EMT gains more flexible, responsive campaign management with an IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules solution from Webmedia

[Please click here to read an Estonian version of this case study.]

Based in Tallinn, EMT is one of Estonia’s leading mobile telecommunications providers; it owns and operates network infrastructure and develops and markets services and solutions both within Estonia and internationally. The company has more than 80 retail stores and branch offices across the country, and employs 500 people.

EMT’s success can partly be attributed to its sophisticated approach to marketing, which leverages numerous channels to communicate special offers and promotions to existing and prospective customers.

“Whatever method the customer wants to use to interact with us – whether they visit one of our retail stores or our e-shop, or log in to our self-service Web site, or call our customer service team, or just look at their phone bill – we are able to make them the same offers,” explains Alar Jõeste, Project Manager for the Development Team at EMT. “The systems that push these offers out through the channels use a complex set of business rules to decide which marketing content is displayed to which customers – for example, corporate customers might be offered a discount at one rate, while consumers are offered a different rate. At any given time, there could be more than 15 simultaneous campaigns running through EMT’s channels.”

Empowering non-technical staff
New campaigns often require new business rules to be created, or existing ones to be modified. The rules are based on Java code, and whenever the marketing team wanted to launch a campaign, it was necessary to submit change requests to the IT team.

“There were several different repositories for business rules, and it could be difficult just to find the right lines of code – let alone change them!” says Alar Jõeste. “Even a minor change could often require significant development effort, distracting our IT team from more strategic projects. Moreover, these change requests became part of our monthly development cycle, so it could take up to a month for the new rule to be tested and released. This made it difficult for marketing to react quickly to the latest trends.”

EMT began to look for a more efficient way to manage business rules. The team wanted to implement a single central repository for all rules, and also make it easier to implement minor changes without significant development effort.

“When we started looking for solutions, there was really only one product on the market that could deliver what we needed: IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules,” says Alar Jõeste. “It translates business rules written in Java into a simpler language, so even non-technical staff can make changes to them. We saw this as a huge advantage, because it would allow the marketing team to define their own campaign targets and reduce work for the IT team.”

Partnership for success
EMT worked with its long-term IT partner, Webmedia, to implement the WebSphere ILOG JRules solution. The initial design and deployment of the solution took around four months, and the system is still being developed and extended.

“Webmedia is one of our closest partners, and has been helping us with IT support and development for many years,” explains Alar Jõeste. “They understand the logic of our business and know how we work, so they are able to deliver solutions that really meet our needs. WebSphere ILOG reduces our development workload – so, ironically, we actually need less help from Webmedia than we did before. Nevertheless, Webmedia has embraced the solution, which shows that they have our best interests at heart.”

IBM WebSphere ILOG Rule Team Server provides a browser-based interface that enables business users to define, store and edit business rules easily, while Rule Execution Server deploys them into production safely. For developers, Rule Studio provides a more sophisticated Eclipse-based development environment, which can switch between rules and Java code effortlessly.

“More complex rule-changes still need to be implemented by developers – whether they are from our in-house team or from Webmedia,” says Alar Jõeste. “But in general, standard campaigns can be managed by the back-office without much help from us. As a result, it is now possible to create, test and release a campaign within a couple of days – significantly faster than when we were tied to the monthly release schedule.”

Efficient and responsive
In addition to the benefits for the IT and marketing teams, the solution also helps dealers in the retail stores deliver better offers to their customers. Previously, the dealer would have to read through a list of all campaigns and decide which was most appropriate for each customer. Now, the solution can calculate the best offers for each customer based on their age, phone usage, professional status and other factors – so it is easier for the dealer to present a compelling offer, which may help to close the deal.

“As well as marketing campaigns, we are also using the WebSphere solution to manage the business rules that govern the sale of packages and services,” says Alar Jõeste. “There are many complexities here, and having a coherent set of business rules helps us make important decisions more easily.”

Tiit Tammiste, CIO of EMT, concludes: “IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules is making a major contribution to the efficiency of our marketing and sales processes, helping us get campaigns and products to market more quickly, reducing workload for our IT team, and reducing our reliance on external IT suppliers. It is hard to quantify the benefits, but we are confident that the ability to react more quickly to an ever-changing marketplace will help us reduce costs and gain competitive advantage in the Estonian telecommunications sector.”