Tech Bitch

One of the defining characteristics of the Web 2.0 generation of consumers who buy goods and socialise online is their demand for mobile and entertainment services that are linked to their lifestyle and individual preferences.This new generation of consumers - the fastest growing market for revenue rich mobile data services - are increasingly impatient and fickle individuals who are notoriously prone to switching network providers as frequently as they do phones.

Many operators, however, are struggling to deliver new dynamic services at the speed at which the market now requires. Converged services operators are looking to launch anywhere from 20 to 40 or more product offers and packages every few months. Reliance on traditional, labour-intensive methods for defining, managing and launching new products is no longer tenable if operators want to meet their objectives of delivering the right offer to the right customer at the right time.

As timing and targeting, together with speed of deployment, are proving critical in winning consumers’ business, operators need to adopt more agile and innovative ways of managing the ‘product idea to product launch’ process. Improving the speed and efficiency with which they introduce new, more complex converged services offerings is essential if they are to survive in this increasingly fierce competitive market.

Lacking the right tools and technology to support the product management process could severely hinder efforts to win and retain young consumers. Operators will need to overcome this challenge if they are to efficiently and quickly provide a tailored mix of services to their consumers.

For operators looking to build profit and increase market share, capturing the loyalty of the ‘i-generation’ is vital. These consumers - born in the 70s, 80s and 90s - consume a dynamic mix of entertainment and communication services - downloading music, TV and games to their mobile and subscribing to bundles of VoD and cable services, from the provider best suited to meet their changing needs.

The significance of their spending power was highlighted in a recent report of young Europeans, which revealed that half of those aged between 15 and 18 use revenue rich mobile multimedia services compared to just 17% of 35 and 44 year olds. They are also significant for the spending power they will wield in the future: today’s 15 year-old gamer is tomorrow’s multi-media communication services subscriber, who will expect an ‘on-demand’ mix of services.

The rules by which these consumers can be targeted are also shifting. Today’s consumer can be defined by a number of different roles and interests; employee, supporter of a football team, fan of action films or of a particular pop group. Accordingly, they expect to receive a mix of quality, personalised services that recognise their lifestyle and overlapping roles.

For operators, it’s the ultimate exercise in customer segmentation, and, with consumers expectations rising, the challenge of defining and rolling out new products in order to stay competitive and differentiate themselves has to be addressed now.

A number of operators are now recognising the need to more aggressively market highly tailored, product offerings of converged, broadband, mobile and entertainment services, and are already facing the challenge of coming up with new products and packages on a weekly basis in some cases. Eventually, service providers will need to be capable of putting up product and service package offerings that may only last a few days, or even hours.

The reality, however is that few operators have the systems and processes in place to be able to do this. Surprisingly, the current methods used to define and deliver products means that there is a lot of hit and miss in the approach and reliance on ad hoc, manual processes such as spreadsheets and word documents which can seriously delay product launches. Furthermore, product definition and management processes are not integrated into the core operational processes and systems of the service provider.

In many cases, product and marketing managers are now managing a product and service portfolio that often spans thousands of items and offer elements. The challenge of compiling and updating a definitive list of available service capabilities, devices, content and merchandise from which product managers can define product offerings - on a scale such as this - is formidable. The process can be tedious and time-consuming involving working out service combinations on paper, and manually repeating the bundle requirements, constraints and dependencies.

My own research suggests there are significant inefficiencies in the way in which operators launch new products. All too often, they are working in silos with no unified overview of product offerings, hampered by poor internal communications between business units and legacy infrastructures which prohibit their ability to get a full view of the relevant product and service assets.

From research carried out last year, the time from design to launch of a medium complexity product could be anywhere between three to 18 months with up to 300 people involved in the process, across divisions and functions, including planners, product managers, service designers and analysts. Lead times such as these will simply not be sustainable in today’s fast-moving multimedia/content-driven market.

The message then for operators is clear; adapt to survive. Developing more standardised approaches to product lifecycle management, by streamlining and simplifying the collaboration of cross-functional teams and automating processes across the organisation is essential. Operators need to become more innovative and agile in the way they combine underlying network and service capabilities into offerings and packages, and need to integrate their product realisation and management processes into their operational systems and processes.

Focussed and purpose-built Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions are now emerging in the market. They can enable operators to significantly reduce time-to-market and cost-to-market for new products. Although the PLM discipline is not new, its application to the telecoms market brings a fresh approach. This software effectively automates the product management and product catalogue update process allowing operators to speed-up and simplify their new product introduction processes.

These systems provide a central definition environment and source of information on products and services which all relevant teams and systems can access - invaluable for teams working on products which cut across business divisions that must collaborate on creating new offerings. These PLM solutions also simplify creation of product bundles constructed from external supplier services/content, such as a package linked to a sporting event like next year’s Olympics, which would comprise a mix of content, wallpaper, ringtones and merchandise sourced externally.

This is a rapid-response, customer-focussed mode of operation which will allow teams and business units to manage and deploy a catalogue of product offerings, including new or updated feature attributes and pricing elements within weeks if not days. To capture and retain the youth market, speed and choice are everything. Moving to a more product-based, consumer focussed  business model will enable operators to design and launch new services or products, matched to changing individual needs, as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Written by Yogen Patel, who has admitted his phone bill is offensive.

Targeted advertising and clever widgets are missing the point when it comes to brands working with sites like Facebook and MySpace, said Beyond Analysis. Like the new kid on the block, we have to earn the trust of our new friends before we’re allowed to play.

The hot debate this year amongst brands is what to make of the social Web and how to use it as a channel to market for their brands. Already there have been various attempts to do clever stuff on sites like Facebook. Well, maybe clever is over egging things: some brands have advertised in the traditional banner ad sense, others have gone one step further and built an application. By and large, these all miss the point.

This year is the year for the start of the final death throes of traditional marketing. The world moved on last year when you and I went online and decided that the Web was our space for catching up with old friends and making new friends. Meanwhile the big brands still think it is THEIR channel for US to listen to THEM telling us about what they have to offer. Wrong - why did they call Myspace My Space? The double u double u double u is ours now and woe betide anyone, especially a big brand, that doesn’t behave itself.

So how should brands behave on the Web? Is the Web primarily a channel to market, or is it much more than that now? Businesses need to recognise that they are now effectively a guest at the table that is the World Wide Web, which is now a social Web, where all networks - personal, private, public and business - can interact. The real value from this new social Web is gained from listening to your customers and getting to know them a bit better. Doing this and acting upon what you learn, be that improving your customer service, or changing your proposition to better suit their needs, is what will drive your business forward.

This means that brands need to rethink how they view the Web and how they interact with us. It strikes me that there are a lot of similarities between being the new boy at school on his first day at school in the playground, and being a brand trying to find its feet in the new world of the social Web. So what’s the right playground etiquette for the new kid on the block? Beyond Analysis has come up with a few pointers that it thinks are just as relevant for brands as the start their foray into the social Web:

1. Be Yourself - To start with, have a little confidence and self-belief in yourself. Know who you are and what you stand for. Take a little time to think about the kind of people you like to spend time with and what you want to get out of any new friendships.

2. Know what you like in people - As you start to wander around and check out all the other kids in the playground think about other friends you have and what characteristics they have that might help you spot like-minded people.

3. Look for things that you have in common with other people - Before you dive in and introduce yourself to anybody, have a quick walk around the yard: check out what the different groups of kids look like. What are they doing? What are they talking about? Is there anything you can see or hear that might mean you have something in common with them?

4. Wait for the right moment to introduce yourself - Once you’ve had a look around, rather than diving in and interrupting a group that looks like they’re busy in the middle of something, see if there are some people who look interesting and like they might be up for a chat. Approach them first.

5. Be prepared with what to say - Go up and introduce yourself and have a few interesting things up your sleeve to have as conversation starters. Remember not everyone will want to hear just about you! Think of some questions to ask them which shows that you are interested in them too.

6. Be a good listener - Be sensitive to what they are like: they might be a bit shy or may not be as open as you. Be careful not to scare them off by being too friendly or enthusiastic. Take some time to get to know them. You might be really keen to make new friends and share out the contents of your lunchbox, but don’t expect everyone to like you the first time they meet you.

7. Be honest about who you are - Whilst it’s always a bit of a temptation to big things up, if you start telling tall stories about how big daddy’s car is or get found out for being less than you say, your new friends might stop taking you seriously.

8. Value any new friendships - Remember that trust and respect are really important foundations for any long-term relationship. Don’t go telling people things about your new friends that they might not want other people to know.

9. Respect people’s space - Don’t expect your new friends to introduce you to all their friends straight away. They will have lots of different friends and may want to keep some of these friendships separate - be careful not to invade these other friendships.

10. Know when to stop - You’ll know after the first conversation if there is any chemistry between the two of you. If there isn’t don’t push things and move on.

Phanfare, probably the best image sharing site you’ve never heard of, is going through pretty significant transition. The business started in 2004, with the goal of enabling and empowering families to share and preserve photos and videos. The owners said they founded the company because they had nowhere they wanted to put their photos and videos.

They were willing to pay to have high-quality photo and video hosting, but over time it’s clear no-one else was. Phanfare offered premium photo and video hosting with no ads, phone support and an orientation that made each Phanfare customer a self-publisher with a direct URL, no branding and a simple email-based invitation system to see photos and videos. The system even uses synchronising desktop client software for Mac and PC.

Since 2004 the site grew to 11,000 customers. But the sad truth is that it’s going nowhere fast. The number of people willing to pay for anything online hosting of their photos and videos is too small. What’s more, its size limited its ability to do the integrations that it wanted wanted: wireless integrations, camera integrations, and digital frame integrations. At the same time, it looked at what it had created and realised it was not nearly collaborative enough. Phanfare was not exploiting the power of the Internet. Instead, it had built 11,000 little silos, each with its little audience.

Phanfare 2.0 was born! Pitched as a standard upgrade, but much more, Phanfare is now a social network rather than Web hosting. There are some important reasons why this makes sense. It should allow more collaboration between creators and viewers, increase the utility of Phanfare as it attracts more people, and is easier to use if you are connected with multiple people. Was it just me who found it cumbersome to remember the multiple URLs and passwords in Phanfare 1.0? Phanfare now comes with 1GB of free storage. Long term, it wants to monetise through some sort of advertising on the Phanfare 2.0 dashboard, but without running ads on personal albums as they ruin the experience and don’t work anyway. Give it up to the underdogs at www.phanfare.com.