Web analysis software provider Buystream moves into wireless operator space

An Ottawa-based software provider says it has an answer to reducing wireless operator churn and increasing ARPU by profiling customers’ use of the wireless Internet. Buystream Inc. will soon unveil the details of a major deal with one of the country’s national mobile wireless operators that would see its software integrated into the carrier’s back-end infrastructure. Specifics of the deal haven’t yet been revealed, but are expected to be made public within the next couple of weeks, company representatives tell Report on Wireless, adding that the R&D is complete and the product is installed in the carrier’s infrastructure. Creating detailed information regarding specific content interests of wireless web users will give carriers the ability to potentially reduce churn and increase ARPU by evaluating the most popular content sites, says Buystream president and CEO Randy Woods. This takes customer profiling to the next level by grouping certain segments of users into smaller sub-groups, a technology widely adopted in the wired world. The company’s newest product, AirMetrics, provides key indicators about surfing habits. It allows carriers to track the habits of mobile Internet subscribers, determining which content sites are being accessed the most, for example. Enabling carriers to find specific information in near real-time on certain users’ wireless web surfing habits could have a dramatically positive impact on the bottom line of carriers, Woods says. The major carriers have committed enormous sums of money to build infrastructure to bring the mobile Internet to consumers, primarily through WAP browsing. This was done primarily under the assumption that these new services would create new revenue sources and build customer loyalty. The model used by carriers, says Woods, was to roll out bundles of services targeted at specific segments of the population and hope that consumers jumped on board. "The reality, of course, is that it under-performed dramatically in many cases," he states. The problem is that carriers don’t have an effective method of evaluating the surfing habits of their subscribers, he explains. "There was no good way of making sense of what was working and what was not," Woods tells Report on Wireless. "There was really no way for them to understand what content is driving usage or even harder questions like what content is of most value to my most valuable customer." The reach of the product isn’t limited to the wireless data space. Carriers can also use this information to get a better picture of their subscribers’ voice and data habits. "The product itself focuses on the missing piece of the puzzle," Woods says. "So we report on the content and all the online information and what we do is bundle that information up in such a way that it can be joined with their existing customer service records." The company is already active in the wired world and recently boosted its online retailing product with an announcement that it is bundling its Buystream Merchant with Cognos Inc.’s Series 7 business intelligence software. Woods says this experience in the wired world had eased migration into the wireless space. "We brought that insight and applied it to a completely different realm," he adds. Potential competition scant in the wireless arena In the early days of the wireless Internet, it is still unclear when and where the competition to Buystream’s technology will come from, Woods says. He doesn’t think, however, that it will come from the traditional business intelligence space, occupied by some big players such as Cognos and Business Objects. "Most of the mobile operators already have some sort of business intelligence framework, but those firms don’t tend to build specialized extract and transform or business logic layers," Woods says. There have been some makeshift attempts to answer some of the toughest questions, says Woods, but they are costly and don’t provide the level of clarity that AirMetrics can. There are service firms that will take the raw data and turn it into charts and other understandable data. Some firms have opted for the human approach by committing a certain number of people to manually crunch numbers on a daily basis. "There’s no easy way of doing this unless you build a product that, (given) web volumes, understands the non-linear logic you need to pull information out of it," Woods says. First deal will open up more opportunities in future Woods sees North America and Asia as the regions providing the greatest opportunity for the AirMetrics product, with Europe coming in behind. He says that technological differences stemming from European systems’ use of two-way SMS as opposed to WAP browsing will be addressed in Version 2 of the product. But North America represents the immediate market for the company. "Our initial customer has been kind enough to offer to take us into two of their U.S. partners," Woods says. "If we can get three or four sales, we suspect that will attract the attention of some of the major systems integrators that would be happy to take the integration tasks off our hands."

Web analysis software provider Buystream moves into wireless operator space

News | November 27, 2001

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