How to start a customer behavior analysis (part ii)?

It’s been a while since we wrote the article “How to start a customer behavior analysis?” and considering the success (measured in visits) of this simple post, I wanted to update that post with a detailed approach on mmC Group’s value driven analytics framework for customer behavioral assessments.

Why did we decide to launch this framework? Well, as most of you may know, mmC Group is a management and advisory firm working mostly in emerging markets and regions such as Latin America, Africa, and APAC. These telecom markets are samples of the last bright spot that’s adding strong competitive pressure to the traditional difficulties on each of these regions.

Big and small mobile operators face the challenge of stimulating acquisition whilst increasing low revenue levels, leaving little room for mistakes. Uncertainties are higher due to the lack of the information usually available in more advanced markets. In 2008 we realized that for some small operators with just a few hundred thousand customers with very low ARPU, the traditional consulting approach is too expensive to successfully address their needs. We also understood the difficulties that most of these players had to find and attract talent to countries with non-minor demographic, economic and security issues.

We then started to support fixed and mobile operators in their need to be better served by analytical solutions that should focus on covering the customers’ real needs while supporting the commercial departments using a “light touch” approach: (i) Limited need of external consultants, (ii) Limited training needs and (iii) Limited hardware or logistical requirements. Our approach turned to show a clear acceptance. We started to offer well-proven and cost effective solutions providing most of the benefits of a traditional consulting project at a fraction of its cost. Is that possible? -You may be thinking-. Yes it is.

mmC Group’s value proposition can be summarized as an “approach to close the gap between data (CDRs), marketing concepts (segmentation, predictive models), and marketing operations (launch of campaigns, tracking, etc.)”. This approach relies on the customer’s core info that every single operator in the world saves on a regular basis.

We saw that information was harder to obtain in these underdeveloped markets than in mature markets (both on aggregated basis (census,..) and on a per customer basis (demographics, credit scoring,…)) forcing operators to make decisions on a thicker “fog of war”. This lack of accurate information combined with a much more skewed ARPU distribution unveiled mistakes that potentially could be much more expensive than the cost of our services. There was a clear opportunity for us here.

On top, over the last year several operators have embarked into very aggressive M&A policies in their search for growth. These operators feel pressured to justify their sometimes-expensive acquisitions are keen on solving problems trying to throw as less money out as possible and this includes tools, hardware, consultancy and interim executives.

Based in my experience, it’s very hard for any company to attract and retain a large number of qualified professionals required to successfully run all the operations that, as we discussed previously, have become more and more unforgiving, with competitive pressures increasing and adding to an already difficult situation. Here was another opportunity for us.At the same time mobile operators needs to reinforce its position against competitors who have some of the deepest pockets in the industry and are decided to “buy” their way. Clearly it is in mobile operators’ interest to outsmart and to outspend these players.

Any customer analytics successful approach will need to consider all the constraining factors that the reality of the day-to-day operations impose and overcome a number of barriers in order to provide mobile operators with the required tools. This is an effort that cannot be achieved by launching isolated actions on single markets. Mobile operators can greatly benefit of deploying this extra organizational capabilities across all its operations. Third opportunity.

As you may understand after reading this port, our value driven customer behavior approach clearly goes beyond the traditional consulting project that focuses on a specific problem and finds the solution for that problem in any market. May you want additional details, about it, please drive through the attached presentation.

Hope you find it interesting. Best regards, CVA.