Teradata, is a global analytic data platforms, marketing applications and consulting services company. Headquartered in US, the company has turned its focus on the Indian market as it sees huge business potential by offering big data services to the Indian operators.

In an interview with tele.net.in, Dinesh Jain, country manager, Teradata India, talks about the challenges facing the Indian telecom market and how Teradata can help address these challenges.

Excerpts…

What are the business opportunities that Teradata sees in the Indian telecom segment?

With customer acquisitions within the telecom domain leveling off, and pressures on revenue growth, telecom operators are seeking new ways to retain customers and stimulate revenue. The solutions like customer experience management, network analytics, churn reduction, cross sell, upsell, are gaining more prominence. As a market leader in data warehousing and business analytics, Teradata is well-positioned to leverage its global experience and expertise for the Indian telecom segment.

Further, with the introduction of merger and acquisition policy for telecom sector there will be consolidation opportunities in the sectors both from a business and data perspective.

In what ways can big data help Indian companies particularly telecom segment to augment their revenues?

‘Big Data’ brings in the promise to provide insights with confidence and accuracy, with much better ease and at a quicker pace. Some of the areas where Big Data can be leveraged are:

Modeling customer churn

Identifying fraud and its patterns, which in turn can help service providers to take remedial action for prevention

Customers data experience on the network as all service providers are striving to be market-leaders in this space

Determining and understanding customer social networks and utilizing them for marketing opportunities - amongst them acquisitions, retention, upsell and cross-sell

Gaining insights into customer sentiments based on unstructured data comprising  HTML, XML and CVS from the web

These initiatives will help service-providers retain customers through better customer- experience and stimulate revenue growth which indirectly impact brand value in a positive way.

Besides, big data what are the emerging technology trends in the Indian telecom market?

Some of the emerging technology trends that are seen in the telecom market are:

Roll-out of 4G services across the country - Currently, this is available only in a few cities through a select number of service providers. Availability of 4G enabled handsets, although it is a current challenge, should be sorted out as more service providers roll out this service. There will be a mass market impact once the spectrum in the 700 MHz band is available.

Growth in the use of ‘smart phones’ - Local players are designing applications for stimulating the smart phone usage. Operators are offering handsets under their brand to sustain brand value and image.

‘Dumb pipes’ will undergo changes to become smarter pipes-  Nucleation of initiatives for synergism between over-the-top (OTT) players and telecom operators to make dumb pipes smarter. Newer opportunities across the B2B and B2C will add to revenue streams.

What are the key challenges faced by the Indian telecom firms? What steps have been taken by Teradata to address these?

The key challenges for telecoms will be how to monetize new business models, leverage customer data by investing in analytics and define their response to over-the-top players.

Teradata has offerings across technologies and applications; such as the Unified Data Architecture that supports traditional and newer data formats. This supports integrated data management for traditional business intelligence, big data analysis for true data discovery and applications for integrated market management. These proven offerings in turn can help telecom firms address these challenges with ease, flexibility, confidence and speed.

What are the company’s plans or key focus areas for 2014?

Teradata continues to expand its footprint and gain new customers across segments. The focus for 2014 will continue to gain new customers and expand business in new industries. More importantly establish the importance of big data with various customers by creating solutions or doing POCs. Bid data analytics would be the main driver for businesses to grow in the years to come, and it will help us grow our revenues.