed in Seagate Holos - the first of which is the Balanced Scorecard application - 1,500 users will access reports and online analysis via Windows and the Web to know at any point in time where they are in relation to corporate goals. They will also access information specific to their business areas to be pulled from a variety of operational systems, through analytical applications, into six specialised data marts.

Business measures change quarterly and it is important to be able to roll these changes out quickly to the user community. Mr. Peter Walker, National Manager, Customer Access Development, added. "The new environment allows us to instantly deploy new or revised performance measures and deliver that information to the people that need it to better manage the business and ensure customer service objectives are met."

Ultimately, Telstra`s goal with Seagate Software solutions is to:

• Centralise its business rules and ensure that standard reporting is consistent nationally within the division.

• Provide wider information access to the user community while controlling security to sensitive information.

• Allow the analysis community to use historical data to pinpoint areas of opportunity, identify risks and forecast future trends and opportunities.

• Minimise costs and reduce support issues by having a standard front-end toolset.

"Reaction from users so far has been very supportive," Jovanovic said. "They have bought into the project and are actively participating in user workshops to agree the functional specifications of the environment. The information technology group is simply providing the vehicle and expertise for delivering this initiative." Jovanovic continued, "The active involvement of users has been a pivotal to the project`s success."

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