Page 500 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Organization and Governance 4-31

Most of the rudimentary systems available or used in the past by these telecommunications com-
panies are those where data must be extracted from multiple systems and complex spreadsheets must
be used to manipulate data. This exercise is time consuming and fraught with delays. If any parameter
changes in the equation, the corporation finds itself at square one, without the ability to construct what-
if scenarios and respond effectively to the changing market conditions.
Carriers rely on analyses of their terabytes of customer, product, and traffic data to help them make
business-critical decisions that will positively affect their bottom line. High-end data warehouses and
powerful business intelligence solutions are essential tools to help carriers meet profit goals. Analyzing
and integrating in-depth data from multiple departments enable carriers to reduce revenue leakage and
churn, mitigate fraud, optimize network usage, and increase profits.
Competition makes things more difficult for operators, and the analysis they need for operations, to
stay ahead, needs to be much more granular to allow for true assessment of the profit contribution of the
customer and the services, especially when most of the business questions they want an answer for go
across multiple operational systems as business processes flow across many departments.
Telecom companies need to deploy new and more focused business services and create stronger
customer relationships. This implies a high degree of responsiveness to customer needs and concerns.
Telecom companies are, however, strapped with large legacy IT infrastructures that are extremely
complex to manage. These infrastructures have rigid operational requirements and resist incremental
change, thereby affecting the agility and responsiveness of the telecom companies to customer demands
and the deployment of new and improved services.
Telecom companies are looking for ways to build IT flexibility and agility in their businesses, in an
effort to lower the costs and risks involved in upgrading and evolving these OSS/BSS. The need to be
flexible and nimble requires telecom companies to migrate to more open technology environments and
to adopt an architectural approach to integration challenges.
The need to deploy new services requires these companies to adopt a new generation of standards-
based middleware that enables rapid and cost-effective service-oriented integration of OSS/BSS
infrastructures. The new technology needs to adopt an incremental approach to the creation of
service-oriented OSS/BSS architectures, thereby migrating to the IT base of telecom companies
through phases of renovation and service consolidation while driving customer-focused service
innovation.
Many telecommunications companies are organized first by customer segment—be it consumer or
business—then by product or service, such as consumer long distance, business, or local. Managing
data within these silos and across these silos can be a challenge, and data warehousing is an essential
lynchpin in maintaining a profitable business model.
A robust BI solution can help telecommunications companies manage the complexities involved
in this calculation. Telecommunications companies worldwide are exploring business intelligence
solutions to achieve competitive advantage. The key solutions for which telecommunications com-
panies are looking involve marketing, such as customer retention, target marketing, and campaign
management, customer-relationship management, and network business intelligence, to streamline
network assets. Moving forward, additional systems are needed with capabilities to deliver best-
of-breed business intelligence and business management. These capabilities enable companies to
accomplish the following:
• Understand the needs of their business (business intelligence)
• Manage actions based on those needs (business management)
• Effectively run day-to-day operations (business operations)

These capabilities will enable companies to realize the opportunity of a business landscape character-
ized by customer relationships, customized product delivery, and opportunity-driven profit. One of the
key enabling technologies to this evolution is the data warehouse.