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The most critical question being discussed in the global market today is how much companies in the telecommunication industry can benefit from “big data”? All operators are searching for new ways to increase revenues and profits. However, only few have demonstrated the required capabilities to make the most of this new technology.

Operators are looking for ways to make initial inroads with big data and to avoid the usual top-down approach. As we all know, that top-down approach sets up a business problem then seeks out the related data that might solve it. This method does have benefits, but it is unlikely to lead to any unexpected and surprising results, thus it is difficult to execute until a company has demonstrated mastery in its use of data.

Therefore, operators should begin with the data itself, and experiment with what they have on hand to see connections and correlations behind. This process is called the “bottom-up” technique. If it is carried out correctly, this method can give operators a more complete and transparent view of customers. In turn, this enables new and more profitable ways of capturing and retaining customers, hence opening new streams of revenue.

Big data re-defined

The typical advice offered to telecom operators is to take a top-down approach by focusing on specific business problems that big data might solve, and then gathering the data needed to solve them. But the challenge in this strategy is two-fold: First, the business problem often exceeds the capacity of the available data to solve it, and second, the process of gathering the right data to help solve the problem is poorly understood by many companies.

To avoid this problem, companies should begin with the inverse approach, viewing the opportunity from the bottom up. In this case, one can examine the data currently available, and then determine those business problems, which the data might solve.

The bottom-up approach

The essence of the bottom-up approach lies in gathering together all the data available to the operator, both internal and external; applying software tools to process, analyze, and make sense of it; and then determining what can be done with the results. The key is to allow the data to “speak for itself,” bringing out not just the obvious correlations and connections, but the unexpected ones too. Remember: data has no agenda, it is incorruptible, it has no boss, it doesn’t want to be promoted, and it doesn’t quit.

Many types of data are potentially available to operators, though it is unlikely that operators will have all these sources at this stage, and certain sets of data might be combined to open up new business opportunities in areas such as campaign marketing and fraud prevention.

The potential data availability and usage in the bottom-up approach comes from the internal and external data. Internal data is all the user-related information which resides within telecom operators. This includes data like CDRs (call detail, record) information, CDR details, all the network events, all text and multimedia messages, volume of data traffic, location-specific data, product catalog data, product life cycle, product cost, product delivery, innovations, ARPU classifications, market and sales related information, campaigns information, usage patterns, order data, contract data, logs information, tariff data and customer account data etc. Similarly, external data is the information of the end users which may or may not reside within the telecom operator. This includes data like social media data from Facebook, Twitter and other similar data.

Advantages for CSPs

In the era of big data and especially in the current era of digitalization, data is the king, and operators have a large number of users and user data, so compared with other enterprises, operators have an inherent advantage.

Operators of data assets can be roughly divided into three domains: BSS, OSS and MSS, to cover production operation, network load and business management respectively. In addition to the traditional customer data, the metadata, billed data assets and employee data give an important input for analysis and more importantly for analyzing new data sources, like:

• Through marketing data analysis, customers can be involved and attracted to participate in marketing activities by sending the targeted campaigns, which they cannot ignore.
• By means of signaling data or mobile app, customer location is collected, and customers’ browsing information of the website or app can be collected.
• Through network tools to collect data from social media to get real customer data.

These advantages provide telecom operators with not only the edge over other players in the ecosystem but a new role for themselves too.

New role of telcom operators driven by big data

So, in this era of big data, operators have new roles: they are becoming INFOCOM instead of TELECOM. Operators also need to change their management strategy by analyzing the process of data and finally realizing the value of data.

On the business strategy side, in addition to improving precise marketing success, CSPs should also pay attention to co-operating with other industries:

• Information to monetize (information sales) such as population distribution, through the analysis of the user’s location and then provide the new store location with the retail industry
• Data to monetize (data sales) such as providing apps to government safety department to query the location of the single user or track their movement.
• Service/technical monetization (service sales) such as providing large data structure storage rental service to corporate customers.

ZTEsoft’s approach to big data

Following the bottom-up technique and according to various big data requirements, ZTEsoft provides a big data suite which comprises five different solutions.

1. Light BI: To help operators gain insight into customer behavior and the enterprise operation, enhance the efficiency of management decision-making, enhance market competitiveness, and reduce the cost of lost revenues.
2. XE: Large data storage and query plan solution for operators
3. Mobile Intelligence: For mobile users with a self-service solution based on intelligent terminal.
4. MCCM: Provides end-to-end multi-channel marketing solutions to our customers
5. CEM: Focus on network performance, the quality of business and the VIP customer experience.

For more details please visit www.ztesoft.com