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 strategyGeneral strategyCompanies 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 strategyBasically 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 patternThus by understanding the above points it is possible to build a strong customer strategy model.This customer strategy model directly influences· Product pricing / tariff plansProduct pricing plays a key role in pushing business, by understandingthe 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 plansAdvertising 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 customer’s data and checking their behavior patters.This can save lot a revenue, thus any saved revenue is profit for the company.2. Sales AnalysisAnalysis can be in terms of· Customers· Performance· Revenue

· Volume· MarginThis 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 servicesFraud controlWith 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 recordsWith 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 servicesWith 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 business’s 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)