eComm Highlights (part II)

Keeping up with the previous two days a fantastic day at eComm at Amsterdam, ideas pouring, challenging audience. Politically incorrect but valid things said on stage, you will never hear that in other events. A bunch of quick notes summarizing the first and last days:

Martin Geddes, BT: "goodbye minutes, welcome moments"
Current voicemail (automatic messages left by IVRs, etc.) ineffective: relies on customer acting, doing + poor user experience + inefficient + unsecure (how to re-authenticate customer call back? how do I know message is from tax agency and not from a fraudster?)
What can be done to e.g. enhance voicemail:
1. use better existing channels (e.g. phweet)
2. insert/update/delete APIs (chargable events) + high definition audio + personalise interactions + smarter containers for messages + add multimodal channels

Sample revenue opportunities for new-think voicemail:
• connect: message informing or asking to contact.
• interact: avoid CRM call by using smart containers (e.g. data in the message avoids the call).
• transact: collect payment on behalf of the enterprise.

James Enck mCapital:
Future is not going to be a repeat of the past. World is not going to be the same.
So ... what do we have to say about all this? Are we a serious industry allocating capital to Kindle, iPhones, etc.?
Greatest value will be found in solving real problems (some of which we haven't found yet): Awareness + engagement + investment + reorientation.

J. Salanave, IDAE: Telecom in 2015: death or bazaar
Future scenario for telcos? Model possible outcomes as a 2x2 matrix:
• Telecom market expanding vs declining-stagnant
• Competition integration model: concentrated-vertical vs fragmented-horizontal
4 possible outocomes
• Silent death: surviving of the fattest, perhaps bailouts from governments and becoming utilities
• Market shakeout: service providers entities mixing device partnerships, spectrum, brands. Probably forced by investors.
• Clash of giants: vertical integration + optimized content + RCS + succeeds.
• Generative bazaar: open model prevails.
Bazaar means do-it-yourself connectivity? No, some entity will be needed to provide interconnection (key aspect) and other services.

Rudolf van der Berg, Logica: "almost everything in telco services is wrong"
Telcos not satisfied being an utility, they see no value being vodafone, they invest in being apple/google/etc.
All telcos offer the same, stuck in a standard value proposition. Telcos fail at innovation.
But ... other approaches are possible and successful in the real marketplace: Free.fr: everything for 30€. How? Keep back-office simple; finances and business cases are simple and transparent, not faked; offer the best product; deny competitors competition on price or capacity. 1000 total staff, 850 staff in call centres.
How to copy free.fr? Accept you work for a telco. Think cool things. Simply billing with single contract + top ups.

G. Leonhard MediaFuturist.com :
Media future: Must transition from ego-system to ecosystem, and, by the way, driven by capitalism, not by goodwill or philanthropy. Price moving from expensive to cheaper (but not cheap enough) to flat rates and bundles. Pricing logic will flip: lower prices, ubiquitous access.
But content pricing and licensing can’t be solved without engaging ISP, advertising, right holders, social networks (recommendations, trend setting). Spotify solved it, paying 0,1 cents per song, but it might become a time bomb if there are no upper caps.

After these 2 last post, we will prepare for coming week a post explaining the view of Solaiemes about the Telecom trends, and the possible scenarios of next decade telco/communication industry, stay tunned, and remember, the debate is open

Jose Recio

eComm Highlights (part I)

I am attending the eComm Europe event in Amsterdam, just amazed by the level of the speakers and the quality and rythm of the 15 minutes keynotes schedule.
Just writting this post (and additional one after the event with final thoughts) just to share some headlines and sentences to think about :-)

VoiceSage:
There are white spaces in the enterprises: communication-enabled services may help to surface them and optimize/monetize/ save costs. An edge perspective allows to surface this data. Simple example: allowing customers to confirm just a bit earlier may have big impacts in resources.

Nauiokas Park:
There is nothing wrong with being a dump pipe, capital structures will adapt to be cash flow driven.
Platform and APIs basically selling trust, technical capabilities are a must, but not enough.
Everything as a Service is coming (including banking). Future platforms blending identity + trust + messaging may allow that.

Mangrove:
Major disruptive driver in the last years: Telecom operators displaced to their rightful place in the eco-system: providers of the tubes. Capital models will have to change to adapt to that situation.

VURB:
Peering-up is the best way to cope with climate change, peak oil, financial crisis, ...

RJ Auburn - Voxeo:
To innovators: Get passionate or get out.
Voice is coming out, text is in. Kids and next generation don’t talk on the phone unless they have to, TXT is second nature to them. Communication pace is faster than voice now, customers want instantaneous answers, not wasting time waiting for IVR answers. No money in voice, cost saving in text (permits multitasking, voice not).
Building person to person communication based on bots and mash-ups. What happens with the existing phone applications?: look at IMified. Just use text instead of bots.

Jay Phillips - Voxeo:
If open source is communism … where is the proletarian?
Voice is not the application; it’s the spice to make the soup taste better.
Innovators to build lots of little voice experimental apps to find the right soup.
Voxeo open sourcing SIPMethod !!!

Jan Linden - Global IP Solutions:
H264 SVC codec for the Internet era.

Dean Bubbley - Disruptive Analysis: “LTE hostage of voice?”
IMS is the dead parrot in the Monthy Python sketch. Dead but nailed to the perch of LTE.
Is industry using LTE as the lever to persuade operators to deploy IMS? CS fallback: 2-3 seconds longer setup times (sometimes 8-10 seg, and double that for LTE-LTE calls). Drops data connection !!!. Extra capex in network.
And SMS on LTE? SMS was completely forgotten in LTE until it was too late. Fact is: You need SMS for backoffice operations (configuration, activations, passwords, prepaid top up, etc.) even if you use LTE only for data.

Sten Tamkivi - Skype: “peace, love and pstn”.
Skype processes 100 billion calls a year. Their view is that they are not taking revenue from telecoms, most of Skype minutes would never happen without Skype. 33% Skype calls include video.
Skype is for the people I actually want to talk to (average skype contact list is a single figure number). Somebody told Skype founders it would never happen because people don't have headsets, but people invested in headset to talk with their valued contacts.

To cover global needs, you need something relevant to developed (“peace and love” way of thinking, good voice quality, video, etc.) and emerging (PSTN, bad voice quality doesn’t matter so much, no video needed). Things like a MVNO focused on price and regular quality (long call setup, not very good audio, etc.) can’t be global (may succeed in emerging, but would be niche in
developed).

Voxygen:
Good user experience: calling a service number and directly listening what you wanted (e.g. ticket status, appointment confirmation), with no delay, no input of account, etc.
How much money wasted by couriers checking parcel delivery times, etc.?
Unlock that value !!!

Tomorrow more :-)

Jose Recio, VP Alliances

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