AUSTAR® United Communications Limited (AUSTAR) was a leading
Australian subscription television provider primarily offering digital satellite services to customers in regional and rural areas, recently merging with Foxtel to deliver a national subscription television provider servicing over 2 million customers.
Established in 1995, its television subscriber base has grown to over 760,000 and is the largest subscription television operator in regional and rural Australia – covering a third of Australia’s total homes. It delivers over 180 premier channels, 13 HD Channels, a near video-on-demand service, and increased levels of interactivity, such as BOX OFFICE, Sports Active and SKY News Active.
Since inception, AUSTAR has invested over AU$1 billion to establish its technology platforms, a state-of-the-art customer service centre and to provide innovative services to regional Australia. AUSTAR is also a significant investor in the development of Australian content – to date committing and investing over AU$5.5 million to innovative dramas. AUSTAR had over 800 employees – around 700 based at the company’s National Customer Operations Centre on the Gold Coast, and the remainder in its corporate office in Sydney.
AUSTAR turns static data
into actionable business
intelligence – fast
Overview
Business Challenge
AUSTAR wanted to eliminate the effort of paper and spreadsheet reports, and address the disconnect between online planning and its static reporting environment – combining multiple data sources in a single view to support faster decision-making.
Solution
IBM Business Partner Certus Solutions integrated IBM Cognos® Business
Intelligence with IBM Cognos TM1® to
deliver an easy-to-use extended reporting solution delivering graphical reports, drill down capabilities, and integrated with its planning system and other key data sources plus an online balanced scorecard to provide visibility over KPIs.
Business Analytics
IBM® Software Media
2
Conventional reporting fails to meet demands
AUSTAR saw paper-based reporting as limited – both in the creation and management of information distribution which involved too many manual steps. Producing hard-copy reports was proving timeconsuming, and they were static and rapidly out of date. It also wanted to eliminate standalone Microsoft Excel® reporting which was used
throughout the organisation and involved a high degree of
administrative and data entry processing for the Finance Department. With a decentralised and fragmented depository of historical data, there was a disconnect between online planning and the current static reporting environment. AUSTAR needed to combine several data sources into a single view – combining information held within multiple key systems – to extract the intelligence it needed to support better business decision-making.
Finding the right partner
AUSTAR had already implemented IBM Cognos TM1 to deliver online planning. Six months of detailed and quarterly planning were already available through TM1 web online which was accessed by a limited number of business users.
It saw the next step as the design and implementation of an easy-to-use extended business intelligence and reporting solution that would deliver:
• Graphical reports
• The ability to drill down to extract detailed information • Integration with AUSTAR’s planning system to enable
comparisons between actual and planned results
Business Benefits
• AUSTAR’s new online reporting greatly
reduced effort and time producing reports – delivering the right data in the right place to provide input for quick decisions
• Resources previously tied up with data generation are now free to focus on analysis that informs decisions to take the business forward
• Managers now have the ability to drill
down to all key data the organisation holds, regardless of source
• An online balanced scorecard provides visibility over the meeting of KPIs across the business
3
AUSTAR engaged IBM Business Partner Certus Solutions to help it integrate IBM Cognos 8.4 with IBM Cognos TM1 to integrate an environment that would seamlessly bring together its reporting and business planning requirements. In briefing these requirements, AUSTAR emphasised that fast performance was paramount. Certus worked closely with stakeholders – carefully measuring and managing staff engagement, and building on their previous experiences with IBM Cognos TM1 to design and build a range of required reports then rolling them out for review and comment. Further revisions produced initial static reports (month-to-date and year-to-date) to inform time and data management, allowing further drill-down where required.
As performance was a key requirement, the solution involved expert tuning to ensure integration between the IBM Cognos and IBM Cognos TM1 servers was optimised.
Ben Brooks, AUSTAR’s General Manager – Finance, says that the integration was a success. “Our chosen reporting platforms, IBM Cognos TM1 and IBM Cognos, are different technologies. Certus created an environment that integrated both seamlessly to maximise their combined benefits for our business.”
Certus also delivered an online balanced scorecard for the business which provides a single source of truth in an instant online format. Users have the ability to drill down to base data sourced from a range of systems, including PeopleSoft®, subscriber records and AUSTAR’s
data warehouse containing details of how its different departments – such as operations and sales – meet their KPIs.
Solutions Components
Software
• IBM Cognos TM1 • IBM Cognos BI IBM Business Partner • Certus Solutions
“Having 90% of the
reporting complete in the
first three days of each
month, rather than the
five or six days it took in
the past, has been a
massive benefit to the
business.”
— Ben Brooks,
Business Analytics
IBM® Software Media
4
Business Benefits for AUSTAR
AUSTAR’s new online reporting solution has greatly reduced the effort and time involved in producing reports throughout the company. Information is now timelier, allowing the business to make decisions more quickly.
Ben Brooks says that having reports online enables the business to review them instantly and empowers them to drill down into source information. “This removes the burden from our management accountants of having to find the time to run reports and do queries. This used to involve a lead time of a day or more, depending on how busy they were.”
“Essentially, having 90% of the reporting complete in the first three days of each month, rather than the five or six days it took in the past, has been a massive benefit to the business – enabling them to make timely decisions that can be actioned in the current month and make a difference faster,” he adds.
Now rolled out to nearly 70 users, the new system delivers significant benefits:
• Online access to graphical and detailed reports – eliminating the need for paper and Excel reports
• Minimal effort in creating new reports
• The ability to drill down to all key data the organisation holds, regardless of source
• An online balanced scorecard providing visibility over the meeting of KPIs across the business
A flow-on benefit is that resources previously expended in generating data have been freed up – allowing staff to spend more time on analysing that data. This offers Austar more value, by informing decisions that will take the business forward.
According to Ben Brooks, “We now have everyone working within the same environment. We have the right data in the right place –
providing the input needed to make quick decisions.”
“We now have everyone
working within the same
environment. We have
the right data in the right
place – providing the
input needed to make
quick decisions.”
— Ben Brooks,Printed in Australia
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