May 2015

A Privacy-Enabled Data Exchange that Expands Analytics Uses in Fraud, Credit Risk and Beyond

interview with Michelle Wheeler

The virtue of analytics is its efficiency. It matches up buyer preferences with seller production.

It enables a dozen brands of spaghetti to appear on your grocer’s shelf: thick vs. thin, Sicilian vs. Napolitano, elegant vs. budget, regular vs. organic, generic vs. your Italian Grandma’s authentic style.

But the soggy noodle of analytics is privacy. It doesn’t matter to me if my local grocer takes note of the spaghetti brand I buy, but I flinch at the thought that my ISP or service provider is scanning my personal emails.

I’m not the only one who’s leery of the privacy-negligent way a lot of analytics data is managed. My hunch is the lack of a rock-solid privacy framework is holding analytics back. Consider data monetization. Using real-time telco data to entice people to visit a particular retail store in a mall: why that’s a multi-billion dollar idea. So why hasn’t it taken off? Well, I think the fear of major privacy breaches is a key reason.

Freeing analytics from this privacy strait-jacket is what XOR Data Exchange (Austin, TX) is all about. XOR has conceived an ingenious privacy and analytics framework that allows telecoms, banks, and money lenders to expand their trading of fraud, credit risk and other data with each other in complete confidence and control.

Here to explain it all for Black Swan readers is XOR’s Business Leader, Michelle Wheeler, a 25-year veteran of telecom and financial fraud management and the inventor/product manager of the former Lightbridge’s telecom fraud control service, Fraud Centurion, a leading solution serving the US mobile industry in the 1990s.

Hearing what Michelle had to say got my mind spinning about potential use cases across the board in analytics.

	Dan Baker: Michelle, can you first explain the genesis of XOR? How did you get this idea started in the first place?

Michelle Wheeler: Absolutely, Dan. Actually three of us with a lot of combined experience in credit and fraud management started XOR Data Exchange in early 2014. There’s myself and Mike Cook, our CEO, who co-founded ID Analytics. And the third founder is Brian Ketelsen, our CIO and analytics guru.

Ever since I started working for Mike 15 years ago, he’s talked about changing the model on how data is shared between companies.

Here’s the issue. Any time a company — banks, telecoms, lenders, etc. — works with a credit bureau, it loses control of its own data. Sure, the bureau provides credit reports and some fraud checks. The trouble is the credit bureau ends up using the data for purposes way beyond what it was originally intended. For instance, the credit bureaus use your data for marketing lists and collections purposes.

In the end, you have no idea how your data is being used, who’s using it, and how often. And if you ever wanted to pull your data back in-house, well, that can’t be done.

So what we aim to do at XOR Data Exchange is to turn this problem on its ear.

The concept is very simple. We set ourselves up to be a facilitator and trusted analytics engine for individual companies who want to share their data. And we do this without ever compromising the privacy of their data. All the data we “house” on our servers comes to us totally encrypted. Plus the data is only used for purposes that each exchange “member” specifically approves.

In fact, the member companies go into the system and say, “Here are the permissions for the use of my data” and the data cannot be used for any other purpose.

The exchange is also “transparent”. And by that I mean, any time their data is accessed or used for any purpose at all, the member gets a notice saying, “Your data was just used by X industry for this purpose at this time.”

	OK, I get the privacy and permissions aspect of the Data Exchange, but what’s the business benefit of setting up this exchange?

Dan, the actual use of the exchange is for the members to decide for themselves. This is not like a traditional software product: we rely on the members to decide what exchange mechanisms get built.

Now, given our background in the credit risk industry, we certainly have some solid ideas on how our members can exchange things. But we really don’t have a product to sell per se. We are facilitators of our members trading with each other.

But working with members as a facilitator puts in an ideal position. For example, the communications industry does not report to the credit bureaus. But they will report to us because we allow the telecoms to retain control of their data.

Now the financial services industry is very interested in gaining access to telecom data because they don‘t have access to it today. So that’s where we facilitate the conversation. For instance, we contacted the financial services guys and said, “Listen, the communications industry is going to report to us the performance of their customer base, are you interested in obtaining that?” And they say, “Absolutely.” And so we asked, “What can we give them in exchange?” And they said, “Well, we’ll give them our self-reported income data.”

To get conversations like that going, we host cross-industry sessions twice a year to get everybody in the room together. And they talk about what data they want, how they would like to work together, and in our last meeting we had 16 people from on-line lending, communications, financial services, credit card, and banking.

And at the dinner the night before, we were sitting around the dinner table and somebody from the satellite company said, for example, “Hey, Ms. Credit Card, can I try your brussel sprouts?” And Ms. Credit Card said, “Well, unfortunately I don‘t have enough brussel sprouts, but Mr. On-line Lender next to me does, so maybe if I give him some of my steak, he will be happy to give you some of his brussel sprouts. And I’d sure be grateful if you would let me try some of your mashed potatoes.”

And that’s how it works :- ) We take the data, and based on what our exchange members ask us to build — what business problem they ask us to solve — we go to work and solve it.

	Michelle, I noticed a recent press release of yours announcing your first major exchange is in the small business risk area. What’s that about?

Dan, small business fraud and credit risk assessment is a gaping hole in the market and it’s critical that telcos and financial services firms get better intelligence. It’s really one of the hottest issue around.

The problem is that traditional business research firms — like Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) — don’t collect much information on small businesses.

Let me illustrate the problem using a telecom example.

The credit extended to a household consumer of telecom is relatively limited. Even if a consumer has a good credit rating, a telecom is generally not going to allow more than five mobile or fixed phones on their account.

But if a fraudster represents herself as a small business, it’s much easier for her to get approval for a combination of maybe 15 mobile phones and fixed lines. So as a communications provider, my exposure is much bigger when I serve small business.

So the fraudster calls up to say, “I’m Michelle Wheeler Inc... I have five employees and I am growing rapidly so I want to have 15 lines provisioned”, and I’ll probably get that approved because you will not find any negative history available about me.

So this is a glaring problem in the credit risk system today and solving it will help any industry who gives credit to small business.

Now we also pull in data from geo-location databases. So if somebody is applying for service and claim they are a small business but the location says it’s a residential apartment building, then it’s probably a fraud.

Social media is another out-of-the-ordinary data source. If the small business doesn‘t have a presence on Linked-In, it’s probably not valid. And someday soon we hope to expand the small business risk exchange to something similar on the consumer side.

	What does the member receive when they obtain data from the exchange?

We take the data provided by the exchange members and do statistical modeling on it. What we return back is a probability score and attributes that indicate what it is we found about that consumer or small business. So a comms provider will incorporate that into their decision processing.

They take that information and because it’s FCRA compliant, if the data is sufficient, they can confidently say: “This guy is a high fraud risk, so I’m going to decline him right now”, or they can dip into another source of data as well.

	And how do you guarantee that the exchange member’s data is not compromised?

Here’s the thing, Dan. When the data is in production, nobody ever sees it. When the application comes over to us from the Member, it comes over encrypted. And as we analyze the data, it remains encrypted all the time, yet the engine knows how to handle and match up the encrypted data into the system.

When the data goes back over to the exchange member the data gets de-encrypted on their end, but no personally identifiable information is sent back, only the final probability scores and some attributes. XOR’s attributes provide details about the matching in the Exchange. For example, an attribute may be ‘multiple identities associated with this email address” or “business is located at a residential address”.

So this is a big reason our exchange members trust us: there’s no way for us to fake it. They set the permissions themselves and we are merely hosting the encrypted exchanges and creating the analytics and thinking about how to use that data, but we don’t touch the data itself.

	Finally, this is a shot across the bow of the credit bureaus. Can’t they steal your thunder and develop exchanges of their own?

We will certainly be cheaper than the credit bureaus because we do not have the overhead those firms have. We are ten or eleven people and we have brilliant technologists who know how to partition things so we don’t need hundreds of systems to run individual exchanges.

The biggest obstacle for the bureaus getting into the exchange game is it’s hard for them to change their business model. If they were to do something like this, they’d lose a big chunk of the revenue they get reselling other people’s data for marketing purposes. And to incorporate permissions and transparency would require a complete redesign of their systems.

And remember, our model is not about replicating what the credit bureaus offer. The exchange allows our members to greatly expand the number of information exchanges that are out there. These exchanges would never see the light of day in credit bureaus because the lack of trust over data confidentiality issues prevents those use cases from being born.

Finally I think our focused approach will be faster to get new solutions in place. We are better adapted to solving these individual problems. And frankly we’re more fun.

	Michelle, hearing your enthusiasm over the phone certainly conveys you’re having fun. Good luck with the roll out.

Michelle Wheeler

Michelle Wheeler brings more than 25 years of experience in the communications and financial services markets to XOR Data Exchange. She has deep experience in risk and analytics and her career has focused on enabling start-up companies to expand their business through direct and indirect sales and marketing.

She is a CFCA Board member, long-term member of TRMA and has previously served on Utica College’s Economic Crime Institute board. Contact Michelle via

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The Multi-Vendor MPLS: Enabling Tier 2 and 3 Telecoms to Offer World-Class Networks to SMBs — interview with Prabhu Ramachandran — MPLS is a networking technology that has caught fire in the last decade. Yet the complexity of MPLS has relegated to being mostly a large carrier solution. Now a developer of a multi-vendor MPLS solutions explains why the next wave of MPLS adoption will come from tier 2/3 carriers supporting SMB customers.
Enabling Telecoms & Utilities to Adapt to the Winds of Business Change — interview with Kirill Rechter — Billing is in the midst of momentous change. Its value is no longer just around delivering multi-play services or sophisticated rating. In this article you’ll learn how a billing/CRM supplier has adapted to the times by offering deeper value around the larger business issues of its telecom and utility clients.
Driving Customer Care Results & Cost Savings from Big Data Facts — interview with Brian Jurutka — Mobile broadband and today’s dizzying array of app and network technology present a big challenge to customer care. In fact, care agents have a hard time staying one step ahead of customers who call to report problems. But network analytics comes to the rescue with advanced mobile handset troubleshooting and an ability to put greater intelligence at the fingertips of highly trained reps.
Hadoop and M2M Meet Device and Network Management Systems — interview with Eric Wegner — Telecom big-data in networks is more than customer experience managment: it’s also about M2M plus network and element management systems. This interview discusses the explosion in machine-to-machine devices, the virtues and drawbacks of Hadoop, and the network impact of shrink-wrapped search.
The Data Center & Cloud Infrastructure Boom: Is Your Sales/Engineering Team Equipped to Win? — by Dan Baker — The build-out of enterprise clouds and data centers is a golden opportunity for systems integrators, carriers, and cloud providers. But the firms who win this business will have sales and engineering teams who can drive an effective and streamlined requirements-to-design-to-order process. This white paper points to a solution — a collaborative solution designs system — and explains 8 key capabilities of an ideal platform.
Big Data: Is it Ready for Prime Time in Customer Experience Management? — interview with Thomas Sutter — Customer experience management is one of the most challenging of OSS domains and some suppliers are touting “big data” solutions as the silver bullet for CEM upgrades and consolidation. This interview challenges the readiness of big data soluions to tackle OSS issues and deliver the cost savings. The article also provides advice on managing technology risks, software vendor partnering, and the strategies of different OSS suppliers.
Calculated Risk: The Race to Deliver the Next Generation of LTE Service Management — interview with Edoardo Rizzi — LTE and the emerging heterogeneous networks are likely to shake up the service management and customer experience management worlds. Learn about the many new network management challenges LTE presents, and how a small OSS software firm aims to beat the big established players to market with a bold new technology and strategy.
Decom Dilemma: Why Tearing Down Networks is Often Harder than Deploying Them — interview with Dan Hays — For every new 4G LTE and IP-based infrastructure deployed, there typically a legacy network that’s been rendered obsolete and needs to be decommissioned. This article takes you through the many complexities of network decom, such as facilities planning, site lease terminations, green-safe equipment disposal, and tax relief programs.
Migration Success or Migraine Headache: Why Upfront Planning is Key to Network Decom — interview with Ron Angner — Shutting down old networks and migrating customers to new ones is among the most challenging activities a network operators does today. This article provides advice on the many network issues surrounding migration and decommissioning. Topics discussed include inventory reconciliation, LEC/CLEC coordination, and protection of customers in the midst of projects that require great program management skills.
Navigating the Telecom Solutions Wilderness: Advice from Some Veteran Mountaineers — interview with Al Brisard — Telecom solutions vendors struggle mightily to position their solutions and figure out what to offer next in a market where there’s considerable product and service crossover. In this article, a veteran order management specialist firm lays out its strategy for mixing deep-bench functional expertise with process consulting, analytics, and custom API development.
Will Telecoms Sink Under the Weight of their Bloated and Out-of-Control Product Stacks? — interview with Simon Muderack — Telecoms pay daily for their lack of product integration as they constantly reinvent product wheels, lose customer intelligence, and waste time/money. This article makes the case of an enterprise product catalog. Drawing on central catalog cases at a few Tier 1 operators, the article explains the benefits: reducing billing and provisioning costs, promoting product reuse, and smoothing operations.
Virtual Operator Life: Enabling Multi-Level Resellers Through an Active Product Catalog — interview with Rob Hill — The value of product distribution via virtual operators is immense. They enable a carrier to sell to markets it cannot profitably serve directly. Yet the need for greater reseller flexibility in the bundling and pricing of increasingly complex IP and cloud services is now a major channel barrier. This article explains what’s behind an innovative product catalog solution that doubles as a service creation environment for resellers in multiple tiers.
Telecom Blocking & Tackling: Executing the Fundamentals of the Order-to-Bill Process — interview with Ron Angner — Just as football teams need to be good at the basics of blocking and tackling, telecoms need to excel at their own fundamental skillset: the order-to-cash process. In this article, a leading consulting firm explains its methodology for taking operators on the path towards order-to-cash excellence. Issues discussed include: provisioning intervals; standardization and simplicity; the transition from legacy to improved process; and the major role that industry metrics play.
Wireline Act IV, Scene II: Packaging Network & SaaS Services Together to Serve SMBs — by John Frame — As revenue from telephony services has steadily declined, fixed network operators have scrambled to support VoIP, enhanced IP services, and now cloud applications. This shift has also brought challenges to the provisioning software vendors who support the operators. In this interview, a leading supplier explains how it’s transforming from plain ol‘ OSS software provider to packager of on-net and SaaS solutions from an array of third party cloud providers.
Telecom Merger Juggling Act: How to Convert the Back Office and Keep Customers and Investors Happy at the Same Time — interview with Curtis Mills — Billing and OSS conversions as the result of a merger are a risky activity as evidenced by famous cases at Fairpoint and Hawaiian Telcom. This article offers advice on how to head off problems by monitoring key operations checkpoints, asking the right questions, and leading with a proven conversion methodology.
Is Order Management a Provisioning System or Your Best Salesperson? — by John Konczal — Order management as a differentiator is a very new concept to many CSP people, but it’s become a very real sales booster in many industries. Using electronics retailer BestBuy as an example, the article points to several innovations that can — and are — being applied by CSPs today. The article concludes with 8 key questions an operator should ask to measure advanced order management progress.
NEC Takes the Telecom Cloud from PowerPoint to Live Customers — interview with Shinya Kukita — In the cloud computing world, it’s a long road from technology success to telecom busness opportunity. But this story about how NEC and Telefonica are partnering to offer cloud services to small and medium enterprises shows the experience of early cloud adoption. Issues discussed in the article include: customer types, cloud application varieties, geographic region acceptance, and selling challenges.
Billing As Enabler for the Next Killer Business Model — interview with Scott Swartz — Facebook, cloud services, and Google Ads are examples of innovative business models that demand unique or non-standard billing techniques. The article shows how flexible, change-on-the-fly, and metadata-driven billing architectures are enabling CSPs to offer truly ground breaking services.
Real-Time Provisioning of SIM Cards: A Boon to GSM Operators — interview with Simo Isomaki — Software-controlled SIM card configuration is revolutionizing the activation of GSM phones. The article explains how dynamic SIM management decouples the selection of numbers/services and delivers new opportunities to market during the customer acquisition and intial provisoining phase.
A Cynic Converted: IN/Prepaid Platforms Are Now Pretty Cool — interview with Grant Lenahan — Service delivery platforms born in the IN era are often painted as inflexible and expensive to maintain. Learn how modern SDPs with protocol mediation, high availability, and flexible Service Creation Environments are delivering value for operators such as Brazil’s Oi.
Achieving Revenue Maximization in the Telecom Contact Center — interview with Robert Lamb — Optimizing the contact center offers one of the greatest returns on investment for a CSP. The director of AT&T’s contact center services business explains how telecoms can strike an “artful balance” between contact center investment and cost savings. The discussion draws from AT&T’s consulting with world class customers like Ford, Dell, Discover Financial, DISH Network, and General Motors.
Mobile Broadband: The Customer Service Assurance Challenge — interview with Michele Campriani — iPhone and Android traffic is surging but operators struggle with network congestion and dropping ARPUs. The answer? Direct resources and service quality measures to ensure VIPs are indeed getting the quality they expect. Using real-life examples that cut to the chase of technical complexities, this article explains the chief causes of service quality degradation and describes efficient ways to deal with the problem.
Telco-in-a-Box: Are Telecoms Back in the B/OSS Business? — interview with Jim Dunlap — Most telecoms have long since folded their merchant B/OSS software/services businesses. But now Cycle30, a subsidiary of Alaskan operator GCI, is offering a order-to-cash managed service for other operators and utilities. The article discusses the company’s unique business model and contrasts it with billing service bureau and licensed software approaches.
Bricks, Mortar & Well-Trained Reps Make a Comeback in Customer Management — interview with Scott Kohlman — Greater industry competition, service complexity, and employee turnover have raised the bar in the customer support. Indeed, complex services are putting an emphasis on quality care interactions in the store, on the web, and through the call center. In this article you’ll learn about innovations in CRM, multi-tabbed agent portals, call center agent training, customer treatment philosophies, and the impact of self-service.
21st Century Order Management: The Cross-Channel Sales Conversation — by John Konczal — Selling a mobile service is generally not a one-and-done transaction. It often involves several interactions — across the web, call center, store, and even kiosks. This article explains the power of a “cross-channel hub” which sits above all sales channels, interacts with them all, and allows a CSP to keep the sales conversation moving forward seamlessly.
Building a B/OSS Business Through Common Sense Customer Service — by David West — Delivering customer service excellence doesn‘t require mastering some secret technique. The premise of this article is that plain dealing with customers and employees is all that’s needed for a winning formula. The argument is spelling out in a simple 4 step methodology along with some practical examples.

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