New research, commissioned by Comptel Corporation (NASDAQ OMX Helsinki: CTL1V), has confirmed that bridging departmental information gaps is a top-to-moderate priority this year for a majority of telco executives (66 percent). Only 32 percent of CMOs said that their companies are very or extremely likely to involve the technology department in marketing campaigns. Even fewer (12 percent) CIOs/CTOs cited being very or extremely likely to involve their company’s marketing department in technology strategy.

The survey, which polled 50 communications service provider (CSP) marketing and IT decision-makers across EMEA, Latin America and Asia Pacific on their 2014 business and technology priorities, reaffirmed the desire for increased departmental collaboration (78 percent). And although a little more than eight in ten (82%) CMOs and CIOs/CTOs say ideally they would either consolidate every department’s data sets or at least collaborate on business decision-making, only 16 percent cited having a fully integrated OSS/BSS and working from a common centralised data source.

“According to our research, telco executives believe that everyone across the company—not just their organisation—should have a shared interest in delivering high quality of service (96 percent) and customer experience (80 percent). This is a great start at building a common ground for the traditionally siloed marketing and IT departments,” said Juhani Hintikka, president and CEO, Comptel. “But without unifying technology systems, CSPs can’t optimally leverage their data to get a holistic view of the business and, in turn, take the proper actions to achieve these goals or any others for that matter.”

A full copy of the research, which was executed by Vanson Bourne in January/February 2014, is available by contacting [email protected].

Other Key Findings
There’s a noticeable difference when it comes to executives’ top priorities in 2014. For CMOs, understanding gaps in the service delivery process (72 percent) and understanding customer experience on a granular level (64 percent) are the most important priorities, whereas CIOs/CTOs care more about improving network performance (68 percent) and delivering new products (60 percent).

Two-thirds (66%) of those surveyed said that their companies are working towards event-driven process automation in 2014. CMOs and CIOs/CTOs see customer experience management (62 percent) and quality of service (60 percent) management as the two areas that could benefit most from increased automation and the resulting operational efficiencies.

It’s clear that telco executives see the power Big Data analytics holds for their businesses. More than six in ten (64%) agreed that their departments are leveraging it for customer service. In the survey, the majority of respondents noted that customer demographic (68%), network information (66%) and social interactions (64%) are required for effective decision-making.