Big data analytics provides an opportunity for telcos to exploit an existing asset that is increasing in size exponentially. This asset is the telcos’ network, operational and customer data, which can be mined to provide better business insights. Ovum’s new report “Big Data Analytics and the Telco: How telcos can monetize customer data,” is the first in a series of reports examining how telcos are using big data to improve customer experience and increase their revenues.
It also identifies some of the leading Big Data analytics vendors and examines their current solutions.
Is big data analytics a big headache?
While researching the topic of big data, we found that telcos were reluctant to talk openly about their activities. This indicates that telcos are either developing unique or commercially sensitive solutions or that they haven’t yet made significant commitments.
Telcos and vendors recognize the benefits of providing personalized telecoms services to customers and improving efficiency and business decision making. They also see some potential in selling customer profile data to third parties, although perhaps not as much as initially envisaged. While there is a significant amount of hype around the subject of big data, it cannot be easily dismissed.
The proliferation of smart devices and services has led to a considerable increase in the number of customer-telco interactions through multiple channels, which is forcing telcos to sharpen their focus. As a result, mining greater volumes and a larger variety of data (in real time) will become a powerful competitive asset. This is the true value of big data analytics.