ENTERPRISE: Get Infopower on the Fly

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:

l 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.

l Cost

Efficiencies: Cost efficiencies by optimal deployment of employees and

information assets in the enterprise can become a strategic value driver.

l 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.

l 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.

l 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.

l 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.

l Competitive

Advantage: Companies can leverage on mobile solutions in the B2C space and

gain a competitive advantage by substantially increasing mindshare.

l 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.

l 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.

l 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.

l 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.

l 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:

l 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.

l 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.

l 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.

l 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

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.