Telefónica Digital, a division of O2’s parent company, has launched Telefonica Dynamic Insights to work on opportunities arising from ‘big data’.
The new service offers companies and public sector organisations some analytical insight with view to making them more effective. It is to be rolled out through a range of products using different data sets including machine to machine data as well as anonymised and aggregated mobile network data.
To expand the service, Telefónica has partnered with GfK the marketing and research company. GfK and Telefonica will work together on product development initially in Germany, the UK and Brazil.
One step at a time
The first product to be released as part of the service is ‘Smart Steps’, which uses anonymised and aggregated data to measure, compare and understand which factors influence the number of people visiting a location at any time.
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It’s an interesting way to make use of our mobile devices. The anonymity helps to protect mobile users and the resulting data should, in theory, help to provide more effective and relevant services from businesses.
The telecomms giant says that a number of retailers are already helping with product development by providing user feedback. Smart Steps will also be able to help town councils measure how many more people visit their high street when there are changes to things like parking or late night shopping hours.
In addition to retail footfall measurement Telefónica Dynamic Insights is also developing analytics products to help companies in a wide range of different industries. Initial product focus areas include fraud protection, and ‘Smart City’ technology, including traffic management.
“Big data is one of the key building blocks of the digital economy. Approached in a smart and responsible way it has the potential to transform every part of business and society – providing economic growth and improving people’s lives,” says Stephen Shurrock, Chief Commercial Officer at Telefónica Digital.
Indeed it seems that our constant data exhaust could provide ways in which we can influence civic design and decision making as well as working out better ways to improve business prospects.
Telefonica Digital does some interesting things with information. As part of a global telecommunications company, it has access to a huge amount of data that could be used in helpful and relevant ways.
The division hopes to deliver new growth for Telefonica through research and development, venture capital, global partnerships and digital services like cloud computing, mobile advertising and e-health. It is also a works on innovation for the umbrella brand Tu which recently released an app for storing mobile interactions and making them searchable via a timeline.
Terra, Media Networks Latin America, 48 and giffgaff are all managed under the Telefónica Digital umbrella.
Image credit: AlbertoOg
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