HARNESSING BIG DATA ANALYTICS FOR TELECOM

January 2013

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1. Background
According to a recent Cisco forecast, global mobile data traffic is estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 78 percent, reaching 10.8 exabytes per month. associated charging mechanisms. While being carriers of data, Telcos have mostly focused on their CRM and usage patterns to derive customer behavior and profiles. The challenging strong bargaining power of customers, a supplier base that associates as vendors rather needs and declining bottom-line. model. Threats from new entrants, substitution of voice based business models with data, business environment that they face today, presents a classic Michael Porters five force

All of this being carried by telecom players across the globe is forcing them to mitigate

threat to voice based business plans they had with improved data handling capabilities and

than partners and a strong intensity of competitive rivalry are all creating extreme survival In these times, reversal to basics of business is most important. Basic fundamentals of tomorrow are the need of the hour.

increased association and relevance to consumers, excellent quality of service, quick and easy customer care, accurate and measured financial planning and innovative solutions for According to a recent survey by The Economist Intelligence Unit: productivity.

a) Companies that use data-directed decision-making enjoy a 5-6% boost in b) 53% of companies leverage only half of their valuable data, and one-fourth of respondents noted that vast quantities of useful data go untapped.

We, at Ananto, believe that data has the ability to throw at us significant actionable insights.

If the framing of business issue to be tackled is right and data is being collected from multiple sources and analyzed with rigor, valuable insights about associations and velocity of generation poses impediments that traditional methods of analysis are unable to
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behaviors can be easily unearthed. However this increases the data volume, data types and

keep pace with in the current business environment. Telcos today can no longer afford to retained for longer and consumer should get his family and friends to buy the same brand.

ignore the next competitive advantage i.e. consumer should buy more, consumer should be

Dynamic decision ability with real-time actionable analytics helps improve and stream-line tactical processes while keeping in mind the holistic goal of optimal customer experience.

2. Challenges of data explosion

Service providers have immense access to data when it comes to subscribers, their usage transactions, network performance data, cell-site information, device level information as well as back office and consumer interaction logs. However the data resides in various Unstructured (voice calls, videos, social media, email, and chats), Static and Dynamic. forms i.e Structured (already in the IT systems like CRM, Sales Force, and Billing etc), Traditional approaches of offline analysis or using business intelligence with siloed deal with today. Increase in data loading time, querying time and hardware shortage, will be major hindrances when they are struggling to remain profitable and remain preferred in the competitive eco-system.

datamarts cannot keep pace with the variety and velocity of data that operators have to

Fig 1: DATA Explosion

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In order to deal with the above challenges and at the same time deliver new, compelling, revenue generating, customer satisfying service without overloading networks and without costs running out of control, Telcos need to find innovative ways to run their process with fine-grained service control. This can be achieved by the intelligent use of Analytics, particularly Big Data Analytics. Analytics not only provides insight about existing behavior of business but can also deliver models that can predict future outcomes far more accurately. We believe Telcos current business environment does not leave them with any room for error and hence there is a need to adopt sophisticated analytics capability that leaders in the trade are the future differentiating strategy for any telecom player today. can unearth valuable correlations. These insights, coupled with business acumen of the

3. Using Analytics to gain valuable insights

It is indeed a challenge to blend multiform voluminous data from a variety of sources when it is being generated at a great speed. With the help of brushing and mining certain basic
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patterns along with low-latency solutions, enormous value and return on investment can be delivered and that is what enterprises require. Businesses must be able to access, analyze, and act on business information faster than ever. In order to deliver new compelling, enhanced revenue generating, cost effective customer Big Data is the new way to harness efficiency and effectiveness along with real time actionable intelligence. While all business environments are different, we make an attempt to help you with some of the known areas of improvement using big data analytics:

experience without network congestion and huge cost implication, Analytics services using

3.1.

Segmentation and Subscriber profiling

Segmented customers based on the current and potential value so as to enable customized value based customer treatments and strategy.

Fig 3: Customer Segmentation The first step here is to ensure that one is able to get data about the customer from sources gaining prominence.

various sources. Billing, CRM, Usage etc are more commonly known but social media, location based information, interactions with customers service etc are some other Micro segmentation is a more advanced form of segmentation that groups small
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numbers of customers into extremely precise segments, based on various factors,

including behavioral predictions. Marketers can then direct specific marketing actions maximize the effectiveness of every contact with each customer.

and campaigns to each micro-segment (down to the individual consumer level) to Segmentation is a continuous activity, using advanced cluster analysis approaches, a pattern about Prized Customers are continuously obtained and applied for predictive improving predictive outcomes. analytics. Campaign results both in terms of its effectiveness and its impact on customer experience are evaluated, helping modelers with a list of impacting variables, thereby

Fig 4: Micro Segmentation A recent experience explains the gap between what a customer needs vs. what a Telco is

able to deliver. An existing mobile user with heavily used multiple connections wanted to get another connection. The CRM system of provider was unable to see him as an existing user and thereby started treating his request for a new connection as a fresh buyer. This results in a paltry credit limit vs. established credit limit of significant amount due to other connections. The customer is left with extra work to manage his cause error in segmentations, resulting in irate customers and cost to provider in understanding his customer profiles.
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new connection and extra bill and would surely result in extra work for providers

marketing department to figure our complete value of this customer. Such processes

3.2.

Customer Retention & Experience Enhancement:

3.2.1. Churn Prediction:

a. Future voluntary churners so as to facilitate proactive retention b. Future non-payers and bad debtors so as to customize the dunning policies and collection efforts for different risk groups and enable early retention actions. efforts yielding better retention performance.

Fig 5: Actionable Analytics with Churn Prediction

3.2.2. Trend & Pattern Detection along with Identification of

a. Major recharge patterns in the prepaid base and segmenting customers recharge stimulation actions. based on the dominant recharge behavior so as to enable customized enabling share of wallet acquisition actions.

b. Multi SIM users and customers using primarily competitor lines and c. Household customers and missing products to enable mobile, fixed and multi-play penetration opportunities

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3.2.3. Propensity model

To prioritize, cross sell and up sell offers to customers based on the the next best offer (BNPO) for the given customer based on their call usage & behavior pattern. acceptance probability and expected revenue increase, eventually predicting

3.2.4. Tariff Optimization

Identification of potential spending of subscribers and competitor tariffs so as to calculate the best tariff for each customer to be used for retention and test performance & relevancy of tariffs. Analyzing the price elasticity of identify tariff. subscribers and calculating the impact of price changes and financials should

3.2.5. Experience measure

Measuring experience from contact center information, unstructured voice of Mind (SOM). of consumers from social media and structured survey data helps in Identification of inherent yet prudent Brand imagery and subscribers Share

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Fig 6: Advanced Analytics & predictive modeling

3.3.

Proactive Network Monitoring

The existing transactional system detects critical outage when it occurs. They were

rarely deliberate to analyze network performance over a long period of time to customers and ultimately effect customer retention. Network lifecycle events have a customer experience. The residual effect of suboptimal network performance will result experience. large influence on customer satisfaction, as there are many moving parts that will affect

understand how and where service issues are trending, how that affects most profitable

in longer contact center calls, higher customer support costs and unsatisfactory customer experience. Optimized and integrated information can enhance the customer The efficient network monitoring solution adds data from network monitoring tools

with CDRs in real time, giving an updated picture of network operations every four to
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five minutes. The network operations center can quickly see issues as they arise and be identified in minutes or seconds rather than by the next day. The statistical analysis would assist in the prioritization of network investments and improvements by calculating the potential value adds and customer experience impact of network in each location. proactively resolve them, before customers start calling. Network quality problems can

3.4.

Buy More Strategy:

most irritating interaction for the customer. The callers or the front desk has little or no knowledge of the consumer profile, causing a dump of possible options, hoping to hit the bulls eye. From carpet bombing to intelligent and customized offers makes a world of difference to customer experience. Ananto believes that being relevant and aligned is most important in this effort to increase consumer lifetime value (CLTV). It should predictive modeling techniques can provide significant value to make this process a comes to buy diapers. Intuitively it sounds right when one understands the need to take care of the baby and watch a game along with beer, but it took many years of basket kept on the way from the diaper section to the checkout counters.

Commonly referred to as cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, it is by far becoming the

appear to the customer that he is being serviced and not being sold to. Data insights and Harvard study which shows a correlation between a single father buying beer when he delight for both customers and providers. One of the most used example is an old

analysis to identify this correlation. To make such folks buy more, beer is normally

3.5.

Revenue leakage management:

CDR data amounts to multiple terabytes in a day, yet this data is the most important input to the revenue management of a service provider. By analyzing such data on the fly, patterns of missed/incomplete records can be identified and corrected in near real
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time basis. This requires sophisticated modeling and continuous updates and results in

millions of dollars of saved revenue. By doing it on the fly, it reduces the cost of storage. Big data techniques are very apt in managing such volume and velocity of data. Such techniques help the operator maintain an accurate tracking of service usage. This points. accuracy is crucial in minimizing revenue leakages, especially at inter-carrier exchange

3.6.

Google Business model:

This concept is in its infancy, yet we find it relevant to be mentioned, considering the stressed business plans most of the Telcos have today. Google mined its search service to generate behavior of the users that it could intelligently offer as differentiated advertising strategy to business. Can Telcos mine the data flowing in their pipes to potential business as qualified target groups? This is not merely a service that Telcos should provide but it needs a bold step to change the business plan completely. Just like in Googles case it should not appear as though Telcos are trying to sell information or lists, rather it should be a comprehensive approach using mobile devices as means to In summary, these are few uses of analytics in managing business issues for a provider. There are number of other specific uses that we have seen, for example, deployment of campaigns and cluster based modeling. mobile towers, evaluating front line staff, predicting future traffic patterns due to a specific event, evaluating low revenue yet profitable customers, reducing cost of outbound channel intelligent offers. offer intelligence of consumption behavior, propensity to purchase, ability to use to

4. The Next Step

Analytics is an art that uses technology as its tools. Use of platforms and technology is to make the job easier and accurate when done repeatedly. The most important resources are
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the people who can see patterns in data. While the science, software and computing power provides one with proactive actionable intelligence. i

has increased tremendously, it still needs a fine eye to detect possible correlations, unlikely patterns, outliers and important insights. Its the people and platform combination that Essence of building and implementation strategy lies in Five C framework of Ananto. them gather correct insight.

Curiosity Ask the right question? Leaders in near future will not have to worry Capture Capture data from multiple sources to create an encompassing image. The velocity coming in from multiple sources.

about providing the right answers but about asking the right question that can help variety of data flows and the velocity of data flow are important considerations in building right capture strategy. This function needs to be automated to manage Curate Data, when compiled through multiple sources needs careful treatment. It

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needs to be put in similar plane, errors need to be corrected, and it needs to be Crunch At this stage, business issue needs to define the shortlisting of data set that and model generation and validation are some common tasks in this phase. converted from an unstructured format to a common structure.

needs to be processed. Sophisticated tools, various permutations by data scientists Create Visualization Ananto believes that insights from analytics are worthless if displays information gathered but also has ability to drill down and ability to run choice. leaders in Telco are unable to play with it and then take decisions. Visualization is a very important aspect of all the hard work done in earlier phases. It not only what if scenarios. All this on the finger tip of these leaders, on a device of their

Ananto also recommends a crawl-walk-run strategy in implementation. It is not

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important to start investing in significant infrastructure and people. We have seen

relatively low hanging fruits in most business cases where some specific problem can be challenges and stakeholder buy-ins. By using the crawl-walk-run strategy, where the clear impetus to invest more dollars.

solved for credible business gains. Since the big bang approach requires significant changes to working business processes, it usually faces significant change management investment is small initially, there is natural buy in from critical business owners and a

Ananto is your partner in this journey from data to dollars.

About Ananto
Ananto is a Big Data Analytics Solutions Company, supporting firms with Data Insight, Predictive Intelligence, Technology Integration and Advisory and Professional Services. business solutions that can be achieved using effect analytics. The word Ananto means Infinite, depicting the very nature of endless possibilities of

be harnessed smartly and transformed into deeper customer insight and channelized organizations to Re-focus, Re-align, Re-engineer and be Relevant and Resilient.

Our mantra is to convert your data to dollars for you. Data itself has no value, unless it can

towards enhancement in productivity and efficiency. This deep insight into data can help Started by customer experience industry veterans with global experience in technology, CMO for the same organization.

process management, consulting and business solutions. Aparup Sengupta, in his last role was the CEO and MD for a $1bn business services organization while Anil Modi was the

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