Two international technology service providers have partnered to offer hybrid cloud and SaaS decision-as-a-service solutions to Africa’s telecoms operators.
Telecommunications and mobile financial services provider LigaData has partnered with FICO, a provider of artificial intelligence, data science and predictive analytics services, to leverage a combined 40 years’ operational experience and service to the continent.
The partnership looks to supply communications service providers with solutions to help roll out digital and mobile financial services. The solutions include mobile lending, price optimisation, collections optimisation, subscriber segmentation and fraud detection.
“Our partnership with FICO will give communications service providers new tools to expand and compete in a data-driven marketplace,” says Bassel Ojjeh, CEO of LigaData.
The partners stress that Africa’s unbanked and underbanked communities are part of this marketplace.
According to the companies, the ability of communications services providers to meet demand in this marketplace requires that they gain full control over data management. However, they acknowledge this can be a challenge because of fragmented and siloed data resources.
LigaData advocates the adoption of a data fabric approach to collate these resources.
Data fabric is an approach that assists organisations to connect various data sources, systems and applications, allowing for seamless data integration, access and governance.
“A data fabric provides a unified view of data and enables organisations to derive actionable insights and make data-driven decisions. It typically includes capabilities such as data integration, data governance, data cataloguing, data quality management and data security,” Ojjeh continues.
The data fabric is expected to serve as the data platform underpinning LigaData's own telecoms and fintech solutions, “as well as those provided in combination with FICO's solutions that transform the way organisations understand their customers and build products and digital services around them.
“This provides a holistic, single 360-degree view of the customer, integrates with regulatory and reporting agencies, and enables data-driven intelligence and product and service growth,” he adds.
Ojjeh sums up the aspirations for Africa: “Our short- and long-term growth objectives for the African market are to enable our customers and partners to create a data ecosystem that enables growth and opportunity for the African consumer, while reducing economic inefficiencies and friction through the use of digital services running on a seamless data fabric.”
Alexandre Graff, vice-president of global partners and alliances at FICO, comments: "By combining our decision management and optimisation tools with LigaData's data fabric platform, we can help telecommunications providers in their transformation from telcos to techcos and serve new digital services customer segments with confidence.
“Together, we plan to also help communications service providers grant loans in emerging markets, making it easier for consumers while increasing the digitisation of the economy.”
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