Business Intelligence in Telecom

The telecommunications industry is increasingly becoming more competitive because of the entry of number of competitors eager to get their share of pie in this exponentially growing business. One of the most important metric used by the telecommunications carriers to measure their success is by the size and growth of their profit margins. Therefore, the service providers are under intense pressure to squeeze profit from the slim margins available to them.

Why is Business Intelligence needed in Telecom Industry

• Revenue leakage, costing the industry $100 billion annually

? This is one of the biggest issues facing the telecom service providers.

? Smart BI solutions can go a long way in plugging the loopholes and making revenue tracking accurate.

• Inaccurate or missed inter-carrier billing

? This happens especially in case of roaming when network providing the calling services changes from one telecom service provider to other providers due to changing locations.

• Fraud, a $12 billion annual industry problem

? Fraud is a real threat not only from the revenue generation perspective for the service provider but also for the overall security of customers and country at large.

? Exponentially increasing customer base clubbed with the ever increasing advancement in technology poses a huge challenge for the telecom providers to handle fraud.

? Advanced and robust BI solutions can be very useful in mitigating and eventually doing away with this menace.

• Churn, a multi-billion dollar problem exacerbated by the wireless number portability requirement

? Churn rate for telecom service users has always been a problem for the industry with customers switching over to the competing providers for lower price, better connectivity or some offers.

? With the introduction of mobile number portability this problem has only become more serious as the most important factor for not switching from one provider to another i.e. the mobile number is no longer an issue.

? BI solutions can be used to keep a check on the changing preferences of the customers in order to give them the flexibility of choosing the offers or service they want without switching to a competitor.

• Inefficient network usage and least cost routing plans

? Many a times we have seen the signals switching between different areas of the same service providers which clearly indicates a problem in the layout of the towers.

? Business Intelligence can be used very effectively to reduce the operational overheads. It can be especially useful in planning the layout of towers in a way which maximizes