John Wanamaker, widely considered to be the father of modern advertising, once said, "I know half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half."
In many ways this statement summarizes the challenge that many communications service providers (CSP) have today. CSPs constantly seek to identify and maximize value from their most valuable and loyal customers, which products and services do they want and need and how do they optimize resources needed to achieve this?
The detailed information on customer profile, service preferences, usage and payment behavior residing in a CSP's billing and customer care systems represents a hugely important asset that can help a CSP answer these key strategic questions. The good news is that in the form of business intelligence (BI), the technology exists to enable, not only the access, but also the storage and analysis of this invaluable data.
Put simply, the role of BI is to translate complex database language and structures into a language and format that business users can work via dashboards and presentation applications. The challenge for the CSP is to be able to respond and act on these insights in the most appropriate and effective way. This is where billing comes in.
Credit scoring and churn management are two of the most common applications of BI in telecoms. The process of assigning a score to a potential customer, based on their credit worthiness, can provide CSPs an early indicator of the value and risk associated with the customer. However, it is the billing system capabilities that determine what options can be offered to the customer.