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5 ways business intelligence helps telcos gain competitive advantage

 | 4 min read
5 ways business intelligence helps telcos gain competitive advantage

As an industry that capitalizes on the transfer and exchange of data, the telecom sector has a wealth of data on their hands they can use to stay ahead of the competition — network performance, product usage, customer information, billing details, and more.

This constant influx of data presents a lot of opportunities for telcos, but only if organizations adopt strategies that aim to make this data accessible and useful.

After all, with customer demand rising and technology ever-changing, there is a lot of competition in the telecom space. Only those who can extract value from data will be able to keep up.

Turning raw data into business intelligence comes with a lot of benefits for telco enterprises. Let’s take a look at some of these advantages.

1. Getting the information you need

Whether you’re a NOC engineer monitoring the performance and health of a network or a C-level executive deciding which project to fund, a business intelligence dashboard will help make a data-driven decision about potential network threats or inspire confidence in the new business direction.

Let’s take a call center manager as an example. The manager needs to determine the number of customer service reps that should be available during a given time. A simple descriptive analytics of the number of reported incidents received throughout the day would be sufficient for the manager to spot patterns in customer service demand and thus make the right staffing decisions.

Should they need to get into more detail, such as type of incidents reported to ensure availability of the right skills, the manager can drill down or drill through the report for further insights.

The same applies for when you’re using more advanced analytics methods. Perhaps the manager is employing a predictive analytics model that forecasts the number of calls that might come in. Real-time, interactive dashboards that visualizes these predictions would allow the manager to identify long-term trends and even relationships between various data dimensions.

2. Better visibility of data — from networks to customers

Not only can business intelligence make information more accessible throughout the organization, but it also breaks down silos and provides a consolidated, more comprehensive view of data.

Telco organizations provide a wide range of services and functions and thus may utilize different systems to manage and maintain operations—from the infrastructure to the business side of things. Data may be generated from various systems, but data management and dashboarding allow you to bring information all into one place.

One of the biggest advantages of integrating and visualizing company-wide data is getting a better view of the customer to tactfully boost customer experience. When a customer calls in to submit a complaint, the representative on the line should be able to effortlessly pull up required information such as the customer’s billing records, service subscriptions, and even the company’s server status. Everything the representative needs would be available within a single dashboard. 

There is a wealth of data in the telecommunications industry.
There is a wealth of data in the telecommunications industry.

3. Insights and alerts in near real-time

The telecommunications landscape today requires an always-on mindset. Customers demand service reliability and availability, and organizations need to consistently provide these if they want to survive. In order to keep up with demand, leverage actionable BI and see key metrics at any given moment. This way, stakeholders will know immediately if SLAs have been breached, KPIs aren’t met, or if there is a service interruption.  

For example, customer complaints are inevitable, but they can also be managed proactively. With near real-time insights into network health, you can get a head start on issues as they occur. If a forecasting model is built into your telecom KPI dashboard, you can even anticipate these challenges. This will greatly improve customer satisfaction and experience. 

Real-time alerts can also enable predictive maintenance. Through a maintenance data dashboard, operators can monitor the entire system and get visibility into potential issues and downtimes. They can use this information to determine when to repair, or even upgrade, telecom infrastructure. 

4. Discovering valuable opportunities

While dashboards are great for accessing information and staying on top of issues, they also allow users to discover new business scenarios and valuable opportunities – whether it’s an idea for a new product or a gap in the market.  

For example, analytics can provide information about the adoption of existing products and services and which have the most potential for a rework. You can also find ways to reduce costs associated with service fulfillment by analyzing information regarding installation, upgrades, and repairs. Or you can address customer service problems by looking into customer feedback and reviews.  

By extracting actionable insights from raw data, you can refine pricing, operational, marketing, customer, and other areas in your business.  

A telecom business intelligence dashboard showcasing customer churn predictions
A telecom business intelligence dashboard showcasing customer churn predictions

5. A boost to customer delight

With customer data and insights at their fingertips, telcos can go a long way in terms of addressing customer needs and expectations. By leveraging business intelligence, organizations can provide targeted experiences that make customers feel valued and heard.  

Data insights also allow organizations to focus on high-value customers. The opposite also applies – customers that are likely to churn. With insight into who these customers are, you can customize campaigns and promotional messages to appeal to these groups for maximum business outcomes. Send them emails that include their product preferences, upsell services that they might need, and target them with ads based on their shopping habits.    

More than just dashboards — business intelligence is key

These are just some of the many ways telecom companies can benefit from a business intelligence implementation. By leveraging analytics and reporting capabilities, the telco industry can act with speed and certainty to make data-driven decision, optimize processes, boost revenues, and improve the customer experience. 

About the author

Fiona Villamor

Fiona Villamor

Fiona Villamor is the lead writer for Sryas, a global technology company that delivers powerful insights and business transformations at scale. In the past 10 years, she has written about big data, advanced analytics, and other transformative technologies and is constantly on the lookout for great stories to tell about the space.

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