It seems there’s no shortage of players looking to help carriers compile all the customer information that can be gleaned from their networks. But it appears network operators are still at a loss at what to do with the stuff.
VeriSign Inc. last week spun off its telecom-analytics business just two years after jumping into the game. The company said it is selling its Self-care and Analytics division back to the original management team of CallVision, a startup VeriSign acquired for $30 million in 2006.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The move gives birth to a new, Seattle-based company, Globys Inc., whose investors include Trilogy Partnership, Duff Ackerman and Goodrich, and Cedar Grove.
Globys will continue to offer “detailed analytics” to both mobile and fixed-line operators, according to Derek Edwards, a CallVision co-founder who continued to manage the business under VeriSign and was tapped to serve as CEO of the new company.
“This group brings it all together and allows carriers a view into (the analytics),” Edwards said. “We help them with churn reduction and allow them to up-sell and cross-sell.”
Focusing on core
The spinoff is the latest move by VeriSign to streamline its operations and focus on core businesses such as its Internet domain registry, online security technology and identity protection services. VeriSign unveiled the effort in November, outlining plans to sell or close as many as 12 divisions including some – or perhaps all – of its mobile operations.
Globys’s offerings include a bill-analysis product that carriers in turn sell to enterprise customers, and an online-payment system for operators looking to minimize the overhead that comes with traditional billing. But the company – whose tagline is “Turning telecom data into valuable intelligence” – will focus on its analytics business as it moves out from under VeriSign, rolling out “some new analytic pieces” in the next four to six months.
That kind of data could be the difference between thriving and becoming a dumb pipe as the lines blur between TV, the Internet and mobile, according to Dr. Lorien Pratt, who until recently served as the global director of OSS and infrastructure for Frost & Sullivan’s Stratecast product.
“What is your business? It’s your customer and your network, right?” Pratt asked attendees at last year’s Visionael Advantage event in New York. “How do you represent your customer and your network? It’s these giant, realtime databases of usage, data network fulfillment, billing CRM. If you can’t manage that data correctly and it’s full of bugs and errors and duplication and you can’t access it in the time you need it, you can’t manage your business.”
Tracking usage
Analytics are nothing new in mobile, of course. Developers such as Openwave Inc. and Israel’s Schema for years have encouraged carriers to leverage their networks to avoid becoming dump pipes, analyzing user behavior and leveraging the information to offer premium content and services to targeted users at the right time and place. And a host of content providers have joined the analytics bandwagon, tracking usage and purchasing patterns from users who shop for ringtones and other goodies.
A consumer who constantly checks box scores on the wireless Web could be presented with a sports game, for instance, while a commuter on an extended train ride could see an ad for a mobile version of “The Office.”
Globys hopes to offer broader insights, though, giving carriers visibility that goes beyond simple download information.
The company hopes to focus its analytics “on the mobile carrier as a whole,” Edwards said, “looking across all of their systems including usage, downloads and roaming to be able to provide a complete view of their customers.”
And mobile may be the most fertile ground for leveraging analytics as modern media platforms converge with the Internet. No device is as personal as the mobile phone, allowing carriers and their partners an unprecedented level of insight.
Made for mobile</span
Network operators who once dismissed the importance of such information are beginning to catch on, Pratt said last week in an interview with RCR Wireless News, realizing that the data could be a key differentiator as Internet giants and media megacorporations cast their shadows across the mobile space. But while carriers may finally be seeing the value of that kind of information, they have yet to demonstrate that they can capitalize on it.
“By and large that’s a pretty big learning curve for your mobile operators, so even through they’re motivated, they still don’t have that cultural and political skill set to create a deep value chain,” said Pratt, who left Stratecast for Quantellia, a startup consulting firm that helps businesses analyze and act on quantitative data. “The bottom line is that, at least of the companies we talk to, (mobile’s) analytics maturity is still really low. Look at that compared to Google, compared to Yahoo, and it’s amazing; it’s still night and day. It’s just boggling to me.”
