Pipeline Publishing, Volume 5, Issue 12

	This Month's Issue:
	Diving into Service Delivery

Leveraging Network Intelligence
for Better Business Results

By Rich McBee

Financial success in today’s communications market is driven by two levers: driving top line growth (revenue) while minimizing cost to deliver it. More than ever, the consumer holds tremendous power given the competitive nature of today’s market and the variety of choices available to them.

For carriers, keeping up with customer needs is not for the faint of heart. Not only are there more customer segments that need to be served, but each segment has become more demanding, requiring unique product attributes at variable price points. For a large Tier-1 or Tier-2 carrier, there are significant challenges that must be overcome to deliver many personalized services to targeted customers.

Fortunately, a great deal of information already exists within the network that can reveal a lot about a carrier’s customers. This information can be used for two key purposes: (1) to understand how a carrier’s customers are using their services today in an effort to more accurately predict future customer needs and trends, and (2) to quantify the level of satisfaction a carrier’s customers are currently experiencing.

Although the answers to this puzzle lie within the networks themselves, many operators do not have the information they need to make better business decisions that ultimately impact their success. What network operators need is what is referred to as “Network Intelligence,” a broad concept that in practice is accomplished by collecting data from the network and turning it into actionable information that can be leveraged by multiple groups within the operator. Network Intelligence not only helps operators more efficiently operate their networks, but also make better operational and business decisions based on accurate, real-time information to ensure that the end-customer is truly satisfied.

Although the necessary data is flowing through the network, it is surprising that this information is not available for many operators in an easily assessable format that can be leveraged by multiple groups within an operator. Those operators who are empowered with Network Intelligence solutions can leverage the information to drive business results and gain significant competitive advantage in what is becoming a very competitive and uncertain market.

The Need for Network Intelligence

Today’s telecom market is very competitive. Consumers have more choices than ever before as similar services are being offered by multiple service providers. Some operators have tried to compete on the basis of cost, while others try to continually differentiate

The importance of customer satisfaction cannot be underestimated.

themselves from the competition by adding new services, etc. In either case, trying to wring your network of unnecessary costs or trying to more effectively bring new services to market are impossible goals to meet if you cannot quantify how your network resources are being used, or how satisfied your customers are based on their experience.

The importance of customer satisfaction cannot be underestimated. Financially, the cost of losing a customer (churn) is significant and is brought about by a customer’s dissatisfaction with one or several of the following factors: discontent with billing/payment/credit options; handset choices; service features; service plan options; customer service; network quality; and price. In addition to the cost of losing a customer, there are costs associated with having to replace a subscriber (via marketing and sales), lost revenue due to early termination of the service agreement, the cost of returning subscriber equipment, in addition to any costs incurred by the call center processing the termination request.

In the future, the ability to quantify and track an individual customer experience will become more important and significantly complex. From a technology perspective, networks are migrating from individual, stand-alone networks to a single, integrated multimedia network. In addition to supporting the patchwork of underlying legacy networks, added complexity is also being introduced for a given user session related to signaling and media protocols, quality of service, etc. Although carriers face challenges and complexity in bringing multimedia and personalized services to the market, ultimately, the consumer does not care how hard it is to deliver those services. The consumer cares about the quality of their individual experience in using those services.

Today, we see many cases where the network is working fine in terms of delivering services and applications, but the consumer

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