Process Mining Telecom in '24: Top 10 use cases & case studies

Updated on Jan 4

6 min read

Table of contents

1. Resolve data integration issues 2. Monitor network and servers 3. Uncover automation opportunities 4. Enable digital transformation 5. Improve cybersecurity 6. Personalize telco service 7. Enhance customer journey maps 8. Assess business performance 9. Continuous process improvement 10. Comply with sustainability expectations Further reading

In recent years, the telecommunication industry has experienced major developments, such as:

The increasing number of competitors: The telecommunication market revenue is expected to rise from $800 Million to $1.4 Billion by 2025.

These changes can lead to complexity in operations, threats to network security, and a high number of network downtimes, which eventually decrease customer retention while increasing costs.

An intelligent business process management (BPM) tool, such as process mining, can tackle these challenges by

Discovering actual processes
Creating customer journey maps
Generating digital twins of business processes and networks
Providing customized business process KPIs

Therefore, we will cover the top 10 use cases of process mining telecom users can apply to ensure customer service excellence, cybersecurity and continuous process improvement.

1. Resolve data integration issues

Telecommunication businesses have increasingly added to big data generation through call details, network, customer and operational data. For instance, IoT devices are estimated to produce 79.4 zettabytes of data by 2025. ¹

However, taking advantage of this data can be difficult since it is complicated to extract and connect various datasets from different systems.

Process mining can pull complete event log data from sales departments, back-office operations, customer service tools, tech support, and other business processes to investigate and discover. This way, process mining software enables capturing the inter-relations between processes, creating more accurate business models and strategies while resolving data integration issues.

For instance, Cox communications could connect multiple data sources and visualize their fulfillment processes with the help of process mining.²

2. Monitor network and servers

As mentioned before, 34 countries in Europe and 14 countries in Asia-Pacific adopted the 5G network (see Figure 1). Although these networks may not be so easy to maintain and monitor, 56% of customers expect telecom companies to predict and solve issues.³

Figure 1: 5G adoption rates, Source: GSMA

With process mining, telcos can create digital twins of their network structure to monitor and manage general network functioning and signal strength. These digital twins can predict potential failures by leveraging information on weather, location and street designs.

3. Uncover automation opportunities

Telecommunication companies automate business processes by implementing chatbots and other RPA solutions to:

Reduce failures and human errors in telecom services and networks
Improves self-service options
Tackle first agent call
Run fast competitor analysis

Despite these benefits, telcos struggle in process automation because they lack internal and IT resources, full knowledge of their business processes and a clear vision over the implementation phase.

For instance, 63% of companies that deploy RPA complained that they could not implement it in the desired time. In comparison, 37% complained about the unexpected cost of implementation.

Process Mining’s core capability automated process discovery can overcome these issues by bringing full visibility to business processes. As a result, telcos can decide which current business process can benefit from automation the most. Some process mining tools can generate a digital twin of an organization to simulate the automation scenarios and estimate the expected ROI.

Furthermore, process mining allows tracking the RPA deployment project to determine and anticipate potential failures in the project.

In a case study, a manufacturer shows that the company could automate 75% of delivery activity and reduce the cost around $ 60,000 in their procure-to-pay process, which improved customer satisfaction while saving cost by $ 50,000.

Read more on how process mining can facilitate RPA-deployment learn more.

4. Enable digital transformation

Telco firms invest in digital transformation by embracing new technologies to

Enable data-driven decision-making and strategy development
Enhance customer experience
Remain agile and competitive

For instance, 45% of customers favor telco firms that use biometric and voice authentication technologies in their customer support.⁴

On the other hand, in 2021, only 22% of telecom companies managed to digitally transform their businesses because of complex processes, market integration, centralized systems, and demand for over-the-top (OTT) platforms.⁵ Learn more about these challenges by reading our digital transformation for telcos article.

Process mining is one of the intelligent tools that can enable digital transformation. In 2022, 25% of process mining implementation projects focused on digital transformation.

Process mining can create a digital twin and run conformance checking to help telcos

Understand complicated processes
Assess digital maturity level
Monitor the transformation project
Mitigate risk

Read how process mining can enable digital transformation in 6 easy steps.

5. Improve cybersecurity

The telecommunication industry experienced a 51% increase in cyberattacks last year alone. As Figure 2 illustrates, communication is in the top 3 vulnerable sectors. ⁶

Figure 2: Cyber attacks by industry, Source: CPR

Process mining helps telecommunication companies identify anomalies and predict fraudulent activities by monitoring user behavior and operational workflow. With process mining, communication organizations can ensure:

IoT security
Preventing data leaks
Network operations and traffic security
Audit smart contracts
Web applications security.

Check out our 12 use cases of process mining in cybersecurity for more.

6. Personalize telco service

Consumers demand personalized experiences by 71% and get dissatisfied when they cannot find them by 76%.⁷Telco consumers are no different. Yet, only 1 out of 3 customers are happy with the service their telecom company provides.⁸

Telcos can personalize their service by utilizing customer data and feedback with process mining implementation. With such data, telecoms can create segmentations, specify which channels they use and understand their needs to define products and services. They can also construct digital twins of their buyer personas to understand customer requests. Thereby, the telcos ensure customer service excellence.

These customer twins can also serve to alert users about incidents. For instance, telcos can inform their clients who use their service for business purposes hours before when they predict potential outages in networks. This way, they allow their customers to get prepared. Meanwhile, they start working on the problem.

7. Enhance customer journey maps

According to a study, only 5% of improvements in customer retention increase profit by 25 to 95%. Therefore, telecom firms focus on improving customer journey maps to reduce retention rates. ⁹

Process mining collects data on customer interaction from CRM, trouble ticket systems, feedback and company website to map and analyze customer journeys (see Figure 3). Process mining maps help analysts detect the areas the customers and telco employees interact and identify pain points.

Figure 3: Customer Journey Map Example, Source: Ericsson

8. Assess business performance

Analysts must develop process KPIs to measure and monitor performance for a better customer experience and easy business process management. Specifically, they must identify process gaps and deviations in operations, such as order-to-cash, procure-to-pay or sales cycle, to standardize and simplify them.

Process mining enables telecom firms to develop key metrics by setting objectives and parameters to monitor and assess business process performance.

The firms can benefit from automated process discovery, conformance checks and root cause analysis to compare actual processes against business process KPIs and determine areas for process enhancement.

For example, Vodafone increased their purchase orders from 73% to 85% and improved time to market by 20% while reducing costs from $3.22/PO to $2.85/PO by deploying a process mining tool.

Learn more on how process mining can design process KPIs.

9. Continuous process improvement

One way to decrease costs and increase customer retention is continuous processes improvement. In the process improvement case studies we collected, companies from different industries increase efficiency by 72%, enhance customer satisfaction by 19% and ensure standardization by 9%.

Process mining offers an automated process analysis to continuously identify areas for improvement and estimate the results of improvement steps in different activities and tasks.

In a process mining case study, Telefonica analyzed and standardized their work order process execution from 62 to 5% in a year.

Moreover, process mining users can generate a DTO that contains all business processes and departments, from HR and customer service to dispatching service. The main goal of this business process model is to ensure that organizations function smoothly.

For instance, a DTO can pinpoint the capacity issue in support calls, allowing telcos to reallocate their technical support team to overcome this issue.

Explore how process mining streamlines business process management in 3 steps and accelerates process improvement.

10. Comply with sustainability expectations

The telecommunication sector demands up to 3% of global energy, increasing its carbon footprint, costs and bad- reputation.¹⁰ After all, customers prefer greener products and services by 85%.

With process mining techniques, telcos can ensure that they meet the sustainability expectations of their customers by running compliance checks against major environmental metrics, such as:

Furthermore, process mining and DTO can locate inefficiencies that waste energy and automated root cause analysis can point out the exact reason behind the , such as issues in coding systems or battery units and heat loss in power amplifiers. A study estimates that Telcos waste 85% of the energy they use on such inefficient activities, which is easy to prevent with process mining.

Read how process mining can ensure easy audit and compliance with rules and regulations