Data and Analytics: Advice from European TV Operators

Data projects are complicated, hard work and expensive. Most TV providers are trying to use data to gain more insight to learn how to improve the overall experience customers have as well as increasing revenues, but there are challenges along the way. We recently interviewed European operators, and most providers are working with multiple systems from different vendors and the integration of data is a common issue as well as a lack of resources. We’ve brought together some of the best advice from operators to help you along the way and overcome some of these challenges.

Collect Data to help your Key Business Challenges

“Only collect data that you have a good reason to collect. Otherwise it is an expensive process.” – OTT Service Provider

Best practice in analytics deployment comes from identifying key business questions at the beginning. Define challenges at each touch point of the customer journey and see what can be done to help solve these problems. Start with ‘small data’, thinking about how these can be used to answer these questions.

Be Flexible with Analytics Systems

“The web culture of testing, failing and rolling-back to learn, is something new in traditional companies. When mistakes are made, there is a tendency to stop the process rather than recognising that mistakes are part of finding the solution.” – Broadcaster

It is important to have flexible and agile analytics systems, and not to engineer something based on one requirement as this may change down the line. The understanding of what you need will evolve as much as the requirement. Part of the process of becoming data-driven is also to be open to adopting some of the techniques pioneered by internet players.

Data helps, but isn’t the ‘magic bullet’

“TV is not a science and neither is business so we are not looking for some kind of data nirvana whereby all creative decision making is done via algorithms, life isn’t like that, and business certainly isn’t.” – Broadcaster

The more advanced you get with analytics, it’s important to distribute the results widely within the organisation to improve overall decision making in as many places as possible. It’s important to remember that although analytics are important, it is not the ‘magic bullet’ solution to improve customer experience and performance metrics.

Download our research

Find out how European operators are coping with analytics throughout the customer journey, and what they plan on doing in the next 12 months by downloading our research.