In a conversation with EnterpriseIT, Dr Vasudevan shares his perspectives on the company’s commitment in the Gulf region and how the company’s AI models is helping businesses to maximize customer lifetime value and product lifetime profitability.
Can you describe the problem Flytxt is trying to solve?
Enterprises are increasingly turning their focus to existing customer base to grow business and deliver sustainable growth. This is particularly prevalent among those using a subscription business model.
Through their current CX systems, these enterprises are missing out on significant opportunities to increase the value of customer relationships. They are constrained by limited understanding of their customers’ behavior that drive long term relationship value, and the inability to take data-driven actions with long-term positive impact, quickly and decisively at scale. This is particularly prevalent in sectors such as telecoms and banking, where firms have an abundance of data yet lack the means to derive insights related to customer lifetime value (CLTV) from it. This is a critical issue that traditional computing has failed to tackle but AI has the potential to solve.
Flytxt helps the world’s leading subscription businesses harness this potential, using our pioneering AI solutions that tackle challenges fundamental to all of them – how to maximize customer lifetime value and product lifetime profitability.
“Flytxt helps the world’s leading subscription businesses harness value by using our pioneering AI solutions to tackle fundamental challenges and maximize customer lifetime value and product lifetime profitability.”
Dr. Vinod Vasudevan, CEO, Flytxt
What are some real examples of the problem you are solving with the Flytxt AI solution?
The benefit of Flytxt’s AI is its versatility. It can cover the entirety of a company’s Customer Lifetime Value Management efforts, or it can be plugged in to and augment existing CRM and MarTech systems to address specific areas of a company’s business.
Our solutions allow businesses to gain a deeper understanding of how customers purchase and use goods and services as well as predict their future needs. This enables clients to take data-driven decisions and actions across sales, marketing, customer service and e-commerce activities to maximize revenue, margins, volumes, etc. For example, we helped one CSP, which has more than 20 million subscribers to add over $40 million to their margin by providing better understanding and insights into what matters most to customers during their moments of truth.
Flytxt is also helping companies to harness second-party data (customer data of other enterprises) to expand their understanding of customers without compromising the privacy and localization of either party’s data. We help clients and their partners to derive and share valuable behavioral insights from data belonging to multiple enterprises without physically moving or even exposing any customer data between them.
For example, we helped a leading telco with more than 8 million subscribers and one of the OTT partners to understand the reasons for a sharp fall in app activity so that it could take appropriate actions to mitigate churn and inactivity. This was done through our patented Privacy Preserving Analytics that uses insights from the telco and the OTT customer data, using advanced encryption and distributed learning techniques. Going forward, this will be a key technology to create a thriving digital ecosystem, especially as third-party cookies get phased out and third-party data becomes irrelevant.
“In the MENA region, we are engaging with many leading OpCos, either directly or with our partners such as Atos and Netcracker, to provide our full stack CVM solution as part of the large-scale digital transformation projects.”
Can you tell us more about your customers in the UAE and ME?
The Middle East is a priority market for Flytxt. We are engaging with the operating companies (OpCos) of some of the largest telco groups in Middle East, such as Etisalat, Zain and Ooredoo. We provide our CVM solutions as part of their digital transformation initiatives directly as well as through our global partners.
We also work with a number of international brands, supporting their Middle East operations, including MTN Group and Orange Group.
Apart from telco clients, Flytxt is also in talks with some of the digital disruptors from other industries in the region, such as retail banking, media and entertainment, and utilities, to explore the use of our AI for driving profitable digital experiences across their CX workflows.
“The Middle East is a priority market for Flytxt. We are engaging with the operating companies (OpCos) of some of the largest telco groups in Middle East, such as Etisalat, Zain and Ooredoo. We provide our CVM solutions as part of their digital transformation initiatives directly as well as through our global partners.”
How mature is the communications market in the region?
Telecoms in the Middle East is still very much a growth market. Over the past decade, we have seen a great deal of investment in telecom network infrastructure and digital ecosystem as they transform from communication services providers (CSP) to digital services providers (DSP). We have also seen increased competition, with governments opening up their markets to more players. These factors have benefited retail and enterprise customers, creating a technological boom that has resulted in both economic and social growth. In fact, the region has one of the world’s highest levels of mobile penetration. The UAE, for example, has the second-highest proportion of mobile subscribers globally.
However, telcos in the region are looking beyond just providing high-speed connectivity and are positioning themselves as enablers of digital lifestyle services. Many of them are launching new ‘digital sub-brands’ with simplified offerings to increase their reach to digital natives and gain agility to address their diverse needs on a day-to-day basis.
As competition for market share becomes ever fiercer, they need to focus on customer experience and value maximization with clearly differentiated offerings. In this context how they engage with customers and balance the goals of CX and CLTV will determine their long-term growth.
What are the digital offerings and products popular in the region, including the UAE?
In the MENA region, we are engaging with many leading OpCos, either directly or with our partners such as Atos and Netcracker, to provide our full stack CVM solution as part of the large-scale digital transformation projects. They are using our analytics, AI and omni-channel campaign management capabilities to drive CVM campaigns, leading to measurable impact on upsell and cross-sell revenue and customer retention. The new digital service providers, such as Fintech players, who operate on a smaller scale benefit hugely from our packaged Cloud solution as it helps them to launch new products faster and drive higher digital sales.
Then there are other enterprises who have invested heavily in CX systems but are still figuring how to optimize the return. These companies are using our well-trained AI, which can be integrated seamlessly to the existing systems via Open API frameworks, to achieve accurate and actionable insights for CLTV maximization.
What are the benefits of partnering Oracle platform?
The focus for CSPs is shifting towards having the right product portfolio as they work to monetize traditional offers and new digital services. However, many still struggle to align product innovation with business objectives.
The combination of Flytxt’s Predictive Analytics and AI solutions and Oracle’s Digital Experience for Communications can help telco address these challenges by removing the guess work, ensuring offers and products are priced optimally, targeted to the right segments and most importantly, aligned with the business’s KPIs.
The platform makes use of Flytxt’s AIML models that were developed, trained, and refined using insights from trillions of samples from more than a billion customers. Through this new partnership, Flytxt will improve decision making for CSPs across sales, marketing and touch points, giving them more precision and personalization when launching products and offers as well as supporting customers.
Tell us more about your presence in the region
Flytxt is a Dutch company with a corporate office in Dubai and global development centers in India. We chose to base our corporate office in the UAE because of its strategic proximity to so many important markets, including Asia, Europe and Africa.
We employ more than 200 people and serve 80-plus clients around the world and also have a sales presence in multiple countries, including Mexico, The Netherlands, Colombia, Czech Republic, Spain, and Kenya.
