Uniceltech mCampaigner

http://www.uniceltech.com/mno09_mCampaigner.html

Unicel’s mCampaigner is an interactive mobile platform that enables the enterprises to create interactive mobile campaign from desktop. Some of the functionality supported in this system are:

- Create interactive campaign from desktop – so what are the channels on which the campaign message be delivered and also the tools available for the advertiser to publish the advertisement, also whethere there are any templates available for some of the standard campaign flows? As per their web site, text, logo/picture message, ring tone can be dynamically inserted as part of the campaign

- Create campaign to be delivered to targeted audience – what are the ways of creating the business rule based on which these target audience can be selected, also from which systems the data can be mined

 - Different attributes of the campaign task i.e., set date & time of outbound delivery of the campaign, select only with certain criteria (again is this business rule?), presence, location etc. Here presence and location based campaign is interesting but that requires to build integration with the location based server. Now how many telecom service providers offer access to the location servers? But how about a third party build location servers on top of other telecom service providers

- Ability to measure marketing efforts and allow access to prospective clients/leads – does this mean creation of the dashboard showing realtime/non realtime statistics?

This coupled with Unicel’s following technology components listed below could make a compelling proposition.

- GlobalOne a SMSC & SMSGW combined virtual number platform for interactive P2A applications (here the understanding is this virtual number platform is nothing but a platform that can host multiple short codes). With service template creation capability, it would be much more useful. Also if such templates support all the business processes identified in the domains, then it would help such companies to integrate their business processes with the campaign.(http://www.uniceltech.com/domains.html)

- eMobileGateway – content management platform to process information from different sources and deliver on diverse set of handsets

- SMS/MMS/WAP/HTTP Gateway – for connection to operator’s SMSC, MMSC, WAP/HTTP infrastructure on the standard interface

- NotifyOne- group messaging – anyway the basic functionality of creating SMS groups would be already part of campaign manager. But creating a group for the end users could help in viral market, also could track the behavior of such groups and with permission, targetted products can be marketed for that group.

But the main concern is the scalability and reliability of the solution as well as the TCO for this total solution. I have not found any information on the hardware required as well as the traffic model that is supported by these solutions.

Marketing Situation in Telecom

Excerpts from Mr. Gopal Vittal, Director Marketing & Communication, Bharti Airtel appeared in ET’s 11th March 2008 edition – Winning In Chaos: Just do, learn and do

Mr. Gopal talks about the nature of the telecom service provider business. He draws parallel between the FMCG & telecom service busines as these two industries have direct interaction with mass consumers. He notes that telecom service providing is totally different from FMCG in terms of compression of the planning cycle, value of speed, challenges of addressing diversity of consumers through a single brand, dramatic changes in the consumer profile as subscribers start discovering new ways of using mobile.

But I am not sure whether I agree with all these. First the compression of the planning cycle; now I guess even in FMCG industry the product management has to be really efficient to constantly updating or customizing the product according to end user tastes/lifestyle. Won’t this be similar to the telecom service consumption behavior of the end users, and will this behavior change so fast? But yes, the difference could be that there is no real product for consuming in telecom service business as it is only using of the voice network that is already in place. There is some difference in terms of content based service as there is a scope of defining real assets and also there is an option to bring in getting external parties to bring products under operator’s brand.

Now addressing diversity of of consumer through a single brand; again in telecom service also there are different products created to address different consumers. The segmentatation would obviously different for telecom service when compared to FMCG. But whether the telecom service provider can create a “brand” to address these segments or are they trying to address all these segments through the overall brand, say ‘Airtel’? Now isn’t Virgin Mobile trying to create a brand that targets only the teens?

However I like Mr. Vittal’s suggestion to handle the chaos. I can easily relate this to product management in an environment where consumer behavior/lifestyle is changing very fast. He mentions having a deep-rooted consumer centricity regarless of environment is the first cruicial factor that can work in managing, navigating and winning in a chaos environment. He gives how tracking consumer behavior (e.g., using mobile device to fill those ‘empty moments’) can help service provider to come out with products suiting such behavior. Now to understand that behavior one needs to keep track of the behavior and learn from the experiences of the previous product launches. For this it doesn’t matter whether you do an elaborate planning or just get on with a skeleton planning and keep improving.

Outsourced CxO

http://outsourcedcfo.googlepages.com/OCxO-MgtNxt-0802.pdf
An interesting concept of the outsourced CxO is mooted in a article by Mr. Jayant. As per him it should be possible for the SME segment to outsource some of the C level roles like CIO/CTO/CMO etc as these organizations may not require full timers on these roles and may not be able to afford. Some of the requirements of such a O-CXO would be to be able to work in start-up mode/’chaos, available 24×7, earn respect based on day-to-day activity, ethics etc. However I do agree that this is a different model that SME can work on but how this model is different from the consultants who help organizations to address certain issue, for e.g., if the issue is about the marketing a product, why not employ a consultant with clear goals and why require a O-CMO? Also with O-CxO I guess it will be difficult to layout the clear responsiblity and make this outsourced executive accountable for the results. Because defining a measurable KPI for activities done by CXO is difficult. No?

Also if the outsourced C level executive works for more than one organization in the similar capacity then how does the executive make sure that the ideas proposed (or derivative of that idea) is not shared with other organization and there is no conflict of interest. In the existing software outsourcing model, this concern is addressed by having physically separated facilities by the outsouced companies.

CEO Talk: TTSL MD on Future Plan

http://www.telecomwatch.in/bnrs/08-03-03-tata/index.htm

Mr. Anil Sardana took over as TTSL MD after his assignment in NDPL where he was involved in transformation of the organization to focus on customer service. Here is the summary of his interview with Telecom watch on his plans for TTSL

- Customer care and service, benchmarking in various components of the business, with a special focus on the value-added services: customer care and service is mostly taken for granted in the mobile service industry as there is an explosion in the number of subscribers. But with brands like Virgin Mobile who have decided to focus on a particular segment, the customer care/service becomes a differentiating factor for subscribers to choose a particular mobile service providers. With mobile portability in force (and if the charges for owning a number is not high for the subscribers), there will be large scale migration of the subscribers to the service provider who provides a better service. But what is the meaning of benchmarking, is it that defining a goal for each business units like the one focusing on prepaid, enterprise etc in terms of business and service quality? Isn’t this a common practice to have such goals? Focus on value added service is something which everyone is talking about. But how can a service provider drive consumption of the value added services? Would it be through attractive tariff plans or through bundled packages or through customized handsets?

- CDMA focusing on data – this is something that I guess Reliance also agrees and are planning to do i.e., focus on the data transfer capability of CDMA and offer data services to SME sector. Looks like bundling data with different services like, sales force automation, mobile centrex, vehicle tracking, logistics could be one of the way to target the SME segment. Now if they have vertical specific solutions like vehicle tracking, logistics for the logistics/travel industry, mobile centrex and integration with the heal care system in health etc, then service providers would be able to offer targetted services to these SME segments i.e., communication enabled business processes will have to be targetted by the telecom service providers

Pseudo MVNO – Virgin Mobile in India

http://www.virginmobile.in/downloads/Press_Release.pdf

Virgin mobile has finally been launched in . They are very clear that they will focus only on subscribers between age 14~25. Accordingly they have set the tariff plan. Some of the “cool” charging features are:

- Get paid to receive call i.e., you get credit of 10 paise for every 1 min of incoming call
- After 1st 2 mins of national call in a day, for rest of the local calls on that day get discount on per minute charges
- Discounted tariff in weekend

This is a clever strategy of push & pull for both the calling party and called party subscribers. This will definitely increase the network utilization for voice. Now for data, they do a daily charge of Rs 5 and unlimited access to portal. This portal hosts some free content as well as paid content. This is a good way of instigating the subscribers for data consumption (look at the ARPU – straight Rs 150 from data which is almost 70% of the current CDMA ARPU of Rs 200). With CDMA offering better data rates, I guess this is a very good strategy. If they can drive more traffic to their portal and if they have compelling content then they will get good revenue share from the 3rd party content providers as well.

Virgin mobile is offering customized handset (not sure whether they are buying from Chinese vendors like ZTE & Huawei as well). All phones are FM and camera ready and are in range Rs 1500 ~ Rs 6000. Again a clear focus on the youngsters. Virgin Mobile also claims that their service centers will be more responsive then others i.e., the same agent will handle the subscriber every time!