During an interview with a senior representative from one of the world’s largest mobile communications vendors recently, I had a tale recounted to me that so illustrated the predicament of the mobile communications industry that it bears repeating. Faced with questions about the future strategy of the company in a market that was facing its first crisis, our valiant executive suggested that the time had come to ‘start selling’. An obvious statement you might think but one which sums up completely the challenge that the entire industry faces.

For 95% of the mobile industry’s history, business success has been about meeting an ever-increasing demand and being first to market with the next incarnation of technology which did the same thing better, faster or in a smaller form-factor than anyone else. The specialist and often under-valued task of selling was largely irrelevant; it was more often than not simply a case of taking orders. Selling, if it came into the equation at all was about scoring points over competitors. Suggestions that a technology was unnecessary, delivered at the wrong time, or too user-unfriendly to be the basis for a sound business case, were notable only by their absence.

The operator community has been equally culpable. No only did it, as a group, largely fail to ask enough of the basic questions as to make vendors assess the business viability of their offerings, but it was also guilty of committing the same crime. Selling mobile telephony to consumers was equally devoid of real selling concepts.

This, however, is not supposed to be a diatribe on the mobile industry fuelled by the 20:20 vision of hindsight. There were reasons for the positions taken, not least of which was that mobile telephony enjoyed a speed of growth that left everyone running to keep up. Furthermore, as I have said many times before, for voice, the network and the service are one and the same thing. But, as the song says, ‘these times they are a changing’ and that change means that all involved have to reference what they are doing against the bottom line.

Products and services have to deliver benefits to their respective target markets. For equipment vendors of all sorts that means they have to deliver something which in very simple terms can increase revenue or decrease costs. The return on investment, a term incidently that was hardly mentioned until two years ago, has to be demonstrable.

On the service delivery side, operators are faced with an even more demanding challenge as they must disseminate highly complex technology into easy to use and easy to understand service offerings. What is more, they must by and large do this to a market that is not aware that it has a demand for those services.

The mobile industry is now faced with building a new market and to do that it must learn to sell. Ask any successful salesman the secret to achieving this and he will tell you it begins by understanding the customer and providing a product or service that meets a need, even if the customer is unaware that he has that need. Never again will the mobile industry be able to start with technology and assume there will be a market at the end of the development cycle. The time is now upon us when we must start to sell effectively.

There are so many new applications, services and technologies flying about that the choices which will face operators and customers in the future are almost unlimited.  This variety is a strength but navigating a path through this maze is going to be tough and the last thing that the industry needs is for consumers to get fed up with the challenge before they start.

The next generation data vision is for new services to be launched on a constantly rolling basis but how will the consumer keep up with this? A consumer may well be interested in one of a package of new services launched in a particular month but how will that individual know that it is available?

Traditional advertising models do not hold true in such a rapidly changing environment. While there is no doubt that Messers Schumacher and Beckham have done wonders for the visibility of Vodafone Live! they can only be used for similar broad-based launches. The logistics, not to mention the cost of doing otherwise would be out of the question.

Broad-based advertising — whether TV, radio or print — cannot give the individual messages that are necessary. More targeted media may well offer a route to specific markets but the real ace already sits in the mobile operator’s hand. Operators register their customers and with that registration comes basic information. Obviously, this is not fool-proof (particularly in the pre-paid market) but it is a definite starting point. Not only does this provide basic information but it provides it to a company that already has an access mechanism to reach the customer — the mobile network.

This combination of customer knowledge and access is highly unusual and highly valuable but, it has to be said, it something that mobile operators have so far done little to exploit or indeed manage. Customer segmentation tends to be broad and basic to say the least. This needs to change. Understanding the customer’s needs, interests, preferences and usage patterns is essential if operators and service providers are going to be able to reach customers with information about services they could be interested in. Send information to the handset — via SMS or MMS — on every new service launch and customers will quickly become aggravated and may even change operators to get away from the constant interruption. Send information about a new service that fits with the customer’s interests and suddenly that interruption, assuming it is not untimely, is a service and can actually increase customer loyalty.

The problem is that to do this, customer information has to be managed, updated and should learn from the customer’s behaviour. Data bases per se are therefore useful but limited. Making the same mistakes because the system cannot learn will be a recipe for disaster; making sure that the customer information gleaned from the customers themselves and from network-based information on such things as what services are accesed, usage times, location, etc, is a recipe for a much stronger business. It is also something that could, in the long term, provide mobile operators with a database that is highly valuable to others as well as themselves and therefore a possible source of new revenue streams. Getting to know customers is becoming an essential part of the mobile business.

If a mobile operator doesn’t have subscribers, it doesn’t have a business. If it can’t manage those subscribers effectively, it can’t have an effective business. However, the process is often characterised by disparate and disjointed systems pulling human resources in different directions and creating something of a financial black hole. Tony Wilson, operations director at Martin Dawes Systems explains why this doesn’t have to, and shouldn’t, be the case.

Mobile Europe: Why is there a need for operators to change the way they manage subscribers?

Tony Wilson: The motivation to change subscriber management systems already exists. Mobile operators and service providers need to be able to support new 2.5G and 3G services. This requires an element of change anyway as, at the very least, they will have to enhance what they have.

Mobile Europe: What are the key criteria that a subscriber management system needs to deliver to the mobile market today?

Tony Wilson: For all mobile operators and service providers and particularly the Tier 1 organisations encumbered with massive debts, the focus has to be on lowering cost — that’s the cost of customer acquisition and the cost of managing that customer. Furthermore, minimising churn has become priority for all.  A few years ago, the emphasis was on IP billing and the underlying requirement for technology still exists — indeed, we support fixed, mobile and IP networks — but the value proposition is what is key and that is where  Martin Dawes Systems (MDS) has a real edge.

Aside from driving down the cost of IT systems required for managing subscriber information, the systems needed now and in the future must help the organisation in its attempts to increase ARPU by launching new services quickly and efficiently; reduce churn by creating a positive customer experience and provide a tool in the subscriber management solution which can be leveraged to increase the value of the business as a whole.

The subscriber management system needs to be a strategic tool for our customers — something that improves the business, rather than hinders it.

Mobile Europe: What is the MDS solution?

Tony Wilson: Dise 3G is a pre-integrated end-to-end subscriber management solution. It covers all aspects of subscription-based management including billing, rating, CRM, self-care, order management, sales and marketing management and revenue assurance. 
The solution is modular and comes in the form of core and satellite sections. The core elements are those fundamental to subscriber management — order management, billing, revenue assurance, sales and marketing, self-care and CRM — and are common to all implementations. The satellite applications can be unique to each customer and include such things as additional connectivity to the network for provisioning and call/charge receipt, or connections to the customer’s bank for payment or to credit referencing agencies.

The strength of Dise 3G is the ability of this underlying architecture to meet the fundamental requirements for billing now and in the future. This is where so many organisations fail.  To do this you have to identify the fundamental functions which can be used as a base for the development of billing for all services. These include such capabilities as multiple tariffing, content billing, fixed and variable charging, bundling and discounting. Using these as a lowest common denominator, you then have the flexibility to bill for all services in any way you want to.

Mobile Europe: What alternatives exist in the market today?

Tony Wilson: There really aren’t many end-to-end solutions out there and a significant proportion of the market doesn’t even realise that systems such as Dise 3G exist. Indeed, many of our potential customers believe that their only option is to go for multi-vendor systems. Therefore, our biggest competition comes from systems integrators that piece together systems using elements from multiple vendors. However, due to the cost pressures on the market in general, we are now beginning to see interest in our product from systems integrators as it offers a definitive value proposition.

Mobile Europe: What makes Dise3G so different?

Tony Wilson: Dise 3G is modular so it gives our customers great flexibility but the applications are also pre-integrated which means they are easier and quicker to deploy. Perhaps even more importantly, they are also more efficient.  For example, if a multi-vendor solution is chosen and implemented with the help of a systems integrator, there will need to be a separate database for each applica-tion. Data could well be replicated across all the different vendors’ products and can, in the more extreme cases, increase the requirements by up to 800% and ironically, reducing the capacity of the system in terms of response times and number of customers supported. If you also bear in mind that different skill sets are then required for each chosen hardware platform and software option, then mobile service providers are looking at needing two or three times the in-house expertise to support a multi-vendor solution as opposed to Dise 3G.

Furthermore, Dise 3G has an inherent workflow engine that defines the work-flow processes. This is vastly different from the disjointed workflow of the type of  multi-vendor solutions that are offered in competition to Dise 3G.  All data is held on the same database which is accessed by all the applications. This means that all departments are looking at the same information, a function that increases efficiency and improves customer service at the same time.

A final point is that self-care and on-line account management are fundamental requirements now, particular for servicing the corporate market but it doesn’t have to be a separate system. We recognised this some years ago and delivered this function as part of the complete solution for the first time in 1999 to O2 (then BTCellnet). Initially, this function was offered to consumers but a corporate presentation layer was added soon after.

Mobile Europe: Do you offer any functionality that is specific to corporate mobile users?

The consumer and corporate requirements are different and the underlying design architecture of Dise 3G is key here in that it allows service providers to meet those different needs from the same system. The corporate option has more sophisticated functions and allows service providers to meet the billing presentation requirements of corporate customers. It can therefore handle complicated requirements such as discounting based on multiple services and multiple users with the ability to support multiple hierarchies found in the corporate environment, thus supporting the specific requirements of the individual to the satisfaction of the corporate entity in terms of care and cost.
Mobile Europe: Martin Dawes Systems may not be known to all our readers; how would you demonstrate you credibility to potential customers?

Tony Wilson:  Martin Dawes Systems  as a separate entity has been in the business of providing subscriber management systems since 1997. However, our experience and expertise goes back much further than that.

The first product was developed in-house for Martin Dawes Telecoms in 1985.  As a result, it, like those that have followed, were developed to meet the real needs of communications service providers. The second generation product, launched in 1989, attracted a great deal of external attention due to its effectiveness which ultimately inspired France Telecom to enter into a joint venture with us.

The creation of MDS as a separate enterprise was based on the efficiencies and value which the subscriber management product offers and came on the back of benchmarking work done in Germany. This demonstrated that the cost of ownership of each subscriber with Dise was 40% less than the systems used by other operators and service providers in Germany. Amongst our key customers are two of Europe’s leading mobile operators, O2 in the UK and Orange France.

Mobile Europe: How complicated is the integration process and how long does Dise 3G take to implement?

Tony Wilson: The implementation process is unique for each business because Dise 3G has to work with the network. Each network has its own individual switch environment for example. These create bespoke records for that network which we take and run through our system to translate them into common forms. Then, Dise 3G can apply what are, to all intents and purposes, individual charge requirements.

This works effectively for a single service provider but it is just as relevant for MVNOs. For example, the tariffing policies used by O2 and Orange are very different and so are the ways in which those networks present information to Dise 3G. But using our system, an MVNO could receive those records from each of the networks and collate, process and simplify them to allow the MVNO to charge as it wants to.
This is a prime example of how the experience of Martin Dawes Telecommunications has be leveraged.  We have connected to most Tier 1 operators in Europe, the USA and Australia and therefore we have a database of interfaces with those networks which makes the process much quicker and easier.  A new customer could be up and running with Dise 3G only six months after identifying the requirement for a new system.

Mobile Europe: How much does Dise 3G cost to implement and what kind of return on investment does it offer?

Tony Wilson:  The cost of the implementation obviously depends on the complexity of the solution the customer wants, as does the payback. However, the important thing is that a cost advantage can always be proved as Dise 3G provides an improvement on the cost the customer would see in the management and improvement of their existing system or over new multi-vendor systems.

There are cost benefits inherent to implementing a single integrated system over a multi-vendor solution, as has already been outlined, but the cost savings do not stop there. In a multi-vendor environment every change in requirements, such as the introduction of a new application, has to be integrated to every element.  With Dise 3G this only has to be done once. Therefore, launching new services is less complicated and this has a cost implication.

In short, we can turn round change faster than anyone else as we understand all the elements of managing a communications business. Cost savings can be drawn from increased workflow efficiency and the better management of subscribers in addition to the capital cost savings, and finally, revenue benefits can be derived from reducing churn and improving customer service. Dise 3G is a proven and cost-effective system.

The device will be marketed as an entry level mass market mobile internet device, but also one that offers the Android experience – including the Marketplace and Google apps and services.

David Kerrigan, Head of Internet Services at 3 UK, said, “We want to bring the 3G mobile internet experience to as many customers as we can. Pricing has been a barrier to that, by bringing the price down to £100 then that is the next step to the mass market.”

For 3, having an Android based handset at this level means that he can run services in a unified way across as many handsets as possible. The operator has to date targeted this segment with the Inq phones, which up to now have been based on Brew. O2 launched the HTC Smart earlier this year – a phone that was also based on Brew but also carried HTC’s Sense UI.

So how mass market is mass market? Well, ZTE’s Director of Mobile Device Operations, Wu Sa, told Mobile Europe that the handset vendor expects to ship “tens of thousands” of the devices this year.

So will 3 have the network in place to support the mass mobile internet market?

Those who follow these things will be interested in a couple of remarks from Kerrigan at the event. The first is that 3 bases its “entire strategy” on having the best 3G network in the UK. The operator plans to increase its number of sites from 11,570 to 15,949 by 201, he said. 3’s focus on its network has led to it having a live tracker on its intranet, telling employees whenever a new site comes on line.

“We’re all supposed to be able to talk knowledgably about the network,” he said, “even though I’m from sales and marketing,” he added.