Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
From existing data, extract new business insights that can be monitored in real time—This is the premise of all business intelligence/business analytic projects, regardless of their information sources or the vertical in which they will be applied. But the phrase has even greater relevance for telecom operators, especially in an era when networks and mobile devices have become more intelligent, generating a huge amount of data.
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With the evolution of networks and access devices, new information has become available, extremely rich material that if exploited with the right tools and the right vision, can turn into a valuable competitive differentiator for operators, whether in terms of service quality, new products or more assertive marketing initiatives.
Applying concepts and business intelligence/business analytic tools on that data—whether they are generated by the network itself, mobile devices, back office systems or customers—is what we call network analytics, a BI “subdivision” which specifically addresses telecommunication companies’ data management to provide relevant information to the business.
But ultimately, what is network analytics? It is the ability to thoroughly analyze a complete set of data traveling across communication networks, transforming it into information, combining it in various KPIs/KQIs and making it available in a dashboard. Such a dashboard can or cannot be based on cause and effect analysis, predictive analytics and mobility, to support various use cases.
Network analytic solutions can allow companies to work proactively to manage their network information, positively impacting some important business challenges. The four main issues that can be addressed with greater focus, thanks to network analytics, are:
- Customer Loyalty: Addressing retention, satisfaction and interaction issues, and better experience management with clients to bring greater economic benefits, both qualitative and proactive, in the services provided to them
- ARPU Increase: More efficiently and effectively examining the results of various marketing campaigns and reorganizing pricing models, bringing new possibilities to existing business
- Cost Management: Assessing the value chain and customer lifecycle, making investments with greater information management support for decision making, measuring qualitative and quantitative success-critical factors, and support risk and fraud analysis
- Supporting new business models: Addressing aspects related to vertical markets, regional differences, network optimization, e-commerce and other issues concerning the use of self-service information
Obviously, such projects do not happen overnight. To achieve the best results, companies should begin their enterprise information management plan in a phased manner, so that such information can be integrated over time. Moreover, keep in mind, that some obstacles must be overcome for adoption to be successful. The main ones are:
• Data reside in silos;
• Data report quality is suspect and inconsistent;
• It is difficult to perform end-to-end analysis on causes and effects;
• Current data marts cannot handle the volume, speed and range of available data.
One of the main advantages of current solutions over those already available—and which makes data analysis more interesting or even feasible for carriers—is the processing capacity of a much larger data volume in real time.
This is a unique moment for operators interested in exploring all the information that travels over their networks. And the first to embrace this issue and devote efforts to realizing projects in this area will certainly have excellent business outcomes in an increasingly competitive market with tighter margins.
