Shift in Thinking: Telcos Look to Business Intelligence

In the ever-shifting sands of the quest for profitability and success, telcos are again on the move. As new technologies nip at the heels of established systems and cost-cutting solutions run out of fat to trim, some telcos are discovering a new way to be more effective in terms of cost efficiency and revenue assurance. They are applying business intelligence (BI) principles to the network environment.

Most cost-cutting and revenue assurance solutions are tactical measures. They involve a response to a specific effect – whether it is restructuring to address redundancy in staffing or efforts to make suspended CDRs usable to the billing system. These tactics are effective, but they have been around for a while, and when everyone on the playing field is using the same tactics, the field becomes level. What can a telco do to tip the field to its advantage? Enter BI – but with a difference. BI designed for the network environment, or network business intelligence (NBI).

BI has been described as the process of enhancing data in order to turn it into information, and then knowledge. It uses a combination of software applications, business practices, and good old-fashioned business sense. Typically, BI lives in the realm of the finance offices, or the “C-level” world of top executives who need to make high-level strategic decisions based on a multitude of factors.

In the network environment, telcos have discovered that NBI products and practices can be very effective in the marketing and IT trenches. NBI starts by analyzing data from multiple sources (including, among others, network elements, CRM data, GIS databases, CDR/SS7, network and electronic media, and network information service data) with the goal of producing both strategic and tactical measures for cutting costs and upping revenue. It relies on a few key ideas: that the data in the network contains a wealth of knowledge; that a layered approach to collecting and analyzing the data is required to render it meaningful; and that integration of the data is needed so that a full-spectrum picture of the network – and the business – emerges.

Integration is the key. Today’s telcos are plagued with information and process “silos” – self-contained units of information or expertise with a narrow focus and little idea of what’s happening outside of their unit. NBI seeks to break down these walls with a combination of business systems analysis and an effort to link the various processes so that, for example, there are no gaps between sales and provisioning, or between marketing and IT. The need for this is made apparent in a recent study by Stratecast Partners, in which more than 60 percent of those surveyed declared “lack of coordinated corporate strategy” as the main cause of revenue loss. Also, 50 percent of respondents blamed organizational silos as a leading cause of inefficiency in their revenue assurance programs.

It takes a shift in thinking to make integration work. Telcos have come to see the data traversing their networks as a commodity. Each CDR has a value, and the road to success lies in realizing the most return on the transmission of that commodity from one paying party to another. The NBI approach does not negate this – rather, it adds a second, and higher order, layer of value to the data. That value lies in the information – or knowledge – that is contained within it.

This means thinking outside of the CDR box. Networks contain many other kinds of data – everything from switch configurations, to cable and infrastructure diagrams, to customer addresses, and even customer relationship management feedback. What if, instead of separating those data types out into separate departments (or silos), you could bring them together into a sort of meta-analysis that evaluated its various aspects with the goal of finding patterns and performance indicators?

The NBI difference is a matter of scope. With today’s telcos working extensively in mixed format environments that are increasingly IP-centric, the business intelligence approach has the added advantage of taking a wide view of the network and the broader business environment, with an emphasis on margin improvement. For example, an NBI approach might take into consideration the effect of incorrectly configured call features for specific customers, enabling the telco not only to fix the problem (an RA solution) but to offer an olive branch to high-revenue customers who might be on the brink of churning as a result. This is a new way of looking at revenue assurance – it’s not just about plugging the leaks that take money out of the revenue stream – it’s about unplugging the log jams that prevent money from flowing into it.

With this shift in thinking about the data in their networks, telcos are realizing the potential of a higher-order system that considers the information value of their data and not just its commodity value.

Chris Couch is CMO at ACE*COMM Corp. He can be reached at chris.couch@acecomm.com.

ACE*COMM Corp. www.acecomm.com

Share this article: Email, Slashdot, Digg, Del.icio.us, Yahoo!MyWeb, Windows Live Favorites, Furl
Add this article feed to: RSS, My Yahoo, Newsgator, Bloglines