Page 503 - Handbook of Modern Telecommunications

4-34 CRC Handbook of Modern Telecommunications, Second Edition

There is no quick fix out of this market. It is imperative that the service providers dive into their plen-
tiful data and really analyze the operational and financial parameters. To obtain the margin improve-
ments they are seeking, the carriers will have to perform detailed analyses of cost of service, customer
profitability, and product margins in order to survive and thrive.
4.3.3.1 BI Requirements of the Telecommunications Industry
Telecommunications service providers should pursue an integrated information strategy from a single
platform without compromising security, user requirements, or future flexibility. There are several stra-
tegic benefits to this type of “define once, deploy everywhere” solution. This type of solution enables
detailed analyses within business units while allowing cross-divisional analyses by enterprise users.
Once the enterprise data warehouse is built, organizations can then define data marts that meet multiple
business unit needs.
Further solutions should include a multilayer security model that authenticates and authorizes access
to data, protects data transmission, and controls application functionality by associated privileges. This
ensures that users see only the data intended for them as access is defined for each user against project,
row, and object.
Finally, the solution’s integrated and flexible platform allows enterprise analysts to survey the entire
enterprise to measure ROI, cost of capital, internal rate of return (IRR), and additional financial analy-
ses across units, campaigns, and customer segments (see Table 4.3.1).

4.3.3.2 BI Application Areas
A telecommunications company can use various BI tools for strategic as well as operational decision mak-
ing. Furthermore, it can carry out various analyses to suit its unique requirements and position within
the industry. Among the applications that play important roles in telecommunications companies’ suc-
cess are strategic decision support, scoring and segmentation, campaign assignment and management,
traffic analysis, customer relationship analysis, corporate performance monitoring, and last but not least,
financial analysis. Other than these central application areas, other areas key to telecommunications
companies’ strategy are risk analysis, fraud detection (or revenue assurance), and platform convergence.

4.3.3.2.1 Integrated Customer View
This is the first hurdle that any telecommunications company meets. It is important to have all cus-
tomer/account/transaction data in one place and to be able to correlate customers across their product
holdings. In all probability, every product line within a telecommunications company sits on a separate
system. The Customer Information System (CIS) should be able to correlate all customers from various
product systems and define the various relationships.
If the telecommunications company does not have a CIS system, then individual customers and
accounts need to be gathered from various systems and a customer integration process begun. This pro-
cess can be carried out using industry-standard tools. Individual customers can be parsed using name,
date of birth, address, gender, social security number, and a distinct customer ID can be assigned to a
customer across all his or her product holdings.
Householding too can be applied based on specific business requirements. The telecommunications
company can identify that two customers listed in both the savings and mortgage systems are actually
one customer. This provides the most crucial information for a telecommunications company upon
which accurate and effective analyses can be run. The data warehouse will then provide a 360-degree
view of a customer. Although this process is extremely cumbersome, it is critical for effective analysis
and should be treated as the starting point.
4.3.3.2.2 Customer Life Cycle
Every telecommunications company develops a customer life-cycle model and maps its products to this
model. This methodology reflects the thinking that customers require different products and services