CSPs are always observed to be in the fore-front of innovation and technology adoption. This has been the case from the time Mobile Phones were invented. World-wide we are observing Mobile Phone adoption at a frenzied pace. New CSPs are allowed function in high growth economies, with greater regularity, in order to meet the growing demand, new technology adoption and prevent restrictive trade practices. CSPs are also transforming themselves to provide more consumer services like: Mobile Phone, Cable Television, Fixed line Telephone, and Broadband.
Most of the CSPs are also transforming themselves through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), aided by deregulation and macro economic conditions, in order to thrive and survive.
This article focuses on the role of BI in CSPs M&A. In my view, BI should act as a quick enabler of M&A for very important functions like: Corporate, Finance, Sales & Marketing and Customer Service.
Corporate would be interested in Business Planning for the short-term and long-term. They would want to do this in a most collaborative manner, and in the shortest time possible. They would also like to keep changing their business plans as the business scenario changes, again in a collaborative and within short timelines. Corporate is also interested in getting a combined view of the new organisation's performance, with standardised data definitions.
Finance division would be interested in understanding consolidated financial statements, covering Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss and Cash Flow. They would also be interested in performing some simulations to understand different scenarios. They would also want to perform some inter-company reconciliation till the complete merger is done. All these would be required without fundamentally disturbing the Chart of Accounts Structure of the two merged entities in the short term.
Sales & Marketing will be enthusiastic to increase their sales through cross-sell & up-sell opportunities in the larger combined customer base. Understanding the customers and harmonising the products are the key activities for this division.
Customer Service will be overwhelmed dealing with combined customer base. Understanding the services provided to combined customer base after harmonisation (de-duplication), and maintaining an updated record of new sales made through cross-sell / up-sell mode is very essential for the customer services team. The merged business entity should aim for new service reporting SLAs and reports, but also maintain the older metrics till the complete merger takes place.
Most of the mature CSPs would have existing data-warehouses and data marts to help their business users make better decisions. There will be an existing spaghetti network of data integration among the data-warehouses, data marts and other source systems. Disturbing them soon after organisations' merger will be difficult. Similarly, it will be advisable to continue with the existing set of source systems, till a detailed study is done on what to retain and what to sunset.
However, Business has to continue as usual, or in a better way with the merged entity having a single face to it. If you observe the above paragraphs, the main points that bring integration are the master data across multiple systems. Master data (or) Reference data like Customers, Products, Financial Chart of Accounts, Organisation Hierarchy, Employees and other natural hierarchies like Geography, Time etc.,. So, the creation of Golden Source of Master Data (or) Reference Data is very essential for the merger to be successful. This Golden Source of Master Data can be shared across the whole organisation, with proper access rights, to enable the various departments carry out their businesses efficiently.
Apart from the master data (or) reference data, the most important merger enabler is the common / harmonised data definitions (or) terminologies. We have observed this to be an impediment with most of the organisations that went for merger (or) acquisition. Usually, the organisations that came together will be using different terms to refer to somewhat similar definitions, and the meanings will be slightly different if they use the same terms. Harmonising them doesn't always solve all the confusion and information exchange across the merged organisations. Till the complete merger takes place, some parts of the organisation will have to go ahead using the old terminologies, thus putting to the simultaneous usage of old and new terminologies.
BI Architecture also plays an important role in making sure the Head Quarters obtain all the information they need, at the same time allowing the business as usual in the departments that are yet to be integrated. Disturbing the existing Data Marts, Data Warehouses and Source Systems is not going to be quick and easy; hence building an extra data layer on top of the existing ones will be more helpful. This new architecture has to keep in mind the need for migrating all the data, in the same granularity or in aggregated form, to the new BI layer, with the available connectivity band-width. We have observed this new layer to come up as decentralised data marts, if the merged organisations are quite far off geographically, and if there is a need to adopt new data definitions, for the Head Quarters reporting. If the old data definitions are going to be given up ultimately, and the merged organisations belong to the same geographical region, then only one layer will be required. This layer will grow ultimately consuming the individual organisations data marts / DWHs.
Functional integration is the most important piece in Telco Merger. This can be achieved through a careful alignment of function-wise / department-wise Metrics and KPIs. Asking the business users for new set of KPIs and Metrics is usually tricky in a merger. There will be lot of confusion in terms of which ones to use, and if they have been standardised or not. This exercise has to be started with a set of standard Telco Departmental / Function-wise KPIs & Metrics. This will also help in harmonising the data definitions and help in gathering the requirements quickly.
Technical Integration is the final most important piece in Telco Merger. Most of the Telco would already have some cutting edge BI Tools in place. Technology stack would include Appliances, Statistical modelling tools, Reporting tools, ETL tools etc. One needs to focus on the scalable and high feature tools to enable both the business and technical teams to put them to a variety of uses. ETL tool should be selected based on some of the features like: load balancing, metadata workbench, metadata integration capabilities. Reporting tool should be chosen based on some of the features like: ability to provide ROLAP, MOLAP and HOLAP, ad hoc querying, standard reports, graphical ability, built-in statistical modelling, and ability to connect to multiple databases. Appliance should be selected based on the scalability, cost and performance. However, in most of the cases, we have observed that technology stack selection is taken up at the enterprise level to obtain huge discounts on license and upgrade prices. It is also common for some of the departments to take up some specialised reporting tools with added mash-up capabilities to reduce the development efforts and reduce the licensing costs.
