Get Infopower on the Fly
Voice and Data - Gold Book , Thursday, March 11, 2004

However, you need to define your needs first and then ask for customized and scalable solutions

The rapid growth of mobile communication in India has started having a significant impact on the perception levels about the benefits of m-enabling business processes. The adoption of mobile phones has outpaced the growth of products and technologies such as PCs and the Internet. Gartner estimates that India's mobile phone market will grow 96 percent this year. It has predicted that mobile phone connections will overtake fixed phone lines around the third quarter of this year.

This means the mobile phone has become a ubiquitous means of communication among office goers as well as the masses.

The time has now come for enterprises to leverage on this tool to reach out to employees, business partners, and customers for a wide variety of applications. Enterprises should seriously contemplate or pursue mobile-enabling initiatives.

Gartner estimates that wireless technology can increase the productivity of mobile workers by as much as 30 percent. Worldwide, Gartner estimates that by 2004, almost 800 million users will access data wirelessly. This means that an increasing number of employees will regularly use mobile devices for work. Consequently, enterprises failing to support mobility needs of workers could face a loss of productivity as compared to organizations that have deployed mobile solutions. Similarly, enterprises who do not reach out to customers through this medium will also lose out on a great opportunity. Enabling a mobile workforce to access enterprise apps or using mobile solutions to deliver better customer care should be a top priority for CXOs today.

Return on Investment
It is important to understand clearly the RoI that a mobile enterprise can bring. ROI can be in terms of the following:

Flexiblity in Business Execution: The flexibility that mobile enterprises provide customers, employees and other stakeholders and partners in doing business is fast emerging as a source of competitive advantage.

Cost Efficiencies: Cost efficiencies by optimal deployment of employees and information assets in the enterprise can become a strategic value driver.

Better Customer-centricity: Results in better 'customer centricity' because of enhanced enterprise abilities to deliver customer service and enable transactions at customers' fingertips. It can assume the role of a process differentiator.

Efficient Business Processes: By providing information anytime, anywhere, it enables employees and partners to take decisions on the spot and reduce turnaround time. It also brings in process efficiencies because enterprise databases have to be updated on real-time.

Better Partner Loyalty: By providing business partners like distributors and channels access to information anytime, anywhere, enterprises can not only increase efficiencies but also use it as a competitive edge.

Customer Acquisition and Retention: It can help acquire customers unconstrained by time and space. It is a great tool in servicing customers, which goes a long way in customer retention.

Competitive Advantage: Companies can leverage on mobile solutions in the B2C space and gain a competitive advantage by substantially increasing mindshare.

Revenue Generation: It can help increase revenues by selling the right product to the right customer at the right time and for the right price, as the mobile is carried by the customer/potential customer at almost all times. Location-based services are just the right tool for such services.

Collateral Benefits: As initial network-related incremental costs decrease, efficiencies realized from improved transaction-processing and other business processes begin to go up. Collateral benefits such as lesser demand on IT infrastructure management personnel and reduced downtime for office relocation would complement primary benefits like streamlined transactions, enhanced customer service, and satisfaction levels and improved business processes.

Technology Trends
In the Indian context, a mobile enterprise essentially means accessing or sending data or information on the mobile phone as other means of wireless connectivity are not so popular. Therefore under the current scenario there are three technology trends available.

SMS-based Applications: SMS has clearly emerged as the killer app for mobile operators, particularly for GSM operators bringing in as much as 9 percent of their total revenue. According to one of the Merrill Lynch estimates, SMS will bring in as much as $75.6 million revenues for Indian GSM operators.

It is a tried and tested application and telecom service providers are also familiar with the way it works. Most enterprise-based applications are also available on the SMS platform. However, in the B2C scenario, for SMS to be an effective marketing tool, it is important to ensure that applications are built in regional language since it would otherwise exclude a large base of potential customers. This of course also presumes that more and more handset would have features that support Indian languages.

According to various internal estimates of cellular service providers, the language barrier has left out as much as 30 percent of the subscriber base out of the SMS service. SMS-based applications can be push-based or pull-based based. When enterprises send information to employees, customers or partners at large from the enterprise database, it is in the push mode. This may be automatic or manual. The database can be programmed to send automatic alerts or messages in a particular manner by defining parameters. Standard responses and answers can also be automated when an SMS is sent. A manual SMS is that which has agent intervention. The SMS is sent to a center, which is attended by an agent Push-based SMSs are more popular amongst enterprises as it is easier to implement. Pull-based SMSs are those in which employees or customers can access the enterprise database and extract the information in an interactive manner. This is not so popular currently because it calls for a lot of security systems in place before allowing access to the enterprise database.

GPS-based Services: The most obvious application of this service would be for location-based services for dating or sales campaigns and vehicle tracking services. While the former service is in the B2C space, vehicle tracking or allied services would be in the B2B space.

The service is delivered by tracking the SIM-card in handsets, which tells the operators exactly where the handset is located. Based on this information, a variety of services can be packaged in the B2B space or the B2employee space or B2C space. This is still a niche application and is mostly being deployed in the B2B space wherein vehicle-tracking services is the most common form of application.

GPS-based services have been deployed often in the recent past to nab terrorists and criminals by tracking the handset. It also helps in tracing stolen handsets by identifying the unique number, which each handset has.

MMS-based Services: This is a relatively new application and is perceived as a high end service partly because GPRS-enabled handsets are still expensive and partly because services are yet to take off. It has tremendous scope in the B2B space wherein executives can instantly access product or design catalogues for display. In niche applications, it has been used by police departments to flash alerts about particular criminals.

Service Classification
Typically service delivery will manifest in three ways:

B2B Space: Wherein enterprises will talk to business partners and associates. Applications would be information-based like inventory status, sales targets, or any other official intimation. The enterprise may or may not allow access to the central database. Applications could be both push-based and pull-based though push-based is more popular.

Business to Employee Space: Applications here again could be in the push or pull mode. These are by far the most popular set of applications. This, in simple words is extending the intranet to be accessed from mobile devices. These can be further divided into two categories: first, personal productivity such as mobile organizers, closed user group chat, e-mail and Internet access. Second, business process enablement such as sales force automation, other online updation and retrieval of information.

Business to Consumer: This though in its infancy is slated for big times soon. As more and more people start accessing information on the mobile device, the potential is immense. On the one hand, it could be a personal communication channel like the telephone, on the other hand, it could become a class if not a mass media like print or television. Again the application can be broadly covered as: applications for existing customers such as customer care, commonly enveloped in the term CRM; and applications targeted at potential customers like advertising and marketing and mobile transactions such as m-commerce, commonly called mobile marketing.

Availing the Service
The service can be had directly through the operator or through a value-added service provider who vends the service independently but in close collaboration with the service provider. The second option is currently less as it still nascent and there are few operators around.

Mobile Operator: Technically speaking, all mobile application services have to come through the mobile operator because he owns the network. Yet that is precisely the differentiator. Owning and maintaining a huge network, taking care of the increasing customer base and keeping pace with evolving technologies, mobile operators have no time or inclination to focus on mobile applications. True, voice revenues have gone flat and the focus had increasingly been on providing value-added services to help bottomlines. But clearly all such services are again targeted at the consumer space. Even though, enterprise applications offer far better margins, operators have missed on this chunk simply because they have to customize solutions and offer guarantees for which they do not have the time or the energy. Still a lot of half-hearted attempts are underway and operators have started looking at this opportunity seriously and some innovative applications with guarantees are likely to come up soon. On the other hand, since the operator owns the network, SLAs given by it can be more reliable. Enterprises can negotiate better package deals for availing both voice and enterprise mobile services from the same service provider. Third, operators are still the best choice currently because there are hardly any mobile value-added service providers MVASP in India to provide an alternative.

l Mobile Value-added SPs: More and more mobile applications in the enterprise space will be vended by independent MVASPs. Since services would always require a network, they will have to work in close collaboration with operators, but bring in value and make life easier in many ways:

• They will provide the all-essential SLAs.
• They will provide a one-point contact for interfacing with different operators irrespective of the location.
• MVASPs are more likely to provide break-up of usage in terms of which application has been used (in multiple application scenario), the frequency of each application, the usage pattern in a particular zone and usage of operator network. In other words, will provide business analytics as a value-add, which an operator may not.
• MVASPs are more likely to position as end-to-end solution providers than the telecom operator. It is possible to outsource the entire process to the MVASPs.
• MVASPs are more likely to deploy the least cost routing methodology than telecom operators.

BUYING TIPS

• There are too few offerings in the market today with operators still focusing on expanding their subscriber base rather than tapping high-end mobile services. MVASPs are still at the concept stage. The onus therefore lies on enterprises to ask for applications. Identify your needs and approach an operator or an MVASP and ask for customized applications.
• When buying SMS-based services, it is important to ask for character optimization. Each SMS message can accommodate up to 160 characters, so ensure that the service provider enables messages as SMSs.
• Ask for 24x7 customer-care support since the applications are meant to convert the enterprise into a virtual workplace.
• Ask for a single point of contact in customer support. Irrespective of the nature of complaints, the service provider should provide a single-window redressal mechanism.
• Ensure that the solution is scalable from pilot stage to full-scale deployment capable of supporting it across multiple locations and across different operator networks.
• Ask for retrial schemas for messages. Set priorities for messages. A birthday wish can be on low priority while a sales update should be given high priority. Also set expiry time for messages. A stock quote for example, is irrelevant after about five hours.
• Stick to one operator across all areas of your geographic presence. Ask for arrangements on a national basis. If there are multiple offices with considerable number of users in few of them, go for a national arrangement. This will give better negotiating power as well as make it easier to manage relationship with a single operator.
• Depending on the applications and the target user base, it is important to select the service provider, which has the largest footprint. If the application is for a large base of users spread over a large territory, for instance a sales force automation of a drug company.
• Don't go by brands alone. Brands are important but for business users one must calculate the returns in clear terms. Hence the guiding parameters would be quality-of service, network quality and track record of customer care.
• Large subscriber base means nothing. It is a statement of marketing success rather than any stamp on quality of service. In a few cities in India, network quality of the leader is often worse than competitors simply because of the load on the network. But this may not be true in all the case, so it is basically a case-to-case basis.

MARKET INFORMATION

All mobile service providers offer mobile applications for enterprises, albeit half-heartedly. However, it is a segment that cannot be ignored any more and therefore sooner than later we are going to see mobile operators making concerted efforts to woo the mobile enterprise customers. However, the desire to m-enable enterprises lies purely on enterprises because operator focus is still basically on voice revenues. Most applications are being provided on a case-to-case basis with little aggression in pitching for accounts.

A huge potentially untapped market is the enterprise to consumer space where we see sporadic initiatives been taken by media companies like NDTV and ESPN. There is a huge scope for utilizing response-based programmes in India, which is an effective marketing tool, very popular in the Nordic countries. Reliance Infocomm is seriously developing mobile applications for enterprises, which will force GSM operators also to take the challenge seriously.

MVASPs are at the concept stage today with a handful of serious players like PervasiveOne, Air2web, Mobingo, Cellnext and Lifetree Convergence. Others like ACL Wireless, a player in the peer-to-peer space is positioning as a MVASP. Operators pledge that 2004 will be a different year with many specific initiatives being rolled out to woo the enterprise customer.