LIVE FROM COMMUNICASIA 2013: Operators are facing a number of organisational challenges in making use of the “big data” at their disposal, and in opening this to third-party partners, according to Grant Watts, head of global advertising for SingTel.

Likening the move to exploit data to the gold rush, the executive noted that so far much of the focus has been on tools and processes, rather than generating value. “It hasn’t really gone after the gold. The hard thing is there is a lot of dirt,” he said.

The biggest issue for many companies is ownership of data, and where the value is being created – which are not necessarily the same divisions. “Data has been sitting in product teams, and those product team leads seem to think they own the data,” Watts noted.

The way in which telcos have traditionally done business has also not helped, he said. “Product have been built in silos, so there has been lots of views on the customer. I’ve seen an example of one of the operators having 12 different views of the same customer, and those systems aren’t talking to each other,” he said.

And the volume (and quality) of the data being stored is also an issue. “We don’t actually know 100 per cent what we are going to need in the future, so you are tending to store a lot of data,” he noted.

According to Watts, who heads up the APAC operator group’s Global Advertising unit, “we know that if you get it right, it has a massive impact on the business as a whole. We also know that if you do it wrong, it has the same sort of impact.”

The company’s Optus unit in Australia has been looking at how it works with “a lot of the core telco data, things like how many months are left on your contract, size of contract, type of plan, the phone you are using”, and linking this with its advertising systems to create sales opportunities.

But there are also other important uses to take into consideration, such as privacy laws. “In Australia, because of the privacy laws, it’s very, very hard for Optus to talk to its own customers in the digital ecosystem. It’s really, really hard. You have to be opt in, you can’t send emails, there are a certain number of calls you can make,” Watts said.

“It’s all fairly green pastures at the moment. Lots of opportunity, but still some way to go,” he concluded.