Amdocs, on Thursday announced the findings of a global survey which highlights the unchartered potential of adopting business intelligence (BI) and analytics tools within one of the most critical business processes, the order-to-activation (O2A) process. The independent research, conducted by Ovum on behalf of Amdocs, found a wide gap between what service providers believe they can achieve by utilizing data collected during the O2A process, and the actual capabilities they have in place to leverage this data for predicting and proactively preventing ordering issues in order to ensure a flawless customer experience.
 
“Data collected during the O2A process enables operators to identify root causes that can serve not only to improve the process itself, but also to improve key business outcomes, such as profitability and the customer experience. To realize these benefits, service providers need to apply robust BI and analytics predictive and prevention tools in order to know what to look for, and correctly predict and prevent order fallout”, said Clare McCarthy, Lead Analyst Telco operations & IT at Ovum.

“We are seeing service providers shifting from traditional strategies focused on improving operational parameters within the O2A process, such as order handling time, to predictive models aimed at proactively preventing issues. Such prediction and prevention capabilities, as offered by the Amdocs O2A managed services solution, will become increasingly important as players continue to merge into bigger and more complex multi-play operations, while looking to offer the best customer experience”, said Rebecca Prudhomme, Amdocs vice president for product and solutions marketing.

Key findings:
 
• There’s wide consensus that data collected during the O2A process can be leveraged to improve service provider business outcomes in the following areas: customer care (82 percent), revenue leakage prevention (82 percent) and proactive order fallout prevention (76 percent).

• While 72 percent of service providers believe an ability to predict order fallout within the O2A process is key for business outcomes such as revenue leakage prevention and a positive customer experience, 57 percent do not apply BI and analytics tools for this purpose.

• Surprisingly, 52 percent of service providers do not analyze or actively measure key performance indicators (KPIs) associated with the O2A process (e.g. number of complaint calls related to orders, activation lead time) in real time or near real-time. Without this ability, they cannot track and predict trends in behavior that will impact the O2A process. More so, only 13 percent of respondents use automation across 80-100 percent of the process, with the majority relying heavily on manual handling of order issues.

• There’s a growing complexity within service provider ecosystems related to the number of departments and channels involved in the O2A process, further driving the need for dedicated BI/analytics tools that can simplify data analysis. Fifty-four percent of service providers acknowledged that they generate between three to five daily reports tracking data collected during the O2A process, with 40 percent having more than five different internal teams (e.g. sales, validation, project managers, care, marketing, customer care) and 36 percent having more than five indirect channels involved.

The Amdocs O2A managed services solution provides a holistic, automated, analytics-based approach to assess, manage and proactively optimize the entire O2A process. Since the launch of the solution last year, Amdocs has signed multiple new service agreements to manage the O2A process for more than 35 million subscribers at service providers in Europe, North and Latin America and Asia.

The research was conducted earlier this year by Ovum on behalf of Amdocs, and surveyed decision-makers involved in the O2A process from 100 service providers with multiple lines of business based in Europe, Middle East and Africa (45 percent), North America (30 percent) and Latin America (25 percent).