Improving telecom customer experiences with AI/ML-powered insights

The race to increase global mobile broadband access has been on for years. As more people depend daily on fast, reliable internet, telecom companies are looking to continuously improve and expand their services. The challenge for many is: how to accomplish this on a massive scale quickly and cost effectively?

The answer lies in advanced data analytics.

MTN Group is the leading telecom provider in Africa, offering voice, data, fintech, and enterprise solutions to over 270 million customers across 19 nations. It was one of the first companies on the continent to build a data science platform that would de-silo information across all markets.

Let’s look at how MTN Group uses Google Cloud solutions and partners with Deloitte to achieve its goals and maximize the impacts.

A first for African telecoms

MTN Group launched its Advanced Data Analytics Management (ADAM) Platform to transform how it gathers, analyzes, and uses data across the business.

“The ADAM Platform is complex, but its objective is simple: improve customer experiences by understanding their preferences in near real-time and tailoring experiences accordingly,” says Mohanoe Mokhitli, General Manager, Data and Analytics, Data & Analytics Centre of Excellence (DACoE), at MTN Group. “Google Cloud was the clear choice as the technology foundation due to its connectivity across Africa, scalability, and analytics tools.”

The company chose to work with partner Deloitte to build a blueprint of the platform on Google Cloud that could be deployed in all 19 markets it operates in. Deloitte provided expertise in Google Cloud solutions and a presence across many African nations to help guide the project from its inception.

“Deloitte brought the skills to make this project work at scale, helping us to cover everything from change management and decision-making to the actual platform tooling,” says Mokhitli. “The partnership just makes sense. We’ve benefited from a lot of knowledge transfer thanks to how closely we’ve worked with Deloitte on the ADAM Platform.”   

Deloitte brought essential expertise as MTN looked to adopt a new technology foundation. An important focus was on ensuring the platform was built efficiently and could scale to handle the enormous data quantities associated with 270 million subscribers.

Tapping into the power of AI/ML

The ADAM Platform relies on BigQuery as its central data warehouse, as well as several other Google Cloud analytics technologies such as Dataproc to accelerate the process of capturing data and gaining insights. Vertex AI has been crucial to the platform’s success, helping make sense of billions of records quickly and efficiently.

With the ADAM Platform up and running, MTN is now processing roughly 4 trillion data records monthly and democratizing insights to derive palpable business value from its data.

“In addition to the sheer power of Vertex AI and BigQuery, we have also benefited from its ease of use,” says Dr Quentin Williams, Associate Director at Deloitte Consulting. “With Google Cloud, we can make sure MTN business users can take advantage of the technologies regardless of their IT experience. This has helped to drive adoption among our business units, which translates to a greater customer impact.”

Furthermore, ADAM enables MTN Group to gain richer, more timely insights into customer needs. For example, sales teams can use insights from the ADAM Platform to decide which services should be packaged together in offers to certain customers.

With access to the platform, data-driven decision making is now more prevalent and streamlined across the MTN Group, as previously siloed initiatives are connected to increase visibility across all markets. Teams benefit because there is less redundant work and they can take quicker action on what’s working well. The result is that each business unit can contribute more to building customer satisfaction and loyalty and reducing churn.

Deloitte and Google Cloud have helped MTN Group manage the technical demands of the project so that MTN Group employees can focus on educating users and increasing adoption.

“If you look back at our business when this project kicked off and compare it to where we are now, we have closed a significant skills gap that held us back from data-driven decision making,” says Mokhitli. “With help from Deloitte and Google Cloud, the ADAM Platform increases our ability to build our business on data-driven insights, which ultimately provides our customers with even better experiences.”