Livewire

The digital lifestyle of people is revolutionizing information consumption. Being online and always connected has become a lifestyle of the Gen Y’ers a.k.a the “millennials”. The change Web 2.0 era has brought in (further exemplified by the technological advancements across mobile devices and enabling infrastructures) has changed the meaning of being “Online”. We started seeing this happening on the mobile devices when the growth of device platforms such as the iPhone and Android created a near-PC like experience on mobile phones and elevated them to a level where they can effectively replace PCs for day-to-day needs. Today, this is being extended to the living room through Interactive TV applications that enable people from accessing information about their local area, to update their status on Facebook and to order a Pizza.

In the Web 1.0 era, web-enabling enhanced the accessibility of enterprise applications significantly. In the Web 2.0 era, “mobile” is changing the way enterprises conduct their business. With more than 4 billion (and counting…) mobile users, the mobile device presents an opportunity that will parallel or even exceed the impact of the Internet.

Over the years, the Enterprise Mobility market has matured. Widespread usage of mobility in the enterprises started with Blackberry enabling mobile access to enterprise emails. From there, we have moved on to see an increasing number of enterprises who have either invested or investing in mobility for their mission critical corporate applications like CRM, FFA, SFA and SCM.

With the proliferation of smart phones, the App Store phenomenon and their “openness” have created a new playing field for enterprises and businesses. Application Stores are here to stay! And the consumer appetite for innovative mobile applications will continue on its exponential growth curve. The growth of this cool and tech-savvy Gen Y population and the devices that cater to their imagination have prompted a lot of business and brands to their rethink their mobile strategy.

Today we see businesses exploring ways to enhance their brand and enhance customer relationship loyalty by creating customer touch points on the mobile phone via iPhone applications. Mobile, as a channel, provides opportunities for these companies from promoting a new product line, to delivering location and user-based targeted offers to providing on-demand access to support information.

Gone are the days when there was a great deal of emphasis given to an organization’s Online Strategy. We are in an era when Enterprises should start focusing on Mobility as a part of their overall strategy giving it an equal footing, if not more, with their Online Strategy. Mobility combined with the power of Web 2.0 and Social Media will exemplify the impact companies can create on the user experience.

Will all these Mobile Apps from Businesses stop just with iPhone? Or will this be the way forward for the businesses and brands? What do you think the challenges, if any, could be?

I would like to hear your thoughts.

Posted by Sandeep Chandrasekar Seshadri at 08:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In the wake of the global economic crisis, firms across industries and geographies have come under tremendous pressure to reduce costs. Most have responded by adopting a 'Capex Freeze' and 'Opex Reduction' mentality, which has been evident in their spending decisions, including those involving their outsourcing partners. Communication Service Providers (CSP) has been no exception!

Against this backdrop, Analytics as a service offering assumes significance, considering its potential to deliver quick and tangible Return On Investment (ROI) against relatively minor investments on the part of CSPs.

The entry of non traditional players to the CSP market and subsequent change in market dynamics, market saturation e.g. UK has more SIM cards than people and the continuous drop in Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) had already made 'customer experience management' the number one priority for CSPs. Recession has served to further galvanize the efforts of CSPs in this regard.

Analytics, through its ability to identify critical customer signals, can provide immense value add to CSPs in this regard. Interpreting these early warning signals can lead to devising of effective programs which will enable CSPs to offer positive 'customer experience' aiding increased loyalty and usage.

One area where analytics delivers stand-out value is capturing the Voice of Customer (VoC). Every customer interaction is a rich source of information on customer experience and behavior. Leveraging this 'Voice of Customer' information, through the use of analytics, can help positively impact ARPU. Unfortunately, the unstructured nature of this information makes it very difficult to mine using ordinary analytical techniques. Analytic tools which can develop semantic insights from unstructured data by leveraging natural language processing capabilities are needed to provide real time intelligent analytics about customer experience and usage.

The insights thus gained can be used in two ways:

• Target a customer segment, eg. fine tune market offerings for a customer segment based on real time customer feedback gained through this type of VoC analytics tool

• Target individual customer, eg. Enhance up-sell & cross sell opportunities during interaction of the customer with a customer care representative, create Just-in time marketing campaigns, etc.

The way forward would be to develop analytics as an end-to-end managed service offering which would cover the entire spectrum of solution development, solution testing and subsequent solution delivery. Such an initiative would be of tremendous interest to CSPs as the risk of 'execution failure' is mitigated with the onus of successful analytics project implementation being passed on to their  outsourcing partner.

Posted by Vinay Peshwa at 04:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In the era of disruptive business models and evolving technologies, service providers need to be able to adapt to the newer models and be relevant in the new value chain.

Business agility is ability of an organization to respond to change. With the advent of internet, mobility, and social networking the consumer expectations have increased and his power to contribute and influence the business models has increased manifold.

Telecom service providers have traditionally lagged behind other industries like retail in understanding and engaging with the consumers directly. The time to market for newer products has been very high with prohibitive costs sometimes. The market scenario requires service providers to develop a business model with partners and resellers quickly.

So how do the service providers become more agile ??

Essentially there are main areas to focus

1. Power of collaboration : Direct engagement with the consumers

2. Faster to market with new products, retire products faster, learn from failure

3. Ability to react to market changes quickly

There is a lot of learning to be acquired from other industries. Dell invites its customers to present ideas and have launched products as a result. Many of the manufacturing companies get ideas from the customers in designing new cars. The ability of the retail organizations to get the products to market and retire them faster is far ahead of the Telco's. Though the telecom products are slightly different, the core concepts can still be applied.

Power of collaboration : Direct engagement with the consumers

There is a need to interact with consumers directly to understand their behaviour, requirements and expectations. The engagement with the consumers should also be extended to ideation, development and testing of the products. Next step would be to utilize the power of social networking tools to develop new revenue lines.

Faster to market with new products, retire products faster, learn from failure

Service providers need to shorten their time to market (typically 12-18 months ) to 3-6 months. There is also a need to go to market with smaller scope of the product and not spend loads of effort in developing products which may or may not be very successfull. The concepts of agile IT processes can significantly reduce the time to market (limited scope) and improve ability to change scope.

Ability to react to market changes quickly

The business processes of the organization and the system estate needs to be very lean, nimble and flexible. This will also require flexible operating models so that it is easy to integrate with newer operators or entities faster.

Business agility will play an increasing role for the service providers to stay in the game and differentiate themselves

Posted by Sanjeev Kumar at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Across the world one can see the ever increasing FTTX (Fiber) rollouts. These capital intensive rollouts are largely driven by the anticipated bandwidth needs of the next generation TV,  network hosted applications and the networked home appliances & devices.

The CSPs have been so focussed on the rollout of these new fiber access networks that little time has been spent on planning for the 'last-mile' solutions / services that would be required to support the new fiber based offerings.

Some of the key challenges faced by the CSPs in these rollouts has been the following

• Upgradation of systems and technology is unable to keep pace with the pace of rollouts leading to failure of 'flow-thru' provisioning and thereby leading to a lot of manual intervention
• In-plant and outside-plant inventory inaccuracy issues leading to delays in turning on the service on the field
• Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) needs to be replaced or upgraded for the new services to be turned on
• Re-skilling or up-skilling of the field technicians to handle install or repair of new fiber-based services

The CSPs need to really think of the so called 'last-mile' solutions which can help address the above mentioned challenges. A few of the potential 'last-mile' solutions are as follows:-

• Setup teams focussed on "Order Fallout" Management to reduce the service activation delays
• 'Routing Solutions' assistance for field technicians to overcome plant inventory data inaccuracy
• Returns or Reverse Logistics Management Solutions to take care of CPE upgrade / replacement
• Effective Knowledge Management techniques to ensure rapid up-skilling of the field-force

The demand for the illustrated 'last-mile' solutions will grow in the coming months and years as the fibre rollouts gather further steam. It would be a good idea for the CSPs to start thinking on these lines soon...

Posted by Vinay Peshwa at 03:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Netflix set this contest in Oct 2006 to challenge the best of statisticians / predictive modeling gurus worldwide to better its movie recommendation system by 10%.  Well, this should qualify as one of the largest globally outsourced projects -- the contest drew tremendous response with over   44K entries from 5K+ teams in 180+ countries. More information on the Netflix contest at  http://www.netflixprize.com/...

Netflix believes that a 10% improvement on the current predictive model could significantly enhance value to its customer experience. For my weekend doses of movie titles, I could hopefully use the new / improved Netflix’s prediction system (based on my preferences), to help decide if I should rent Taken ahead of The International.

While this post is not about Innovation / collaboration and how Netflix may implement the winning solution, let’s look at how Cable companies can learn from Netflix’s experience. Traditionally, Cable companies have figured at the bottom of the Customer Satisfaction scale. Let’s look at some data points:

-According to the recent ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) Q1’09 scores, Cable & Satellite industry is rated at 63, whereas the National Customer Satisfaction Index is 76. Rating is done on a 100-point scale.

The difference between the Cable & Satellite and national average is over 1300 basis points. This is a huge gap. Even amongst its peers, the Cable MSOs lag behind the Satellite providers by 500 to 1100 basis points.

- Now, compare Cable & Satellite providers with an innovator like Netflix, whose score is around 85.

Cable MSOs have a mile to cross to get their customers excited about TV experience. What does Netflix initiative tell us? Are Cable MSOs engaging their subscribers?

Will the Tru2Way initiative help drive Customer Experience by engaging both the subscribers and 3rd party developers?  What about the new tools and applications that can improve customer experience? As the VOD library grows, how will a MSO deliver content based subscriber’s preferences? Interesting times for the Cable industry as they try to bridge the gap. Will be back soon with more thoughts…

Posted by Balajee Natarajan at 03:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Given that for the most part the mobile offerings are standards and stack driven, there is not much that separate’s the service providers (from a consumers view) in terms of offerings – voice is voice, text is text. The main choice is currently driven by product bundles and more recently some exclusive access to handsets. But these are for most part easily replicable or contended with.

However, quality of customer service can be one key aspect that is difficult to duplicate / replicate and a much more personal experience for a customer – and this matters.
 

Posted by Vivek K. Chadha at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)