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  • Customer Analytics : Gen X and Y and the Millennial Divide

    Customer Analytics : Gen X and Y and the Millennial Divide

    We live in a world where technology is like a digital liquid that’s flowed around every aspect of our lives. There’s no doubt that technology can help to oil the craggy wheels of daily life, and while some find this enabling and liberating, others consider the intrusion to be more insidious. Working out where people stand on this issue is generally just a simple matter of checking their birth date. Many born before 1980 tends to view social and on line everything with suspicion, whereas those consumers born after that date, referred to as Generation Y, or Millennials, are far more comfortable with social media and sharing everything online. In a recent report from Pew research it was shown that the Millennials are much greater users of social media than their parents.

    This is probably because Millennials are the first generation that have grown up entirely with the internet and mobile phones.  They are ‘digital natives’. It’s difficult to know exactly what effects this has on general culture, but one surprising change is that Millennials tend to be far more optimistic that their parents were when they were young. While Generation X and before are more inclined to have a cynical and pessimistic attitude towards the future, a recent report by the Pew Research Centre, Millennials in Adulthood, has found that, despite feeling detached from politics or religion and burdened by debt and recession, the Millennials are inexplicably much more optimistic. According to a recent Gallup poll, eighty percent of millennials, aged 18 to 29, feel positive about the future and say their standard of living is improving.  The reasons for this relentless optimism are unclear but researchers at Pew have pondered that it may be down to more nurturing parenting, or perhaps it’s because millennials always feeling at the centre of their own social network.

    Another characteristic of the millennial generation is that, contrary to predictions that technology would free us all from work, they are now working harder and are more driven to succeed than ever before. In his book ‘Generational Teaching: Motivating the Minority’ Christopher Alan has also found that Millennials are ‘more polite and considerate’, ‘attentive and respectful’ and prefer to work in teams rather than in a hierarchy. Goldman Sachs also says that they are also more health conscious and savvy than earlier generations.   But, as ever, the picture is never that simple, because it seems that the Millennial generation is itself divided in two, as Pew Research has written

    Just 40% of adults ages 18 to 34 consider themselves part of the “Millennial generation,” while another 33% – mostly older Millennials – consider themselves part of the next older cohort, Generation X.

    This all has very great implications on marketing, and how companies should reach out to different generations. Connecting with customers is one of the greatest challenges marketers face, and capturing Millennials is now one of the key battlefields for competing companies. As Leah Swartz of Millennial Marketing says

    ‘When it comes to fashion and shopping, there isn’t a more important demographic for retailers to reach than millennials.’

    Goldman Sachs have even put together an infographic dedicated to marketing to Millennials in which they identify several key things to consider when marketing to the ‘largest generation in US history’. In summary they are

    • Living at home longer
    • Marrying later
    • Sharing, not owning
    • Exercise choice in purchasing
    • More health conscious

    From a non-millennials perspective it may seem that they are so immersed in instant messaging and playing computer games that they are oblivious to the real world, but, on the contrary, millennials are very much aware of the state of the world. It’s just that this revolution is a lot quieter than the ones before, taking place as it does silently from the screens of our phones and laptops. The silence is an illusion. The volume of noise is now measured in packets of data rather than decibels, and it’s loader than ever. If companies don’t engage with different generations of customers on their own ground then they will not be heard at all.

    In my next blog I will look at how Millennials and other demographic groups can be better served by adopting a customer-centric approach to marketing.

  • The Evolution of Internet Protocol

    The Evolution of Internet Protocol

    In traditional interconnect, every telecom operator has domestic and international partners to terminate traffic, or use hub operators to route the traffic to specific destinations using Time-division multiplexing (TDM) circuits. But with full service IP networks coming into the arena, telecommunication operators can provide video, data and voice using the same backbone network structure. Over the next few years the traditional TDM/PSTN and IP would probably continue to coexist. Interconnection in effect also undergoes a transformation here. Interconnection creates end to end service connectivity and interoperability across providers.

    As the industry is transiting into a hybrid model where IP coexists with TDM, the physical infrastructure for call transfer and exchange is undergoing a technological transformation. All new networks are using the IP backbone and this has lesser points of interconnection as compared with the TDM/PSTN network. The need for more bandwidth and to keep up with network trends now, focusing on accurately transport newer types of data, IP is definitely the most cost effective and sustainable solution.

    The current subscriber needs and demands are seamless, ubiquitous connectivity of mobile services everywhere, giving them access to information and social data. And while today the focus is on voice and video, voice is rapidly becoming a part of other bundled packages and offerings.

    The focus of past bilateral agreements between telecom providers were typically based on commercials and volumes with penalty, shortfall or send/pay clauses associated. Settlements happened at a defined frequency where invoices are exchanged, compared and reconciled in cases of disputes. Quality metrics in the traditional interconnect model were parameters like ASR, NER, etc., which sampled/monitored data to derive the call quality and checked periodically for SLA violations and route failures. At this stage, the IP layer was merely handling transport, while the actual services (be it voice, content, OTT, or web based) would be delivered in any combination. With IP related services becoming a predominant offering, it means the understanding of quality, routing and agreements would change dynamically over the next few years and lead to the need of a ‘new’ interconnection model that would be able to handle these level of agreements, charging and settlement. Quality of service for IP now needs to prioritize data security, encryption and protection of information.

    The target being constant connectivity, another challenge in terms of both technology and business is roaming agreements. Initially GPRS roaming required complex agreements between every individual operators and each operator had to maintain dedicated links. GSMA had launched GRX (GPRS Roaming eXchange) technology a few years ago to handle mobile packet delivery and exchange. This started off supporting 2.5G technology and eventually 3G as well. The idea behind this was to ease roaming agreements between GPRS vendors. GRX is typically based on a public IP backbone and used GTP (GPRS Tunneling Protocol) and enabled the GRX operator to act as a hub for the interconnect partners without having direct or dedicated links between them. GRX is making way for IPX (Internet Protocol eXchange) which addresses some of the drawbacks of GRX. Primarily MNOs could leverage the benefits of GRX and this was a model based on best effort, hence QoS, security, acknowledgement were not guaranteed in this method.

    IPX on the other hand, has clear quality parameters like Service Availability, Jitter, Packet Loss and Delay. It also has defined traffic classes: Conversational, Streaming, Interactive and Background Class, so any kind of application has to be clearly mapped to a potential QoS class name, for example: Instant Messaging is Interactive, Video is Streaming while File Transfer is Background. Telecommunication operators with backbone network would look at offering an IPX solution to mobile operators, content providers and aggregators by supporting multiple data, video and voice services. Mobile operators earlier had to rely on multiple platforms for voice and data and can now look at a unified synergy. The target market would look at not only MNOs (Mobile Network Operators), but also MVNOs (Mobile Virtual Network Operators), Content Providers, App Providers, Fixed Line Providers.

    With IPX built on a secure IPVPN network, a lot of the parameters around security and protection would be eliminated, while all kinds of data can traverse through a standard backbone network. Operators need to focus on sustainable revenue models. A strong settlement and assurance system would be critical in this play to understand the packetized data structure and price based on the CoS (Class of Service).

  • Operational Insights lead to CAPEX savings

    Operational Insights lead to CAPEX savings

    Telecom companies across the board often crisscross their blades with OTT players. While it’s true that Telcos are trying to find sustainable new avenues – few are succeeding, their current-state CAPEX keeps growing at an ever faster clip. This is mainly due to exponential data demand from customers resulting in increasing investments into network to keep up quality customer services. With ubiquitous mobile connectivity and video traffic demand spiraling-out, it puts enormous amount of stress on the networks. Telcos need to continue investing in this consumer trend [current-state CAPEX] and at the same time figure out alternative growth areas [growth CAPEX].

    To invest in new avenues with better ROIs, Telcos need to keep close tabs on their CAPEX that goes into network for present growing customer demand. And follow the traditional mantra – keep the current cash flow as cushion and invest for future. But for many Telcos, the worrying part is large chunk of the cash flow generated is ploughed back into network to meet current demands. This leaves little room to focus on new growth areas. Telcos are forced to raise money via debt or other means, resulting in further stress on balance sheet and reduced returns to investors.

    Let’s take a look at a snapshot of financial summary of a public listed global telecom major:

    [Figures are normalized]

    On a closer inspection of this summary one could observe,

    • The CAPEX has increased significantly (50%), but contributed only marginal increase in operating income (2%) and revenues (10%) over a year.
    • At the end of three year period, the CAPEX investment grew nearly to 20% of annual revenue but the corresponding incremental revenues seen marginal uptick only.
    • Return on Assets came down to single digit despite spending cumulative CAPEX of nearly half of average yearly revenue for this period.

    Without undue speculation and with publicly available data, one could do an educated guess: during this period, most of the CAPEX went into supporting & enhancing existing network infrastructure to keep-up quality services.

    This picture is not much different from any other typical Telco in the developed or emerging markets. While Telcos try to figure out the next wave of growth, it is equally important to keep a check on the current-state CAPEX.

    Telcos have no dearth of information in their siloed systems. It is just that few of these system’s data need to be unleashed to discover insights that can help in reducing CAPEX. For instance, reusing stranded assets in the network, warehouse and spare stores during purchase decisions would reduce CAPEX drastically. This would require deeper analytical insights generation, with collaboration among operation teams within the Telco towards achieving a common goal.

    Telecom operators with better equipped analytical tools to gather operational insights and actionable work flows can reduce their on-going CAPEX, draw more mileage from the pan-network assets and derive better return on assets in the network.

  • ..but that’s not my responsibility!

    ..but that’s not my responsibility!

    Now that’s something that we’ve all heard at our workplace at some point..and believe it or not, its not entirely incorrect.

    Traditionally most organizations have been created with a vertical structure having clear demarcation of responsibilities and identified handoff points for communication and information interchange between verticals. This was thought to be the most optimum way of assigning limited resources within the organization while allowing for specialization within verticals. Think of this organization as an architectural structure with three key layers:

     

    • Apex of the structure represented by executive management and strategy layer of the organization
    • Pillars represented by different verticals within the organization
    • Strong base represented by organizational infrastructure which acts as a common foundation

    While efforts are made by every organization to eliminate ‘silos’ in functioning, the inherent nature of this structure results in unidentified hand-offs, ineffective information sharing during hand-offs and compartmentalized view of processes leading to challenges in measuring, improving and most importantly identifying ownership of cross-functional processes. In many instances, different verticals end up shifting accountability of such cross-functional processes at the expense of progression. The pace at which technology, markets and customer demands are changing in present times demand a level of agility within the organizations to respond and keep pace with the market and competition. This places an enormous stress on the organizational structure, particularly on the handoffs between verticals.

    Managing millions of dollars’ worth of Network Capex within a Telco is a cross-functional process which experiences similar issues of ownership, handoffs between verticals and lack of a common, centralized view leading to ineffectual Capex tracking much less calculating effectiveness of these Capex investments or return on investments. Typically, Finance is the identified owner of Capex investments in a Telco but most Finance teams struggle with deployment of Capex in the network and more importantly tracking and calculating the return on network Capex investments as they are heavily reliant on Operations team for this information.

    Solving this Network Capex conundrum calls for a two-pronged approach, creating a cross-functional Network Capex Assurance team and enabling a supporting technological component to create a Network Capex Control framework. Lets have a closer look,

    Network Capex Assurance Team

    A cross-functional team which acts as the owner of Network Capex investments within the Telco – typically lead by the CFO or CTO. This team delivers critical insights and drives actions to enhance capital management practices in all phases of the business and comprises of representation from Finance, Planning, Procurement & SCM, Deployment, Operations and IT. The key responsibilities of this team would comprise of,

    • Custodians of Capex management processes
    • Capex planning and validation
    • Ensure data integrity across supporting systems
    • Capex tracking and analysis
    • Standardization & Reporting

    Network Capex Control Framework

    An enabling technological component which supports the Capex Assurance team in delivering their responsibilities by providing a centralized end-to-end view enabled by Network intelligence. Key insights from the framework would cover,

    • Centralized view
    • Standardized processes
    • Utilization and effectiveness
    • Capex & Opex optimization
    • Insights & Analytics

    Enabling strong capital management practices is much more than operational or process changes in the organization; it is a fundamental change in the outlook of an organization. Embracing this change will enable agility, data integrity and measures for optimization, better equipping Telcos to respond to the rate of change in the industry..and that should be everyone’s responsibility!

  • The SDN & NFV world: Things not to lose sight of!

    The SDN & NFV world: Things not to lose sight of!

    Natural human tendency is to focus more on things that affects our present rather than the future. Coming to things that affect us for which there is a lack of awareness about the “extent” of issue caused, there would be little or no attention from us to resolve them.

    Let us look at the priority with which investment decisions are made by telecom service provider on the software systems that they wish to have. Before a service provider can go live with a product offer for their end customers, they need to have the network in place to support the product. The priority for the software systems they should have to support their products are:

    • The first and most important is the billing software. They do not want go wrong in the billing as it would directly affect their revenues.
    • Second is the assurance software to make sure the network and the services are up and running.
    • The fulfillment software to automate as much as possible the order to activation process
    • A software which will help in strategic decision making like a planning software.

    Above are the verticals, now let us look at the horizontals which are the domain.

    • The first and most important aspect that is recorded well is that of the end customer. The entire lifecycle of a customer, right from acquisition to end of service to the customer in most operator environments is maintained well.
    • The second would be product life cycle management. This is important to know what needs to be billed based on the product that the customer is using.
    • The next important aspect is the maintenance of service life cycle.
    • By the time Telecom service provider gets all of the above going and fully operational, it is already a mammoth task for them and they tend to lose focus on Resource lifecycle management.

    A recent survey that was conducted by TMForum led by Subex revealed the following findings:

    • 1 in 3 operators do not measure returns on CAPEX investment
    • 77% of the respondents believed that inadequate asset utilization leads to increase in costs
    • 55% of the respondents believed that network planning is based on guesses
    • 64% believed that capex planning is driven by technology and not business objectives

    From the above findings it is clear that getting the right business process and tools around resource life cycle management is extremely critical for the long term health and efficient operations of a telecom service provider.

    In this blog, I would like to discuss about the exciting new world of SDN, NFV and cloud technologies and the relevance of resource lifecycle management in this new world. While a part of the telecom operator community is very aggressively embracing the concepts of SDN and NFV already into their network, there are others who are waiting and watching to see how things progress. I strongly believe, for the telecom industry to break the shackles of “reducing margins” and “increase in the need of CAPEX/OPEX investments” that it is currently facing, the key answers can be provided by SDN, NFV and cloud technologies.

    It is obvious that maximum energy is spent by telecom service providers, vendor community and standards bodies like ONF, ETSI, IETF, OPNFV etc. on how the network will work in this new world. Also, what I observed is that a bulk of the energy is being spent on defining standards around next gen BSS and OSS by TMForum, ETSI and ONF are in the following areas:

    1. Orchestrator
    2. VNF Manager
    3. VI (Virtualized Infrastructure) Manager
    4. SDN controllers
    5. Network and Application adapters
    6. Protocols used for communication with the devices and applications
    7. Policy engine
    8. APIs etc.

    As we go about defining the standards, let us look at covering the life cycles of all the domains starting from Customer life cycle, product life cycle, service life cycle all the way to resource life cycle. In this new world, resources can be physical compute, storage and network resources or virtual resources like software licenses. Let us not restrict ourselves in defining standards only on the operational aspects of resource life cycle management (OSS inventory) which was done in the eTOM model of TM Forum. Some work is being done by one group under the ZOOM initiate of TM Forum to define standards on onboarding of the software resource. This is definitely good, but we need to cover all aspects of the life cycle right from onboarding till end of life.

    So what if we do not do it, the systems will work, be operational and deliver services to the end customer. But we will probably end up being in the same state that we are in today, i.e. not being able to monitor how the CAPEX decisions of the past have fared, optimize on the investments already made, learn and improve in order to make better CAPEX decisions going forward.

    I would like to leave you with the following thought before I end my blog. If we ask any telecom service provider on the number of database or web server licenses they currently have deployed in their data centers, they may or may not have an answer. But if we go to the extent of asking how many of these licenses are in use and in how many cases we have a compliance issue, I am pretty certain that almost all of them will not have a precise answer to the question. Going forward, if all the network functions are going to be software running on COTs hardware, the need to have answers to the above questions will be even more important.

    Join the webinar on ” Telecom Asset Management in SDN & NFV world” to discuss more.

  • Should you still be “keeping your eye on the ball”?

    Should you still be “keeping your eye on the ball”?

    In almost every major sports analogy where a ball is used, the coach is always telling players to “keep their eye on the ball.” In baseball this is obviously critical. Certainly the same holds true in cricket. Other sports rely on this fundamental as well; the ball is the player’s universe. Without keeping your eye on that ball scoring doesn’t happen, and victories escape our favorite teams.
    In the world of Revenue Management the same analogy has been applied to those charged with protecting revenues. “Keep your eye on the money.” We’ve all received our marching orders to monitor and protect the revenue process, from where value is generated, billed, and ultimately collected.
    What has inevitably happened, however, is an ever-growing expansion of what was originally a relatively simple carrier business model. Consider this maturing timeline for most operators over the years:

    • Risk Management (“ERM”) became an embedded factor in enterprises as they grew larger
    • Revenue Management soon grew on its own within Risk Management, eventually dominating the ERM program with both Fraud and Revenue teams operating (mostly) autonomously
    • Operator business models have since evolved well beyond the classic voice services that ERM was chartered to monitor, further stressing an already crowded ERM oversight domain

    Suddenly (actually, over the last 20 years), Risk Management programs are finding that there is no longer a single ball to keep their eye on; in fact, there are many. Revenue is now generated from many streams (e.g., product lines), all using different business models. But what makes this even more difficult is the relationships and interdependencies these product lines have with each other – these also need to be monitored for risks and failures. Now ERM can’t simply deploy independent, autonomous teams to track individual streams – the collaboration and sharing of consistent data and resources is now a critical requirement.
    Putting this into context, let’s talk about fictitious Carrier “A” … we’ll call them Rio Hondo Telecom:
    Rio Hondo offers 3G and 4G mobile services. They also operate as an ILEC (Independent Local Exchange Carrier), so they have invested in a great deal in underground plant, in the form of both copper and cable, to serve the majority of their 1 million customers. Through that plant they offer fixed line telephony, broadband, and video broadcast services to consumers, and high-speed business service packages to enterprises. Unfortunately, they have no last mile access to 15% of their enterprise customers, and 10% of their standard consumer customer base is too far away to receive broadband and broadcast services. Therefore, Rio Hondo has formed several partnerships with other operators to round out their service offering to those outlying customers. They started carrying services 65 years ago…and their ERM teams formed in the early 1980’s. They have limited Fraud and Revenue controls in place, yet their business models have grown well beyond what they can easily monitor for risks. Where should their ERM teams be focusing their resources? Candidates must include both revenue generation and revenue support functions, among others.

    1. Revenue generations functions:
      a. Event creation, mediation, and billing
      b. Recurring charge integrity
      c. Retail sales of equipment and services
    2. Revenue support functions:
      a. Retail and call center provisioning operations, and change requests
      b. Order integrity and fall-out management – critical for bundled service delivery
      c. Capturing of traded/returned equipment, including tracking to warehouse receipt
      d. Chargeback management, merchant charging integrity
    3. Cost and other support functions:
      a. Service call management and charging
      b. CPE and inventory assurance
      c. Commissioning integrity
      d. Partner services delivered as ordered, billed appropriately

    This operator example is not uncommon, and certainly something that we have successfully worked with operators to manage for much of the last 16 years. What has been learned over this time that ERM can’t just keep their eyes on the “business model complexity” ball; now ERM must also keep their eyes on every ball that deals with product, service, and support inter-dependencies that now dominate the carrier business landscape.
    This is the foundation that drove the birth of the ROC from Subex. First envisioned over a decade ago, the latest generation of ROC3 products fully support the monitoring and instrumentation of every facet of Revenue, Cost, Fraud, and Network Asset protection within the operator’s business…all from a single, integrated architecture. With ROC3, operators can not only keep their eyes on as many balls as their business can throw at them, they can easily manage which ones to catch, and which ones to hit “out of the park!”

  • A Sentimental Journey

    A Sentimental Journey

    When Doris Day sang the jazz classic ‘Sentimental Journey’ she described the joy of returning home to the things she had missed. Back here in the 21st century we also feel a sense of joy when we get home, but it’s often because we can finally get a reliable internet signal through our Wi-Fi.   Mails download, WhatsApp messages pour in and all those photos and vids we took get uploaded to share.   The sentiment that people feel when they get home and find their internet service is not working is generally far less happy. It’s a sentiment that I experienced first-hand, having suffered from a service that was slower than old fashioned dial-up for several months. Web pages with sliding graphical widgets and targeted advertising completely stopped loading. After endless rounds of calling support, listening to distorted 80’s pop tunes while stuck on hold, and re-booting of modems I just didn’t want to speak to them anymore. In today’s marketing vernacular, I was not having a good “customer experience”, so I left them and went to another service provider.

    Although the initial buzz around customer experience may have died down from a few years ago it is still regarded as the single most important ingredient needed to have a successful business. In a recent report Watermark Consulting studied the cumulative stock returns of the top 10 “Leaders” and bottom 10 “Laggards” in Forresters CX index and found

    Leaders outperformed the broader market, generating a total return that was 35 points higher than the S&P 500 Index.

    Laggards trailed far behind, posting a total return that was 45 points lower than that of the broader market.

    In a world of commoditized products and services businesses now rely on customer experience more than ever to differentiate themselves from the competition. However, in the report ‘Customer Analytics: How to make Best use of Customer Data’ the Aberdeen Group has reported that

    ‘96% of companies are not fully satisfied with their ability to use data (both customer and operational) in CEM programs’

    In order to provide good a customer experience companies need to do 5 things

    1. Introduce good data governance practices around customer data
    2. Create a unified view of customers across all touch points
    3. Profile and segment their customers
    4. Track the emotional impact of a customer interactions with the company over time.
    5. Use that intelligence to guide agents on how to provide the best support for customers.

    Enter the world of the customer journey map. A customer journey map (CJM) is a visual representation of all the interactions a customer has with a company, through every touch point, with a measure of the customer’s attitude towards the company during those interactions. For example, receipt of a bill may be a negative experience, whereas receipt of some reward, like bonus loyalty points, would be viewed more positively. These sentiment scores may be collected directly through touch point surveys and recording call dispositions, or inferred based on history and through the use of analytics.

    Agents that have an immediate grasp of a customer’s journey and level of satisfaction are far more successful at resolving issues and upselling than agents who do not have that insight.

    The first step in understanding a customer’s journey is to introduce good data governance practices and create a unified view of the customer. The Aberdeen group also observed (in their ‘Big Data in CEM’ study) that

    More than half of all (56%) businesses lack a unified view of the data captured across multiple channels and stored in systems such as customer relationship management (CRM), marketing automation, e-commerce and enterprise resource planning (ERP)

    Customers should then be profiled and segmented along demographic, financial and behavioral lines. Then, by recording their changing sentiments during various interactions with the company, a picture can be built up of how different segments progress through their customer journeys and it becomes possible to understand which interactions lead to greater customer loyalty and value, and which lead to churn.

    Customer journey mapping helps companies to understand their customer needs and provide the kind of personal advice and support that builds trust.   Trust that encourages customers to buy more, stay loyal and spread good news about your business.

  • The legacy network is dead, long live the legacy network!

    The legacy network is dead, long live the legacy network!

    I was recently asked by a Tier 1 client in North America if Subex can use our network discovery technology to retrieve information from D4 channel banks.  I honestly had not crossed paths with these relics of the voice network since my days doing central office engineering in the late 80’s.  So you may be wondering, in a day-and-age when the buzz is about SDN/NFV, IoT and everything in the “Cloud”, why is someone worried about the humble channel bank?

    As it turns out, there’s plenty to worry about.  End-of-life technology can be a significant Opex drain.  Operators incur costs for energy (power, HVAC), maintenance and real estate to keep such equipment in place.  Compounding the problem is that much of this old equipment typically sits racked, stacked and powered… and idle (no traffic).   Channel banks are just one example.  Arguably, the entire fixed-line TDM network is retirement-age (I’m talking about SONET/SDH DACs and ADMs, voice switches, local loop equipment, etc.) and needs to yield to IP/MPLS and VoIP.

    In a previous blog post, I wrote about what operators need to consider when planning a transformation from legacy technologies to future state.   For this post, I will stay grounded in the present and focus on this question: What strategies can operators employ to reduce their Opex and Capex burdens when operating a legacy network?   For starters:

    • Use network discovery techniques to determine the operational status of your actively deployed network assets.
    • For all unutilized assets, apply a deliberate strategy to disposition everything.  Too often, because operators don’t have adequate visibility to operational status and utilization of assets in the legacy network, they default to what I call a “rust-in-place” strategy.  Since they lack the visibility, they ignore the problem.  Equipment sits idle or underutilized and costs add up.  My suggestion is to proceed with purpose—if an asset is carrying adequate revenue-producing traffic, fine.  If not, do something about it!

    For assets with reuse potential, then the options include:

    • Harvest and reuse elsewhere in the network.  Benefit: Avoid Capex for new purchases.
    • Perform grooms to more densely pack some assets and free up others for reuse or end-of-life monetization.
    • Allocate as spare.  Benefits: Reduced maintenance costs when spares are optimized in terms of count and location.   Customer experience is improved and exposure to SLA penalties is reduced when spares are well managed.

    If there is no reuse potential, then consider:

    • Reselling on the secondary market if there is still industry demand for the asset.
    • If not, then recover and sell for salvage value.
    • In both cases, remember that the NPV of averted monthly energy and real estate costs may actually exceed any direct cash received when the asset is sold or salvaged.
    • Don’t overlook other possible financial benefits from disposing unneeded assets such as tax write-offs and reduced insurance premiums.

    Most importantly, seek an asset management and logistics partner who can help you squeeze the most value from legacy assets.  Elements of a legacy network cost reduction program include:

    • Automated audits via network discovery
    • Asset evaluation and disposition recommendations
    • Capacity utilization trending and related analytics
    • Asset tracking
    • Turnkey asset recovery services
    • Resale valuation and brokerage services
    • Eco-friendly recycling
    • Analytics for sparing level optimization
    • Spares management
    • Warehousing and related logistics services
    • Warranty and annual maintenance contract management
    • Test, repair and engineering services

    Subex provides industry-leading asset management solutions and services.  With our forward and reverse logistics partners around the globe, we can help you to establish a turnkey and highly effective legacy network cost reduction program.

  • Making history in Prague

    Making history in Prague

    One of the most commonly used greeting, Dobrý den, means “Good Day” in Czech. Coincidentally, we at Subex believe this to be an apt indicator of things to come at the 12th Subex Annual User conference, happening in the magical city of Prague. In a city famous for its spectacular architecture and scenic beauty, we at Subex feel excited about the ground-breaking sessions planned for our esteemed guests.

    In the past year we, both operators and partners, have seen the rise of new threats and hidden opportunities. We have seen margins getting further squeezed by the nimble tactics of OTT players, and conversely we have also seen some operators take bold new steps to capitalize new technologies. We have seen the magic of LTE establish the foundation of our collective next steps in the telecommunications industry, both in terms of defining the new business ecosystems which would evolve, as well as how and what services we would deliver. In a way, we are going back to basics – observe, study, understand and compete.

    Following up on the success of the 2014 User conference, this year Subex is pulling out all the stops in terms of pushing the boundaries of innovation in business optimization. This time around, it’s going to be about looking to the future and preparing for agile transformation today. The day and age of “built to last” solutions might be seeing it’s official sunset. A new era is upon is – The era of “built to change” solutions. When operators are grappling with the vast product possibilities now open to them, it becomes of paramount importance that associated risks can be handled at the pace of business. To help us gaze into the crystal ball, we’ve reached out to industry stalwarts like

    Simon Torrance – Futurist & Senior Advisor on Digital Innovation, Analysys Mason
    Mark Zmigrodski – Manager Fraud Investigations at AT&T & Director – CFCA
    Mike Willet – Executive Director at Ernst & Young
    Paul Fedarb – Head of GTM UK Billing & Collection at BT Group

    My good friend Eric Priezkalns, Co-founder at Commsrisk returns this year as the event’s chairman . Last year his ability to bring the speaker and the audience closer together in meaningful discussion (and debate) ensured that all of us took away the best from all the sessions. Beyond the speaking participants, we have a full roster of industry leaders and active voices in the risk & assurance community like Amit Agrawal (Group Director, RAFM at Etisalat), Edward Granillo (Director, TeliaSonera Group-wide RAFM), Pedro Bravo (Revenue Assurance and Credit Scoring Manager at NOS), Ahmed Saleh Benatif (Director of RA at STC) and the list just goes on. In such a rich gathering of domain experts, I for one would expect something fantastic to emerge from the planned sessions. The sessions themselves are keyed towards focused discussions around emerging technologies, evolving risk frameworks and a little bit of magic (by yours truly).

    In keeping with the theme of Prague, Subex also plans to spring a few pleasant surprises for our esteemed customers. Rest assured, we are confident that this would be a User Conference that won’t be soon forgotten. We are looking forward to breaking new ground, and jointly going where no risk management expert has gone before!

  • The Case for Monetizing the Internet of Things

    The Case for Monetizing the Internet of Things

    The Internet of Things. While the discussions around IoT are interesting, in reality what are these “things”? More importantly, why should operators care? On the surface the answer is simple: The IoT world is all about Monitoring, and Machine to Machine explosive use of networks. It’s all about how to plan for the capacity – where to invest, when, and how much is needed to meet the IoT demand? This is the realm where Subex Asset Assurance and Network Analytics platforms help operators plan, procure, and place assets to quickly and effectively meet that challenge.

    The Internet of Things, however, goes much deeper than a network optimization discussion. The IoT is ultimately about data. Data about our lives, our spending, our health, the “things” that support us (power, roads, air quality, resource availability, etc.). The value in the IoT is in the collecting and monetizing of that data.

    Imagine the scope of that data, by walking through a day in a life where IoT is engaged. Waking up is now more about an alarm clock. It’s now about a smart home knowing what day of the week it is, and therefore what time you’ll be wanting to wake. It’s about the home knowing what temperature the water heater needs to maintain to support the amount of water you typically need to shower; it’s about knowing which rooms in your home you’ll be using today, and controlling the environment in those rooms at the right time. It’s about anticipating your food consumption…and warning you when those supplies are low. An even smarter home will seek marketing promotions from local grocers, to give you best options for pricing to replace those depleting supplies.

    In this whitepaper we’ll explore the value of IoT data in more depth, as we continue through a day in an IoT engaged life. This data has the ability to steer spend habits, and thus help retailers secure share of wallet. Analytics and Data Sciences are a crucial component in the successful harvesting of IoT data, and any latency in understanding the data will absolutely make the difference in determining who wins the wallet-share competition.