Optus is developing a series of analytics assets for internal use that it calls ‘one-click insights’, with the aim of being able to measure the impact of launching new product and service offerings faster.
Head of analytics and analytics tribe team lead Tim Rogers told an Economist Impact and Databricks webinar that the telco is “really just getting started” in terms of its aspirations for data analytics and AI use.
Rogers said that Optus had invested “quite heavily” to stand up a “customer 360” data asset that all business units could use to have common data-driven discussions.
“We’ve now got a data asset in place that, through its design principles, is well-governed and highly available, and the quality of it is first-class,” Rogers said.
The initial idea was to reduce effort put into interpretation and reconciliation “of different insights across business units”.
“We’ve taken a very big step away from having a fragmented ecosystem to a place now where we have trust in our data, we can mobilise it rapidly for different business use cases,” Rogers said.
“We’ve got a common conversation across the organisation now, and we can start to utilise that in more business use cases.”
Creating and measuring customer value that Optus creates is a key area of focus now, and the telco is particularly keen to reduce time-to-insight.
“We’ve been spending a bit of time developing some analytical assets that we’re calling ‘one click insights’,” Rogers said.
“Here, we’re trying to create that ability to generate insights rapidly so we can be more responsive to certain circumstances when they arise.”
Rogers said the telco wanted to get faster insight into the reception of its customers to new products and services.
Optus groups a lot of this product innovation under what it calls its “living network” - and Rogers indicated that measuring the impact of these initiatives faster is an area of focus.
“Whether we’re creating a new living network feature, or we’re trying to innovate and show customers what is possible with a new product or service, we want to be able to really rapidly measure the impact,” he said.
“Instead of having to perform a bespoke piece of analysis, we want to make sure that we can produce insights rapidly and create results that are consistent so that we can scale the impact across the organisation.
“Historically it would have taken us x days to produce a piece of analysis and now we can have insights on tap.
“Our business stakeholders understand what sort of insights they are getting, so we can partner with the business to be able to drive new sources of value for our customers.”
Similarly, Rogers said the telco is keen to measure the impact of its growing 5G network.
“For the 5G network, there’s been a lot of geospatial analytics that’s been performed,” he said.
“It’s not just about where do we place the next 5G tower - we can then utilise that for different segmentation opportunities and then how can we ensure the customer experience is optimal when we’re transitioning people to new and emerging innovative technologies.
“We can use those same data insights to ensure the customer’s experience across all the touchpoints of the organisation are consistent.
“The more that you can reuse your analytics and insights, the better, because you can then deploy your people on higher value-add activities, ensuring the outcomes you’re achieving are well considered and that you can maximise the value of your analytics.”
