DIY IT departments are hindering telco management decisions

Executives complain of not getting customer metrics data quickly enough says Sagacity survey

Telecoms executives are complaining that their IT departments are hindering decision-making processes because they are reluctant to use outside specialist organisations to process customer data and try and do it themselves.

So says a survey of 200 telecoms executives in the UK, USA and Europe carried out by data solutions company Sagacity Solutions.

The survey showed a lag between getting customer data from IT departments to executive decision-makers. This lag prevented the executives from making good business decisions and reacting quickly to customer demands.

It is more difficult to process customer data as IT departments try and solve problems better solved by external specialists, the survey states.

The executives polled say they can’t quickly obtain accurate customer metrics. This lack of quick access is hindering the decision-making process. Executives and managers were using gut feel instead of solid data.

“It’s a false economy to build a value-based management platform in house and trying to do complex calculations in Excel. You wouldn’t build a billing system. So why try to build an even more complex value management system yourself,” said Sagacity co-founder Harry Dougall.