The Value of BIG DATA ANALYTICS FOR TELCO

LEAD-TO-CASH: THE VALUE OF BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS FOR TELCO

ENTITY WHITE PAPER

ENTITY WHITE PAPER ENTITY GROUP ADVISORY SERVICES

THE CHALLENGE OF THE DIGITAL AGE Life in the Information Age continues to accelerate. The digital world is changing the rules, and telecommunications service providers are having to evolve from being process and account-oriented to focusing firmly on the individual. By combining products and plans, service providers are able to offer increased flexibility through unique customer journeys to service an increasingly competitive double, triple and quadruple-play market. But with this flexibility comes massive complexity and an exponential growth in data volumes.

Successful operators are the vanguard of the digital world – adapting to meet the demand for individually tailored packages of services. Each of the component services must continue to demonstrate innovation – to outclass the competition, and to do so at ever an increasing pace.

While struggling to keeping pace in its fast-moving markets, telcos face a nexus of additional pressures, including:

• Stringent legal and regulatory requirements

• Increasing costs in developing and maintaining technical infrastructure (people, equipment and fleets), and

• Demand for a highly resilient ‘always on’ service.

All whilst continuing to increase revenues, reduce operational costs and ensure that VIPs are treated with the due care and attention they demand and deserve. A lot of challenges in a highly competitive sector that are compounded by other disruptive technology - by 2018, telco companies are set to lose a combined US$386 billion to over-the-top (OTT) voice applications such as Skype and WhatsApp1.

For C-Suite Executives, the revenue imperative from investment in Big Data and Analytics is clear.

The promise of Big Data and Advanced Analytics• Over 7.4 billion mobile devices

• 69% increase in global mobile data traffic in 2014, and

• An expected seven-fold increase in mobile data traffic by 2018 2

For the telco industry, Big Data is already here - real time and near real time analytics on large and overlapping data sets - and with it comes big opportunity as it continues to grow exponentially.

Telecommunications companies are uniquely positioned to capitalise on this opportunity. They are at the epicentre of the communications industry, control its underlying infrastructure and are awash with data on how customers use, interact with and buy their products. The challenge now is how to unlock the power and potential of these strategic assets.

2

LEAD-TO-CASH: THE VALUE OF BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS FOR TELCO

“The most meaningful way to differentiate your company from the competition, the best way to put distance between you and the crowd, is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage and use information will determine whether

you win or lose.” Bill Gates

MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS

1. http://fortune.com/2014/06/23/telecom-companies-count-386-billion-in-lost-revenue-to-skype-whatsapp-others/2. http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/visual-networking-index-vni/white_paper_c11-520862.html

ENTITY GROUP ADVISORY SERVICES ENTITY WHITE PAPER

3


Obstacles to implementation

The potential for this technology for telecommunications companies is huge but its adoption will not come without challenges.

Data Silos

As in many industries, telecommunications companies have suffered from having to respond to pressures of growth, business and technology change. As a result, data has typically been defined at the business unit or department level (sales, network engineering, billing etc). Unfortunately, this approach has led to siloed information strategies, siloed solutions and data that contains gaps, duplications and errors. To be ready for Big Data, telcos must first put their houses in order.

Enterprise Information Architecture

Service providers need to extract insight from a great variety of data (voice, messages, GPS, location, field service, change management, customer care, connected devices, social media etc); data that is operating at different speeds. This information must be leveraged, often in real-time, to achieve business objectives such as improving the customer experience.

Furthermore, legacy customer and operational information must be aggregated and processed using new tools, whilst ensuring data quality, accessibility and security across existing solution ecosystems for regulatory compliance.

Without an effective enterprise architectural vision in place that meets the complexity of these requirements, telcos cannot capitalise on the competitive advantage that Big Data brings.

Enterprise Thinking

Big Data requires integration of information from different divisions, departments and systems across the enterprise. This involves each of those divisional and department heads and the system owners subscribing to a single corporate vision. It is often very difficult for a group of people, each with their own interests at heart, to agree on a common objective and the roadmap to the wealth of benefits that can be achieved.

In a sector characterised by a lifecycle of global mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and expansion into multiple media markets, this challenge cannot be understated.

4


Key Business Drivers

Enterprise Information Management provides the bedrock principles for Big Data and Analytics to succeed. It is the discipline of treating data as an Enterprise Asset - and - enabling the enterprise to capitalise on that asset.

For each strategic information management initiative, telcos must identify key business drivers, gain executive sponsorship, and develop a business case that will deliver quantifiable ROI. Business drivers for telcos can be expressed in numerous ways, and are often interrelated:

Realising the benefits

The potential of Big Data and Analytics comes with a profound challenge: Trust.

• Have I the right quality of data to run my organisation efficiently?

• How can I manage and combine the ever-increasing amount of data and have confidence in the result?

• Can I measure and improve data quality?

Sounds familiar?

Success rests upon true Executive recognition of the importance of data as an organisational asset. Telcos executives now recognise that in order to succeed, they need to weave information management strategies, policies, procedures and solutions throughout the fabric of their operation so that raw data becomes timely, relevant and actionable information.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS - BUSINESS DRIVERS

New products and services derived from analysis of customer behaviour and sentiment.

Enhanced and responsive customer service and package configuration.

Management of the customer experience based on cost-to-serve, value and relationship status.

Focused targeting of marketing campaigns towards individuals.

Real-time network optimisation for improved routing and for maximising the quality of service.

Streamlined error diagnosis and problem management.

Effective and efficient deployment of maintenance vehicles and personnel.

Sophisticated detection of fraud and misuse of services.

Revenue generation from new sources, such as selling insights about customers

to third parties.


5

Information Management Strategy

The purpose of the Information Management Strategy is to define an Information Architecture and strategy that meets the needs of your business as it changes.

Once the strategy is understood and agreed, an optimal roadmap is identified for deriving the most business benefit from your information management projects as they are implemented incrementally. The objective is to quickly provide recommendations on areas where possible improvements could be made based on strategic goals/drivers.


Figure 1 - Enterprise Information Management Model - 2015 Entity Group Ltd.

ENTITY GROUP ADVISORY SERVICES ENTITY WHITE PAPER

ENTITY’S APPROACH

Entity’s approach for Enterprise Information Management (EIM) orchestrates people, process and technology to deliver outcomes that have a direct correlation to strategic objectives. The following model represents this approach.

The layers of the triangle represent the ‘principles’ of successful information management along with their constituent data concerns (shown inside the triangle) and, towards the right, the capabilities delivered by addressing these data concerns.

The model exposes how to extract value from solutions such as Big Data, BI and Analytics (bottom layer), by taking into account all of the concerns above.

Our model allows for a structured approach to data governance and information management strategy; provides a blueprint for the design of Enterprise Information Architecture into which each strategic initiative should fit; enables a clear understanding of different data domains (reference data, customer master data, Big Data etc) and their role in data management; and allows for a considered process for Information Lifecycle Management across the enterprise as data is used, creates value, and is discarded.

Along the journey, various types of capability are established, and the business benefits become realised (as shown on the right of the model).

DATA GOVERNANCE

OWNERSHIP

ORGANISATIONAL GOVERNANCE

ORGANISATIONAL STRATEGY

DESCRIPTION

QUALITY

ACCESS

USAGE & SHARING

CONTROL &IMPLEMENTATION

MODELLING, ARCHITECTURE, METADATA, CATALOGUING

COMPLETENESS, ACCURACY AND INTEGRITY OF DATA

DATA STORAGE, PRIVACY AND SECURITY

INTEGRATION, INTEROPERABILITY, SOCIAL MEDIA AND OPEN DATA

MANAGEMENT OF METADATA, CATALOGUES, REFERENCE DATA AND MASTER DATA

DOCUMENT AND CONTENT MANAGEMENT, DATA WAREHOUSE, BI AND ANALYTICS, TRANSACTION MANAGEMENT (ERP, CRM etc), AUDIT DATA, BIG DATA

BUSINESS CAPABILITIES

ARCHITECTURAL CAPABILITIES

TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES

OPERATIONAL CAPABILITIES

6

Telco specialist knowledge

Entity staff are highly experienced in developing Enterprise Information Management solutions for the Telco sector. Our teams have worked with a wide range of companies from large multinational groups to monopolistic national incumbents to start-ups. Entity staff have covered the breadth of service portfolios including wireline, wireless fixed, wireless mobile, cable, internet, digital media, converged multi-play solutions and international interconnect.

Companies include:

Entity staff have implemented solutions that enable analytics of data in large volumes, sometimes in real-time. In doing so, we have helped clients to improve customer service, billing performance, revenue leakage, fraud prevention, operational efficiency and real cost savings.

Experience includes:

GROUP CO’s

AT&T, BT, Belgacom, Vodafone, Cable & Wireless, Qtel

OP CO’s

Vodafone Ireland, Bahamas Telecom, Maroc Telecom, FastLink (Zaine), Tunisiana (Ooredoo), Lime

SOLUTION

Use of analytics to manage customer experience, balancing cost-to-serve against revenue generation.

Use of data mining and analytics, combined with intelligence from customer interactions, to manage the complex network of VIP customer relationships.

Use of Big Data techniques to manage high volumes of call data records in near real-time.

Use of Operational Data Store and Analytics combined with Business Service Monitoring to provide real-time end-to-end customer experience monitoring.

Single-source-of-truth (Master Data Management) and intelligence for a large telco group during and following merger and acquisition of new operating companies.

Development of data models and processes based on industry frameworks such as TMF Frameworx (encompassing eTOM, SID and TAM) and ITU.

BUSINESS OUTCOME

The most lucrative customers received appropriate customer service experience.

VIP and VVIP subscribers experienced significantly shorter waiting times and more direct routes through the interactive voice response (IVR) system.

Complex regulatory reporting achieved for the first time.

Insight in real-time how the customer experience was affected by technical challenges in network, OSS, BSS and VAS systems.

Enhanced data quality for improved decision making.



For more information please contact:

[email protected]


ENTITY GROUP North America

+1 (512) 790-DATA

www.entity-im.com