Enhancing customer experience

with subscriber intelligence

The Subscriber Intelligence Framework –
seeing, analyzing and acting on
customer behavior as it happens
Introduction
Throughout the world, operators are consolidating
subscriber data with one purpose in mind – to create
consumer insight and act on it in real-time. Creating a
single, unified view of all your customer profiles has
become a priority of the first order, but the industry is
evolving beyond this – from profile consolidation to
the use of subscriber intelligence. This move creates
an open subscriber-centric network, where an opera-
tor, utilizing his own and third-party applications, can
innovate around customer network and behavioral
data such as availability and location information.
Immediate benefits are obtainable through creating
more relevant and meaningful customer experiences
and a platform that creates interta for business model
innovation. This is in line with the Telco 2.0TM initia-
tive, which envisages operators taking up the role of
a trusted identity, profile and privacy broker as the
telecommunication market evolves even further. The
aim is to create an open third-party eco-system plat-
form consisting of multiple suites of applications de-
signed to deliver value to the operator, the application
provider and the customer in a non-hierarchical fash-
ion. Right at the heart of this important industry transi-
tion is real-time network data which can be used to
better understand customer behaviour.
This paper deals with the current and potential usage
of consolidated subscriber network data. It is intend-
ed to provide an insight into emerging techniques and
philosophies of how such data can effectively contrib-
ute to a healthy subscriber-centric business that al-
lows operators to capitalize on information that they
already possess. Examples of use cases will be cited
and an overview of the Nokia Siemens Networks ap-
proach and ensuing solutions will be given.
2 Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence
Bit-pipe or intelligent-pipe?
Throughout the world, mobile operators are facing a
frustrating predicament. They want their business to
rapidly evolve towards a customer-centric operation,
but the customer service, marketing and value-added
services they offer largely ignore the uniqueness of
the individuals they serve. Their existing technology
infrastructure must therefore also evolve to meet the
demands of a customer-orientated market in which
subscribers increasingly base their choice of provider
on the quality and ease of use of services offered.
Personalization, the subjective identification with a
provider who “can offer me more”, has to a large ex-
tent not yet been exploited as it could be by opera-
tors. Furthermore, lack of growth in voice revenues,
combined with the increasing trend for customers to
surf off the operators network to their favorite web
services, have placed operators in an unenviable po-
sition when it comes to competing with resurgent IT
companies and other media providers eager to sup-
ply the abundance of Internet-based services and
products to mobile consumers.
If operators continue to do nothing to address these
issues, they will inevitably become the dreaded “bit-
pipe”, with the added value coming from elsewhere.
But there is an alternative. The operator has the op-
portunity to become the “intelligent pipe”, an intelli-
gent pipe that opens up subscriber network data for
the benefit of consumers.
The intelligent pipe is the future. It is the only mecha-
nism that lets the operator deliver end-to-end servic-
es tailored to the specific situation, circumstances
and needs of each customer.
 The window of opportunity

Over the years operators have invested huge

amounts of money in off-line business intelligence.
Unfortunately, these systems often do not have ac-
cess to the real-time customer data stored in the net-
work. Moreover, they often have no atomic level cus-
tomer profile data that allows them to better
understand their customer’s current circumstances
and historical behavior. Operators, in fact, are sitting
on a goldmine – terabytes of high quality customer
data – but their methods of data management and
real-time analysis fail to unlock its full value. All too of-
ten they are victims of unwieldy processes where po-
tentially valuable data is often turned into critical
knowledge far too late for any meaningful action to be
provided for the customer. The “window of opportuni-
ty” is being lost. A new form of interaction with the
customer is called for, and here information on the
customer is of prime importance. One of the corner-
stones of a new approach to the customer is real-time
subscriber intelligence.

“Window of
opportunity”
Streamed data
Event

Information value deteriorates

Information Value

Extract

Transform
Load
Query Result

Seconds Minutes Days Weeks

Figure 1: The window of opportunity

Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence 3

Real-time Subscriber Intelligence

A recent poll asked operators “What are the most rel-
evant areas of subscriber data intelligence in your
opinion?” Most felt that customer profiling was the top
priority with a rating of 76 % (Market Research Q3/
2008, commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks).
And for good reason – customer profiling helps in un-
derstanding and acting on customer behavior, thus
increasing both satisfaction and loyalty. It also lays
the foundation for the operator to become a trusted
partner for Internet businesses, in a world where the
boundaries between the Web and the network are
dissolving.
Operators actually possess a huge volume of profile
and network data but generally struggle to identify
and abstract meaning from it.
The telecommunications environment has an abun-
dance of data streams, such as identities, session
status, call setup, location area, roaming, preferenc-
es, subscriptions, and presence data. These streams
of data hold precious information about subscribers
that amongst other things indicate whether they are
on-line, available to contact, travelling abroad, on the
move and what other identities they are also known
as. Today, these streams of data cannot be queried
in real-time as they are generated. Indeed, the vol-
ume of this dynamic atomic level data is often too
large to store in an enterprise data warehouse, is only
available in an off-line environment or may not be
available at all. Precious data is frequently lost as it is
filtered, transformed and slowly batch loaded into the
store. This means that the potential value of the data
is eroded as time goes by and the window of opportu-
nity to interact with the customer, and the relevance
of this information, is lost.

User Names Fixed No. Current/Average Balance Busy in call or Available online

HLR SDP IDM Prepaid HLR AAA

My Identities My Balance My Context

HSS AAA Online Charging HSS Switch

MSISDN IMSI IP Address Purchase History Country Time Zone On/Off

MAC IMEI UAProf Name Age Date of Birth
What if your intelligent pipe
HLR EIR Switch CRM Data could:
My Devices My Personal Data • Automatically update your
web community with your
HTTP AAA Profile Store
whereabouts and a city
Current/recently used devices Adress Id No. Preferences snapshot when you travel?
Cell VLR area Diverts Call Waiting Voicemail Static User Roam Frequently • Automatically notify people
to leave a voicemail
HLR GMLS Switch HLR GMLS Switch HLR AAA Switch
message when you are
My Location My Services My Behaviour called abroad while roaming
at night?
Profile Store Profile Store SDP

Coordinates Portal Messaging Data Use several high end devices

Figure 2: key requirements for mobile backhaul

4 Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence

Utilizing subscriber data efficiently
If the data can be made available in real-time, the op-
erator can dramatically enhance the experience of his
customer. Bringing profile data into a single central-
ized real-time data repository for your first lead appli-
cation is the initial step towards creating a treasure
trove of intelligence data. The repository can store
activities such as identities, location, devices, prefer-
ences and network usage status. The second step on
the road to effective use of subscriber data (and also
a step on the road to Telco2.0TM) is to implement a
subscriber data management solution that consoli-
dates all essential subscriber profile information
across an array of networks and services. This in it-
self realizes massive cost efficiencies, achieved by
reducing data silos and proprietary interfaces be-
tween applications and the data they require. An ef-
fective subscriber data management solution then
sets the scene for the third step – the use of subscrib-
er intelligence.
Understanding what subscriber intelligence requires
The methods historically chosen by many operators
to store data can be loosely categorized as enterprise
data warehouses (EDWs). These are typically very
good at storing large sets of historical data for billing
and high level off-line business intelligence. Usually
information arrives at the EDW over time, in large
batches, and is eventually loaded into the system
through a transformation process which can take from
hours to several days. Reports can take minutes or
hours to run due to the very large datasets, and gen-
erating ad-hoc reports can often take longer amounts
of time. EDWs are optimized for very large, relatively
static datasets, where online customer profile access
and analysis is not the focus.
On the other hand, subscriber intelligence requires
access to both the subscriber’s current profile and
their history. The current profile allows applications to
access the subscriber current status, such as “my
location” or “I’m on-line now”. The history, on the oth-
er hand, provides context, for example “which devices
do I use”, “what capabilities do they have”, “let my
friends know where I was travelling last week” or “tell
Smart backhaul can profitably meet the mobile traffic boom
customer care that I had difficulty going on-line to-
day”. In other words, the analysis of events as they
arrive – and the correlation of that event with other
relevant events – can immediately offer benefits to
customers. Subscriber intelligence can be further en-
hanced through a ‘sense and respond’ capability.
This means that an immediate response can be pro-
vided to a customer event and an action can be tak-
en. This technique is useful in many circumstances,
particularly for personalization using dynamically gen-
erated customer segmentations or for creating trig-
gers when the customer’s behavior changes.
The key criteria here is that the data repository must
have diverse capabilities such as real-time load per-
formance for the loading of streamed profile data up-
dates, while retaining the ability to store large
amounts of historical dynamic profile data. Real-time
subscriber intelligence databases, however, require
specific tailored load and access methods to preserve
their performance characteristics. Extracting data that
can be used in this way therefore requires efficient
and extremely fast techniques. If the term “real-time”
can be defined to include access to the current profile
with concurrent access to the historical profile, and at
the same time still permit sub-second customer re-
sponses within the “window of opportunity”, then this
opens up even greater prospects of enhancing the
customer experience.
Imagine that your i-pipe could:
• Immediately detect when you insert your
SIM card into a new device. It knows if
you have ever used that device before and
if you have not, it offers you instructions
on how to automatically configure it
• a device with potentially faulty firmware
can be immediately detected and the
customer notified via SMS to contact the
operator’s technical support center
5
Positioning real-time intelligence

While a high performance unified data repository is a
necessary prerequisite for consolidating subscriber
data, and ensures the storing and processing in real-
time of the entire network data, it is not a complete
solution in its own right. Many other applications must
be capable of simultaneously using this data. In es-
sence, two differing requirements must be met – the
need to serve the network and services in real-time in
the bottom layer represented by the real-time data
repository, and the need to allow complex data que-
ries for real-time analytics, business intelligence, and
reporting in a middle layer. As shown in the diagram
below, the middle layer not only interfaces to atomic
level shadowing data, but can also interface to data
stored in other network and OSS/BSS databases
such as charging systems, provisioning systems and
the data warehouse.
For these reasons, a further element is required to
complete the framework. This framework includes
several key elements, for example database probes,
a real-time data ETL (extract, transform and load)
process and a massively parallel processing (MPP)
relational database which shadows the in-memory
repository at high speed. It utilizes industry-standard
interfaces such as Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC) and employs the ubiquitous SQL query lan-
guage, therefore presenting an open and commonly
used interface to the outside world. It can therefore
communicate with existing historical, archiving or leg-
acy systems and at the same time open up real-time
event data from, for example, the unique Nokia Sie-
mens Networks One-NDS data repository to allow
sub-second response to customer behavior, sensing
this as it happens.

Nokia Siemens Networks calls this framework the

Subscriber intelligence Framework.

Historical trend analysis

Historical Data
and business intelligence
Business intelligence
Data
Warehouse Traditional Customer segmentation
Warehouse
Repository
Revenue recognition
Profiling Real-time Reporting, Dashboards
Profiling and Modelling
Complex queries
Intelligence
Subscriber
Intellligence Usage analysis
Shared data asset
Profiling
Repository Elapsed time
Data consistency
Network, Device, Service and
Subscription Profile Data
Single view
Network
Real-time and Services
Profiling
Real-time data Repository

Figure 3: key requirements for mobile backhaul

6 Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence

The Subscriber Intelligence Framework

The Subscriber Intelligence Framework (SIF) goes
beyond the capabilities of subscriber data manage-
ment to address an emerging market that permits
network operators to better analyze, understand, and
capitalize on mobile subscriber current status and
historical behavior.
The framework provides open and secure access to
consolidated customer profile data across network
elements. It is based on the dual principles of real-
time profile access and real-time subscriber behavior
analysis. The subscriber profile is a subscriber-centric
data model that describes the characteristics and be-
havior of individual subscribers. As a framework, the
SIF solution provides core functionality and a set of
basic services that can be built upon it to create spe-
cific applications. A deployed SIF solution will support
multiple applications of this type. The functionality
provided by the SIF solution includes data integration,
data management and event processing while also
offering security, resilience and scalability features.
SIF use cases include:
The SIF solution provides a stream-processing event-
driven architecture that shadows (mirrors) the in-
memory database. This architecture allows data to be
queried as the event happens without affecting critical
in-memory procedures such as call setup, and en-
sures that any appropriate action, such as that to be
taken by marketing, network operations, customer
service or revenue assurance, can take place imme-
diately.
At the heart of SIF is a process that permits fast data
transfer between One-NDS and SIF by transforming
the X.500 protocols used by One-NDS into the table
structures used by the Relational Database Manage-
ment System (RDBMS) system. It is this mechanism
of mirroring network data, by means of a high per-
formance RDBMS system, that unleashes the value
of the network customer data which today is land-
locked in network silos.

• Reporting:
• For network elements such as the HLR, HSS,
AAA, BSF, MNP, and EIR
• For the general customer profile repository
• For third-party network elements and applica-
tions deployed on One-NDS
• For Service Delivery Platforms deployed on
One-NDS
• A continuous profile dashboard for customer
experience intelligence
• Profile auditing with data quality verification
• Event triggers based on customer behavior
• Personalization and targeting with real-time profile
analysis
• Profile self-care through customer self-care profile
management
• Partner performance portal, a 3rd-party customer
feedback portal
• Enhancement of web services with open network
profile data

Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence 7

Putting subscriber data to work
A framework that can process real-time information
without delay and respond within the window of op-
portunity to external events or trends, while still being
able to access historical data, opens up hitherto un-
exploited possibilities to enhance the customer’s ex-
perience. After all, the customer’s service experience
is one of the most important factors for differentiation
and increasing usage. A deeper understanding of
customer needs and perceptions enables a stronger
and more profitable customer relationship and avoids
potential relegation to bit-pipe status. These possibili-
ties can be taken advantage of today through the
power unleashed by the Subscriber Intelligence
Framework.
The following concrete use cases represent just a few
of the many immediate opportunities that the operator
can capitalize on – with each one not only equaling
an opportunity to make money, but also a further step
on the road of transformation into the i-pipe, the sub-
scriber-centric Telco2.0TM environment.
Share while on the move – the customer goes
abroad and family and friends are kept up to date
with their whereabouts on their community wall wher-
ever they travel, whether to London, Paris or Las Ve-
gas. Friends are notified that “Jo is in London … last
updated at 11:04 hrs” with automatic status updates
from their community website. You check out which
friends are in the vicinity, meet up with them and then
publish a picture of yourselves having fun.
Community communiqué – a customer downloads
a new network-enhanced address book to their
phone; imagine a downloadable Java application like
that on the iphone. When they scroll down their list of
contacts it automatically tells them when the person
was last available and where they currently are (for
your friends only). Some friends are abroad in foreign
time zones, others are in the same area as I am close
by, and some are on the move. You try to call a friend
but are prompted that their local time is 3am as they
are roaming, and so you are asked if you want to
leave a voice message instead.
8 Smart backhaul can profitably meet the mobile traffic boom
Surf with a smile – the customer downloads a portal
website application onto a mobile device. As part of
the registration process they allow personalized rec-
ommendations. The customer shares their profile
anonymously, receiving localized recommendations
based on their behavioral segmentation and demo-
graphics. Suddenly, these recommendations have
become much more useful and informative.
Behavioral assistance – the operator detects that
the customer has an issue with their mobile Internet
settings as they keep failing to connect to the Inter-
net. The customer receives a call which asks them to
“press 1 to reset their device settings or press 2 for
technical assistance”. Or the customer can’t reach
someone. Their phone is off, but they ask the network
to notify them when the customer next turns their
handset on.
Machine to machine connections – embedding a
SIM-type card into a machine opens up a vast range
of possibilities. Manage vehicle fleets and toll collec-
tion, remotely meter utilities such as power, water
and street lighting, track location-dependent rental
cars or monitor mobile emergency medical equip-
ment. With over a billion machines around the world,
the potential is almost limitless.
Imagine that:
• The customer has consistent data session
failures (authentication failure), indicating
that there might be an issue with the
device configuration and is offered a reset
of device data service settings
• The operator builds up a database of
inbound roamers in order to identify
repetitive high value customers, so when
one of these customers returns they are
offered an incentive to keep them on the
network
Application enablement for eco-systems

An “eco-system” is a suite of applications, such as Examples include:

those mentioned above, that communicate with SIF
via its standardized SQL-driven application program- • Recommendation Engines
ming interface. This avoids duplication of interfacing Support for engines that trigger recommendations
effort, meaning that investment is amortized over the based upon pre-defined event conditions
entire eco-system of applications. Data access to this
eco-system of applications is open, thus supporting • Advertising
multiple concurrent applications or those that can Support for 3rd party advertising; provides the
query multiple event streams in real-time. The appli- source of real-time behavior and event triggers
cations, in fact, can gain enormously in scope and for adverts
power when these streams are combined with con-
solidated atomic level historical usage data. Another • Community Analysis
important point is that this element of the framework Real-time maintenance of the customer’s circle
can be constructed to allow alert conditions to be set. of influence
These can then trigger applications when event con-
ditions are met by SIF’s “sense and respond architec- • Customer Profiling Algorithms
ture”. Support for innovative third-party customer profiling
algorithms

• Network Performance Monitoring

Real-time network event triggers & usage data
for performance monitoring

PRINTABLE LOGOS PRINTABLE LOGOS PRINTABLE LOGOS

NEEDED NEEDED NEEDED
What if:
• The user profile (age and
credit check) could be
My current Age: Credit I‘m online Just landed Sign me in; share
city is ... Worthy? & available in Paris my preferences
Enable the eco-system shared with a casino site
to authenticate that the
HLR Profit AAA HLR IDM customer can be registered
Store
• A high value customer who
Web services, widgets, content and apps. has the phone active most
Ubiquitious device support of the time switches it off
for a long period, and the
operator can detect this
and attempt to contact the
Open standard APIs:
Secure Telecom Assets Exposure APIs
Application Certification customer to understand
why they are not using the
Real-time, secure, event
service
Network Subscriber Intelligence triggering, anonymous identities

Figure 4: key requirements for mobile backhaul

Smart backhaul can profitably meet the mobile traffic boom 9

The enhanced customer experience –
building on an open framework
The essence of the Subscriber Intelligence Frame-
work solution is the provision of an open framework
so that the operator can share this usage data across
many applications. As shown, SIF achieves this goal
by providing an open SQL interface with access con-
trols and a virtualized schema. Nokia Siemens Net-
works itself possesses an internal suite of data analyt-
ics applications that can harvest SIF data and present
this in processed form for other applications to make
use of. The company is currently building a third-party
eco-system of applications which, for example, could
be used to enable the operator to offer proactive cus-
tomer care with tariffs targeted to match the custom-
er’s willingness to pay, or offer personalized pricing
bundles.
10 Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence
SIF is both complementary with, and an ideal catalyst
for, the Telco2.0TM initiative, designed to bring about
change in the telecommunications-media-technology
sector. As can be seen in the examples touched on,
it is possible to make money – and safeguard the fu-
ture – by addressing new types of applications, new
fields of business and new types of customers. The
choice whether to do so lies in the hands of you, the
operator. It’s a straightforward choice – become a bit-
pipe for others to profit from or take up the challenge
and enter the new world of the intelligent pipe by uti-
lizing subscriber intelligence.
Why Nokia Siemens Networks

Nokia Siemens Networks is the world’s leading pro-
vider of subscriber data management solutions with
around 1 billion subscribers at 70 customers in 46
countries. It provides a complete Subscriber Data
Management solution including the One-NDS unified
data repository, multiple NSN and 3rd party applica-
tions such as HLR, HSS, MNP, EIR, BSF, AAA and
additional solutions such as Identity Management and
SIF., The company possesses profound expertise in
the provision of an open, subscriber-centered archi-
tecture, built specifically to meet the needs of mobile,
fixed and converged networks.
The SIF solution opens customer network data so
that it can be used be a suite of analytics applications
and business intelligence applications. Nokia Siemens
also provides TDW, which is the centralized, multi-
vendor, multi-technology reporting solution providing
easy and accurate information on subscriber and
service experience.
Backed by 20,000 services professionals offering
service, and a local footprint in over 150 countries, the
company takes on end-to-end responsibility for com-
plete solutions and is proud of its ability to deliver cus-
tomer-specific solutions with verified functionality that
are on-time and on-specification.

3rd party products

HLR HSS AAA SDP

SMSC MMSC Web Adverts

Char-
SPAM IdM WAP ging

Enterprise Application�
management integration�
framework framework

Policy Subscriber�
management intelligence�
Open, subscriber-centered
framework framework
architecture, built specifically
to meet the needs of mobile,
IdM
fixed and converged networks

MNP EIR SDP NPS

AAA IDM HSS HLR

Figure 5: key requirements for mobile backhaul

Enhancing customer experience with subscriber intelligence 11

Nokia Siemens Networks Corporation
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Visiting address:
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