The Telco Training Academy

   

Data Warehousing

No single computer systems tool can contribute more to the success of your telco customer value management activities than a good customer data warehouse. It can provide your organization with a well organized, easy to access, easy to manage source where any and all information about customers, their wants, needs, behaviors, and spending patterns are stored. With this kind of system at the heart of your telco customer value management efforts, everything about management and optimization of customer activities is made easier.

 

Unique Telco Challenges

Although many telco organizations have become convinced of the value that a good data warehouse can offer, few have been able to realize the full benefits available. While companies in other industries have created massive and highly effective data warehouses, most telcos still seem to struggle with the core value proposition that these systems represent. This should come as no surprise, since telcos face many unique challenges including:

 

  • A volume of data that is many hundreds of times greater than in other industries

  • Erratic market conditions that make future information needs impossible to predict

  • Complex and inflexible billing systems (the source of most customer related data) that make data warehouse loading and management extremely challenging

All of these conditions, and many more, make telco data warehouse development one of the most difficult challenges.

 

Telco Data Warehouse Development Expertise

Getting to the heart of value delivery in the telco data warehousing area is one of the things we do best at TTA. As the author on the only books written about the specific challenges involved in data warehouse construction for the telco, and as the world's leading expert on telco data warehousing development and value delivery, has helped dozens of telcos improve the effectiveness and greatly increase the value from data warehouse efforts.

 

Telco Data Warehouse Applications

Telcos use data warehouses to support many different kinds of operational challenges. There are dozens of different types of data warehouses and data warehouse applications including:

  • CDR (Call Detail Record) Warehouse
    Stores one or more months worth of call detail records. Used to support:

    • Billing pre-cycle record reconciliation and matching

    • Billing revenue assurance audit

    • Government mandated call record history maintenance

    • Intermediation, reconciliation, and management

    • Network traffic monitoring and troubleshooting

    • Data mining support

  • Billing Repository
    Holds a copy of the important information out of the billing system. Developed to support:

    • Ad hoc query against the billing system without impacting billing cycle runs

    • Audit and control over billing cycle revenue assurance

    • Repository for customer tracking and reporting

    • Staging area for downstream analysis and reporting

  • Enterprise Warehouse (ODS)- (rare)
    Stores copies of all core information from most operational systems

  • Customer Data Warehouse (CDW)
    Stores a stable, historically accurate profile for each customer, account, and hierarchy of accounts

  • Billing Consolidation Warehouse (BCW)
    Stores and reconciles customer billing records across multiple billing systems, allowing a single consolidated bill to be issued to each customer

  • Billing and CDR Log File Warehouse
    Allows customers and other interested parties to track their own traffic and billable events online or via the Internet

  • Many, many others

 

Telco Data Warehouse Value Propositions

Based on experience with dozens of telco data warehouse conceptualization, development, audit, repair, and value enhancement, we can help you with your data warehouse development efforts in many ways. No matter what specific functions we might perform for you, our objectives are always the same, namely to help telcos with the following.

  • More efficient collection of customer and customer related information

  • More effective utilization of customer and customer related information

  • Increased efficiency of sales, marketing, advertising, customer service, channels, and branding activities

  • Minimized cost of I/T support

  • Maximized value of I/T support

  • Utilization of data that was difficult to access and analyze in the past

  • Improved overall effectiveness and precision of all customer value management related activities

 

Telco Data Warehouse Offerings

Our offerings in the telco data warehouse area include:

  • Data warehouse software and hardware selection

  • Data warehouse builder selection

  • New data warehouse conceptualization

  • Data warehouse budgeting

  • Data warehouse specifications and requirements

  • Data warehouse cost justification

  • Building the business case for data warehouse construction or improvements

  • Design of data warehouse, data mart, or ODS

  • Data warehouse ETL (extract, transform, load) processing

  • Data warehouse application development

  • Data warehouse staffing, support, and administrative management

  • Data modeling

  • Distressed data warehouse review and troubleshooting

  • Getting more value out of existing data warehouse investments

  • Training I/T staff in data warehouse development and design

  • Training marketing, sales, customer service, and management staff in the use of data warehouse data and tools

See our books or directly for more information about how TTA can help with your data warehousing efforts.  

 

Working with Data Warehouse Vendors

We have experience working with all of the data warehouse vendors and can help you with the selection and utilization of any of them.