Comptel’s FinPro Trip Looks to the Future of Telco in Indonesia

Last week, Comptel’s CEO Juhani Hintikka and vice president of Asia-Pacific Kari Jokela visited Indonesia as part of the FinPro business delegation to discuss future economic cooperation between Finland and Indonesia. A leader in FinPro, Comptel has previously visited India, Kazakhstan and Chile, among other countries, to meet and work with those regions’ local communications service providers (CSPs) and government officials.

Comptel has been doing business in Indonesia for more than 10 years now, and we’re excited to continue to build relationships with those in the region. The Asia-Pacific telecommunications market has tripled in size since 2003 and added one billion new connections. By the end of 2013, experts expect there to be three billion connections total. Next year, Analysys Mason predicts that Indonesia will steadily move toward deploying 4G services.

To help CSPs in the region prepare for this wave of change, Comptel aims to offer new products and services through an extended range of local partners. For example, the company recently announced that it is working with local partner Lintas Teknologi to deliver Comptel Convergent Mediation to the second largest CSP in Indonesia, Indosat. By consolidating the mediation of its entire mobile product portfolio, the operator will be able to handle billions of transactions daily, while seamlessly scaling as its business grows.

As 2013 draws to a close and Comptel looks at a new year, we couldn’t be more excited to cultivate our relationships with CSPs throughout Indonesia and Asia-Pacific, and offer them new ways of doing business that help grow their revenues, streamline their operational processes and build customer loyalty.

Want to learn more about what the telco industry is thinking about in the APAC region? Download our APAC survey below!

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Big Data and Analytics are on APAC Telcos’ Minds

Comptel recently hosted a focus group in Bangkok, Thailand, with attendees from fourteen communications service providers (CSPs) across ten different APAC countries. A multitude of topics were covered during the sessions, but the main thing on everyone’s mind seemed to be Big Data and analytics.

We surveyed attendees in the weeks leading up to our event—and the results seemed to reflect the same trends. With twenty-five respondents, 79 percent of which came from the Southeast Asia region, we got a sense of the issues facing CSPs today. We asked what IT, marketing and R&D leaders were currently focusing on, and one way or the other, it always seemed to come back to Big Data and analytics.

Here’s what our survey revealed:

1. Nearly three-quarters of CSPs say Big Data and analytics will have a big impact on their organizations

Whether CSPs are trying to better target customers or increase operational efficiency, it’s understood that they could benefit from Big Data. Although 71 percent agreed that Big Data and analytics will have a significant effect on their businesses going forward, only 58 percent said that Big Data was being used effectively.

Many CSPs could be in the same place as other businesses – data is being collected, but not being properly leveraged. New systems, processes and strategies need to be considered to truly turn all of that information into intelligence and the right actions. Only 16 percent of CSPs said that they had begun a Big Data initiative.

2. Almost nine out of ten CSPs believe integrating IT with marketing results in richer customer engagement

As we’ve said before, the future of marketing is networks, and the future of networks is marketing. Marketing campaigns at CSPs are becoming increasingly dependent on analytics and the technology that IT controls. At the same time, there’s more pressure on IT to become aligned with the broader goals of the business.

By breaking through the silos between those teams, CSPs can radically improve customer service, increase efficiency, ensure smart operations and realise many other business benefits.

3. 54 percent of CSPs say that their organization is undergoing changes

The landscape for CSPs is shifting, so it’s no surprise that more than half of survey respondents said that their businesses were undergoing some kind of change. A third said that their organizations had launched LTE services, many within the past six months, while 46 percent said that they were in the process of consolidating their OSS/BSS systems.

The ongoing changes may signal a search for more efficiency. Just 58 percent of respondents said that their networks and operations were efficient. A third said that the processes were “somewhat” efficient, and 8 percent said they were “inefficient.”

The Promise of Big Data and Analytics

One way or another, these three trends showcase the need for CSPs to find the right platforms to streamline their operations and bring marketing and IT together to reach the next level. Big Data and analytics are the key to this kind of success, but only if all of the pieces are in place and effectively working together.

Analytics Everywhere: A Recap of IBM’s Smarter Business 2013

This post was written by Malla Poikela, senior product marketing manager and Leila Heijola, channel marketing manager

We recently went to IBM’s Smarter Business event, which took place on 10 October at Finlandia Hall. We learned more about the increasingly important role Big Data and analytics will play in the coming years for businesses. That’s a topic dear to our own hearts, too, as Comptel works hard to help communications service providers (CSPs) leverage all of the information at their fingertips, turn it into contextual intelligence, and improve their business decision-making and performance.

What did we learn at the IBM event? The highlights of the key notes included:

• 90% of data was created in the last two years
• 86% of leading organisations say customer experience is the top priority
• 81% of customers depend on social sites in their purchasing decisions
• 72% of business leaders say that cloud is important

In particular, Big Data driven by smartphones, devices/sensors and social media, and insights, predictive analytics, mobility, cloud and the customer experience played a central role in the event. We would like to share the key takeaways from the variety of customer, partner and IBM presentations and live product demos.

Analytics for All

The central theme of IBM’s Smarter Business 2013 was how Big Data offers a totally new spectrum of innovative ideas and opportunities. Analytics is at the core of every data effort, a pervasive answer for almost “all” business problems. The three major trends we identified at the event were:

1. Big Data will make a “segment of one” a reality. Part of optimising Big Data analytics is about achieving a new level of personalised marketing. Let’s call it “segment of one.” As the number of customer touch points continues to increase, the intelligence from each touch point can help master customer interactions across different channels.

In turn, this will allow marketers an extremely granular view of customer needs, allowing for true individualisation and customisation of solutions and interactions/engagement.

2. Visualisation. Advanced visualisation tools and dashboards for business intelligence and predictive analytics, also known as the “face” of analysis and insights, will help democratise data across an organisation. Where reams of numbers and solid data only legible to IT were once the norm, newer tools offer easy and intuitive interfaces that make data accessible to more stakeholders than before.

This will usher in new perspectives on how to leverage data accordingly, because everyone from the CMO and CIO/CTO to the sales team will be able to get involved.

3. Process Optimisation. With powerful analytics tools that can span different departments, businesses will be able to better gauge efficiencies and effectiveness. That will allow for a deeper understanding of essential business parameters, challenges and anomalies. By providing a comprehensive and holistic view of customers, business and technologies, an analytics dashboard will allow companies to create a clearer picture of what should be done in development, marketing, system optimisation and more.

The Needs of the Future

Maybe the best way to demystify predictive analytics is by presenting the business results that have been achieved with it. At IBM’s Smarter Business 2013, those results were described as “astronomical,” as the proper application of predictive analytics can significantly reduce churn and improve campaign success rates by exponential degrees. As the democratisation of data and devices continues, we can only expect to hear more of the same.

This was a very insightful and well organized event. We gained plenty of valuable information and are looking forward to visit IBM Smarter Business again next year.

Comptel’s Q3 Results and Review

Comptel announced Q3 Interim Report on October 16^th. We continued the successful execution of our main target for the year – the improvement of profitability. Our cost base is now notably below last year´s level which has significantly improved our ability to generate profit. We have also maintained significant investment level in our two main areas for the future which are the Comptel Fulfillment and Comptel Analytics.

We have received significant new orders from the fulfillment area during this year and the first next generation Comptel Fulfillment solutions have been taken into production use by our customers. Overall our fulfillment business has grown much faster than the market during this year. In terms of the Comptel Analytics solutions we continued the development activities as per our plans. The first Comptel Analytics solutions delivered have generated significant enhancements to the operator´s performance. We expect to secure new customers during the remaining months of the year and we anticipate business to grow next year.

We secured two significant orders from our fulfillment product area during the third quarter of the year. Comptel closed a deal valued at EUR 2.8 million in South America in July and received an expansion order from a significant operator in the Middle East during September.