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CASE STUDY

Mobile Services Data Commercialisation

Helping Upstream Systems find new ways to monetize their unique mobile services datasets.

The Client

Upstream Systems are a global leader in mobile marketing automation, operating worldwide on every continent. Via their integrations with Mobile Service Providers, they can reach 1.2Bn consumers worldwide.

Upstream's products and services drive digital acquisitions and sales across every mobile channel available. Their products are designed to increase loyalty and engagement, bringing more customers and increasing their interactions.

Upstream had recently received significant investment from a Private Equity firm. Identifying new opportunities to accelerate growth was the primary goal of the business strategy.

THE CHALLENGE

In the course of its business activities Upstream had generated longitudinal datasets from previous marketing campaigns that had reached over 100M consumers worldwide.

The data and IT infrastructure were operationally focused; Upstream and its investors realised that there was likely to be significant value locked up in it. Their questions were: how could they exploit it, and how should they transform their systems, processes and data to support these efforts?

Upstream's investors approach Unai for assistance, aware of the firm's previous work in Loyalty, Marketing Optimization and data commercialisation.

What Unai Delivered

  • Data Commercialisation Discovery. The Unai team conducted extensive on-site interviews; they reviewed data-flows, datasets and system architectures; and they combined their expertise and prior knowledge with desk-based research. Unai were able to deliver a Data Commercialisation vision and roadmap, aligned to Upstream's Business Strategy.

  • Data Warehouse Design. The first step on the roadmap was a recommendation to consolidate and remodel existing data assets to support future Use Cases. Upstream asked Unai to lead the design and modeling work for this warehouse. The Unai team delivered conceptual and logical models, and a reference architecture for an Amazon Redshift architecture.

The Result

Upstream's engineering teams built the consolidated data warehouse in the AWS cloud. It supported a new line of marketing optimisation products, driven by machine learning.

In late 2021, three years after the Unai project completed, Upstream reported that the platform side of its business now accounted for two-thirds of its revenue and is the fastest growing part of the company. Platform revenue had risen by 33 per cent (CAGR) over the last three years, and accounted for almost two thirds of all revenues in 2021. Company EBITDA had grown by 34 per cent between 2018 and 2021.

Unai executed a significant project for Upstream that was at the heart of our Data Management infrastructure transformation. They carried out a detailed analysis of our Data and B.I. requirements, bringing together stakeholders from across the business and consolidating diverse data sources. The output of their work formed the main blueprint for our new data warehouse and analytics platform.

Unai stood out with the thoroughness of their analysis, their quick and accurate understanding of business needs, their organisational and planning skills, and their ability to achieve consensus across the business quickly and efficiently.

I would not hesitate to recommend Unai and I would gladly work with them again.

Grigoris Kouteris. General Manager, Upstream Systems.