Fiber To The Home Data Analytics

A leading Tier 1 Cable MSO was observing higher-than-expected-and projected project costs and needed to correlate actual costs to projected costs to understand the issues and better control budget overruns.

• DTS developed an analytics framework to look for trends and identify outliers.
  • Created data dictionary to map projected expenses to actual costs
  • Both labor and material expenses included in data dictionary
  • Focused initial review on projects with higher percentage overruns
  • Initially, reviewed only completed projects
• Used analytics to drill down further on overruns by type of expense
• Further analysis included projects in flight to allow earlier feedback
• Held project reviews to understand the need for the extra expenses
• Took corrective action to stop unnecessary expenses
• Captured and shared lessons learned with the team

• The client was able to identify expenses on spare materials that should not have been charged to the projects, leading to a development of a separate sparing program.
• The client found that on over 10% of the projects, funds were being used to provide temporary services not covered in the funding request.
• Overall, the client was able to understand what was actually being charged to the projects and better manage and control their expenses and close a 43% program variance.