Big Data into Tangible Revenue
Carlo Alloni, Group CTIO, Cable and Wireless Communications
There are many ways–mostly surrounding a better customer experience by tailoring rate plans, roaming, top-up, and content or event based purchasing to name a few. The most obvious is collecting data on customer purchasing and usage habits and then responding quickly to meet their needs. Pricing can be set to maximize the value to customers and offer add-ons by targeted messaging. Roaming packages are familiar examples of offering bundles that provide a value to customers while expanding opportunities for higher bundle take rates. In our markets, top-up of prepaid plans and setting these during certain time periods, such as weekends, can incentivize customers to take offers that may not otherwise be purchased if wrongly targeted.
Fostering Innovation and Growth
We are living in a very connected world. In the Caribbean and Central America where we operate, we are fortunate to have the best undersea and high-speed networks connecting our markets. In many of our regions, we offer significant traditional quad-play IP based networks that may not be available from one carrier in other parts of the world. But the real opportunity will continue to be the Internet of Things and Cloud. We are at the forefront by offering high-speed wireless networks and in-home broadband that cover a significant percent of our population.
We believe we will see an increase of traditionally connected devices as well as Machine to Machine (M2M) growth in our markets. M2M will feed directly into our Big Data plans as we gather enormous amounts of intelligence on how devices are used. Some examples are: Connected cars and fleet management solutions, points of sale everywhere, healthcare apps and connected homes, to name a few.
Embracing Technology
We see mixed results with m-Commerce in our markets. However, virtualization and cloud solutions as well as Ethernet (and other solutions) are very much expanding rapidly. We actually enable our business model by serving many of our own applications from virtual appliances in massive cloud storage centers as well as video content that would otherwise be stored locally in a customer’s home. We are very pleased how these technologies have transformed our business.
Undoubtedly, wireless networks require more spectrum with each evolution. There are several components to the spectrum that come into play– not just availability. Availability is an absolute requirement as well as the capital to acquire it and often-overlooked issues of band class frequency between carriers and the handsets that support them. Getting all three of these right–not just availability, is key.
Customer-centric approach
We are a customer driven technology company, so technology continues to play a large role in our IT Strategic Plan. We manage our technology portfolio out of our IT organization. In some enterprises, technology is not what IT is all about and a distraction to the information assets the team manages. But we too have to balance technology within IT. IT is the enabler of the technology we sell and how that translates to our revenues. As CTIO, I stress how our IT efforts must make it easier for customers to do business with us, and to tailor a personalized experience that will keep our customers on our networks. Technology is an enabler for a better customer experience.
Cloud and virtualization greatly changed the days of the data center and its complexities. High speed connectivity now makes it possible for any and every location to be well connected at very high rates of speed. But fundamentally a few things continue to be challenging and can derail the entire organization if not done correctly. With our highly connected environment, we must continue to focus on resiliency, security, and simplicity. Our customers count on this and we must drive these into everything that we do. The major lesson I learnt is that IT and technology is all about lots of transpirations and not only inspiration.
Nothing matters but the customers’ interest. Profits are the applause of our customers saying: “good job!” This mission puts two challenges ahead, at least: define and solve the variables of the customer experience equation whilst we move our business from legacy networks to newer high speed networks as fast as possible, while remaining profitable.
