business definition

Many employees today are not satisfied with their jobs. There are many reasons why employees feel dissatisfied about their careers. It may be caused by a conflict with another employee, inconvenient location, bad management, and many other reasons. Some people believe that being employed requires a lot of patience and understanding. But, there are factors that often cause problems no matter how patient and understanding they are which is why they decide to stop being an employee and be their own boss.

Starting a business is of course not as simply as making a cupcake, you have to learn the ins and outs of the business industry. Taking courses in business and marketing, reading the best books for entrepreneurs, learning tips on how to become a better networker, are some of the requirements before you can create a successful business of your own.

In this modern time, people believe in the power of media, which is why online businesses are also thriving. For you to decide why you would want an online business here are the reasons why:

1. An online business can grow faster compared to an offline business. Once you have set up your online business, it would be easier for you to scale up and grow in the future. Since you are operating online, the constraints are lesser compared to a business operating offline.

2. You will have a bigger audience. It is of course true that the audience of the business depends on its location. Yes, especially if the business is in the central area of a big city. But an online business has audience all over the world. Many people today choose the most convenient way to shop, so there’s no better option that to shop online.

3. An online business is faster to set up. For a business operating offline, before it can start its operations, there are necessary things that need to be processed, so the business cannot start immediately until all legalities are filed – ex: loan approval, finding locations, getting business permits, etc. To start a business online, you just need to make use of the information online, and you can start operating within a few minutes.

4. Online business requires lower costs and maintenance. Since you are operating through the internet, you can work anywhere without renting a place. You can save money from paying monthly rates of office spaces or commercial units for your business.

5. Be your own boss – everyone’s favorite. Since you are running your own business, all decisions are made by you, including your time and day of work. You can work anytime, anywhere you want. You can declare your own holiday. No absences, no tardiness. Enjoy quality time with your family while earning.

The first thing to remember is that anybody who takes consistent action and is willing to work hard can be successful with a work from home online business. This includes people who have never owned a business before or have no idea where to begin. There are a wide range of online business opportunities available, irrespective of whether or not you’ve got some online business knowledge. You don’t even need your own products to sell.

Why Start Your Own Online Business?

The surge of billions in online spending has created an incredible opportunity for entrepreneurs who are looking for a legitimate work from home business.

The cost of creating your own business online is considerably less in comparison to regular offline ‘bricks and mortar’ businesses. And, best of all, when you are setting up business from home on the internet, you can run it as a ‘side business’ to your existing job. In fact, after a while many online entrepreneurs make sufficient income online and end up ditching their old job altogether!

How Can I Do It If I Don’t Have Anything To Sell?

People are willing to pay for products and services that help solve their problems or make their life easier or more enjoyable. And, if you want to find those products and services, where is the first place you look? You got it, the internet!

How is this possible to start your own online business if you’ve got nothing to sell? The answer is that you can use business models like affiliate marketing. This is where you can make money from selling other peoples products to a worldwide market. There are over 2 billion people online, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days a year!

And don’t forget, due to the huge reach of the internet, when you start your own home business online your customers can come from around the globe, not just from near where live.

Yes, You Can Do It!

There are no age restrictions or required qualifications before you can start your own online business. Anyone from any background and any education can quickly get started online and take advantage of the new digital economy that is flourishing on the internet. If you can you use email and surf the internet, you have all the “skills” you need to get started.

Having said that, you do have to be prepared to learn an effective skill set known as online marketing. This will give you a practical opportunity to create a solid business online and reach your financial objectives over time. After that, how much money you make and how quickly you make it is up to you.

Introduction

In the modern Telecommunication with the competition mounting up between the service providers, customer acquisition and retention is a considerable challenge. For the new entrants, acquiring the new customers is the highest priority, whereas for the incumbents, retaining the revenue earning customers is essential.

The telecom companies can increase profitability by creating a predictive modeling for identifying potential churn candidates and non-revenue earning customers; and can increase revenue and profitability by targeted campaigning and promotional offers which will not only retain these customers but also convert the non-revenue earning customers to profitable revenue earning customers.

This article highlights the necessity of churn and campaign management and the usage of SAS – Telecommunication Intelligence software (TIS) for the purpose. It also includes various implementation challenges for SAS – TIS in the real time scenario.

Churn Management

Customer acquisition and retention is a significant challenge in all industries. In the Telecom industry it affects profitability of the company if a customer churns before the company can earn back the investment it incurred in acquiring the customer. Therefore, it is very critical to identify the profitable customers and retain them.

With the telecom market becoming more competitive, determining the reasons of the customer leaving the service of the company is increasingly difficult. In this circumstance, it is even more difficult to predict the probability of the customer to leave in near future. It is increasingly challenging to devise a cost-effect incentive to target the right customer to convince him to stay with the company.

Predictive modeling of churn analysis and management aims at generating scores depicting the probability of the customers to churn out in future. This takes into consideration different aspects of customer’s susceptibility to churn, including the history of people those who have churned in the past and build a data model that generates an easy-to-understand reference numbers (scores) assigned to each customers. These customers are then targeted with incentives to deter their cancellation. In other words, Churn analysis determines the probable reasons for a future cancellation depending on the past records which will help the companies to customize their offer. For example: if analysis reveals that many customers have churned from a particular area last month and further investigation has identified that there are frequent call drops (disruptions in service) in that exchange (or BTS area). It can be concluded that due to the technical inadequacy of that particular exchange, frequent call drops are experienced which has contributed to the customer dissatisfaction and their moving out of the company. So further technical solution for that exchange can prevent future potential churns.

Business Definition of Churn Management

Defining churn is the first and foremost activity in Churn Management designing. Different companies define churn according to their business experiences.

Churn definition differs from a Pre-paid to Post-paid scenario.

In pre-paid scenario, a customer can be considered as churned in the following cases:

a) If the customer goes out of network (deactivated)

b) If the customer is an active non user (ANU)

A customer can be considered as ANU when:

i. the customer has no outgoing or incoming usage for last (X) rolling days

ii. the customer has only incoming usage but no out-going usage for last (X) rolling days iii. If the customer’s usage is below a pre-determined (business decided) amount for last (X) rolling days.

In post-paid scenario, a customer pays a rental on monthly basis. So in case of non-usage or lower-usage, the company earns fixed revenue from every post-paid customer. Therefore, the customer is considered as churned only when he/she goes out of network (Deactivated).

Churn Parameters for business analysis

After defining churn, next activity is identifying the correct parameters for the contribution of churn. The churn probability or churn scores for individual customers can be generated on the basis of following categorical details:

1. Customer demographics Customer demographics related data are used for segmenting the entire customer base depending on:

a) Age

b) Sex

c) Income

d) Customer Account Information

e) Subscription life cycle

2. Billing and Usage:

Billing and usage related information which is obtained from switch (Call Data Records) is mainly used for detection of churn probability. The following details are used:

a. Price plan

b. Monthly usage summary (Charged call count, Charged data volume, Free call & Data amount)

c. Monthly profit contribution

d. Bounced payment

e. Managing channel information

f. Recharge channel information

g. Network Product information ( Voice, Messaging, Data)

3. Technical Quality:

Quality of service is a potential churn driver as call drops or inferior service quality increases the customer dissatisfaction and therefore churn probability. In case of CDMA, as the customer is tightly coupled with the handset equipment, the aging of handset impacts the probability of the customer churn.

The following details are used:

a. Dropped call counts

b. Service quality

c. Equipment age (Handset age in case of CDMA)

4. Contract Details: At the end of the contract period or grace period, the probability of the customer leaving the connection is high, therefore it has a high impact in determination of churn. The following details are used:

a. Commitment period

b. Count of contract renewal

c. Current contract and end date

5. Event related:

Loyalty scheme or loyalty benefits are key drivers for retention. The Loyalty scheme related data is used for churn scoring.

Identifying the source systems:

After deciding the Churn parameters, next step is to identify the source systems from where the respective data will be extracted.

For example:

Cusomer details from CRM system

Usage & Billing related details from Billing system

Technical Quality from Exchange & CellSite

Activation details from Provisioning system

Data Management

Data management is the foundation for a business analysis. Correct data should be present in correct place.

Data Management has three parts:

Extraction: Involves extracting of data from source system and loading to data interchange layer

Transformation: Involves validation of the extracted data (eg: Validation for unique keys), creation of joining conditions among the tables, cleaning of invalid data etc.

Load: Involves loading the data in the Business Intelligence Data Warehouse

Data Modeling and Churn Score generation

Once the authenticated data is available in the data warehouse, the data modeling is performed. It is an iterative process. The quality of the model is accessed and the model which returns the best business value is considered. This model provides results in the form of churn score of individual customers which can be used for determining campaign targets.

Using the churn scores for Retention Campaigns

The data model generates individual customer’s churn score which ranges from 0 to 1.

0 – Signifies least probability of the customer to churn

1 – Signifies highest probability of the customer to churn.

These scores are weighted components of various parameters, such as

Usage information

Balance information

Recharge information

Decrement (Promotional and Core) information

Handset feature

Network coverage

Quality of service

Customer service/complaints

Price plan sensitivity

Business decision needs to be taken to determine an upper threshold of the churn score. The customers above this threshold need to be analyzed further (eg: customers with score 0.7 and above). The top two parameters contributing to the churn score to be generated on individual customer level (for customers having churn scores greater than the threshold). Depending on these parameters retention campaign can be carried out. The parameters can be as follows:

Usage statistics: The usage behavior can be derived from the combination of decrement (promo and core), balance and recharge information. The customer who has higher score in “lesser usage” can be targeted with promotional price plan offers to enhance his/her usage and convert that customer from non-revenue earning to revenue earning.

Higher Off-net usage: The higher score on “off-net usage” signifies that the particular customer has called very frequently to other networks. A targeted campaign can be performed with the price plan beneficial to call other networks. A further analysis of the called off-net numbers can result in identifying frequently called off-net numbers which can be targeted by campaigns as a candidate of acquisition.

Handset Features: The handset used by the customer can be old and be lacking the modern features. In this case, the probability of the customer to change to a newer handset is high and there is a considerable susceptibility of that customer to move to another service provider having bundled handset offer. A retention campaign can be targeted (to this group of customers having high Handset churn score) with new service offer bundled with handset.

Customer Service/Complaints: The higher score in Customer service/Complaints signifies that the customer has called the customer care frequently and probability of that customer dissatisfied with the service is higher. Further investigation to the customer call interaction details can reveal the cause of frequently calling to customer service. After the execution of campaigns on the basis of the churn score and churn drivers, the campaign response needs to be captured and fed into the database for analysis of successfulness of campaigns.

Implementing Churn Management Solution Implementation Steps

The following phases are involved in Churn Management solution implementation:

1. Requirement Analysis: In this phase, the business requirements are gathered and analyzed and business definitions for churn are decided

2. Solution Assessment: In this phase, the business intelligence solutions are assessed with the high level requirement of the implementing company. The feasibility test is done depending on the high level business requirement and data availability.

3. Detailed Analysis/Detailed design: In this stage, the business requirements for the Churn Management project are analyzed in depth for design, development and enhancement of the project. An exercise is performed to understand the availability/unavailability of information required to fulfill the business requirements and data mapping from source system.

4. Data Analysis – ETL: In this stage, the data is extracted from the source system, transformed (cleaned/modified for missing fields and data quality is analyzed) and then loaded into Data Warehouse of the business intelligence tool.

5. Data Modeling: In this stage, the analytical data models are created by statistical methods (eg: Logistic regression method) on historical data for churn score prediction and Analytical Base tables are populated by data.

6. Reporting: The churn score (0-1: 0 – means less probability of churn, 1 – Maximum probability of churn) is generated at each customer/account/subscription level and corresponding report is generated.

7. User Acceptance Test and Roll-out: On completion of successful UAT, the software is rolled out for the business users.

Implementation Challenges

There are several challenges when a business intelligence solution is implemented in a huge scale of millions of customers.

The major time of the implementation is consumed by data management. Data management utilizes 75% of the total implementation time. Data Management includes:

Identification of source systems from where data needs to be extracted:

Due to the involvement of multiple source systems (CRM, Provisioning system, Billing, Mediation systems etc.), it becomes increasingly difficult to identify the correct source system for various data fields. Identification of the correct data source and mapping to DIL fields consumes majority of the implementation time. If the data source mapping is wrong, then the subsequent steps of implementation (modeling, analysis) will also be erroneous. Therefore, special care needs to be taken during the data gathering exercise.

Data Quality: Data obtained from the source systems need to be of high quality and error free. The major challenge in implementing a business analytics solution is obtaining a high quality data. Cleaning up of data and filling the missing fields consume considerable amount of implementation time.

Change management: With the implementation of a BI solution, the users need to change the way they used to conduct churn prediction and campaign management. Therefore, user adaptability and user awareness needs to be built up through proper training sessions

To make the Business Intelligence system operational: After the implementation, specific organizational structure for handling the BI operations needs to be planned and the resources need to be trained in the required areas.

SAS in business analytics

SAS is a leading business analytics software and service provider in the business intelligence domain. It has delivered proven solutions to access relevant, reliable, consistent information throughout the organizations assisting them to make the right decisions and achieve sustainable performance improvement as well as mitigate risks.

SAS has an extended capability of handling data of large scale (with the help of SAS-SPDS – scalable performance data server). This combined with strong programming language and enriched graphical interface has differentiated it from the other analytical tools available in the market. This makes SAS perfectly suitable for enterprise usage where it demands handling of huge data stores.

SAS – Telecommunication Intelligence Solution (TIS)

SAS has several industy specific solutions. SAS has packaged their business analytics knowledge in the form of models, processes, business logic, queries, reports and analytics.

TIS is the telecom industry specific business analytic solution which has been built specific to telecom industry needs. This solution assists the telecom service providers with specific modules, for example:

SAS Campaign Management for Telecommunication

SAS Customer segmentation for Telecommunication

SAS Customer retention for Telecommunication

SAS Strategic Performance Management for Telecommunication

SAS Cross sell and Up sell for Telecommunication

SAS Payment risk for Telecommunication

SAS churn management and campaign management solution includes Segmenting the entire customer base

Detecting the causes of churn

Scoring the individual customer on the basis of their churn probability

This churn score is further used as an input for campaign management.

SAS Data flow (Architecture)

The data needs to be collected from various source systems.

CRM system: Customer/Account/Subscription related data

Provisioning system: Activation date, equipment (Handset) age Billing System: Billing data

Mediation System: Call record details

The data is collected in the Data Interchange Layer (DIL). The data is then extracted, transformed and loaded into Detailed Data Store (DDS).

The data is used for:

1. Dimensional Data Modeling: This is used for query, reporting and OLAP (Online Analytical Processing)

2. ABT (Analytical Base Table): This is the solution specific model developed which can be used for a particular analysis. For example: The ABT for churn model.

3. Campaign Data Mart: This data is used for targeting specific customer segments for targeted campaign.

Conclusion

Therefore, it is imperative that churn management is an essential challenge in the modern day Indian telecommunication industry. Detecting the proper reason of churn and predicting churn in advance can save the company from substantial revenue loss.

Business Intelligence tools help the telecom service providers to perform data analysis and to predict churn probability of a particular customer. Apart from churn predictive analysis, the tools can be used for various other analysis to assist the business decisions.

SAS has a potential to handle huge volume of data. As a business intelligence tool, SAS empowers the business to efficiently handle enormous volume of data and perform analysis on the available information for millions of customers. Moreover, SAS with its telecommunication specific solution (TIS – Telecom Intelligence Solution) assists in building the data warehouse to hold the required parameters for further analysis.

Therefore, SAS-TIS can be an efficient tool for business intelligence activities in the telecom industry.

Link: SAS company details: http://www.sas.com/

Link: Arindam’s Profile: http://in.linkedin.com/in/arinmukh

Do you have your own business? Are you offering a service that you wish to promote? Definitely, you love your carpet cleaning business and you wish to expand it and make it succeed. Are you determined? In order for your business to succeed, you need to be determined and creative enough to promote your business.

For sure you have a good service to offer your potential customers, but no matter how good your business is if no one knows your business, nothing will happen. You need to know your target markets and you must be creative in promoting your service to them.

Having a carpet cleaning business, you need to promote it in order for people would know about it. Of course, in order to earn and succeed you need to have lots of customers, but how on earth can you get it if people do not know your business. You have to make ways to let your target markets to know what you can offer them. Marketing is one of the keys for you and your business to succeed.

Actually, there are lots of ways for to gain customers, you have to advertise your business. Read on in order to gain ways on how to promote your business.

Definitely, your target markets are the homes and businesses in your neighborhood, so you would want them to know about your business. They can learn about your business by making business cards. Create cards which has your business name, last and first name, contact details. As soon as the cards are ready, visit the homes and businesses in your neighborhood and give them your card.

You can produce door hanger. Hang these door hangers to the doors in your area. Just make sure that these door hangers are water proof. In creating such, you can promote your business and can let the people in your neighborhood know about your carpet cleaning business.

Providing special offer is a good way of promoting your business. You can provide discounts or freebies to your clients. Be creative, you need to make special offer that potential customers can’t resist.

Another good way and definitely, the best way of promoting your business is by providing the best service that your customers will be happy about. For every happy and satisfied customer, you can end up having more and more customers due to recommendations and referrals.

Learn more see: Start a carpet cleaning service business

If you are still asking yourself…Do I really need a business coaching program to build my own online business? Definitively you will agree with me that the best and smartest way to succeed in business is finding the most successful business men or women you can and persuade him/her to teach you how to succeed in the particular niche you want to start your online business. Then if you are lucky, follow the exact footsteps and do exactly what he/her tells you to do.

Well with that in mind you will probably say:

1. The cost of a good business coaching program is way too expensive and you must pay up front!

Yes that’s correct, actually the total cost of some of the best coaching programs run between $5,000 and $25,000. But what if you can find a good one if not the best for just a fraction of the total cost?.

2. Way too risky – huge investments with out refunds!

Again you are right, for most if not all of the best coaching programs offered in the marketplace nowadays, you must pay up front and most of them do not have refund. But what if you can find a good business coaching program that offers a 14 days risk free trial in which you can decide to continue or cancel it at any time, and even if you choose to continue, having the ability to cancel it at any time? Plus how about having a really easy cancellation process where you just end it and it’s done?.

3. Too complicated!

In my previous experiences with online business coaching programs, I have felt overwhelmed with a lot of great information. Many times I found myself paralyzed. It could be that the information is too much for a newbie to handle or it could simply be that it’s one thing to be good at making money online, and having the ability to teach others how to do it is another. Now What if you can find a former teacher who designs his business coaching programs applying his teaching techniques? Someone who delivers every week, the exact amount of material you need to complete the assignments, as well as letting you see over his shoulders all the time so you never get stuck. Obviously with this kind of coaching program you will never feel overwhelmed or stressed again, because you can learn at your own pace and go back to previous lessons or assignments at any time.

4. Inability to get personal access to your coach or mentor!

What if you find a program that includes a discussion area where you can ask for some extra advice and guidance? And each week your coach would be going through all your questions and answering them as best as he can. What is more, how about if he offers to record his answers on an audio file for you to listen to at your leisure.

5. Many coaching programs don’t include every thing you need to get the results you want and they sell separately other complimentary content or tools you will need at the end.

Well this is absolutely an ugly truth, but what if you don’t need to worry about it? because you found a business coaching program that grants you access to content that normally would cost you thousands, plus all the valuable tools or resources you will need to build your own online business fast.

Move over Bill Gates and make room for work at home Bob. Corporate scams and real estate disasters have helped people to empower themselves to work from home. Calculated risk can achieve great rewards for the person willing to make a stand. A $427 billion dollar home business industry certainly helps make this possible.

People are very attracted to the allure of becoming self employed. Not to mention the tax benefits. You can typically get involved with a credible home business for just a few thousand dollars. The survival rate of a home business is over 5 years compared to the high failure rate of retail and office space businesses. The reason is simple. When you work at home, you don’t incur the many additional costs associated with a traditional business. The rewards for becoming a wealthy marketer are countless.

Many people are beginning to realize that the ijnternet can automate 99% of their business. This is possible due to website exposure, search engine listings, auto-responders, and more. Of course, you still want to be available to provide the human touch that goes along with any successful business.

According to the IDC, a top research firm, there are over 34 million home offices in the United States. They also predict over a 7% growth per year. “America is in the midst of an extraordinary workplace transformation.” There seems to be no slowing it down.

The home business industry has no barriers and no prejudices. People from all walks of life are getting involved. Their backgrounds range from attorneys and doctors, to stay at home moms and college dropouts. Starting a home business isn’t as hard as some people may think. There are companies out there who offer turn-key programs. The great thing about the internet is the vast knowledge available at your finger tips.

Take websites for example. Free website software provides templates and cut and paste features. Anyone can learn how to build a professional website with the intenret knowledge thats available today. The crucial ingredient to any online or home business is that you must be able to reach your prospective clients or buyers. Having just a website isn’t always good enough. If no one knows your website exists, then no one will be able to do business with you. The good news is that there are countless ways of reaching prospective buyers for your product or service via the internet. Some methods do work much better than others. The best ways of marketing simply requires good old fashioned work. The upside is that there are many ways to market online which cost nothing except for your time. With a little bit of research, anyone can learn how to reach their target market and become a wealthy marketer.

Leverage is another key ingredient for success in today’s competitive world. Why try to corner the market yourself, when you can work with several people on the same goal? It frees up some of your time when you can delegate. A wealthy marketer knows this and that’s why they seek to be around like minded individuals. As with any successful business, you need to get connected with a few good people who can help you. One proverb to sum this up is.

“A committee never fails.”

The most successful online home businesses definitely provide a needed value to their market. Some online businesses can go way beyond successful and become outright significant. You definitely want to make sure you have a good profit margin to stay in business. If you are making $10 a sale, it might be awhile before you can quit your day job. There are many products and services out there that make a good profit. This can provide peace of mind knowing you won’t need thousands of sales to become a wealthy marketer from home.

We live in a very fast paced world today. It makes sense that America wants to work from home. When it comes to juggling a career with fixed hours, children, appointments, spouses, engagements, emergencies, and special occasions, it’s no wonder people want and need to generate an income that has flexible working hours. Who knows, if you are motivated enough, you too could find yourself becoming a home based wealthy marketer.