Commercial control tower for CEO/CMO/CFO: the one screen that has to exist

Where commercial data lives today

At most telecoms commercial reality is visible through several sources.

Marketing shows its dashboard — campaigns, conversion, reach, response.

Sales shows its own — activations by channel, dealer network, base growth.

Retention has its own — churn, saves, lost customers.

Customer care has its own — calls, NPS, time-to-resolution.

Finance publishes a monthly report — revenue, ARPU, margin.

Network ops have a separate dashboard for technical metrics.

Each source has its own numbers, its own calculation logic, its own timeframes. When the CEO needs to understand “how sales are going”, different teams give different answers. When the CFO needs to explain “why ARPU is stagnating” to the board, they have to reconcile versions manually. When the CMO needs to decide “how much to invest in digital”, they rely on a marketing dashboard that other teams find too flattering.

This is not “no data”. It is the opposite — too much data without a common ground.

What “control tower” actually means

A commercial control tower is not “one more dashboard”. It is an architectural decision that:

Has one set of numbers. Every key metric (ARPU, base, retention, churn, sales, margin) is defined once and computed once. Every team sees the same numbers.

Is real-time or near-real-time. Not “updated next morning”, but a current snapshot. Decisions can be made faster.

Allows drill-down. From a top-level metric (total revenue) you go down to sub-segments (revenue by segment, by region, by product, by channel).

Is cross-functional. Connections between metrics are visible — how marketing changes flow into retention, how network experience flows into churn.

Is action-oriented. Not just a dashboard but links to actions — saw the problem, see the owner, see the available steps.

Without at least three of those five it is just another dashboard.

Why building one usually fails

The project looks like a “BI initiative”. In reality it is not BI — it is a rebuild of the commercial operating model. BI without operating model is a fake control tower.

Each team wants to keep its dashboard. That keeps narrative control. Moving to a shared source threatens that control.

No master definitions. ARPU is calculated three different ways by three teams. The CFO calculates from billing, marketing from revenue captured to customer, finance planning from revenue net of discounts. Without an agreement on definition, the control tower does not get built.

Vendor preferences. Different teams use different tools — SAS, Power BI, Tableau, custom. Sweeping to one tool is politically hard.

Data foundation. Master customer ID, event-level data, real-time pipeline — without these the control tower does not work technically.

The board does not see ROI. “Why spend a year on a dashboard” is the recurring question. The answer is that it is not a dashboard, it is an operating discipline. But that is a hard sell.

What goes into a control tower

Top-level revenue view. Total revenue, by segment, by product, by region. With drill-down.

Active base view. Active base size by segment, dynamics, net additions.

Churn view. Voluntary churn, involuntary churn, top 5-10 reason codes, churn by segment, MNP outflow and inflow.

Sales pipeline. Activations by channel with trustworthy attribution, conversion rates by stage.

Margin view. Margin by segment and product, not just revenue. Often missing — revenue measured, margin not, decisions taken on revenue.

Customer satisfaction. NPS by segment, complaint trends.

Network impact. Correlation between network quality and churn, sales by region.

Marketing efficiency. Spend by channel, attribution-aware results, ROI by campaign.

Without any of these the picture is incomplete. Without all of them informed decisions are hard.

A realistic build roadmap

Building a control tower takes 12-18 months. Phased.

Months 1-3. Foundation. Master definitions for all key metrics. Board approval. The politically hard stage.

Months 4-9. Build the core. Top-level views — revenue, base, churn. The main elements. Real-time or near-real-time pipeline.

Months 10-15. Expansion. Margin views, customer satisfaction, network impact. Drill-down capabilities.

Months 16-18. Operating discipline. A weekly review where C-level looks at the control tower. Decisions taken on its data, not on parallel reports.

By month 18 the control tower works as the commercial decision-making layer. Teams can keep their operational dashboards, but C-level and strategic decisions run on shared data.

What often goes wrong

Building a dashboard without master definitions. A pretty interface that shows different numbers depending on the data fed in.

Vendor lock-in. One vendor builds the control tower, and 3-5 years later vendor change takes as long as the original build.

Avoidance of hard topics. The control tower shows only the pretty picture, omits margin, churn by causal segments, other inconvenient truths. Damaging — the control tower must show problems, not only success.

No operating discipline. Built, but C-level still uses parallel team reports. Investment does not return.

Real-time on every metric. Not every metric needs real-time. Margin can be monthly. NPS quarterly. Real-time only where it matters — sales activity, system incidents, large changes.

When not to start the control tower

If the data foundation is rough — no master IDs, events not unified, source systems heavily fragmented — the control tower is upstream of the foundation. Foundation first.

If C-level is not committed to 12-18 months of investment — start after the commitment, not before.

If there is no central Data Office or equivalent function, there is no owner of definitions, build or operations.

If the organisation is in an acute RFP phase on billing or CRM, a control tower on shifting underlying systems is unstable.

If the competitive environment demands today’s decisions and there are no 12 months — focus on quick wins, control tower later.

Discussion points for the committee

Which 3-5 numbers differ across team views? That is the entry point.

Who is committed that master definitions of metric X will be one specific way? Without commitment it does not start.

Is C-level ready to look at one dashboard instead of several parallel ones? A behavioural commitment.

Which data foundation gaps block the control tower? On what timeline are they closed?

What 18-month budget commit is needed and is it there?

How SamaraliSoft can help

Commercial Control Tower Architecture — audit of the current state of commercial measurement (where the fragmentation is, what problems it creates), build of the master definitions framework, design of the control tower architecture with 7-9 key views, blueprint of the data pipeline and real-time component, organisational design of operating discipline, and a phased rollout with a pilot on a few commercial views.

Related reading

• /en/insights/telecom-subscriber-intelligence-operating-model/ — operating model
• /en/architecture/telecom-around-core-architecture/ — layer around the core
• /en/insights/telecom-sales-attribution/ — attribution
• /en/insights/telecom-retention-economics/ — retention economics

Sources

• Digital Government Portal — digital infrastructure UZ
• UzDaily — Central Asia telecom market
• Ministry of Digital Technologies — telecom in UZ
• MNP.UZ — number portability