For telecommunication utilities that want to reign in spending, there typically isn’t much low-hanging fruit to be found. In a fiercely competitive industry that demands perpetual upgrades and improvements, operational costs tend to only move in one direction—up.
That said, there are always steps to take toward the goal of optimizing spend. In this guide, we’ll explore one of the most important areas for telecom spend management: analytics.
As the telecom industry continues to touch new markets in new ways, analytics play an essential role in helping providers understand customer consumption, service delivery performance, and other key areas.
Below, we’ll discuss analytics as a spend optimization tool for telecom companies. To get started with software that turns these insights into actions, contact SilverBlaze today for a customer engagement software product demonstration.
Telecom Spend Optimization: Cost Management Challenges
Telecom companies run high costs to meet customer demand and maintain competitive standing. Major costs include:
- Service delivery
- Infrastructure and equipment
- Marketing and sales
- Administrative
- Customer support
Both short-term and long-term costs tend to be unpredictable and prone to significant fluctuation. Everything from surprising regulatory updates to extreme weather events can bring rapid changes to expense forecasts.
For navigating the complexity of telecom spending, analytics is a powerful tool. To the extent that a variable can be measured and predicted, analytics can provide actionable insights. We’ll touch on a few specific methodologies in the next few sections.
Leveraging Analytics to Optimize Spend
More so than in most industries, the nature of telecommunications involves a necessary transfer of large amounts of digital data between providers and customers. The use of telecommunication products and services relies on connectivity with service providers, thus automating some amount of data transfer.
Automation of data collection can be enhanced by the use of digital customer engagement software. These platforms provide telecom companies and their customers with a unified view.
A unified view provides customers with useful information about their accounts while equipping the service provider with data that can be used to improve customer support responses. This data, such as a payment history or a history of customer service interactions, may also be leveraged for analytics purposes.
Analytics Tools and Techniques
Here’s a brief summary of the analytics methods that telecom companies use to better understand their data. Insights gained from these techniques can be used to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Utilizing Digital Customer Engagement
A digital customer engagement system can enhance the customer experience by enabling personalized customer service. Customers can interact with the service provider via multiple communication channels, set up alerts and notifications, and view usage data that helps them understand their bills. A unified view is also a tool that generates and organizes the data that telecom companies require to perform analytics.
Real-time Analysis and Reporting
Telecom companies can collect enormous amounts of useful data via customer engagement software and other automated systems. Much of this data is collected in real-time, i.e. with little or no delay between a data point’s creation and its availability. This type of granular, real-time data improves the accuracy and relevance of analytics results.
Trend Analysis and Predictive Analysis
Telecom teams use analytics to break down and understand costs by identifying patterns and trends. These may include budgeting and expense report data as well as customer behavior data.
Trend analysis looks both backward and forward, by using existing data to perform predictive analysis. This involves forecasting future costs based on established patterns. Predictive analysis is useful for areas like budgeting, resource management, hiring decisions, and disaster preparedness.
Analytics Implementation Challenges and Strategies
Implementing advanced analytics requires a top-down commitment and a heavy dose of caution. The challenges that telecom managers can expect to face include:
- Ensuring that analytics teams and projects are value-driven and aligned with business goals
- Managing collaboration between departments (e.g. finance, IT, customer service) for cohesive analytics implementation
- Maintaining compliance with evolving privacy regulations
- Maintaining superior data security standards
- Developing and upholding lofty ethical standards for the collection and use of data
To maximize benefits and minimize risks associated with telecom analytics, it’s crucial to monitor procedures closely, with all appropriate internal and external oversight measures in place.
Tie Your Analytics to Better Customer Engagement with SilverBlaze
At SilverBlaze, we know that analytics go hand-in-hand with customer engagement. Providing a user-friendly platform for customers to interact with your company’s services is a win-win. To learn more about upgrading your telecom company’s customer engagement software, contact SilverBlaze today to request a product demonstration.
