Case Study
| Client | Mahindra Comviva |
| Product | Telecom Revenue Assurance on CUBOT |
| Categories | Telecom, Revenue Assurance, SMS Hub |
| Data Sources | SMS Transaction Logs |
| Metrics of Focus | Successfully delivered SMSes, Revenue by Source/Destination Operators, Cost-Optimal Routes |
| Time to Deliver | Approximately 3 Months |
Mahindra Comviva is a telecom solutions company that develops, operates and manages a SMS Hub for Telecom Operators. The SMS Hub is an SMS global routing technology that receives SMSes sent by a person or application through a Source Operator, and routes the SMSes to a Destination Operator that in turn delivers it to the intended recipient.
Typically the need for SMSes to be routed through the SMS Hub involve messaging across countries and regions, as the network of Telecom Operators is location focused. Therefore the SMS Hub allows them to connect with other network Operators to reach out to more countries.
The implementation for SMS Hub reporting involved processing transaction log files, pre-processing activities and ETL, calculating key metrics, and reporting them through visualizations in CUBOT. Several terabytes of information were processed daily and ready for finance users to make use of, within 2-3 hours.
We made use of custom visualizations as well to plot key trends in routes through map based visualizations that represented route information. These helped provide clearer insight into cost effective and reliable routes to take for delivery. The eventual outcome of this analysis would be to automate message delivery based on route cost – so that Source Operators could take the low cost route to deliver their messages, and in effect the SMS Hub increases profitability for Airtel.
The SMS Hub makes use of Operators in the desired destinations to deliver messages to mobile numbers. Therefore destination operators need to be paid for the message delivery service they provide and the costs for these were accounted for through transaction information. Volume of messages, price point information, and the combination of destination operators required to deliver the message were key variables in calculating the cost of the service. Information on payables was made available daily through the automated calculation of payables.
In the same manner, Airtel receives income from Source Operators that opt to use its hub services to deliver a message. The SMS hub service fees needed to be calculated, based on several parameters of logic, mainly including the source and destination of the message. Message fees were then assessed over various time-periods in order to bill Source Operators.
Message failures were an area of interest as Airtel loses out on income when messages do not get delivered. Patterns were analyzed within the data – in order to understand operators, routes as well as hot spot areas with lower delivery rates.
As the SMS Hub charges a fixed fee to Source Operators, and has limited control over the service fees levied by Destination Operators, the need to lower costs to Destination Operators exists. This business model means that certain routes can be loss-making, while others could be extremely profitable. Minimizing delivery costs by analyzing various permutations and combinations of routes to deliver messages by, and utilizing the route with the lowest cost, has great impact for the SMS Hub Operations.
Challenges |
Solutions |
Product Module |
|---|---|---|
| Large Volumes of Data to Process | Tool and Process-Design Optimized for Large Data sets | Vizualytics Services CUBOT ETL |
| Calculation of fees for each message based on logical inputs needs to be done | ETL, Programmatic Calculation that can be Scheduled | CUBOT ETL Vizualytics Services |
| Data not available in time | Scheduled data processing & calculations that take 2-3 Hours | CUBOT ETL |
| Understanding route information is complex | Easier, simpler visualization methods | Vizualytics Custom Visualizations |
| Lack of insight into relationships, patterns and category-wise information within the SMS Hub Data | Data Modelling and Drill-Down features | CUBOT Analyze CUBOT Designer |