Smart ramps up shift to data-driven services
THE Kingdom’s largest mobile operator, Smart Axiata Co Ltd, and Singapore-based Cloudera Inc, an enterprise data cloud company, have entered into a partnership agreement to accelerate their business growth, improve Smart’s customer service performance and better equip it to “deliver targeted offers that anticipate the needs of its eight million customers in Cambodia”.
Cloudera said in a March 15 press release that with its support, Smart “moved from multiple data lakes and a traditional data warehouse to a single data lake”.
“This streamlined the number of sources, allowing data lineage to be more easily tracked, presenting Smart Axiata with a clearer view of its data. The new data lake serves as a single source of truth for all Smart Axiata’s applications, democratising data within the organisation and facilitating self-serve access for different business functions,” it said.
Smart chief information officer Kalyan Achyutuni said
in the release that Cloudera’s solutions had enabled his company “to produce an app for customers, which has allowed Cambodians to manage their accounts and services at their own convenience and improve their digital savviness”.
“Our ability to achieve a single source of truth with Cloudera
has allowed Smart Axiata to do many things that were not possible before. By leveraging data, we can get a 360 degree view of customers to enhance their experience, improve network performance and drive innovation.
“Customers can troubleshoot their own issues, while
the load on our call centre agents has been reduced by 40 per cent. This improvement has allowed for more efficient operations, where staff can focus on other tasks to improve efficiency or profitability,” he was quoted as saying.
Cloudera Asia-Pacific theatre vice-president Remus Lim added: “Telecommunications operators have access to a multitude of data sources and thus collect and generate extensive amounts of data. To be closely attuned to customers’ needs, they need to be able to manage and secure their end-to-end data lifecycle to gather insights and engage in data-driven decision-making.
“We are committed to supporting Smart Axiata to continue unlocking value from their data as they work towards becoming a data-driven organisation and future-proofing their hybrid data cloud journey,” he said in the statement.
According to Smart, it was the first network in Cambodia to introduce a number of mobile communication standards – “4G LTE in 2014, 4G+ in 2016, 4G+ with HDVoice [VoLTE] and LTE Advance Pro in 2017”.
“In mid-2019, Smart hosted the first 5G live showcase, manifesting its data leadership position in Cambodia. Smart also provides 2G, 2.5G, 3G and 3.75G mobile services, as well as international roaming across more than 190 countries,” it said on its website.