By Safaricom, a leading communications company in Kenya says it is on course to mine data from its 29.5 million-strong subscriber base to realise new insights and help the company grow.
Speaking during the company’s recent announcement of its half-year 2018 Results, Safaricom Director of Strategy and Innovation, Joe Ogutu said the company need to led by insight as they hold a lot of data.
“We want to be an insight led company. We are sitting on huge amounts of data and we want to make sense out of it and make the right decisions for the business going forward,” said Joe Ogutu.
Ogutu said that they already have an analytics team, set up at the beginning of the year, which will conduct an in-depth analysis of the data the company holds.
Safaricom also claims to have invested Kshs 17 billion in improving their products, including delving into customer analytics.
Ogutu added that the company has a strong initiative in the form of its Spark Fund to support startups and in-house innovation.
“In terms of innovation we are setting up a unit and it is that the unit should be away from the business (Safaricom) not necessarily be detached from the business, but be allowed to try new things; if they fail they fail, But we want to give them opportunities to really try new stuff,” he said.
Small fintech companies such as Branch, which offer mobile based loans, are already using customer data to evaluate loan risks. A global report by PwC on Fintech services in 2017 established that fintech companies are keen to invest in analytics and mobile technology.
“Financial Institutions are concentrating on updating their legacy systems with a strong focus on data analytics (74% of companies) and mobile technology (51% of companies). While most incumbents are struggling to consolidate and manage data and to offer digital customer-service experiences,” the report said.
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