Carriers are facing a more challenging environment than ever today.
More competition points to smaller margins and greater demand to deliver services more quickly. So service providers need to move to more efficient and low-cost operating models while at the same time be able to extract “actionable” data from their billing and OSS systems. That will allow them to better control fraud, do revenue assurance, and improve customer service and marketing.
That was the message of the “Cost-Effective Business Analytics” panel at the Billing & OSS World show in Chicago.
While data warehouse solutions have become more sophisticated, allowing point-and-click access to data, which opens data to non-technical types, only about half of North American service providers have a true analytics environment in place and those that do realize “they’re just getting started,” said Susan McNeice, the panel’s moderator and program manager of OSS/BSS Global Competitive Strategies at Stratecast.
Emphasizing the need for carriers to get information quickly so they can act on it while it still matters, Bruce Bednaski, senior vice president of business development at Razorsight, added “Nobody wants to read yesterday’s paper.”
And while some espouse summary data, Jim Hayden, executive director of business intelligence with TEOCO Corp., said that gathering as much data as possible will give carriers the most flexibility and accuracy in this process.
“The more granular the data the better,” agreed panelist Bill Zimmer, Media & Entertainment Solutions Portfolio Manager at HP Communications.
However, Stephen Rickaby, director of revenue assurance products at Intec, said that while it would be nice to have all information in analytics, it may not make sense to do so in all cases.
