Analytics to Drive Big Changes in Telco CEM, Heavy Reading Finds

NEW YORK, March 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Customer experience management (CEM) is poised for significant growth this year in the telecom sector, as more operators look to deploy holistic CEM systems that use analytics to improve customer service, increase customer satisfaction and enhance profitability, according to a major new report from Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com), the research division of Light Reading (www.lightreading.com).

The CEM-Driven Telco: Next Steps for Adoption looks at the state of the CEM market from both operator and vendor perspectives and explores the next steps in telco adoption of CEM. The benefits of CEM in terms of churn prevention, new upselling opportunities and new customer acquisition through customer advocacy are now well documented. Telcos are at a critical point in their relationship with customers, and 2014 is set to be a key year for grasping the opportunity to improve their market standing.

As telcos increase their interest in and spending on CEM, growing numbers of vendors are polishing their CEM stories and/or entering the CEM market. This report profiles nine leading CEM systems vendors that either have built or are working on CEM systems that give a holistic view of the customer across telco domains.

"Telco spending on CEM is rising as more operators understand what CEM is and the benefits it can bring," explains Caroline Chappell, Senior Analyst with Heavy Reading and author of the report. "There are tremendous opportunities for telcos that get CE right, in terms of winning market share, creating customer stickiness and improving profitability and ARPU."

However, the automation of the CEM-driven telco is still in its infancy, Chappell notes. "Vendors and operators are using CEM system recommendations to drive process automation, but in very limited areas. Some vendors have developed sophisticated automation between their CEM and self-organizing network (SON) systems for near-real-time remediation of poor network experience, but vendors say most operator organizations can't support a high level of process automation yet."

Key findings of The CEM-Driven Telco: Next Steps for Adoption include the following:

The main barrier to CEM adoption is the difficulty of securing cross-organizational cooperation. Telcos still find it difficult to institute cross-domain sharing of data, establish a single view of the customer truth and tame BI/analytics tools and data sprawl.

The emerging TM Forum CEM models and Metrics Framework will help to formalize industry CEM practices. These models and framework may be largely vendor-driven and untested at present, but they do offer a common language and benchmarks for CEM that will help operators in need of a starting point. The TMF is soliciting feedback from a wide range of operators, which will help validate these tools.

Analytical applications that discover insights and generate recommendations within different operator domains are the new CEM vendor battleground. This is where the value within a CEM system resides, and CEM system vendors are competing to provide the broadest set of analytical applications that address the widest number of domains and the most "value-added" CE analytics that work out of the box.

CEM is becoming a large vendor market as smaller vendors are acquired. These include companies that can fill gaps in the domains that such vendors can address (such as Amdocs' acquisition of Actix), or that help CEM system vendors productize solutions that were largely based on generic technologies and custom engagements (such as IBM's acquisition of The Now Factory).

The CEM-Driven Telco: Next Steps for Adoption costs $3,995 and is published in PDF format. The price includes an enterprise license covering all of the employees at the purchaser's company.

For additional information, or to request a free executive summary of this report, please contact:

David Williams
Global Director of Sales, Research
Heavy Reading
858-829-8612
[email protected]

About Heavy Reading
Heavy Reading (www.heavyreading.com), the research division of Light Reading, offers deep analysis of emerging telecom trends to network operators, technology suppliers, and investors. Its product portfolio includes in-depth reports that address critical next-generation technology and service issues, market trackers that focus on the telecom industry's most critical technology sectors, exclusive worldwide surveys of network operator decision-makers that identify future purchasing and deployment plans, and a rich array of custom and consulting services that give clients the market intelligence needed to compete successfully in the global telecom industry.

About Light Reading
Light Reading (www.lightreading.com) combines its research-led online communities and targeted events portfolio to help those in the global communications industry make informed decisions. Lightreading.com is the ultimate source for telecom analysis for more than 350,000 subscribers each month, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. Light Reading produces targeted communications events and focused one-day conferences each year for cable, mobile, and wireline executives across five continents.

SOURCE Heavy Reading