By HP’s Nigel Upton

You're sitting on a gold mine. In fact, with the recent wild fluctuations in commodity prices, the information you've got tucked away in your customer data might be even better. Companies in communications and media, more than those in virtually any other industry, already possess a vast array of consumer data. In capturing customer transactions – from patterns of service usage to billing choices to the services chosen – your customer data paints a detailed portrait of both individual consumers and of your customer base as a whole.

The trick is turning that information into actionable insight. In today's turbulent economy and competitive marketplace, if you're not fully leveraging this vital store of information, you're leaving money on the table. New competitors are entering the playing field, powered by innovative technologies that have enabled them to immediately compete with established players. Unfortunately, too many communications and media companies still rely on yesterday's network controls and business models. Many are aware that revenue is going begging, but are constrained by their legacy infrastructure and disparate processes and unable to capture it. That has to change.

Here are five ways that more effectively leveraging customer data can help you to grow your business:

1. Monetize customer transactions. Analysis of customer data in real-time, perhaps through real-time charging solutions, can provide valuable insight into consumer behavior by "showing" what customers are doing while they're doing it. That enables the delivery of targeted marketing to the right customer at the right time. Plus, you can use compiled customer data to more accurately predict, track and analyze the outcomes of marketing spending.
2. Capture more revenue from service usage. Today, every operational process and capital investment is being scrutinized for ROI. Customer interactions are dissected to see where and how the experience can be improved to increase cross-sell and up-sell, as well as reduce churn. Analysis of customer activity can highlight which services are, or should, produce results and which should be scrapped. As competition intensifies and data and service volumes continue to grow, you must understand what your customer data is telling you.
3. Understand the entire customer lifecycle. Lifestyle service offerings rule today’s consumer-driven markets. Effectively leveraging customer data enables you to improve the velocity and accuracy of your decision making at all customer touch points. You'll not only gain speed, but when you act, you're far more likely to act correctly, even in the rapidly evolving marketplace.
4. Protect and grow revenue through monitoring and analytics. Understanding what the data is telling you enables you to quickly weigh customer credit risks, improve fraud detection and plug leakage. Real-time data analysis gives you the ability to stop revenue loss as early as the point of sale and all the way through your revenue chain.
5. Secure data efficiently for retention and compliance. You can't achieve compliance if you're not sure where critical data resides. Proper customer data management enables you to achieve compliance with data retention and protection requirements, and supports both common fixed and mobile communications data collection, as well as data collection from Internet, email, SMS/MMS, GPRS, and 3G.

Put systems in place to harness the insight provided by your customer data, and you'll be well-positioned to make smarter decisions about everything from service introduction and retirement to targeted marketing to fraud control. The answers for many of today's most important challenges are already there, just waiting to be unearthed and understood.

Nigel Upton is responsible for the Customer Intelligence and Billing portfolio within the HP Communications & Media Solutions (CMS) business. Nigel brings more than 20 years experience with HP in Europe and the United States, managing various Enterprise and Telecom software businesses within HP, as well as managed Global Alliances. Nigel represents HP on the Board of Directors of the IMS Forum. He is a frequent industry speaker on BSS topics.