Navigating an insightful course through deep oceans of billing data has until now been near impossible. But one captain of industry has pushed for this Holy Grail with an insistent hand, and data can no longer keep its secrets to itself in Union Street's partner Benchmarking report.
In data analytics, as in billing, Union Street Technologies is blazing a trail with the launch of Benchmarking, a free analytics service that enables reseller partners to compare their business performance against industry averages. The results are derived from a large sample of Union Street's client base and represent a good knowledge base for statistical reliability. In practice, Union Street's Benchmarking service breaks out significant data and then segments it into a number of categories that, for example, signpost performance indicators, pinpoint missed growth opportunities and areas where growth inhibiting factors may need to be overcome.
Managing Director Tony Cook said: "By harvesting anonymised data from our aBILLity billing platform Benchmarking provides reseller partners with valuable business insights, comparing their performance with that of the wider industry. These include reports on revenue growth, profit margin, charge rates and how revenues are split."
With over 450 reseller partners using the aBILLity billing platform Union Street's customer base represents a significant proportion of resellers operating in the UK. "The consolidated data harvested will provide a strong industry benchmark average, and a valuable indication of business performance for resellers against their peers," added Cook.
The quest for clarity of strategic vision must lie in converting every drop of gathered data into meaningful information that captures a number of important and relevant trends. But there are no magic bullets, and the work put in by Union Street developers has been, and continues to be, praiseworthy. Union Street developed Benchmarking in response to what it believes is a growing awareness within the channel and the wider business community of the opportunities presented by data analysis.
Union Street's Head of Sales and Marketing, Vincent Disneur, explained: "Analytics is driving businesses forward in all sorts of ways. As organisations start to integrate and share information across common platforms and APIs, new types of business data are created offering valuable perspectives on industry and company performance. Companies operating across the communications sector will pay ever closer attention to their data to gain deeper insights into customer preferences, behavioural patterns and how best to respond.
"Benchmarking is a significant extension of this practice and we're the first company within the channel that has developed meaningful analytics based on billing data. By sharing this information with our partners we can help them visualise their business, improve performance and better understand their relative competitiveness."
Benchmarking tells us that it's real details, not flimsy forecasts, that should give direction to strategic thinking, so Cook is urging all partners to opt into the service. "The reporting utilises rolling average data collected securely and anonymously from the previous 12 months," added Cook. "When we refer to an industry average in the reports we are not claiming that this is a precise figure as it is simply derived from the CPs who have subscribed to this.
"However, we believe that once we have a minimum of 200 reseller partners included the sample will be large enough to provide averages that closely reflect the industry as a whole. The Benchmarking reports only use high level information and the averages do not identify any individual CP other than the one receiving their own unique reports. We do not collect or publish any data that could be used to identify any of their end user customers."
It is worth exploring at this point a snapshot of some of the analytical data already available (what follows is only a sample of the full reporting capabilities). The Revenue Growth Ranking report compares a partner's average revenue growth with that of other resellers. This rate is compared against the industry average and also against the average found among the top performing ten per cent of CPs.
The Margin Ranking Report compares average profit margin to the industry average and the top 10 per cent performers. The report also shows an absolute ranking position in a sample of over 100, and highlights any deviation from the average margin. The Revenue Growth Report displays as a percentage the month-to-month growth in revenue for a partner's business, which is represented on a graph. Using the graph users can also compare the revenue growth of their business with the industry average.
The percentage split between revenue generated by calls and services is presented in the Calls and Services Report. And the Revenue by Call Type Report displays in percentage terms how a partner's revenues generated by calls are split between voice, mobile, local rate, national rate, GPRS received, freephone and ISDN data. More call data is detailed in the Revenue by Carrier Report which explains how a partner's wholesale expenditure is split by carrier and then compared to the industry average across other comms providers.
It is not hard to sense the expectation surrounding the benefits that Benchmarking offers to participating partners, especially when you consider the priority Union Street has placed on ensuring the accuracy and broad range of its insight reporting. "To ensure that anomalous readings will not distort the reports the Union Street team has taken steps to smooth the data featured in the Benchmarking service," said Cook. "In order to avoid anomalies caused by CPs with exceptional or freak billing figure we use the 95th percentile method when calculating the averages. By ignoring the top and bottom five per cent of samples the overall average is closer to a realistic industry benchmark."
Once a billing period is closed in aBILLity, statistics are automatically submitted to Union Street via a secure web service. When a minimum of 50 reseller partners have submitted their data the statistics for the billing period they have contributed to will be made visible on a web-based dashboard. Industry averages are recalculated daily as more resellers submit their monthly statistics.
For Union Street, there is no such thing as data-lite, and its reporting is incontrovertibly insightful, reliable and almost without boundaries, believes Cook. "As Benchmarking gains traction it will help Union Street's partners to spot trends in sales of certain services early on, so they can focus their sales and marketing activities on those areas accordingly," he added.
"The Benchmarking Service will initially feature eight key reports. However, due to the flexible architecture of our system new reports can be added without limit. We actively encourage our partners to submit feedback and share their ideas for how our solutions can be developed, and this will be essential to the development of our Benchmarking service going forward."•