IBM today said it assisted Indian telecom operator Idea Cellular to transform its postpaid business.
Utilizing IBM business consulting expertise, Idea Cellular improved mobile customer service, while reduced operational costs and grew revenue.
Inspite of an addition of 14.8 million subscribers with a 13 percent increase in the calendar year 2013, Idea Cellular has stayed focused on improving quality of subscriber addition.
The Aditya Birla group company’s ARPU has increased by Rs 11 to Rs. 169 (7 percent improvement) from Rs 158 in Q3FY13 and blended subscriber churn fell from 6.9 percent in Q3 FY13 to 5.6 percent in Q3 FY14.
Idea Cellular earlier said its third quarter revenue in fiscal 2014 rose 18.6 percent to Rs 6,613 crore from the year-ago quarter. Its net profit grew 105 percent to Rs 467 crore. In the third quarter, Idea Cellular’s mobility business contributed Rs 6536 crore (Rs 5476 crore) revenue, ILD Rs 103 crore (Rs 113 crore) and tower business Rs 618 crore (Rs 646 crore). Idea does not share specific revenue from postpaid business.
IBM did not share details on specific benefits to Idea Cellular.
Mobile number portability has helped Idea Cellular in adding customer base. Idea has a net gain of 8.4 million MNP customers as on December 31, 2013 from other existing telecom operators with around one out of every four existing mobile customers, who chooses to port out, preferring to shift to Idea services.
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The enterprise IT vendor is currently in talks with Bharti Airtel, a rival of Idea Cellular, to renew its contract.
Idea Cellular’s postpaid transformation program is part of a 10-year business transformation deal signed in March 2007 to transform Idea’s business processes and IT infrastructure.
IBM said Idea Cellular implemented a new customer relationship management system as well as improved Billing and Payments system. New data insights and intelligence resulting from these systems now provide the basis for differentiating customer service at key touch points and uncovering critical cross-sell opportunities.
Prakash Paranjape, chief information officer, Idea Cellular, said: “As Idea continues to grow and expand services across India, this transformation will enable us realize our business goals and offer better, more innovative products to our postpaid customers.”
IBM assisted Idea to standardize information technology processes by introducing a centralized IT system with higher processing capacity and enhanced automation. IBM software including IBM Websphere, InfoSphere, Tivoli and DB2 Enterprise are being utilized to help Idea drive efficiency into customer service adding value to every asset, capability and strategy.
The standardized yet flexible IT architecture will also help accelerate time to market for new services and enable the company’s operations to keep pace with its accelerated business growth and expansion, IBM said.
