Telecommunications companies in Nigeria are mining the deluge of data flowing freely through their respective networks, as they look to extract requisite business intelligence needed to enhance marketing strategies for upselling, customer retention and loyalty, in the face of dwindling revenues from voice services.
As the post-voice era continues to hit operator’s bottomlines hard, with mobile Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) declining by 4.6 percent in Q2 of 2014, according to research firm, BMI, operators are deploying next-generation analytics technologies to help them predict the behaviour, trends, choices and buying habits of their 130 million mobile subscribers.
Adebayo Sanni, country manager, Oracle Nigeria, confirmed the development, adding that his firm is currently working with the two of the largest operators on ‘Big Data’.
Big Data is an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications.
Speaking with BusinessDay in an interview, Sanni said, “Telcos are sitting on top of an unprecedented amount of data. Their ability to take that data, analyse and interprete it, would enable them to take informed decisions that would not only provide better customer service delivery, but help their next phase of evolution as a business.”
Sanni further said that mobile operators’ ability to make better decisions by interpreting large amounts of data would enable them increase and sustain revenues. Mobile operators have access to a large amount of data per customer. Data is generated every time a customer makes a call, navigates the World Wide Web (WWW) or even acquires a product or service using a mobile phone.
By simply having the phone connected to the operator’s network, data is being generated, such as location, speed of movement and even biometric data. Large European operators, such as Orange, Telefónica and Vodafone have, for several years, leveraged the power of data analysis to improve their management decisions.
MTN, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat Nigeria, are already deploying Next Generation Networks (NGN) and Business Intelligence (BI) software tools to analyse consumer behaviour. Last year, Globacom spent $1.25 billion to build an Internet Protocol (IP) network while MTN says total investment ploughed into network expansion initiatives, including fixed assets and facilities, over the last 13 years of operation is $15 billion.
Airtel and Etisalat are not left behind. Both operators are spending over $3 billion collectively to retool their networks to tap into the Big Data opportunities.
Mohammed Jameel, group chief operating officer, Globacom said, “With the investments we have made, wherever you are you will be able to connect to the broadband internet whether you are home, office, on the train, etc. With Big data and connected devices emerging, we have to keep developing applications that will thrive on broadband”, he further added. Worldwide, the International Data Corporation (IDC), estimates that spending on Big Data technology and services will likely grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9 billion in 2015, representing a CAGR of 40 percent, or about seven times that of the overall Information Communication Technology (ICT) market. Ronald Raffensperger, chief technology officer, Huawei Technologies, at a recent conference, said data volumes are growing at an exponential rate. “This data is unstructured – everything from click streams to videos to pictures to social media feeds.
“Organisations today are starting to realise that this massive data can be an important revenue-producing asset and that the creative use of this data or information can provide a real competitive advantage”, he further explained.
Venecia Liu, senior analyst at Gartner, said big data analytics is aiding mobile operators to monetise and optimise their operations. “Big data analytics can impact a CSP’s financials by an estimated $300 million a year. Mobile opertaors have migrated to advanced analytics, including predictive and prescriptive analytics” says Liu.
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“Big data analytics for the telecom industry can be applied in four areas: network optimisation, customer engagement, operations and applications, and new business models.”
Amazon, a leading electronic commerce site is taking advantage of Big Data to improve service delivery. Amazon has an unrivalled bank of data on online consumer purchasing behaviour that it can mine from its 152 million customer accounts.
For many years now, Amazon uses that information to build a recommender system that suggest products to people who visit Amazon.com. This sort of scenario is applicable to various industry verticals.
Ben Uzor
