Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 31 | Page 52

CASE STUDY and proactively communicate with customers accordingly. Similarly, high- usage SIMs can be identified much more rapidly, close to real-time, based on the business rules supplied by MiX. • It is much easier to bill customers for usage outside of their standard subscriptions. An example would be roaming charges, which previously required a lot of manual processes at the end of the month. Thanks to Clarity, MiX can now obtain an indication of spend during the month, and the billing for roaming is automated so that the end-of- month process is much quicker. • Reporting used to be highly manual, and was not granular enough. Internal stakeholders had to specially request certain data sets. Automation via Clarity means that highly granular reporting is available on demand. • MiX used to have to consolidate information from the GSM providers, which was provided in different formats. Again, this was a time and labour- intensive process. Clarity provides a single source of information for cost and consumption data from all the GSM 52 INTELLIGENTCIO providers, enabling MiX to understand its cost drivers much better. “For me, the greatest benefit is not just the ability to control and manage our sizeable and increasing number of SIM cards, but also that we have the capability to retain that control into the future,” added Pretorius. “Clarity is helping us to drive down costs while delivering a better and more cost- effective service to our clients. Employees welcomed and embraced the solution as it eliminated manual processes and ultimately, it has increased efficiency. “Underlying factors that influenced the positive outcome included training as needed and a help desk. Apex BI also spent time with key users to understand their needs and ensured that they were addressed as quickly as possible. This, in turn, ensured that users quickly realised that the system could provide them with the information they needed to do their jobs better and to make smarter decisions because they had a deeper, fact-based understanding of their environment.” n www.intelligentcio.com