Telecom industry to boost sales with Business Intelligence : Telecom industries are faced with the huge challenges

of ever changing market conditions. They therefore need information to anticipate these Changes and quickly make informed Smart decisions. Decision-making in the telecom industry today demands high-quality intelligence. This is where business intelligence (BI) solutions play their critical role. Any business can be successful only if the sales end is strong. The same holds good for telecom industry, especially with telecom service providers. Here with telecom service providers Business intelligence plays a large role in making profit because it deals with large amount of customer data . Hence getting this customer data in a useful format is Business intelligence. As mentioned previously for any business to be successful sales plays a very prominent role and sales always is supported by strong marketing practices. Well next question would be how is this possible? Some of the focus areas are: Providing strong marketing support. Sales Analysis Improving customer loyalty services. Building customer retention models. 1.Providing strong marketing support: To give a good marketing support it is necessary to understand the market well. Having a good strategy is the foundation for a strong marketing. Two basic Strategies, which can be pursued, are: . General strategy . Customer strategy General strategy Companies here comes up with a product, which is common, and try marketing to the masses. Advertising plays a major role here. Even though this has been a major practice, profit margin out of this has been very low, because individual needs of the customers are not taken into account. Customer strategy Basically understanding the customer needs and tailoring to their individual needs have overcome the disadvantages in general strategy. Thus business intelligence plays a major role here by analyzing the customers that optimize profits by nurturing value added customer relationships. Thus strong customer relationships are attained by customer centricity: Customers drive business, thus understanding the customers plays a very important role. Customers requirements Customers expectations. Customers changing behavior pattern Thus by understanding the above points it is possible to build a strong customer strategy model. This customer strategy model directly influences Product pricing / tariff plans Product pricing plays a key role in pushing business, by understanding the customers it possible to categorize them into different groups based on their needs . Thus pricing can be decided by striking a balance between customers group needs and profits to the company. This can also be easily tested with help of business intelligence by implementing the model for a trial period and comparing the sale figures it is possible to get the profit margin. By business intelligence useful information can be provided to different departments for making the right decisions with in very little time thus analysis becomes easier and designing the product pricing(tariff plans)becomes efficient. Advertising plans Advertising plays major role because major money is involved in this. Thus channeling advertising according to customers is very important. Since it conveys the right message to right mass and this can be achieved by profiling the customers data and checking their behavior patters. This can save lot a revenue, thus any saved revenue is profit for the company. 2. Sales Analysis Analysis can be in terms of Customers Performance Revenue

 Volume Margin This can be viewed in terms of reports or charts thus competitive plan can be developed . By this analysis any strategic decision taken by management will be based on proof and not by just guessing and thus can also predict the performance of the company for the next quarter or so. Improving customer loyalty services. Fraud control Call records Billing and other services Fraud control With Business intelligence it is possible to track the pattern of calls their duration etc thus any abnormalities in call pattern can be detected. Thus timely intervention can reduce the loss to the company. Call records With Business intelligence it is possible to view call pattern and possible to understand their call history. Thus it becomes easy to get any records of particular customer or a group of customer with common call fashion. Billing and other services With Business intelligence it is possible to send e-bills to customer on related dates without any much manual intervention and get customer billing of web will also help customers view their own bills and analyze the same. Thus by getting in more related services it is possible to get more customer satisfaction thus improving business. Building customer retention models. Customer retention is one of the major challenges faced in any industry. In case of any business it is said that retaining a customer is always cheaper than getting a new customer. Here with help of business intelligence it is possible to build certain customer retention models basically looking customer data and their call behaviors. A well-designed customer retention model can reduce customer churn to greater extend .The positive impact of this can be huge ie a small increase in customer loyalty can deliver a large increase in profitability. Businees intelligence can also identify the behavior looking at the customer data and business analysts can say who are customers likely to leave and take the appropriate action in advance. On a conclusion we can say that business intelligence if properly implemented and used in the telecom industry it can help in boosting the profits to greater extent.

Uses of Data Warehousing in Telecommunications

Churn Differentiate between the propensity to churn and actual churn Differentiate between product church and customer churn Fraud Detection Data mining tools can predict fraud by spotting patterns in consolidated customer information and call detail records Product Packaging and Custom Pricing Using knowledge discover and modeling, companies can tell which products will see well together, as well as which customers or customer segments are most likely to buy them

 Packaging of vertical features Voice products such as caller ID, call waiting Employ price elasticity models to determine the new package's optimal price

Network Feature Management By monitoring call patterns and traffic routing, a carrier can install a switch or cell in a location where it is liable to route the maximum amount of calls Historical activity analysis can help telecommunications companies predict equipment outages before they occur

KPI for Telecom Industry

Last post, had mention about Business Intelligence for Telecommunication Industry. Here I have compiled few KPIs for the Telecom Industry. Key Performance Indicators for Telecom Industry: Call Centre - Wait times - Average speed of answer - Call volume - Number of complaints received - Revenue per call - Average quality of calls - Number of call transfers - Average call length - Number of one call resolutions - Abandon rates - Customer satisfaction - Number of calls answered within ten seconds - Agent Efficiency Systems and Network Performance Analysis / Capacity Planning - Availability - Grade of service - Service life of equipment - Bit error ratio (data, bits & elements transfer)

- Bit rate (data, bits and elements transfer) - Downtime / Time out of service - Call completion ratio - Cost of support systems - Cost of operational systems - Average call length - Analysis of ASR routes - Network traffic, congestion - Idle time on network - Dropped calls Revenue / Financial Analysis - Average revenue per user (ARPU) - Prepaid ARPU - ARPU from contracts - Revenue per voice-minute - % of non-voice revenue - Average revenue realization (ARR) - Minutes of usage (MoU) per subscriber - Average revenue per employee (ARPE) - Average revenue per subscriber (ARPS) - Periodical Revenue Analysis - Analysis of company overheads - Profit and loss Analysis - Recovery Analysis Customer Satisfaction - Average score from external surveys - Average score from internal surveys - Average score from call monitoring - Total number of complaints - Total number of unresolved issues - Number of responses generated Quality / Usage (Airtime): Analysis of the volume of successful calls - Mean Opinion Score - Service - Duration of calls - Billed amount on each call Coverage

- % of land covered with services - % of population covered with services - Average land unavailable to services - Average population unavailable to services - Access to customer service Marketing - Effect of promo campaign on subscriptions - Trend analysis - Segment analysis - Call behavior analysis Faults and complains (Trouble tickets analysis) - % of open and level of escalation priority required - % closed - mean time to resolved - Work in progress - Customer service level statistics Fraud Analysis - Normal traffic - Identify deviations from normal traffic patterns - Normal usage per customer per area of country - Identify phone numbers for customers with high deviation Compliance / Service Analysis - Service connection - Timeframes repairs and installations - Reliability - New service connections - Activations, de-activations, re-activations - Misc services - Waiting time - Waiting period before grant of service - % order error rates and reasons Customer Analysis - Customer segmentation - Analysis of subscriptions - Top N customers - Churn

Top 140 KPIs for mobile operators (telecoms industry)

Below is a non-exhaustive list of 140 metrics that make it possible to understand the way the business of mobile telecoms functions. These metrics are split into 5 categories: country telecoms sector, marketing and sales, quality of service, operational efficiency, finance and valuation.

1. Country telecoms sector (13 KPIs)

Mobile penetration Tele-density Penetration per household Mobile market share index (MMSI) Subscribers per km2 Prepaid relative penetration Number of SIM cards per user Competition intensity index (HHI) Top 2 players share Mobile revenue per GDP Market ARPU Data penetration Pricing ratios (termination rate, In-out ratio)

2.Marketing and Sales (38 KPIs)

Marketing and Sales metrics are split into 6 categories: subscribers, market position, brand performance, usage, revenue, distribution.

Metrics concerning Subscribers

Revenue generating subscribers (RGS) Gross connections Net additions Churn rate (monthly or annual) Rotational churn rate Customer lifetime (in months or in years)

Market position metrics Market share (subscribers) Value share (revenue) Share of talk (usage) Relative market share Marginal market share

Brand performance metrics Top of mind awareness Total spontaneous awareness Aided awareness Share of voice Brand preference Brand affinity Brand health score Brand index

Customer Usage metrics Minutes Of Use per User (MOU per User) Number of calls per user Average call length Sphere of influence (SOI) Sphere of reception (SOR) Sphere of activity (SOA) Return call index Average call distance Call ratio

Metrics concerning Revenue Average Revenue Per User (ARPU/ASPU)

Average Revenue Per Minute (ARPM) Average Revenue Per Cell (ARPC) Marginal ARPU (or ASPU) Marginal Revenue Per Minute

Sales and Distribution metrics Share in shop handling Numeric (and weighted) purchasing Stocks volume Stock cover days Handling stock (numeric or weighted)

3.Quality Of Service (33 KPIs)

Metrics pertaining to Quality Of Service can be split into 3 categories: network, call center, distribution.

Network metrics Call setup time Call setup success rate (CSSR) SDCCH congestion Congestion rate (all-hours and busy-hours) Radio network utilization (all-hours and busy-hours) % cells > 2% congestion Call drop rate Half-rate utilization Point of interconnection congestion Prepaid service success rate BTSs accumulation downtime Handover success rate SMS delivery success rate International link availability Critical link availability International link availability

Average Erlang per subscriber Complaints on coverage per 1,000 subscribers

Call Center metrics Average call handling time (CHT) Average delay to answer (ADA) First call resolution % service level Calls per subscriber per month Call abandonment rate Conversion rate Occupancy IVR completion rate Agent utilization Average subscribers/Call center employee

Sales and Distribution Out-of-stock (numerical and weighted) Net numeric distribution Stock cover days Dealer satisfaction index

4.Operational Efficiency (36 KPIs)

Metrics related to operational efficiency measure the quality of a businesss receivables and how efficiently it uses and controls its financial, material and human resources. This set of metrics is very large and can be split into margin ratios, revenue-based ratios, unit-based ratios and billing metrics.

Margin ratios Average Gross Profit Per User (AGPPU) Contribution Margin Per User (CMPU) Average Operational Margin Per User (AOMPU) Average Operational Margin Per Minute (AOMPM)

Revenue-based ratios

Cost Of Sales/Revenue OPEX/Revenue CAPEX/Sales Commissions (distribution)/Revenue Business operations cost/Revenue Network operating cost/Revenue Marketing OPEX/Revenue Interconnect cost/Revenue Subscriber acquisition cost/Revenue Labor cost/Revenue

Unit-based ratios Cost of sales/average RGS Cost of sales/billed minutes OPEX/average RGS OPEX/billed minutes OPEX/number of sites CAPEX/average RGS CAPEX/billed minutes CAPEX/number of sites Marketing OPEX/Gross connections Marketing OPEX/Net additions Subscriber acquisition cost/Gross connections Subscriber acquisition cost/billed minutes Maintenance cost/number of BTS Rent and utilities/number of BTS Mobile switching centers/average RGS Base transceiver stations/average RGS Base transceiver stations/km2

Billing ratios Number of days sales outstanding Bad debt (% unpaid and % of revenue) Cost to deal with errors (billing) Cost of collecting revenue Ratio of bills collected before due date

NB: For the metrics concerning Human Resources, please refer to the post: Top 100 KPIs for Human Resources.

5.Finance and Valuation (18 KPIs)

Metrics pertaining to Finance and Valuation can be split into 3 categories: return and profitability, solvency and liquidity, valuation.

Return and profitability Gross Profit margin EBITDA margin PAT margin Return-On-Invested Capital (ROIC) Return-On-Assets (ROA) Return-On-Equity (ROE)

Solvency and liquidity Net gearing ratio Net debt/EBITDA Invest coverage ratio

Valuation Enterprise value/EBITDA EV/(EBITDA Tax) EV/Revenue EV/Subscribers Earnings per share (EPS) Price earnings ratio (P/E) Price-to-sales ratio (P/S) Free cash flow/Revenue Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC)