We have spoken to Ilya Polshakov, the New Businesses Development Director at Kyivstar, to find out which services Kyivstar treats as the prospective ones for the Ukrainian B2B market, and how Big Data, IoT and cloud solutions can bring the companies to the new level.
– The companies can no longer work the way they used to, so they are looking for new ways to manage their business. Kyivstar offers a range of services helping optimise business processes. Could you describe them?
Given its technological nature, the telecommunication business tends to transform and turn into a reliable business partner. Kyivstar complex solutions are digital tools that solve various operational issues, from deployment of the digital platform for data processing to the customer analysis tool using the Big Data. New-generation connection – 4G (LTE) – is a basis for all the solutions. Let`s imagine, a customer intends to construct the “smart” plant and automate all the production processes. How can mobile operator help? First of all, we provide the company with the high-speed 4G connection, “smart” sensors to exchange data, and we adjust the system that will analyse the production process. It is a matter of a consistent approach: Kyivstar ceases to be a traditional mobile service provider and turns into a end-to-end solution operator.
– In your opinion, what tools are most highly-sought and prospective
for the business community?
Kyivstar is one of the leaders in Big Data in Ukraine; the company has been developing this sector for 15 years. The task of the service is to assist in knowing your end customers as deeply as possible, to analyse their preferences, to trace changes in the consumer behaviour and to make unique offers by means of the targeted sms.
– What advantages does the Big Data tool offer to the business community, and what is included into the package of services?
Our task is to demonstrate efficiency of the model for any business. Just imagine: accuracy of the Big Data models we create exceeds 80%. It works as follows: the customer selects the necessary target audience in the Big Data Solutions package for the unique valuable offers to be sent in text messages. Several dozen analysts used to deal with the customer’s specific analytical tasks, but the Big Data Solutions has replaced a team of analytical specialists.
As a test, Kyivstar offers the Proof of Concept package, which is a trial version making the customer understand how Big Data can help achieve its business goals. An interested businessman can order the Proof of Concept as a test service by calling 0-800-300-466. Basically, the “pilot” version is implemented successfully, and we provide subscription services after that. In Ukraine, the service is popular with the financial sector, retail and insurance companies. On average, about 50 to 60 customers per month buy the full version of the service and get a regular Big Data subscription after the successful test period.
– What other digital solutions are offered by Kyivstar?
The solutions of the industrial IoT are offered by Kyivstar to industrial and municipal enterprises, agrarian and logistical companies and the retail sector. Our offer includes deployment of the telecommunication network and connection of the system of “smart” water, electricity and gas sensors. The smart city technology is gradually developing in Ukraine. Several days ago, Kyivstar signed the memorandum with the Kharkiv City Council regarding cooperation to implement innovation projects in the city. The projects include IT services used to manage the public transport, cloud solutions to optimise expenditures for operation of the IT infrastructure of different entities, statistical data based on the Big Data to assist in development of the municipal infrastructure, analysis of demographic and tourist flows in the region as well as access to the municipal electronic portals through Mobile ID service.
The cloud platforms developed in cooperation with Microsoft, Azure Stack with Kyivstar and Azure Cloud with Kyivstar, are the services used to deploy applications, create analytical data, and store and process data in the Kyivstar data centre. Our partnership with Microsoft ensures the maximum level of reliability and safety. For instance, a workflow may be deployed in the cloud in several hours by means of Azure Stack with Kyivstar with no capital expenditures, which ensures speed, reliability, disaster recovery and strategically reasonable investment into future business performance. The important customer data are stored and processed in the Kyivstar data centre, which is consistent with the Ukrainian laws, on the one hand, and high security standards, on the other hand. The most important thing that cloud solutions help business save money and avoid heavy costs in practice.
Another sector of strategic significance for the telecommunication operator is the mobile financial service (MFS). Payment with a smartphone and from the mobile account will enable to withdraw from traditional plastic payment cards. The mobile wallet, the mobile payment and money transfer platform SMART-MONEY by Kyivstar, works this way. It is a sort of payment ecosystem where customers’ cards and accounts are kept in the mobile operator’s virtual wallet, and all the utility bills are paid from the mobile account. As a matter of fact, Kyivstar is turning into the financial and technical entity providing transaction services.
Kyivstar offers complex business solutions and ceases to be a traditional mobile service provider and turns into a end-to-end solution operator. /
Ilya Polshakov
Photo: provided by Kyivstar
