Vodafone finds business benefits in moving to Google Cloud

Editor’s notice:  Annoyed that its current on-premises infrastructure was limiting the enterprise intelligence it might derive from its knowledge, Vodafone determined to modify to a extra accessible, scalable cloud resolution. Right here, Osman Peermamode, Head of Knowledge and Analytics at Vodafone, explains how the migration to Google Cloud is cost-effectively reworking its service providing to optimize its enterprise worth and supply enhanced options to its clients.

Most individuals know Vodafone as a cellular community operator. And, with greater than 300 million clients worldwide, we’re certainly one of many largest cellular telecommunications firms on the earth. However Vodafone is a lot greater than that. We offer broadband to greater than 28 million individuals, TV to greater than 22 million individuals, and greater than 140 million IoT connections assist companies with their digital transformation. M-Pesa, our cellular cash switch service, is utilized by greater than 50 million individuals throughout Africa.

All these companies serve a standard function. They create a sustainable digital future that’s accessible to all, constructed on next-generation connectivity powered by Vodafone. The shopper expertise sits on the coronary heart of this imaginative and prescient, and knowledge is the important thing to an enduring relationship with our clients. However knowledge alone isn’t sufficient – it should even be securely processed and made accessible throughout the group. That’s why, in 2019, we determined to crew up with Google Cloud to unlock the true worth in our knowledge.

Democratizing Vodafone’s knowledge with Nucleus

After all, leveraging knowledge isn’t new territory for Vodafone. We’ve lengthy used knowledge insights to enhance our buyer retention by optimizing packages and personalizing our providing to our customers, for instance. However earlier than our transfer into the cloud, the info we collected was very fragmented and dear. Knowledge sat in silos on our on-premises infrastructure, the place it grew to become shortly outdated, and a number of copies of information units have been simply inefficient, they decreased our knowledge’s high quality and credibility. 

In comes Nucleus. Powered by Google Cloud merchandise akin to BigQuery, Dataproc, and Cloud Knowledge Fusion, Nucleus is a unified knowledge platform that integrates all of Vodafone’s knowledge. As an alternative of reconciling between totally different knowledge warehouses, as we did up to now, we now have established a single supply of fact, making knowledge accessible throughout our group. This helps fact-based decision-making and helps us to cut back prices, streamline operations, and ship new companies and merchandise shortly throughout Vodafone’s worldwide markets. 

Nucleus has three core elements. First, there’s Neuron, which homes all the info – 70 petabytes and rising. Then there’s Dynamo, a pioneering hybrid cloud system that makes it simple for us to maneuver knowledge from all our on-premises repositories around the globe to Google Cloud. It could course of round 50 TB of information per day, that’s the equal of 25,000 hours of HD movie. Lastly, there’s Vodafone’s frequent knowledge platform, which supplies entry to each uncooked and arranged knowledge for all areas of the enterprise, enabling Vodafone to construct capabilities as soon as after which immediately deploy them throughout markets.

Elevating the bar on customer support

With Nucleus and our ongoing partnership with Google Cloud, we’re reworking our strategy to knowledge. We’re higher geared up to fulfill new regulatory necessities at a a lot decrease price, and we’ve unlocked new capabilities by producing prime quality insights that inform the subsequent technology of information and analytics merchandise. What’s most enjoyable is that we’ve already recognized greater than 700 concrete use circumstances that reap the benefits of these knowledge capabilities to make Vodafone extra buyer pleasant, sustainable, and worthwhile.

Let’s take buyer loyalty, the important thing to our success. By lowering our knowledge ingestion for enterprise intelligence from 36 hours to 25 minutes, Nucleus has already made us far more aware of adjustments in buyer habits. If cellular customers are paying pointless roaming prices, for instance, we are able to establish the difficulty in virtually real-time and save them cash. We are able to additionally routinely spot when a buyer wants a velocity increase, or proactively contact clients who could be experiencing a problem with their connection. Total, we’ve already raised the bar on customer support.

Unlocking worth, boosting profitability

Glad clients are worthwhile clients. We are able to supply extremely customized content material, apps, and rewards. We’re additionally higher at detecting fraud in virtually real-time.

The info insights we’ve generated with Google Cloud additionally assist us to realize a extra holistic understanding of our clients. We are able to tailor our companies to every family and counsel new companies. Through the use of the info insights from Nucleus to enhance our campaigns and buyer administration, we’re unlocking untapped worth. 

Our new knowledge platform additionally offers us a greater overview of the profitability of our channels and retail shops. This helps us to weed out pointless spending and makes positive our retail providing is centered across the wants of our clients. By channelling our retail footprint in locations the place they’re most wanted, we’ve been capable of improve our retailer profitability in some markets.

Accelerating change with data-driven sustainability

A greater grasp on our knowledge additionally helps us on our mission to drive constructive change for society and our planet. Google Cloud helps us to raised monitor all our sustainability KPIs, from our discount in greenhouse gasoline emissions to the share of power we use from renewable sources. We’re additionally serving to to unravel world well being points, by supporting governments and support organizations, for instance, with safe, nameless and aggregated cell phone sign knowledge to assist sort out COVID-19. Now, we are able to present even deeper insights to assist curb the unfold of illness.

These have been just some of the 700 use circumstances which can be serving to us to ship thrilling new merchandise, scale back prices, and centralize our operations. With Nucleus, we’re constructing the inspiration for a digital future, and we’re thrilled to be constructing it with Google Cloud. Carried out by round 1,000 in-house staff from each firms, it’s a real joint effort, impressed by our shared imaginative and prescient of digital know-how that’s accessible to all. By tapping into the collective energy of Vodafone and Google Cloud, we’re reworking our companies for the individuals, organizations, and communities we serve.

Discover out extra about how Google Cloud helps the telecommunications business right here.