Key Elements in Building

BI & Analytics Solutions for Telcos A Whitepaper

www.prodapt.com

Executive Summary Today’s telecom operators are in a fast-paced marketplace that demands rapid decision making. Critical business decisions are buried deep within the volumes of business data of each communications provider. In order to be innovative and maximize revenue, telecom operators must have the right solutions in place to harness the volume, variety, and velocity of data flowing into the organization. The telecom operators should be properly primed to leverage this data to derive actionable insights. Telecom companies are sitting on terabytes of data stored in silos as well as scattered across the enterprise. The real challenge in extracting meaningful information from this data is establishing a system capable of interpreting hidden patterns, trends, and meanings from substantial volumes of data. In addition, the disparate data sources are structured as well as unstructured. The solution is to find patterns and relationships beyond the data, and BI & Analytics can be the driving force for this. For simpler and faster processing of only relevant data, telecom operators need an advanced, analytics-driven solution that will help them achieve timely, accurate insights through various analytical techniques, such as data mining, predictive analytics, etc.

Current Telco Challenges A few key challenges faced by telcos relate to: Customers: Failure to understand

customers’ value Network: Inability to extract value

from network assets Revenue: Failure to connect

industry growth with social & economic gains

Sales & Marketing: Failure to realize new roles (service diversification opportunities) in evolving industry ecosystems

The common underlying issue across all the above challenge perspectives is the lack of integrity of the data with telecom operators, hindering their ability to drive growth and efficiency. BI & Analytics plays a major role in addressing the challenges faced by the telecom industry and offers the following: 360-degree view of the enterprise Identification of hidden data

patterns, behaviors, and relationships

Support business strategy and planning

Identification of opportunities to optimize costs across the value chain

Prediction of demand in networks Insights for improved

decision making Equipping the organization for

cross-channel communication

The common underlying

issue in BI & Analytics is

the lack of data integrity.

To maximize the revenue, telecom operators must have the right solutions in place to

harness the volume, variety, velocity, and veracity of the deluge of data into the

organization. A good BI & Analytics solution is essential for this.

www.prodapt.com Key Elements in Building BI & Analytics Solutions for Telcos

With Prodapt’s offerings, telcos can effectively increase sales; reduce churn and fraud; cross-sell/upsell products and service plans; and improve visibility into core operations, internal processes, and market conditions.

Key Building Blocks of BI & Analytics As telcos increasingly need to set up strong analytics systems, it’s also essential to understand the key elements earmarking their success, such as: Analytics roadmap & use cases Data Statistical & analysis models Tools Performance

Analytics Roadmap & Use Cases At the beginning of every analytics initiative, have a clear vision of the business goals: What kind of reports have to be generated and how they will support in achieving the goals. Since BI & Analytics adoption is a multi-stage process, telcos need to determine their current position and their goals. This in turn will tell if the solution has to be on the cloud, on premises, or hybrid. The diagram below depicts the typical progress of BI & Analytics adoption in a telecom company.

At the beginning of

every analytics initiative,

have a clear vision of the

business goals: What

kind of reports have to

be generated and how

they will support in

achieving the goals.

www.prodapt.com

The next step is converting the telco’s business goals into analytics requirements. As part of this, it’s essential to finalize the use cases and reports needed, along with its contents, granularity, dimensions, etc. Further, this will drive the need for

picking the right analysis and metrics to deliver business values to telcos. Some of the typical use cases developed by telcos to gain valuable insights into their business are depicted below:

Key Elements in Building BI & Analytics Solutions for Telcos

Picking the right analysis

is as important as

ensuring the right data

www.prodapt.com

Data

Data plays a key role in ensuring that reports generated are accurate and consistent, so that they can be effectively used to gain valuable insights to achieve business goals; therefore, the data for analysis warrants utmost importance. Some key factors to be taken care of while finalizing the data used for analysis are: Identification of the right data

from various O/BSS data sources Ensuring the data is available,

accessible, and consistent Validating the quality of data

based on currency, variance, etc. Ensuring the definition of shared

data infrastructure for seamless consolidation and easy user access

Ensuring provisions for onboarding new data sources at any time

Validating the suitability of data to perform required analysis and generate desired reports

In most telco implementations, data security and governance also play a major role in the design of BI & Analytics solutions. Hence, data

classifications are essential to protect the data for legal and regulatory requirements. The solution design should also allow data access levels based on user types and strategies for mobility and bring your own device (BYOD). Some of the key data tasks during implementation are: Data mapping: Direct maps,

indirect maps, and unmapped fields/tables

Data cleansing Data transformation Preload cleansing Data quality testing Relational OLAP development:

Data warehouse or big data implementation

Multidimensional OLAP development: data marts/cubes

Statistical & Analysis Models Picking the right analysis is as important as ensuring the right data is used. The type of statistical analysis used varies depending on the type of use cases, granularity of the report, and the nature of the outcome (predictive, descriptive, etc.)

Key Elements in Building BI & Analytics Solutions for Telcos

A complex combination

of multiple statistical

techniques has to be

deployed to get the

www.prodapt.com

A few techniques are: Descriptive & Inferential Analysis:

Provides summaries of the sample and measures (e.g., churn factors identification)

Predictive Modeling: Creates a statistical model of future behavior using decision trees, neural networks, association rules, K-Means clustering, etc., (e.g., churn prediction, cross-sell/upsell market prediction)

Path Analysis: Describes the direct dependencies among a set of variables (e.g., predicting network failures based on known failure paths)

Machine Learning: The science of making computers act without explicit programming (customer segmentation based on call patterns and data usage)

Text Mining: Process of deriving high-quality information from text (e.g., subscriber complaints analytics)

In most cases, a complex combination of multiple statistical techniques has to be deployed to get the desired outcome. For instance, a cross-sell/upsell model can be established using a combination of clustering (to choose samples that truly represent the whole population), association rules (to identify similar existing products by matching underlying characteristics of the products), and decision trees (to establish purchase patterns by a customer sample).

Tools Tools are decided based on the use cases to be implemented, analyses to be done, and the types of reports to be generated. The final set of tools is selected based on the client requirements. A typical BI & Analytics tool will be assessed under the following categories:

Performance More often than not users of the BI & Analytics solution are spread across multiple locations and require multiple queries to generate the reports and dashboards. Therefore, performance plays a key role in

designing BI & Analytics solutions. The key factors to be taken into account while deciding an architecture to suit the required performance criteria of telcos are: The amount of data to be

analyzed The amount of data to be indexed

Key Elements in Building BI & Analytics Solutions for Telcos

In order to arrive at a

suitable performance

architecture, one needs

to know the query limit

of each processor unit.

www.prodapt.com

Number of concurrent users Number of saved searches Types of searches to be used Number of concurrent sessions

per user In order to arrive at a suitable performance architecture, one needs to know the query limit of each processor unit (cores, threads, etc.,) and match it with the requirements obtained based on the above-mentioned criteria. For instance, if a core can do one query in real time, eight in near real time, or 20 queries within 10 minutes, the telco will need 16 such cores to cater to roughly 30

concurrent users with a few minutes of response time.

Conclusion Prodapt is an end-to-end player in O/BSS BI & Analytics area offering communications service providers with the flexibility to start small with a standalone use case (e.g., customer/product profitability analysis), and then develop a holistic analytics strategy with a unified view of various dimensions of business processes of the entire enterprise. Here is an overview of Prodapt’s offerings and technical expertise:

Key business values offered by Prodapt include: Effective Marketing Improved Growth & Market Share

Improved Customer Loyalty Improved Customer Experience Improved Customer Retention Improved Customer Profitability Improved Product Profitability

Key Elements in Building BI & Analytics Solutions for Telcos

About Prodapt Prodapt is a leading provider of software, engineering, and operations services with a singular focus on the information and communications technology (ICT) industry. Prodapt endeavors to maximize the value at competitive cost for global communications service providers (CSPs), independent software vendors (ISVs), and network equipment manufacturers (NEMs). Prodapt’s services and solutions span across Operations/Business Support Systems (O/BSS), Machine-to-Machine/Internet of Things (M2M/IoT), Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM), Telecom Business Process Services, and Network Product Engineering. Prodapt is a niche telecom services company with expertise in service delivery and fulfillment, network service assurance, and integrated customer and revenue management. Full-fledged and constantly evolving O/BSS offerings from Prodapt will provide telcos with profitability and uncompromised customer experience, through service quality, customer touchpoint experience, and branding. Prodapt offers flexibility to telcos through targeted solutions and services (both cloud and on-premise) across BI & analytics, digitization, mobility, and B2B & B2C services. Prodapt has over the years partnered with global leaders in the communications industry including Fortune 500 companies. In-depth telecom expertise, competitive costing, and enterprise-level flexibility make Prodapt the partner of choice in the telecom domain. Headquartered in Chennai, India, Prodapt has operations in the US, Europe, and South Africa. The organization is part of a 120-year-old Indian business conglomerate, The Jhaver Group, employing over 15,500 people across 60+ global locations. The Jhaver Group has business in IT services, healthcare, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, textiles, apparel accessories, and the BPO industry.

India

Prodapt Solutions Pvt. Ltd. Chennai: 1. Prince Infocity II, OMR Ph: +91 44 4903 3000 Fax: +91 44 4903 3010 2. “Chennai One” SEZ, Thoraipakkam Ph: +91 44 4230 2300 Fax: +91 44 4903 3010

USA

Prodapt North America Oregon: 7565 SW Mohawk St., Tualatin Ph: +1 503 636 3737 Fax: +1 503 885 0850 Texas: 222 W. Las Colinas Blvd., Irving Ph: +1 972 201 9009 Fax: +1 972 501 9019 New York: 1 Bridge Street, Irvingston

South Africa

Prodapt SA (Pty) Ltd. Johannesburg: No. 3, 3rd Avenue, Rivonia Ph: +27 (0) 11 259 4000 Fax: +27 (0) 11 259 4111

The Netherlands

Prodapt Solutions Europe Amsterdam: Zekeringstraat 17A, 1014 BM Ph: +31 (0) 20 4895711 Prodapt Consulting BV Rijswijk: De Bruyn Kopsstraat 14 Ph: +31 (0) 70 4140722 Fax: +31 (0) 70 3030047