Application Case 2.8 Visual Analytics Helps Energy Supplier Make Better Connections Energy markets all around the world are going accurate and timely information to whomever and through a significant change and transformation, whenever it is needed. For instance, if you need to creating ample opportunities along with significant easily track marketing budgets, balance employee challenges. As is the case in any industry, oppor- workloads, and target customers with tailored mar- tunities are attracting more players in the market- keting messages, you would need three different place, increasing the competition, and reducing the reporting solutions. Electrabel GDF SUEZ is doing tolerances for less-than-optimal business decision all of that for its marketing and sales business unit making. Success requires creating and disseminating with SAS Visual Analytics platform. (Continued) 146 Chapter 2 . Descriptive Analytics I: Nature of Data, Statistical Modeling, and Visualization Application Case 2.8 (Continued) The one-solution approach is a great time-saver for to build, and the rest came quickly. The successes marketing professionals in an industry that is under include the following: going tremendous change. "It is a huge challenge to stabilize our market position in the energy market. Data that took 2 days to prepare now takes That includes volume, prices, and margins for both only 2 hours. retail and business customers," notes Danny Noppe, Clear graphic insight into the invoicing and Reporting Architecture and Development Manager composition of invoices for B2B customers. . A workload management report by the oper- in the Electrabel Marketing and Sales business unit. The company is the largest supplier of electricity ational teams, Managers can evaluate team in Belgium and the largest producer of electric workloads on a weekly or long-term basis and ity for Belgium and the Netherlands. Noppe says can make adjustments accordingly, it is critical that Electrabel increase the efficiency "We have significantly improved our efficiency of its customer communications as it explores new and can deliver quality data and reports more fre- digital channels and develops new energy-related quently, and at a significantly lower cost," says services, Noppe. And if the company needs to combine data "The better we know the customer, the better from multiple sources, the process is equally easy, our likelihood of success," he says. "That is why "Building visual reports, based on these data marts, we combine information from various sources can be achieved in a few days, or even a few hours phone traffic with the customer, online questions, Noppe says the company plans to continue text messages, and mail campaigns. This enhanced broadening its insight into the digital behavior of knowledge of our customer and prospect base will its customers, combining data from Web analytics, be an additional advantage within our competitive e-mail, and social media with data from back-end market." systems. "Eventually, we want to replace all labor intensive reporting with SAS Visual Analytics," he One Version of the Truth says, adding that the flexibility of SAS Visual Analytics Electrabel was using various platforms and tools for is critical for his department. This will give us more reporting purposes. This sometimes led to ambigu- time to tackle other challenges. We also want to ity in the reported figures. The utility also had per- make this tool available on our mobile devices. This formance issues in processing large data volumes. will allow our account managers to use up-to-date, SAS Visual Analytics with in memory technology insightful, and adaptable reports when visiting cus removes the ambiguity and the performance issues. tomers. "We've got a future-oriented reporting plat- "We have the autonomy and flexibility to respond to form to do all we need." the need for customer insight and data visualization internally." Noppe says. "After all, fast reporting is QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION an essential requirement for action-oriented depart- 1. Why do you think energy supply companies are ments such as sales and marketing among the prime users of information visualiza tion tools Working More Efficiently at a Lower Cost 2. How did Electrabel use information visualization SAS Visual Analytics automates the process of for the single version of the truth? updating information in reports. Instead of building 3. What were their challenges, the proposed solu- a report that is out of date by the time it is com- tion, and the obtained results? pleted, the data is refreshed for all the reports once a week and is available on dashboards. In deploy-Sunce SAS Customer Story "sual analytics helps energy sup ing the solution, Electrabel chose a phased approach tomeny electrabel be hamil (accessed July 2016). Copyright 2016 plier make better connections at http://www.ss.com/en_us/cus- starting with simple reports and moving on to more SAS Institute in Cary, NC, USA, Reprinted with permission. All complex ones. The first report took a few weeks rights reserved