A case study developed by Professor Ravi Bapna, Executive Director, Srini Raju Centre for IT and the Networked Economy (SRITNE), assisted by Nidhi Sharma, Research Associate, SRITNE and Shyaam Subramanian, PGP Student 2008 Batch

In today’s information age organisations face mammoth challenges in managing and effectively using the information available to them. Bharti Airtel’s case highlights the day to day operational challenges faced by rapidly growing organisations, which strive to use information as a source of competitive advantage.

It showcases the journey of a large conglomerate from the Business Intelligence perspective, and also highlights the need to make decisions based on a prediction model rather than through the observation method. The company wanted to identify the usage pattern at an individual level and offer each customer customised plans based on his/her usage enhancing the value of services offered.

The case has instances which studies the data and leads to consumer behaviour insights. For example, it was seen from the data that the network usage was 15 to16 percent higher than the actual talk time. This was a point to worry, as that would mean discrepancy in billing. Further digging into the data, Bharati Airtel realised that the consumers were using mobiles as pagers. They would make a note of the incoming call number and return calls using a landline, hence the larger usage of network than the actual talk time. This led them to make marketing decisions based on the network usage rather than billing revenue.

The case also highlights the various loop holes in the integration of different systems leading to instances of data inconsistency which in turn lead to suboptimal business decisions. These instances also bring out the different aspects of how the data needs to be used encouraging the readers to appreciate the characteristics of data warehousing.