Multimedios Redes saves time and money with Tableau

Multimedios Redes is a leading telecommunications company in Mexico, serving over 500,000 regional subscribers. Before Tableau, analysts stored data in individual Excel documents, making insight into gigabytes of data time-consuming and difficult. Business leaders were dependent on analysts for any access to data. If an analyst was out for a day, questions would go unanswered. Today, with a combination of Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server, Multimedios Redes has:

• Put data into business users’ hands
• Identified a “quick win” for saving time and money while improving customer service
• Improved understanding of key business indicators

In video 1, Carlos Rodriguez, Head of Monitoring and Business Offers, talks about how visualizing technician movements let his team identify opportunities for savings. In video 2, Edgar Schwartz, Head of Information, describes how the company has changed its approach to data with Tableau.

Tableau: What return has Tableau given Multimedios Redes? Edgar Schwartz, Head of Information: The return that Tableau has given us is definitely that of meeting our needs for the visualization of indicators, something which was previously very limited. Tableau: How does your company use Tableau? Carlos Rodriguez, Head of Monitoring and Business Offers: You can take a few gigabytes of data, which used to take a long time to process, and with Tableau you can process it practically online and play around with the data and see it in graphs the way we want. Tableau: Can you give an example of when you used Tableau to help solve a problem? Edgar: Tableau has been very helpful in geographically referencing our customers. We use nodes to provide our service and those nodes, we have even made the connection between climate temperature, or room temperature. And this has led us to, for example, a node might fail on a very hot day. And this means calls from angry customers because the node has failed and their internet is slow, their phone isn't working, or the image is blurry. Tableau: How do you track that in Tableau? Edgar: Thanks to Tableau, we have been able to reference those points and cross-reference data, for example, combine the geo-referencing of node with the failure with the calls. Then we combine all of this data and we obtain the support or the indicator data we require to make decisions. Tableau: Have you had any surprising moments in Tableau? Carlos: We looked at the maps, for example, the movements of our technicians, our fleet of technicians, where they were being called out to our customers. When we saw a map of their movements, how they were moving around, for example: from downtown to the west side and then on to another part of the city, we realized: "There's a window of opportunity here, we're making a mistake." We hadn't noticed it before by just looking at the numbers. When we saw it plotted on a map, it came to our attention and we began to deal with it. Tableau: Did you get a positive reaction? Carlos: As the technicians have increased their productivity, they are making more commission. So, everyone's happy. Tableau: How has this impacted the company? Edgar: All of this means we have saved fuel and time, we have prevented failures, we have reduced the cost of call-centers. Tableau: How does Tableau fit into Multimedios Redes’ future? Carlos: Now, for the future, I think that discovering Tableau has changed my perspective and I think we are going to strengthen our knowledge of this tool and keep using it, we are going to become more specialized and continue to grow with Tableau. If Tableau grows, we grow and the company grows.

Tableau: What reactions did you get when your team started using Tableau? Edgar: The reactions we got at the first meetings in which we used the tool were literally "Wow, what is that?" And we said that it was Tableau, a BI visualization software, and they were amazed, especially when we started by showing them geo-referenced data. That was something that we had never been able to do, you know? Where in the city we were procuring, where in the city we had failures or needed to open branches. Tableau: Is Tableau catching on within the company? Edgar: Now when we present an Excel, management asks us: "Why don't you do it in Tableau?" Or when we give them any indicator or short report, they say: "When can I have it in Tableau?" Tableau: What did your process look like before Tableau? Edgar: The way it has changed how the analysts use their time, for example, to use the tool, we used to just use Excel and all of the data would be stored on one analyst's laptop. If the analyst wasn't there it was very difficult to access and update the data for management, or for our internal users or clients. Tableau: How has that changed? Edgar: Now, with Tableau, the information is on the server, because we have Tableau Desktop and Tableau Server. And this means we can download the workbook and work with it without the user, the analyst, who uploaded that data being there. The only thing you have to give it is the database or the data and then literally play around with the data until you reach the point where your analysis is complete. Tableau: What would happen if you didn’t have Tableau? Edgar: If we didn't have Tableau we would still be working how we were working five years ago. And we wouldn't be able to carry out the measurement of indicators that the company requires. And that would mean that the data wouldn't flow in the same way. And that would mean that decisions wouldn't be taken in the same way. And so, the company would come to a standstill in terms of data. Tableau: How would you describe the effect that Tableau has had? Edgar: With that data and Tableau, we have the power of data. We have the power of knowing where to attack, and when. Tableau: How so? Edgar: Now the directors and different areas of the company come to us as analysts to ask us what is best for the company in decision making. Now it's not so much "Give me the data so I can see how I am doing." Now they ask us: "What do you see?"