CAN TELE-COMMUNICATIONS DO WITHOUT IT?

Need for Data Warehousing

How can end users be allowed to play around with up-to-date data without bringing mission-critical systems to their knees? How can they ask varying questions about the same data without tying up the IT department in writing queries and reports? How can they get responses in seconds and minutes rather than hours and days?

The answer to these compelling requirements of the end-users is the Data Warehouse. The "father" of the Data Warehousing concept, W. H. Inmon, states that a data warehouse is a "subject oriented, integrated, time-variant, nonvolatile collection of data in support of management's decision-making process."

The primary concept of data warehousing is that the data stored for business analysis can most effectively be accessed by separating it from the data in the operational systems. Corporate data has grown both in volume and complexity during the last 10 years. In addition to producing standard reports, today's data warehousing systems support very sophisticated online analysis including multi-dimensional analysis.

Before the evolution of structured data warehouses, analysts in many instances would combine data extracted from more than one operational system into a single spreadsheet or a database. The data warehouse may very effectively combine data from multiple source applications such as sales, marketing, finance, and production.

Top five industries that use Data Warehousing are Telecommunications, Banking, Manufacturing, Insurance and Medicine.

Of these, Telecommunications is one of the fastest growing service industries in the world. This sector plays a crucial role in spurring growth in any economy. Multinational companies are investing in developing countries because of huge latent demand. Today's customer can choose among different carriers and hence customer care and marketing intelligence become strategic functions in retaining and gaining market share. This demands that a carrier's supporting infrastructure be responsive and flexible. In short, an operator's business can no longer revolve around the network; it must revolve around the customer.

Issues In a Telecom environment

Executive Information Systems
Managers require a consistent, enterprise-wide view of business information. This requires a single data source, which ensures a single view of the customer across all service areas. A top-level view is required, although the ability to 'drill down' into specific information is also necessary. Trend analysis and investigation of anomalies can show marketing and service performance. This can be provided by the Data Warehousing technology.

Customer Care and Retention
Customer Service is often the only point of contact the carrier has with the customer and is often the responsible element in both minimizing churn and maximizing revenue through cross selling. This makes it possible to turn any customer query or complaint into a sales opportunity. There is little that binds a customer to their current carrier, should an alternative come along. Hence Customer care and retention is of prime importance in today's Telecom environment.

Churn Analysis
The objective of Churn Analysis is to reduce customer turnover by using advanced modeling tools that analyze customers' patterns in connects, disconnects, and changes of service. The information in a data warehouse can be used with churn prediction applications to identify high-risk targets and to provide, through outbound marketing, appropriate counter measures to retain the customer.

Customer Profiling
Service providers see the need to provide customized services, targeted at each demographically dispersed customer. Data warehousing is the key component to enable this capability. Customer profiling closely tracks trends so that the customer base can be segmented, and targeted. This type of marketing can maximize the short-term revenue of new and existing products and services by leveraging knowledge of existing customers. For example, customers who match the target profile for a new tariff can be selected. These customers are then monitored and the impact of the new tariff examined on a near real-time basis.

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