Telecom industry to boost sales with Business Intelligence :

Telecom industries are faced with the huge challenges of ever changing market conditions. They therefore need information to anticipate these Changes and quickly make informed Smart decisions.
Decision-making in the telecom industry today demands high-quality intelligence. This is where business intelligence (BI) solutions play their critical role.

Any business can be successful only if the sales end is strong.
The same holds good for telecom industry, especially with telecom service providers.
Here with telecom service providers Business intelligence plays a large role in making profit because it deals with large amount of customer data .
Hence getting this customer data in a useful format is “Business intelligence”.

As mentioned previously for any business to be successful sales plays a very prominent role and sales always is supported by strong marketing practices.

Well next question would be how is this possible?

Some of the focus areas are:

· Providing strong marketing support.

· Sales Analysis

· Improving customer loyalty services.

· Building customer retention models.

1.Providing strong marketing support:

To give a good marketing support it is necessary to understand the market well. Having a good strategy is the foundation for a strong marketing.

Two basic Strategies, which can be pursued, are:

. General strategy
. Customer strategy

General strategy

Companies here comes up with a product, which is common, and try marketing to the masses. Advertising plays a major role here. Even though this has been a major practice, profit margin out of this has been very low, because individual needs of the customers are not taken into account.

Customer strategy

Basically understanding the customer needs and tailoring to their individual needs have overcome the disadvantages in general strategy. Thus business intelligence plays a major role here by analyzing the customers that optimize profits by nurturing value added customer relationships.

Thus strong customer relationships are attained by customer centricity: Customers drive business, thus understanding the customers plays a very important role.

· Customers’ requirements
· Customers’ expectations.
· Customers’ changing behavior pattern

Thus by understanding the above points it is possible to build a strong customer strategy model.

This customer strategy model directly influences

· Product pricing / tariff plans

Product pricing plays a key role in pushing business, by understanding
the customers it possible to categorize them into different groups based on their needs . Thus pricing can be decided by striking a balance between customers group needs and profits to the company.
This can also be easily tested with help of business intelligence – by implementing the model for a trial period and comparing the sale figures it is possible to get the profit margin.
By business intelligence useful information can be provided to different departments for making the right decisions with in very little time thus analysis becomes easier and designing the product pricing(tariff plans)becomes efficient.

· Advertising plans

Advertising plays major role because major money is involved in this.
Thus channeling advertising according to customers is very important. Since it conveys the right message to right mass and this can be achieved by profiling the customer’s data and checking their behavior patters.

This can save lot a revenue, thus any saved revenue is profit for the company.

2. Sales Analysis

Analysis can be in terms of

· Customers
· Performance
· Revenue
· Volume
· Margin

This can be viewed in terms of reports or charts thus competitive plan can be developed .
By this analysis any strategic decision taken by management will be based on proof and not by just guessing and thus can also predict the performance of the company for the next quarter or so.

Improving customer loyalty services.

· Fraud control
· Call records
· Billing and other services

Fraud control

With Business intelligence it is possible to track the pattern of calls their duration etc thus any abnormalities in call pattern can be detected.
Thus timely intervention can reduce the loss to the company.

Call records

With Business intelligence it is possible to view call pattern and possible to understand their call history. Thus it becomes easy to get any records of particular customer or a group of customer with common call fashion.

Billing and other services

With Business intelligence it is possible to send e-bills to customer on related dates without any much manual intervention and get customer billing of web will also help customers view their own bills and analyze the same.

Thus by getting in more related services it is possible to get more customer satisfaction thus improving business.

Building customer retention models.

Customer retention is one of the major challenges faced in any industry.
In case of any business it is said that retaining a customer is always cheaper than getting a new customer.
Here with help of business intelligence it is possible to build certain customer retention models basically looking customer data and their call behaviors.
A well-designed customer retention model can reduce customer churn to greater extend .The positive impact of this can be huge ie a small increase in customer loyalty can deliver a large increase in profitability. Businees intelligence can also identify the behavior looking at the customer data and business analysts can say who are customers likely to leave and take the appropriate action in advance.

On a conclusion we can say that business intelligence if properly implemented and used in the telecom industry it can help in boosting the profits to greater extent.

Business continuity (BC) has scaled the heights of the boardroom agenda to become the business issue of the 21st century. Companies are realising that ‘downtime’ – for whatever reason – is unacceptable. Reputation, turnover and a business’ very existence can be determined by its ability to respond to any operational disruption – whatever the cause!

Causes of operational disruption can be many and various; freak weather conditions, terrorist attacks, public order disturbances, criminal activity, accidents and so forth. The list is endless but, thankfully, most of these occurrences are rare.

One phenomenon that occurs with increasing frequency, however, is power failure. Its effects can be just as devastating and an obstacle to business continuity. Power problems and power cuts are now the most common cause of business disruption according to research by business continuity provider SunGard.

In July 2006, The Secretary of State’s Second Report to Parliament on Security of Gas and Electricity Supply in Great Britain from the DTI, Between April 2005 and March 2006, the total number of customer interruptions was around 21 million and total number of customer minutes lost 1,966 million.

Power continuity is normally part of a business continuity strategy but given the fact that businesses are more likely to suffer a power cut than a terrorist attack, shouldn’t it be the central theme?

The Business Continuity Institute in the UK defines BC as ‘the process, procedures, decisions and activities to ensure that an organisation can continue to function through an operational interruption’. The same could be said for power continuity. Without power continuity there is no business continuity.

So, how do you plan a power continuity strategy?

It starts with an assessment of the systems and equipment that are the bedrock of operational requirements; computers, telecommunications, electrical machinery, building management systems, entry systems, lighting, heating, cooling and so forth. They must be categorised into critical, essential and none-essential loads (load being the electrical requirement each one carries).

Critical loads directly affect the ability of an organisation to operate and must either be kept running when their mains power supply fails or be powered down in an orderly manner to prevent system crashes, data corruption and hardware damage.

Essential loads provide secondary support services that may be required for health and safety reasons (air-conditioning, emergency lighting and heating) or to maintain ambient temperature levels but they are not critical to the continuity of the business.

Non-essential loads are those that an organisation can afford to lose when the mains power supply fails such as general lighting and printing services.

Critical and essential loads need some kind of back-up power protection, usually UPS (uninterruptible power supplies), such as those provides by specialist suppliers like Riello UPS, with perhaps a diesel generator or some form of alternative energy source attached.

Why have a UPS and not just a back-up generator?

UPS does far more than just breaching the gap between power failure and generator start-up (which can be up to ten minutes in some cases). By nature of its online technology, a UPS will condition and stabilize a fluctuating mains supply and keep it to within a regulated and acceptable level, continuously, as well as on generator start-up, and cushion against many power problems such as sags, surges, brownouts, harmonics, flicker, frequency deviations, interference, interruptions, distortion and of course complete blackouts, which are associated with raw mains energy.

With reliance upon electronic equipment now critical to business (be it computer systems, telecoms equipment or manufacturing machinery), companies are spending more of their operational budgets on it. Preserving its life, therefore, is paramount. Computer systems, particularly, are sensitive to fluctuations in voltage current, which can result in data corruption or loss or even complete breakdown.

As with business continuity, a power continuity strategy will contain similar elements of planning, management and operation and what needs to be done in each case to guard against the inevitable power outage, which can strike at anytime and last from less than a second to several days depending on severity and cause. Businesses that protect against this by installing UPS and back-up power systems should see it as an investment in their long-term future and it should always be foremost in any business continuity policy.

For a comprehensive and (uniquely) comprehensible overview of power continuity read The Power Protection Guide.

Managing terrorism threats can be very daunting challenge for most business directors. Especially as most business owners and directors have little if any formal security training to fall back on. Herein lies the problem.

As a company director you have a legal responsibility under the corporate manslaughter laws to ensure the safety of your paid employees.

Terrorism experts advise all business directors to take a proactive response to implementing security awareness and staff training to counter terrorism threats to your business. Imagine for one moment you are one of several business directors running a company and you send one of your sales representatives overseas to win a business order.

Your business becomes a terrorism targets and your representative is kidnapped and held for ransom. You have various options including paying the ransom, which is typically cost prohibited unless you have kidnap for ransom insurance.

Let’s just imagine for one moment you don’t have the money to pay the ransom and the jihad terrorism kidnappers execute your sales representative as a warning to other businesses.

If you can’t prove you prepared your sales representative for his or her overseas business trip by ensuring they attended certified security awareness and/or a counter kidnapping training programme. Then you and your fellow directors will be sued under corporate manslaughter laws.

One of the major problems facing business directors is that they have no idea where to start when it comes to terrorism threats, terrorism targets, terrorism incidents, terrorism acts, security and implementing a plan for countering terrorism.

Every terrorism expert I know recognises that businesses, especially small to medium size businesses present as soft terrorism targets. It is also considered good practice by any terrorism expert skilled in countering business related terrorism to advise business directors to produce their own internal threat management unit or TMU as it’s known in the terrorism expert industry.

#1 Organise A Threat Management Unit (TMU)

Organising a TMU need not be a time consuming or expensive endeavour. In its basic format a small business TMU consists of the business owner and a security expert or a terrorism expert.

The terrorism expert conducts security research relevant to your specific business and then collates all the available business intelligence relating to terrorism threats, terrorism acts, jihad terrorism or any other terror incidents.

The terrorism expert then designs a specific security plan for countering terrorism which your business implements and updates as and when the terrorism expert recommends. Most terrorism experts also recommend the TMU organises a series of certified security awareness and kidnap awareness training programmes.

#2 Design A Business Continuity Plan

Designing a business continuity plan is usually one of the first steps suggested by the terrorism expert tasked with producing a TMU for your business.

I’ve included a hypothetical example, i.e. Management Training Company Business Continuity Following A Critical Incident

The Issue

The tragic events of Post Sept’ 11th, in particular July 7th 2005 in London, should make all HR managers think carefully about how prepared their business is for any type of critical incident.

We are all conducting business in uncertain times. Protecting the future of the firm has to be the number one priority for every business manager.

The Problem

Statistics suggest that almost half (46%) of London businesses do not have a business continuity plan in place.

This means that those directly impacted, suffering a major or even a minor loss may find it impossible to continue to trade, particularly if they do not have terrorism insurance cover.

Source: Vanson Bourne research, October 2004

Critical Incident Downside

80% of all businesses affected by serious incidents never re-open, or close within 18 months. Business interruption hits companies in Customer Relationships. Cash Flow. Reputation. Staff Moral. Understanding incidents like fire, flood or computer failure, highlight where long term damage is done.

Firm – Too Small For A Business Continuity Plan?

The smaller your business, the more important it is to have a contingency plan in place. Any incident, no matter how small, is capable of impacting your business & profitability.

The size of any continuity plan will depend on the risks facing each business – it will be as large or as small as needed.

Small Businesses Hit Harder

The impact of any critical incident is likely to be more pronounced for SME’s. The majority of SME’s operate in specialised markets with limited product ranges & relatively small customer bases.

Any short interruption to business can have a disproportionate effect, totally halting output & leaving customers high & dry. Source: AXA Insurance.

What Is Continuity Planning

It’s about anticipating crises that could befall a business & planning for them. It sets out clear roles & responsibilities. It states who takes charge of specific roles. It lists a series of contingencies. Details clear emergency procedures to ensure risks to staff are minimised.

Business Continuity Plan

A business continuity plan sets out clear roles and responsibilities, for example those assigned to manage all liaison with Customers. Employees. Emergency services. It lists a series of contingencies that enable key business activities to continue in the most difficult circumstances.

Threats To A Business

Examples of threats to a business are…

A vital computer system is unavailable. Critical process machinery is damaged. Loss of key employees. The building, or part of the building, cannot be accessed, and… Suppliers are unable to deliver.

Common Small Business Disasters

Fire/Flood Computer telecoms failure
Key equipment failure
People issues – illness, resignation, maternity leave
Denial of access to premises
Product defects
Bomb – terrorism threats
Legal regulatory action
Utilities failure
Negative press or media coverage

Commercial Benefit Of A Continuity Plan

There is also the commercial benefit to consider. Companies with business continuity plans are more attractive to do business with.

For example

Large businesses that rely on the outsourced services of third parties will prefer to work with suppliers who have a Business Continuity Plan in place.

Business Continuity Summary

80% of all businesses affected by serious incidents never re-open, or close within 18 months. 46% of London businesses do not have a business continuity plan in place.

Less than 20% of London Businesses have a dedicated team to handle a major incident.

Barely a quarter (13%) of SMEs said they had managed to test their business continuity plans.

Insurers are now seriously looking at how a business, plans for a major incident before insuring them.