New research conducted by TM Forum reveals operators see network analytics playing major role in driving business improvement and ultimately CSP share price increase
Barcelona, Spain, Mobile World Congress – 2nd March 2015 – Big Data and network analytics hold the key to operators’ efforts to enhance the user experience, optimize capital investments and even drive share price movement, according to the findings of a new TM Forum report entitled ‘Network analytics: Creating better customer experience and new revenues’.
Sponsored by MYCOM OSI, the leading independent provider of best-in-class Service Assurance solutions to the world’s largest Communications Service Providers (CSPs), the research identifies network analytics as a key area CSPs are targeting in order to better increase data quality of service, which is a primary reason for churn rates as high as 50%. Further, the research found that those CSPs that deliver the best quality of service and network performance to create a competitive mobile broadband product can expect their share price to rise significantly.
At Mobile World Congress, MYCOM OSI is launching a new network analytics solution, MYCOM OSI ProInsight™, that delivers an innovative approach to telecom analytics by leveraging its industry-leading network management of heterogeneous multi-vendor and multi-domain network data, and dynamically injecting business and customer data from big data stores.
Drawing on primary research from 163 industry professionals and further in-depth interviews with C-Level executives representing eight leading operators across EMEA, North America and Asia, the research revealed that CSPs are not only using network and service data to manage their network and service delivery, but they are increasingly going (or more typically aspiring to go) well beyond this. CSPs are enriching their data by applying sophisticated analytics to both historical and real-time data to learn how to improve service quality and customer support, create more attractive offers for their customers and predict and mitigate churn. Importantly, they are looking to act quickly and decisively on this information, using it to drive both automated and manual processes to benefit their businesses.
The findings outline key goals for executives within leading CSPs:
– Focus on high value customers to drive ARPU
– Internet of Things – maximise success of IoT offerings by ensuring effective monitoring and measurement of data in real-time and over time
– Enterprise mobility – meet demand from business customers for reliable, high performance mobility services to unleash performance productivity gains
– Company value – increase share price through better QoS and network performance
– NFV and hybrid network environments – monitor performance of the new virtual network functions and the interaction of VNFs with traditional network elements to optimise end-to-end service delivery
– Real-time analytics – these capabilities are now emerging and up the game dramatically, helping CSPs deal much more quickly and effectively with network and customer issues
– New business models – analytics enable operators to better understand and manage OTT traffic, informing plans to partner with third party application and content providers
The main challenges perceived by those surveyed included:
– Data integration, data management and governance issues
– Skills availability
– Dealing with data velocity and volume
– Maturity of tools and applications – here, CSPs note they are looking for more than just tools; they need analytical applications that incorporate best practices and produce actionable output
– Proper filtration to reduce data volume to collect only that which is needed
– Speed – achieving the right balance: sub-second processing is not always required and can be non-cost effective
“This research reflects what we are hearing from our customers – and we do count 8 out of the top 10 global CSP groups as customers – which are increasingly leveraging network and customer big data analytics to impact their quality of service and strategic investment initiatives,” commented Mounir Ladki, President and CTO of MYCOM OSI. “We are seeing customers leverage Big Data and network analytics to optimize Capex spend by aligning network investments to the value of customers and services, and there can be little doubt that Big Data analytics will be one of the major themes in the conversations we will be having with CSPs throughout this week.”
“Our research uncovered that network analytics can have a direct immediate impact on network and service quality, customer experience, churn, revenues, costs and ultimately even share price, so CSPs should clearly invest in them,” said Rob Rich, Managing Director, Insights Research, TM Forum. “But our research also shows that CSPs need network analytic solutions that derive actionable intelligence, and not just tools and data collection platforms. We would recommend partnering with highly experienced companies that have built a deep and contextual understanding of the business value of telecom network data. After all, analytics are about delivering business value, and CSPs need solutions to achieve that quickly and cost effectively.”
The full report is available to download from the MYCOM OSI website and the TM Forum website. TM Forum and MYCOM OSI will host a webinar on Thursday 16 April to discuss the findings in more detail and explore some real customer use cases, including value-based capacity planning and QoS-driven NFV orchestration.