Implementing Self service Predictive Analytics in the Telecom sector

1. US42325917
T E C H N O L O G Y S P O T L I G H T
Implementing Self-Service Predictive Analytics
in the Telecom Sector
March 2017
Adapted from Business Strategy: Technology-Oriented Value Chain 2016–2017 Investment Guide
by Kimberly Knickle, Heather Ashton, et. al., IDC #US40539916
Brought to you by Tech Mahindra, Powered by IDC
Communications service providers (CSPs) own and manage communications networks with a business
model based on the transport of information. CSPs sell voice and data services to both business and
residential end users. They also make money by providing network connectivity to other telecom
companies and by wholesaling circuits to heavy network users such as internet service providers (ISPs)
and large corporations. The industry is undergoing rapid change as fixed-line voice revenue, traditionally
the biggest revenue generator, continues to decline and service delivery is more about data and mobility.
Revenue growth is greater for IP-based voice services and mobile data services. Given that shift,
IDC Manufacturing Insights is seeing an increased appetite for advanced analytics, particularly self-service
analytics, in this sector. This Technology Spotlight examines the role of self-service, predictive analytics in
the telecom sector. It also looks at the role of Tech Mahindra in addressing the challenges that CSPs face
in today's market.
Business Challenges in the Current Environment
On a global basis, CSPs are organized in structures that range from publicly owned corporations to
government-owned ministries. Deregulation caused the breakup of most PTTs, which were large
national and regional operators. Today, national competition in the communications industry is often
described in terms of "incumbents" and "competitors."
Increasingly, market competition on an international basis is shaped by the remnants of the
incumbent CSPs and the aggregation of mobile CSPs into larger groups that dominate spending and
shape many industry trends. At this stage, the communications industry players are generally publicly
owned companies rather than government-owned monopolies with a diverse set of shareholders
common to public companies.
The competitive environment for CSPs is intense. In the consumer and small to medium-sized
business markets, the industry faces one of the highest rates of churn (the movement of customers to
a competitor) and CSPs compete heavily on price. For these markets, success relies heavily on
branding. Heavy investments in efficient billing systems and outsourcing operations contribute to
financial viability. Corporate customers are less price sensitive and more concerned with the quality
and reliability of their communications systems. They are willing to pay for premium services such as
higher-security private networks and videoconferencing.
The CSP customer device or corporate infrastructure shapes what CSP service offerings can deliver.
Costly access networks stretching across vast geographic footprints, especially radio network
coverage and broadband fiber deployments, provide the CSP with the reach to the customer's
location. The dynamics of the industry are varied, from the influence of the buyer to competition and
substitutes, as shown in Figure 1.

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FIGURE 1
Forces at Work in the Telecommunications Industry
Source: IDC, 2017
Telecom Industry Subsegments
The telecommunications industry is typically divided into three main sectors: wired, wireless, and
satellite. It should be noted that CSPs do not create the content that is transmitted over their
networks, such as TV programs or other media, because this would be considered part of the media
or broadcast industry. Also of note is that we are not considering hardware manufacturers.
 Wired: The largest sector of the telecom industry is made up of wired CSPs, which provide wired
(landline) telephone, DSL, cable TV, and internet services. Companies may own, share, or lease
network capacity. This sector also includes direct-to-home satellite television. Wired companies
can offer a variety of other business services such as outsourcing.
 Wireless: Wireless CSPs provide voice, data, internet, and other services via signals transmitted
over radio tower networks. A large component of these services is from cell phone service as well
as mobile Internet services to Internet-enabled devices.
 Satellite: Satellite companies are both private and government organizations that transmit data
via satellites.
While the preceding are the traditional segments of the telecommunications industry, the lines
between these segments are increasingly blurred because some wired companies have wireless
divisions and because similar services are being supplied by all these sectors of the industry. It is
also important to note that the availability of cloud capabilities further blurs the lines of distinction.
Power of
Buyers
Power of
Suppliers
SubstitutesCompetition
Threat of
New Entrants
• HIGH. Buyers hold a lot of
power, especially
consumer/residential. View
services as a commodity,
high rate of churn.
• Corporate customers have
higher switching costs.
• LOW. Entrants must possess a lot of
cash to enter this capital-intensive
industry plus deal with regulatory
bodies like the FCC. There is also the
issue of the finite amount of radio
spectrum available.
• HIGH. High rate of churn and
commodity offerings leads to
heavy pricecompetition and
spending on marketing for
brand recognition. Substitute
products abound, and exit
strategies are scarce because
expertise and investments are
industry specific.
• MEDIUM. Bargaining power is
diluted by the number of large
providers, though their
equipment is essential for CSP
functioning, and suppliers have
close relationships with CSP
customers.
• HIGH. Substitute offerings
from cable TV and satellite
companies as well as
internet telephony from
ISPs increase the pressure
faced by CSPs.

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Creating business value in the telecommunications industry depends upon customer growth in terms
of revenue and profitability. To excel, CSPs need to have the ability to reach customers, efficiently
serve those customers, and keep ahead of requirements for capacity and service flexibility. They also
need to do all three of these things at scale.
As a result of increasing pressures, CSPs and the telecom industry as a whole are transforming around
operational models, services, relationships, infrastructure, supplier relations, customers and branding
and, as always, regulation. A key focus area for creating business value is around improving margins,
which leads to targets for revenue growth and operational efficiencies as well as cost cutting.
The Customer Is King — From Control to Providing Customer
Experience
The transformation vision is not just about economics for the CSP. It is also about the value to the
customer. CSPs have extraordinary assets in the form of customer service and billing relationships
with customers, knowledge about where customers live or operate and, in the case of mobile
offerings, knowledge of where customers are at any point in time. CSPs capture data that includes
call and online session details, such as time of day, length of session, and content of session.
And yet, increasingly, customers are in charge; they are more sophisticated and informed. They
consume via multiple channels, are constantly comparing and sharing via social networks, and have
a strong desire to design their own experience. They expect and demand quality — though their trust
and loyalty is tenuous.
Supporting a positive and rich user experience in the corporate and consumer context has driven
investments in recent years and will continue to shape priorities as customers are demanding that their
CSPs change the interaction. Customers are driving CSPs to embrace trends such as self-ordering,
self-servicing, customer trouble ticketing, online payment, and automated supplier procurement.
Analytics and "Eyeballs"
Most CSPs we speak with cite two separate "gaps" for their business., The first gap is between the
amounts of data to which companies have access and the degree to which they have analytics to
derive insights from all the data. The second gap is between the insights generated from analytics
and the ability to have people available to react to those insights. The ability to leverage advanced
and comprehensive analytics with an easy-to-use, even cognitive capability is both a key requirement
and a notable gap.
Trends and Strategic Imperatives
Digital disruption is a provocative notion that IDC has been championing for the past few years
following the introduction of our 3rd Platform concept in 2013 and the prediction that by 2018, fully
one-third of all industry leaders will be disrupted by digitally enabled competitors. When one
considers that 52% of the Fortune 500 companies listed in 2000 are no longer in business, this
prediction strikes a rather ominous note. Defined as "the approach by which enterprises drive
changes in their business models and ecosystems by leveraging digital competencies," digital
transformation is particularly important for the telecom industry.
The Personalized Customer Experience: Analytics and Business Intelligence
To maximize customer revenue and reduce churn, CSPs are turning to robust business analytic tools to
segment their customer base and identify the most profitable customers. Some of the more advanced
providers are taking these applications to the next level and applying one-to-one marketing strategies.
Advanced services require deep customer knowledge both to market and to maintain. For CSP
customers, compelling applications and content are critical, and personalization is what makes the
applications and content compelling. Analytics is the key to personalizing applications and content.

4. ©2017 IDC4
Many CSPs cite analytics as a top investment priority for 2017–2019, and some still view analytics as
a net-new area of investment. The primary challenge for CSPs is not a technical issue — data
warehousing and analytics technologies are not the gating factors — but a mindset issue. That aside,
according to IDC's 2016 Vertical IT and Communications Survey, investments in analytics are quite
advanced in this industry: 55% of respondents are using big data analytics, and 14% of respondents
are in pilot phases.
The organizational silos that exist among internal service provider organizations, such as IT,
networks, and marketing, have limited their ability to aggregate and analyze customer data derived
from multiple sources. Ultimately, strong customer service relies upon CSPs having a closer
understanding of their subscribers. From call center familiarity with a subscriber's billing address to
making connections with friends, families, and social networks, CSPs have significant amounts of raw
information to piece together.
The Future of Analytics
As the use of analytics progresses, CSPs will move to run their businesses with a richer set of metrics. In
the 2016–2018 period, we expect to see the relationship between CSPs and their customers become
even more dependent upon service-level agreements (SLAs), self-service predictive capabilities, and the
ability to offer comprehensive yet intuitively simple analytics capabilities.
As companies transition from "analog" to "digital," expectations and capabilities become greater.
In the digital world in which we now operate, capabilities and attributes such as "self-service,"
"automation," "quick response/delivery," and "always available" have become increasingly expected
by customers, consumers, and providers. Further, as consumers transition from older to more
tech-savvy younger generations, expectations become even more pronounced.
Digitally enabled advancements such as mobility/mobile access, self-service portals, and easy
access to documents via the cloud are increasingly "table stakes" for consumers to reach telecom
providers and get the services they expect. For CSPs, integration of silo systems, automation of
processes, self-service applications, seamless integration of different technology components, cloud
enablement, advanced analytics, omni-channel servicing, and cybersecurity are just some of the
expected digital capabilities.
Furthermore, analytics must be better. We are long past the time where retrospective analysis is
good enough. Customers and consumers expect their telecom services to be available all the time,
with perfect reliability. Consequently, analytics must increasingly be proactive, predictive, and
prescient. The ideal self-service analytics capability should be able to both remedy the "reason for the
call" and identify root cause to prevent reoccurrence. It should be easy to use and able to leverage
existing data to predict future problems and prevent them from occurring. Of course, nothing can fully
predict the future, but the ability of analytics to be "prescient," based on existing data sets, will be a
key element of customer and consumer satisfaction.
The Key Benefits of Analytics
The benefits that will accrue to the telecom company that can provide effective self-service,
predictive analytics are potentially great. Indeed, for any business, the ability to target the right
customer/consumer at the right time with the right product directly defines the success of
customer/consumer retention and meets the growth objectives of the organization.

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Business analytics play a significant role and are critical/strategic for any organization to adopt.
Early adopters of advanced business analytics are likely leaders today and will be better positioned
to win in the market in the future. Benefits include:
 Analytics can foster higher customer and consumer satisfaction, particularly with tech-savvy
consumers who are used to interactive, always-on interactions.
 A self-service predictive analytics environment facilitates building one's own reports, exploring
data, and leveraging intelligent insights for building a better business.
 A self-service business intelligence and analytics environment empowers customer-facing staff to
make informed business decisions, ensures better customer experience, reduces churn, and
boosts revenue without a system overhaul.
 In terms of business endurance, the future will involve automation of massive machine learning
processes. It will help CSPs not only get valuable customer insights but also gain customer
satisfaction and maintain relevance.
Considering Tech Mahindra PRISM
In the self-service, predictive analytics space, Tech Mahindra has a robust offering called PRISM
(Predictive Insights from Tech Mahindra), a platform for executing both traditional and self-service
predictive analytics. At its core, the PRISM platform enables:
 Business insights designed to provide a simple, structured, accelerated, and lean approach
 Analytics on structured and unstructured data, with preventive and predictive capabilities in both
batch and real time
Tech Mahindra, leveraging knowledge of both telecom and analytics, has built PRISM, a
"self-service" platform for business intelligence and predictive analytics. The PRISM platform
democratizes the analytics play by giving different users a forum for interacting and analyzing.
The PRISM platform automates the data science life cycle and is designed to help business users
and data scientists leverage technology power without knowing about it. A self-service platform such
as PRISM can help accelerate the delivery of valuable insights to business users/end consumers.
PRISM is a data model/platform that is designed to have significant flexibility in adoption and
implementation. As illustrated in Figure 2, it is a "closed loop" self-learning platform that offers an
easy-to-use analytics engine designed to provide the right insights at the right time. The benefits of
PRISM include:
 Configures rather than iterates: This is intended to allow customers to avoid days or weeks of
iterating data models and reduce the effort required significantly.
 Data preparation phase via automation: Data sets can be organized and examined prior to
applying models and creating analytics sets for each algorithm. Typical requirements will be to
create derived variables, categorization, and pre-processing of binary data. Automation of this
process is designed to save weeks of team effort because data preparation is a crucial step.
 Provides a set of algorithms: A number of algorithms are available. It's generally not possible
for data scientists to know all algorithms. PRISM allows them to explore the accuracy of different
results even for algorithms they would normally hesitate to apply.
 Model configuration and execution: The system can configure and execute without writing
CLIs and can provide result generation and evaluation. Automation of model development
reduces iteration and allows easy model access.

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FIGURE 2
PRISM Business Analytics Framework
Source: Tech Mahindra, 2017
Challenges
Although Tech Mahindra has brought a well-considered offering to the marketplace, advanced
analytics is an increasingly crowded space and the ability to differentiate is critical. Further, the
bewildering array of new technologies and potential business approaches available to CSPs means
that priorities are watered down. According to IDC's 2016 Vertical IT and Communications Survey,
only 13% of telecom respondents identified analytics as a top priority. Clearly, there remains an
opportunity for better education about the benefits that analytics can provide.
Conclusion
As with most segments of the manufacturing industry, telecom is experiencing significant change.
At the core of this change is the need to provide a personalized customer experience. To maximize
customer revenue and reduce churn, CSPs must adopt robust business analytic tools to segment
their customer base and identify the most profitable customers.
Advanced services require deep customer knowledge both to market and to maintain, and analytics is
the key to personalizing applications and content. Business analytics play a significant role in enabling
necessary business performance and are strategic for any organization to adopt — and to adopt now.
Early adopters of advanced business analytics are likely leaders today and will be better positioned to
TechMBusiness
AnalyticsFramework
 Industry & Domain Expertise
Applied
 Identify gaps in current process
Expectations & Problems
Data Preparation
Exploratory AnalysisAdvanced Analytics
Insights
 Identify Data sources
 Clean data
 Find data distribution
insights
 Identification of outlier
records
 Createpredictive models
using advanced analytical
techniques
 Recommendations/Next
Best Action
 Createbusiness rules
Multiple Regression
Logistic Regression
Neural Networks
Decision Trees
4321
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Internal
External
+6%
Marketing
Impact
Business
Benefits
HigherMarketing
Impact LowerCosts
Increased Revenue
Options
Loyal& Happy
Customers
Visual Analysis
Tools
Business
Drivers

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win in the market in the future. Benefits will be broad, including higher customer and consumer
satisfaction as well as the ability to leverage intelligent insights in real time, make more informed
business decisions, and gain valuable customer insights. Tech Mahindra PRISM is an offering that
provides many of these benefits. To the extent that Tech Mahindra can address the challenges
described in this paper, IDC Manufacturing Insights believes PRISM is well positioned for success.
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