Telecom operators may have access to big data today; but they need VAS (Mobile Value Added Services) companies to analyze, identify and manipulate it into viable business opportunities.
This is why collaboration is absolutely essential between both industries, argued Amr Shady at the 2014 VAS Africa conference in Johannesburg.
‘Telecom operators must view the VAS companies as their partners,’ he said. ‘As an operator, if I don’t have the resources internally to sift through and analyze the data, then I should push my VAS partner to provide the insight and analytics.’
‘What’s going to happen in the industry is that these VAS companies are going to start capturing a new set of data that the operator doesn’t have’ he added. ‘Companies in the industry will be competing with data, and competing for data.’
TA Telecom predicts that the mobile industry will focus on capturing value from big data over the next five years, which is by no means a small task if companies don’t have the right expertise and tools on board.
‘Whether you’re using small or big data you’ll need to have a unified structure, the right people and the right tools to be able to work with and analyze the data,’ Shady said.
For a company to move from small data to big data, it must first ask whether or not it treats data as a core asset to begin with. This will focus the organization’s efforts in treating and manipulating the data in order to capture value from it.
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