Vibrant and dynamic digital-first telco M1, a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation, is focused on transforming telecommunications in Singapore. M1 provides a suite of services to more than 2 million customers and is Singapore’s first digital network operator.

Data analytics have played an essential role in M1’s growth since the company launched commercial services in 1997. To enable data-driven decision-making across its marketing, finance, customer service, and retail teams, M1 ingests and analyzes large amounts of operational data.

M1 turned to Snowflake to modernize its data environment as part of a digital transformation initiative.

Digital Transformation as a Catalyst for Democratized Analytics

M1 began migrating its applications to the cloud but continued storing data in on-premises databases, which inhibited users from accessing near real-time insights and leveraging advanced analytical tools. Creating new reports was complex and required significant support from the IT team. Multiple sources of truth negatively impacted the efficiency of M1’s data scientists.

System upgrades, compatibility troubleshooting, and ongoing infrastructure maintenance diverted technical talent from increasing analytics. “We spent so much time and energy managing on-premises servers and solutions,” M1’s Head of Data, Kwok Heng Chan, said. Integrating one new data source required considerable planning and, in some cases, months of data engineering work. Spinning up data warehouses involved incremental costs to acquire and configure hardware.

Enabling Self-Service Analytics and Data Science

Leveraging Snowflake as M1’s data lake and data warehouse creates a single source of truth to power a variety of data-driven use cases. Combining data from M1’s CRM, billing systems, website, and mobile app provides a more complete view of the customer experience. Snowflake’s fine-grained, role-based access control and column-level security help M1 protect sensitive data and maintain compliance. 

ThoughtSpot and Tableau integration makes self-service analytics a reality for users across the organization. According to Chan, “They no longer have to rely on the IT department to generate insights and reports.” M1’s data literacy program provides users with training to maximize data’s impact.

M1’s data scientists now spend less time looking for data and more time building statistical models that deliver value. “Data scientists are more focused on data science work because we’ve built our pipeline and data is stored in Snowflake,” said Chan.

Streamlining Database Administration and Data Engineering

Snowflake’s fully managed infrastructure and near-zero maintenance free up M1’s technical staff to extend self-service analytics to more users. Integrating data sources and spinning up data warehouses takes hours or days—instead of weeks or months—saving even more time for value-added work. According to Chan, “Snowflake enables M1 to focus our energy on building data analytic solutions and exposing more data to our business users, empowering them to be self-capable for reporting and analytics.”

Future: Achieving Hyper-personalization and Data Sharing at Scale

“We chose Snowflake because it unlocks so many doors for leveraging M1 data. Hyper-personalization becomes a possibility with real-time data,” said Chan. Ingesting near real-time interaction and transaction data into Snowflake will lead to new insights that help M1 respond faster to customer needs.

Enabling secure, governed access to data via Snowflake Secure Data Sharing and Snowflake Data Marketplace will simplify collaboration with corporate partners and access to third-party data sources. According to Chan, “Today we’re using SFTP with encryption keys and protocols, but the Snowflake Data Cloud can create a data network within the industry to seamlessly and securely move data.”

Learn more about Snowflake’s Data Cloud and M1.