Page 502 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

Network Organization and Governance 4-33

This exercise is time consuming and fraught with delays. If any parameter changes in the equation,
they find themselves at square one, without the ability to construct what-if scenarios and respond effec-
tively to the changing market conditions. The analysis needs to be much more granular to allow for true
assessment of the profit contribution of the customer and the services. Most of the business questions
they want to answer go across multiple operational systems as business processes flow across many
departments.
The same holds true for many of the operational processes. For example, one area that has severe
implications for customer satisfaction is the time it takes to activate a new customer. The activation of a
new mobile customer can take several hours and for a new broadband customer it can take several days.
Activating a new customer touches many departments from customer and service support to account-
ing, credit approval, billing, network planning, network support, inventory management, scheduling a
service person to configure and install the customer premises equipment, and turning the service on.
Most operators have disparate systems managing the provisioning and customer activation process,
and there is very little visibility of the bottlenecks and disconnects. The activation of new customers has
revenue implications, and therefore affects the share price and market evaluation of the carrier. This is a
key business performance parameter with visibility in the office of the CEO and to the board.
The same disconnects happen in many other areas as well: interconnect billing, network operations
and management, service creation, and introduction of new services, determining the profitability of
various products, services, and rate plans. The systems at most service operators have been built for
accounting purposes and do not provide adequate information across processes and functional areas to
support business users in making business decisions based on the power of information.
There are software solutions that are helping service providers to bridge this gap. The business intel-
ligence applications extract and connect disjointed systems and data from disparate sources and enable
the business user and decision maker to make an informed decision.
Generally, the IT organization at a service provider will consolidate data from multiple sources into
large data warehouses or smaller data marts. The analytical applications and reporting tools are uti-
lized to query the database and provide regularly scheduled production reports to the business users.
Solutions have very easy-to-use user interfaces so the users can also create their own reports and make
ad hoc queries as required by business conditions. The analytical applications and digital dashboards
go a step further and let users keep their fingers on the pulse with prestructured guided analysis and
sophisticated event-management engines. The user can set alerts based on predetermined business rules
and thresholds.
It is important for service operators to be able to segment their customers more precisely than they
have in the past. Not all services are attractive to all customers, and it is very costly to run outbound
marketing campaigns that result in low response rates. Not only do they tax the resources of already
overburdened call centers, but they also result in customer irritation or oftentimes acquisition of cus-
tomers who do not add any value to the bottom line. Service operators are using business intelligence
tools to obtain a better understanding of their customers.
Who are their high-value customers? How can they treat them differently?
This is the same strategy that some other industries, such as airlines and credit cards, have been
using for years. Understand the impact of combining one service with another. Understand the basket
mix of services being purchased by premier versus low-usage customers and the revenue impact of each
service. Understand the impact of marketing campaigns sooner and be able to take corrective action in
midstream. Without business intelligence applications, they may not know the results of a marketing
campaign for three to four months. A product promotion that is run in July will have customer usage in
August show up in the September billing cycle. A 30- to 60-day delay removes the ability of the product
manager to take action during the campaign. With business intelligence tools, the product manager
can see the customer activation and usage on a daily basis without having to wait three months for the
billing records. This enables her to adjust the message and the product if the campaign is not meeting
its targets.