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The software-as-a-service (SaaS) model has also seen growth in 2010, and enterprise social networking is starting to take off as well, hoping to mimic the successes seen in the consumer sector. According to Gartner research, SaaS is expected to reach $14 billion by 2013, roughly double its current revenue level.
SELLING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES VS. PRODUCTS
One of the top trends in the sector this year, although not brand new, is a shift in focus from selling products and technology to selling customer experiences. In years past, it may have been enough to provide a cell phone to a customer who wanted mobile connectivity. As Matt Bross from Huawei said during his keynote at 4GWorld 2010, “For the past 100 years our industry has been doing business with addresses where people live, not people.”
One primary driver of this shift comes
from a basic question: There are
certainly more than three kinds of
people—why are there only three
packages to choose from at T-Mobile/
Comcast/Verizon/Dish? Selling a
customer experience means offering
new levels of customization and
account management. Instead of
attempting to fit into a pre-packaged
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The main reason cited by IT purchasers for a slow move to the cloud is concerns over security. |
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customer interrogation, and solutions
should be similarly customizable.
For the enterprise customer, needs are even more varied, and scalability becomes an additional metric by which plans can be customized and supported. A company might want to select off-peak times for data transfer and backup, monitor customer bandwidth usage to locate new sales opportunities, or expand into new markets. In terms of service, if a data center goes offline, how fast is the response time? Today, increasingly the experience is what sells, not the type of server, device, or speed of the connection.
PLATFORM AGNOSTIC DATA RETRIEVAL/ANALYSIS
Roger Lindquist, CEO of MetroPCS, pronounced “The future is any wireless appliance on any network.” If this is true, then platform and vendor agnostic data retrieval, testing, and analysis is crucial, and that’s just the sort of solutions that are coming from many vendors in the BSS/OSS market in 2010.
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category created by a sales/marketing
manager, a customer should be able to
create a tailored plan that mirrors his/
her lifestyle. Systems should be
created and put in place that allow the
customer to craft his/her own package
on the front end while enabling the
delivery, billing, and support of the
service on the back end. Additionally,
revenue opportunities exist in the
realm of location-based incentives,
such as real-time couponing and
advertising.
Selling an experience also means
knowing what that service looks like to
the customer. It means integrating
formerly siloed activities to give
customer service agents the ability to
see the account from the customers’
point of view. If a customer calls the
support line, there should be real-time
account information as well as current
and historical testing and
measurement systems in place that
allow the service operator to see what
the customer sees, even if the
customer forgot his/her account
number or plan information. To a point,
this data should be known to the
operators without the need for a
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Seeking to converge multiple platforms to create enhanced experiences, the innovation extends to other areas as well, like full lifecycle sales management. NetformX, Subex, and Salesforce.com presented a catalyst at Management World Americas 2010, integrating CRM, solution management and OSS to optimize sales and post sales processes.
4G IMPLEMENTATIONS
The big mobile data boom is about to accelerate with the further deployment of 4G networks worldwide. How big? The Yankee Group forecasts an explosive growth of 4G subscribers in North America from about 2 million to 120 million by 2015. In Asia Pacific they forecast a growth from 3 million to nearly 200 million by 2015. How will we stay ahead of the tidal wave of demand? This thought gives rise to many questions in terms of available licensed spectrum (will we employ virtual channels? eminent domain?), technology (whether LTE or WiMAX is a superior solution), and spectral efficiency.
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