Uses critical data insights to protect 23+ million mobile subscribers from emerging threats
Helped prevent £250 million worth of fraud and blocked over 92 million malicious texts with additional tools
Data requests that once took up to 2 weeks are now completed in under 48 hours
Virgin Media O2 is putting the power of data into the hands of its people to drive smarter decisions and stop fraud in its tracks. With Tableau, teams across the business can easily access near real-time insights, spot suspicious patterns, and make data-driven decisions with confidence.
About the Company
Virgin Media has partnered up with O2, the UK’s favorite mobile network operator–and together, they’re ready to supercharge the UK.
They're two of the UK’s most iconic brands, combining 45.8 million broadband, mobile, phone and home subscribers, and 16,000 employees. They’ve come together to give the UK more choice and better value–it’s good news for customers, communities and businesses all over the country.
We now have data that’s available on a daily basis that’s easy to navigate, easy to query, and available on our phone. It’s really changing the game.
The Challenge
Removing the fear around data
Virgin Media O2 is a leading mass media and telecommunications company, providing mobile, broadband, and entertainment services to millions of customers in the UK. As part of its ongoing transformation, the company is becoming more customer-centric and data-driven, using technology and analytics to improve operational efficiency and enhance user experiences. A crucial part of this evolution is strengthening fraud prevention and ensuring security measures keep pace with emerging threats.
Making data accessible to all to improve customer experiences
Before Tableau, teams at Virgin Media O2 struggled to manage and analyze large datasets. Reporting was primarily done through Excel, which wasn’t built to handle the volume and complexity of data the company was dealing with.
Analysts had to extract and consolidate information across multiple tools, leading to slow turnaround times of one to two weeks for basic requests.
“When I started in the organization, most of my reporting was Excel based which is fairly standard but also wildly frustrating in terms of the sheer scale of the data we’re operating with,” says Murray Mackenzie, Director of Transformation at Virgin Media O2.
Mackenzie, who oversees Virgin Media O2’s fraud prevention capabilities, says that these delays hindered the company’s ability to detect and respond to suspicious activity. Without a centralized, real-time view of data, analysts simply couldn’t detect patterns or respond proactively and quickly enough.
Transforming the industry through data
Tableau was first introduced to Virgin Media O2 in December 2023 as part of a broader data strategy.
“It’s a transformation program,” says Mauro Flores, Executive Vice President of Data Democratization. “It’s not just about making data available to everyone—though that’s the end state. It’s making people comfortable with data so they make better business decisions, a process that involves cultural changes, upskilling, and choosing the right tools.”
While the company explored various options, the decision to go with Tableau was a “no brainer” according to Flores, who heads up a team of over 200.
“We’re a huge telecommunications company with massive amounts of data. When we looked at Tableau’s capabilities, particularly around AI, as well as their roadmap, there was no doubt that Tableau came out on top.”
And AI is already making an impact on the democratization strategy, lowering the bar even further. With Tableau Agent, teams across Virgin Media O2 can now ask simple questions like, “How many iPhone 16s were ordered yesterday?” and get an immediate answer, without worrying about the detail behind the data. From there, they can ask the Agent to build more datasets and create visualizations.
How Tableau Helps
Fighting fraud with self-service analytics
In the beginning, the data team rolled out Tableau to a small group of early adopters. What began with simple dashboards quickly evolved into a critical tool for fraud detection and prevention.
Today, fraud prevention at Virgin Media O2 is no longer confined to a single team. Insights now come from across the business, with Tableau acting as the common platform for analysis. In fact, VMO2 believes that approximately half of the insights that drive fraud prevention don’t originate from the fraud team: They come from the broader organization using Tableau.
Around a dozen key dashboards—ranging from finance and supply chain to voucher redemption—help teams track trends, assess vulnerabilities, and take swift action to mitigate fraud.
Our teams were monitoring how fraudsters were moving and as part of that, had applied a rule to mobile devices. Tableau Pulse identified how, the very next day, the fraudsters had pivoted to tablets and we were able to build new rules around tablets. That insight didn’t come from our teams analyzing data. It came from Tableau Pulse.
Helping the business react faster
Historically, companies relied on frontline colleagues to identify fraudulent activity and raise alerts, which was often very reactive and time-consuming. Tableau Pulse has been a “game changer,” in this regard, says Mackenzie, providing live alerts that allow teams to act quickly.
“One example was when we reduced our exposure on mobile phone handsets. Fraudsters, unfortunately, pivoted to tablets but thanks to an alert from Tableau Pulse, we were able to identify the shift instantly and put measures in place to stop the trend in its tracks.”
Similarly, when Tableau Pulse flagged unusual ordering patterns, the team quickly uncovered that fraudsters were exploiting vouchers to bypass key security controls. In response, Virgin Media O2 redesigned how it creates, shares, and redeems vouchers, introducing a dedicated dashboard to monitor for similar activity in the future.
One of the biggest challenges everyone has with stakeholder management is confidence. Having a consistent source of truth that’s reliable, fast, and that you can plug your stakeholders into is incredibly powerful.
The Tableau Difference
Tableau has now become a cornerstone of Virgin Media O2’s transformation, putting it ahead of the competition, particularly in the data space. By empowering teams with self-serve analytics, it has accelerated decision making, streamlined fraud prevention, and put critical insights in the hands of employees at all levels.
To learn more, watch the Virgin Media O2 session at Tableau Conference: Drive Success, Culture, and Collaboration with Tableau Pulse.