Is billing data + AI the secret to service provider success?

Service providers are investing heavily in AI, but the success of these investments relies on having access to the right data. In telecoms, billing is one of the most important customer data sources. Find out why mastering billing data is a critical step in optimizing the success of AI, as well as the three main ways AI + billing data can be utilized.  

Billing is a major data source for AI

Through advanced algorithms, machine learning and deep neural networks, AI can instantly analyze datasets, identify patterns, and provide intelligent insights and predictions. To reach its full potential, though, massive amounts of data are required to train and refine the algorithms. As one of telecom’s most valuable customer data sources, billing data has enormous potential to empower AI to help service providers make better operational and commercial decisions, boost efficiency, optimize customer experience, transform support, reduce churn, develop more appealing products and offers, and more. 

Siloization is one of the biggest blockers to AI adoption and success

The problem that service providers face in making full use of their billing data for these types of AI-empowered initiatives is that it is fractured across multiple billing systems, trapped within proprietary silos, and organized in different billing structures. What AI/ML needs is for billing data to be readily accessible and contained in ONE place. 

Service providers understand the importance of getting the data layer right to benefit from a 360-degree, precise, current, and reliable view of customer behavior, but most are still struggling with siloization. This is partly due to the complexity of legacy back-end infrastructures and partly to do with internal organizational structures that still result in operational and commercial departments creating, collecting, and managing data separately.

Creating a single source of billing truth without disruption

This is where Calvi can help. Instead of replacing the entire billing stack, Calvi’s data platform allows service providers to connect to any billing silo – whether it’s been developed by an ISV or is home-built – extract the data, consolidate it with data from other billing silos and transform it into a usable format. All this is achieved with minimal disruption and no need to replace any underlying billing system(s). Next, our standard APIs allow service providers to access or export consolidated billing data to support all the AI use cases envisaged (as well as any future AI-empowered uses). 

With Calvi doing the heavy lifting of consolidating and harmonizing the data, it’s easy to unlock the full potential of billing data for AI-empowered initiatives and smarter analytics, which benefits service providers in three main ways by:

• Optimizing efficiency and reducing costs. AI boosts service providers’ ability to pinpoint and address hidden costs proactively – such as reducing churn (and the causes of churn, such as bill shock), encouraging faster payments, or minimizing customer support costs. McKinsey estimates that this could result in cost reductions of up to 30%.
• Adding value. AI can analyze billing data to discover new commercial insights, then automatically tailor responses and suggestions. Having detected an increase in data usage or associated mobile handsets, AI can identify small businesses that are growing, for example, which can then be flagged up to marketing for targeted offers.  
• Creating superior experiences – great customer experiences strongly correlate with increased loyalty. AI + billing data empowers service providers to make smarter, customer-centric decisions. Slower payments, for example, often indicate a customer who is struggling and needs extra help; while canceled mobile accounts may indicate an enterprise that is dissatisfied and getting ready to churn.

Billing data is a highly valuable data set for AI-empowered initiatives that can unlock unprecedented opportunities for service providers. But it can only do this if data is readily available and organized into a single source of billing truth. Calvi can help you rapidly access and organize your billing data to fuel your future AI plans. If you could get all of your billing data in a usable, consistent format in one place, what would you do with it? Why not contact Calvi to discuss this and find out how we can help you turn your plans into reality!