Telecommunications has long been one of the most data-intensive industries, and some of the earliest analytical marketing initiatives originated at established firms like AT&T. But the industry is evolving quickly, and the old mail-driven database marketing has become a thing of the past that hardly does the job in a digital economy. For legacy firms, building a data-driven culture that leverages Big Data and AI capabilities represents both an opportunity as well as a challenge.
Verizon Communications, formerly a “Baby Bell,” is now a massive telecommunications conglomerate with $126 billion in 2016 revenues. In addition to the traditional wireline unit—now almost an afterthought—its businesses include Verizon Wireless, FIOS fiber infrastructure to homes and businesses, Oath (the combined former AOL and Yahoo organizations), network security offerings and several others. Each of these businesses both generates and consumes vast amounts of data. You might imagine that a company this diverse would demand an ambitious and diverse approach to analytics and artificial intelligence.
Indeed that is the case. Verizon has a variety of different analytics and AI groups scattered around the company. Some, like the Data Science and Cognitive Intelligence (DSCI) group, focus on applying analytics and cognitive technology to Verizon’s interactions with customers. Part of Verizon’s IT organization, it works closely, for example, with the company’s marketing, Digital Operations and Customer Care functions. Headed by Asim Tewary, DSCI is heavily focused on cognitive technologies, and is adding increasing levels of intelligence to the company’s marketing and customer service applications.
Others, like the Global Supply Chain Strategy and Analytics group, focus on internal processes—in that group’s case, ensuring that products reach customers and that sourcing and procurement are effective. Anne Robinson, the leader of this group, and many of its members have strong backgrounds in optimization technologies, which are commonly applied to supply chains. The group is also increasingly knowledgeable and proficient in machine learning applications.
A third group, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Systems, focuses on creating new products and services for Verizon with these methods and tools. Led by Ashok Srivastava, Verizon’s Chief Data Scientist, the Palo Alto-based lab employs large-scale machine learning both to improve Verizon’s infrastructure and to develop products in such areas as education, healthcare and the Internet of Things.
With these and many smaller analytics groups scattered around the company, Verizon has also established a coordination mechanism across them. VEDA — Verizon Enterprise Data Analytics—is an enterprise organization that addresses data management, data governance, data warehousing and data lakes, and common analytical and AI technologies. The goal of VEDA is to facilitate cross-functional, cross-organizational projects. Each analytics group has a representative that serves as a key point of contact with VEDA. The coordinating group helps to build infrastructures for data and notifies diverse groups of shareable resources. Verizon has both proprietary and open source analytical and AI technologies, and it is their role to help the company use these efficiently.
Business adoption of Big Data and AI processes remains a challenge for most legacy firms. Being a large and complex organization, possessing massive amounts of data to be analyzed, Verizon customers, suppliers, and partners require considerable help in navigating this complexity. Analytics and cognitive applications can shed light on potential problems and make the navigation process easier.
It probably wouldn’t work for Verizon to have a single analytics and AI organization that addresses all internal and external needs. Having a variety of different groups with a coordinating mechanism like VEDA appears to offer an effective organizational solution to the challenge and opportunity of leveraging Big Data and AI at Verizon.
Randy Bean is an industry thought-leader and author, and CEO of NewVantage Partners, a strategic advisory and management consulting firm which he founded in 2001. He is a contributor to Forbes, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and The Wall Street Journal. You can follow him at @RandyBeanNVP.
Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor in Management and Information Technology at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser at Deloitte Analytics. Author of over a dozen management books, his latest is Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines. You can follow him at @tdav.
