Fiber To The Home Data Analytics

The Problem

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 Approach

  • 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

Client Benefits

  • 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.