The Digital Dashboard: How new metrics drive success in telco digital initiatives

Introduction

As core services revenues, margins and cash generation decline quickly, Communications Service Providers (CSPs) are seeking to invest in and grow new (digital) services. STL Partners estimates that digital business should represent 25+% of Telco revenue by 2020 to avoid long-term industry decline. The move to digital is challenging for CSPs. It will require large established organisations to define and implement new sustainable business models with new services delivered to existing and new customers via new channels and partners underpinned by new technology and supported by new operating, revenue and cost models. This requires a fundamental shift from a traditional infrastructure-based business to a complex amalgam of infrastructure, platform and product innovation businesses:

Historically, the telecoms industry has been an infrastructure business. It has invested large amounts of capital on things such as spectrum purchases, fibre and tower deployments. The result has been three largely undifferentiated services and revenue streams that have been ‘bundled in’ with the networks – voice, messaging and data. In the past, being a good communications service provider involved:
- Making effective capital investment decisions, and then
- Operating the network efficiently and affectively.
The Internet has changed everything by fracturing the integration between the network and services so that voice and messaging are no longer the sole domain of CSPs. CSPs now need to continue to hone their infrastructure business skills (in a world where every dollar of revenue is competed for hard by other operators and by ‘OTT’ players), and must also develop a range of new skills, assets, partnerships, customer relationships and operating and financial models if they are to compete in the new digital service areas.

In our recent survey (see Reality Check: Are operators’ lofty digital ambitions unrealistic given slow progress to date?), Telco practitioners were asked to comment on the importance of nine things that needed to be addressed to complete their digital business model transformation and the progress made to tackle them (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Digital metrics should be driving change at CSPs but are themselves proving difficult to implement

Source: STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Operator Survey, November 2014

Measurement using new digital operational/financial metrics was highlighted in the global survey as one of the ‘big 6’ challenges that need to be addressed for CSPs to be successful in future. However, to date, it has often been neglected by CSPs (metrics are often an after-thought and not an integral part of the digital transformation process).

In this report, we argue that the reverse is true: effective metrics lie at the heart of change. Without measurement, it is impossible to make decisions and engender change: an organisation continues on its existing path even if that ultimately leads to decline. We will:

Look at why it is important to capture, synthesise and act upon appropriate metrics.
Examine traditional and new approaches to the use of performance metrics and identify the factors that contribute to success and failure.
Highlight ‘telco best-practice’ via a case-study from a leading Asian CSP, Telkom Indonesia.

Why metrics matter

There is a common misconception that start-ups and digital companies do not – and do not need to – measure and report the performance of their businesses and initiatives. Digital start-ups are often portrayed as small creative teams working on ‘exciting stuff’ with no sense of business rigour or control. This could not be further from the truth. Most start-ups follow a LEAN & agile approach to product ideation and development are steered by one motto… “What you cannot measure, you cannot manage”. This is even more true if they are VC-backed and therefore reliant on hitting specific targets to receive their next round of funding.

Start-ups rely on operational and actionable metrics to measure progress, identify when to pivot as an organisation and translate strategic objectives into daily activities. By applying the “Build – Measure – Learn” concept (see Figure 2), innovators create something (Build), evaluate how well it is received (Measure), and adjust it in response to the feedback they receive (Learn).

Figure 2: “Build – Measure – Learn” concept

Source: LEAN Analytics – Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

Metrics evolve over time. Start-ups are continuously searching for the ‘right’ metrics at any given stage of their development because their businesses are constantly evolving – either because they have just started on their journey or because they may have recently changed direction (or ‘pivoted’ from their original value proposition). Metrics are perceived as an operational toolset to quickly iterate to the right product and market before the money runs out. This ‘sword of Damocles’ hanging over entrepreneurs’ heads is a world away from the world inhabited by telcos’ employees.

Indeed, CSPs’ current approach to business targets & funding allocation is unlikely to create a sense of urgency that will drive and stimulate the success of digital initiatives. Based on extensive interviews with CSPs, digital start-ups and VCs, STL Partners concludes that CSPs should focus on:

Removing the Telco ‘safety net’. To succeed in creating truly compelling customer experiences CSPs need to mimic a VC-like environment and create a culture of higher-reward in return for higher risk by targeting employees more tightly on their digital initiative’s performance:
- Reward success more heavily: this could be ‘shadow’ share options in the venture which yield value in the form of shares or cash bonus for hitting targets which would takes an employee’s overall package way beyond what could be earned in the core business.
- Create risk for individuals: the quid pro quo of a big upside could be a reduced salary to, say, 60% of normal Telco pay (i.e. similar to what might be earned in a typical start-up) or offer contracts that only renew if an initiative hits its targets – if you fall short, you leave the business and are not simply moved elsewhere in the organisation.
Adopting ‘start-up culture’ and ways of thinking. For example, when negotiating for funds, employees should be negotiating for their survival, not for a budget or a budget increase. Also, Telcos should start using the vocabulary / parlance commonly used in the digital space as such burn rate, time before cash runs out, cash break-even date, etc.
Establishing new processes to manage KPIs and performance metrics. In the fast-paced digital environment, it usually does not make sense to use 18-24 month targets derived from a detailed business case backed by financial metrics (such as revenue, EBITDA, etc.) – particularly for early-stage start-ups. Google actually identified a move away from this approach to one focused on a stable strategic foundation (make sure the initial proposition is viable by defining a clear problem we are trying to solve and how the solution will differentiate from alternative solutions) + fluid plans as one of the pillars of its success (see Figure 3
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Figure 3: Business plan and financial metrics are out-of-date in a digital world

Source: How Google works, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg and Alan Eagle

Metrics are a powerful tool that CSPs should use to foster sustainable commercial growth through validated learning. Unfortunately, metrics are often an “after-thought” and very few CSPs have implemented a consistent approach to metrics. From a series of interviews, undertaken by STL for this research, it became apparent that most initiatives failed to develop regular reporting that engages (or is even understood by) other stakeholders. At best, operators are inconsistent in tracking digital innovation, at worst, negligent.

Executive Summary
Introduction
Why metrics matter
Metrics make a difference: 3 case studies from telecoms operators
3 additional reasons why Telcos need digital metrics
Alternative approaches to digital metrics for telecoms operators
Introduction
The corporate approach – the Balanced Scorecard
The start-up approach – LEAN & AARRR methodology
Telkom Indonesia’s approach to digital metrics
Background
Telkom’s current digital strengths
Telkom Indonesia’s digital metrics system
Benefits of the digital metrics system to Telkom Indonesia
Conclusions
STL Partners and Telco 2.0: Change the Game

Figure 1: Digital metrics should be driving change at CSPs but are themselves proving difficult to implement
Figure 2: “Build – Measure – Learn” concept
Figure 3: Business plan and financial metrics are out-of-date in a digital world
Figure 4: Near perfect correlation between number of agents and number of M-Pesa subscribers, R² = 0.96
Figure 5: Metrics reporting by M-Pesa, December 2012
Figure 6: Turkcell’s Mobile Marketing Platform Overview
Figure 7: Turkcell’s continuous development of it Mobile Marketing portfolio
Figure 8: Libon single roadmap enables rapid evolution and rich features
Figure 9: Libon – Cost per Monthly Active Users (M)
Figure 10: Illustrative Net Synergy Make up (Hypothetical case)
Figure 11: Facebook vs. Yield Businesses: Revenue and Enterprise Value (EV)
Figure 12: Facebook: Monthly Active Users vs. Valuation
Figure 13: Different players’ metrics requirements
Figure 14: Balance Scorecard concept
Figure 15: AARRR model
Figure 16: Pros & Cons – Summary table
Figure 17: Telkom Indonesia’s Metrics Approach – Characteristics
Figure 18: Telkom Indonesia’s digital strengths
Figure 19: Telcos – slow by design?
Figure 20: Telkom Indonesia’s TIMES service portfolio
Figure 21: LEAN start-up approach
Figure 22: Delivering Innovation – Telkom’s internal organisation
Figure 23: Telco 2.0 Domain Framework
Figure 24: Metrics Prioritisation & Outcomes Example
Figure 25: Governance process – Phase 1 & 2
Figure 26: Innovation Governance – Case studies examples

Winning Strategies: Differentiated Mobile Data Services

Introduction

Verizon’s performance in the US

Our work on the US cellular market – for example, in the Disruptive Strategy: “Uncarrier” T-Mobile vs VZW, AT&T, and Free.fr and Free-T-Mobile: Disruptive Revolution or a Bridge Too Far? Executive Briefings – has identified that US carrier strategies are diverging. The signature of a price-disruption event we identified with regard to France was that industry-wide ARPU was falling, subscriber growth was unexpectedly strong (amounting to a substantial increase in penetration), and there was a shakeout of minor operators and MVNOs.

Although there are strong signs of a price war – for example, falling ARPU industry-wide, resumed subscriber growth, minor operators exiting, and subscriber-acquisition initiatives such as those at T-Mobile USA, worth as much as $400-600 in handset subsidy and service credit – it seems that Verizon Wireless is succeeding while staying out of the mire, while T-Mobile, Sprint, and minor operators are plunged into it, and AT&T may be going that way too. Figure 1 shows monthly ARPU, converted to Euros for comparison purposes.

Figure 1: Strategic divergence in the US

Source: STL Partners, themobileworld.com

We can also look at this in terms of subscribers and in terms of profitability, bringing in the cost side. The following chart, Figure 2, plots margins against subscriber growth, with the bubbles set proportional to ARPU. The base year 2011 is set to 100 and the axes are set to the average values. We’ve named the four quadrants that result appropriately.

Figure 2: Four carriers, four fates

Source: STL Partners

Clearly, you’d want to be in the top-right, top-performer quadrant, showing subscriber growth and growing profitability. Ideally, you’d also want to be growing ARPU. Verizon Wireless is achieving all three, moving steadily north-west and climbing the ARPU curve.

At the same time, AT&T is gradually being drawn into the price war, getting closer to the lower-right “volume first” quadrant. Deep within that one, we find T-Mobile, which slid from a defensive crouch in the upper-left into the hopeless lower-left zone and then escaped via its price-slashing strategy. (Note that the last lot of T-Mobile USA results were artificially improved by a one-off spectrum swap.) And Sprint is thrashing around, losing profitability and going nowhere fast.

The usual description for VZW’s success is “network differentiation”. They’re just better than the rest, and as a result they’re reaping the benefits. (ABI, for example, reckons that they’re the world’s second most profitable operator on a per-subscriber basis and the world’s most profitable in absolute terms.) We can restate this in economic terms, saying that they are the most efficient producer of mobile service capacity. This productive capacity can be used either to cut prices and gain share, or to increase quality (for example, data rates, geographic coverage, and voice mean-opinion score) at higher prices. This leads us to an important conclusion: network differentiation is primarily a cost concept, not a price concept.

If there are technical or operational choices that make network differentiation possible, they can be deployed anywhere. It’s also possible, though, that VZW is benefiting from structural factors, perhaps its ex-incumbent status, or its strong position in the market for backbone and backhaul fibre, or perhaps just its scale (although in that case, why is AT&T doing so much worse?). And another possibility often mooted is that the US is somehow a better kind of mobile market. Less competitive (although this doesn’t necessarily show up in metrics like the Herfindahl index of concentration), supposedly less regulated, and undoubtedly more profitable, it’s often held up by European operators as an example. Give us the terms, they argue, and we will catch up to the US in LTE deployment.

As a result, it is often argued in lobbying circles that European markets are “too competitive” or in need of “market repair”, and therefore, the argument runs, the regulator ought to turn a blind eye to more consolidation or at least accept a hollowing out of national operating companies. More formally, the prices (i.e. ARPUs) prevailing do not provide a sufficient margin over operators’ fixed costs to fund discretionary investment. If this was true, we would expect to find little scope for successful differentiation in Europe.

Further, if the “incumbent advantage” story was true of VZW over and above the strategic moves that it has made, we might expect to find that ex-incumbent, converged operators were pulling into the lead across Europe, benefiting from their wealth of access and backhaul assets. In this note, we will try to test these statements, and then assess what the answer might be.

How do European Operators compare?

We selected a clutch of European mobile operators and applied the same screen to identify what might be happening. In doing so we chose to review the UK, German, French, Swedish, and Italian markets jointly with the US, in an effort to avoid a purely European crisis-driven comparison.

Figure 3: Applying the screen to European carriers

Figure 3 Applying the screen to European carriers

Source: STL Partners

Our first observation is that the difference between European and American carriers has been more about subscriber growth than about profitability. The axes are set to the same values as in Figure 2, and the data points are concentrated to their left (showing less subscriber growth in Europe) not below them (less profitability growth).

Our second observation is that yes, there certainly are operators who are delivering differentiated performance in the EU. But they’re not the ones you might expect. Although the big converged incumbents, like T-Mobile Germany, have strong margins, they’re not increasing them and on the whole their performance is average only. Nor is scale a panacea, which brings us to our next observation.

Our third observation is that something is visible at this level that isn’t in the US: major opcos that are shrinking. Vodafone, not a company that is short of scale, gets no fewer than three of its OpCos into the lower-left quadrant. We might say that Vodafone Italy was bound to suffer in the context of the Italian macro-economy, as was TIM, but Vodafone UK is in there, and Vodafone Germany is moving steadily further left and down.

And our fourth observation is the opposite, significant growth. Hutchison OpCo 3UK shows strong performance growth, despite being a fourth operator with no fixed assets and starting with LTE after first-mover EE. Their sibling 3 Sweden is also doing well, while even 3 Italy was climbing up until the last quarter and it remains a valid price warrior. They are joined in the power quadrant with VZW by Telenor’s Swedish OpCo, Telia Mobile, and O2 UK (in the last two cases, only marginally). EE, for its part, has only marginally gained subscribers, but it has strongly increased its margins, and it may yet make it.

But if you want really dramatic success, or if you doubt that Hutchison could do it, what about Free? The answer is that they’re literally off the chart. In Figure 4, we add Free Mobile, but we can only plot the first few quarters. (Interestingly, since then, Free seems to be targeting a mobile EBITDA margin of exactly 9%.)

The distinction here is between the pure-play, T-Mobile-like price warriors in the lower right quadrant, who are sacrificing profitability for growth, and the group we’ve identified, who are improving their margins even as they gain subscribers. This is the signature of significant operational improvement, an operator that can move traffic more efficiently than its competitors. Because the data traffic keeps coming, ever growing at the typical 40% annual clip, it is necessary for any operator to keep improving in order to survive. Therefore, the pace of improvement marks operational excellence, not just improvement.

Figure 4: Free Mobile, a disruptive force that’s literally off the charts

Figure 4 Free Mobile a disruptive force thats literally off the charts

Source: STL Partners

We can also look at this at the level of the major multinational groups. Again, Free’s very success presents a problem to clarity in this analysis – even as part of a virtual group of independents, the ‘Indies’ in Figure 5, it’s difficult to visualise. T-Mobile USA’s savage price cutting, though, gets averaged out and the inclusion of EE boosts the result for Orange and DTAG. It also becomes apparent that the “market repair” story has a problem in that there isn’t a major group committed to hard discounting. But Hutchison, Telenor, and Free’s excellence, and Vodafone’s pain, stand out.

Figure 5: The differences are if anything more pronounced within Europe at the level of the major multinationals

Figure 5 The differences are if anything more pronounced within Europe at the level of the major multinationals

Source: STL Partners

In the rest of this report we analyse why and how these operators (3UK, Telenor Sweden and Free Mobile) are managing to achieve such differentiated performance, identify the common themes in their strategic approaches and the lessons from comparison to their peers, and the important wider consequences for the market.

Executive Summary
Introduction
Applying the Screen to European Mobile
Case study 1: Vodafone vs. 3UK
3UK has substantially more spectrum per subscriber than Vodafone
3UK has much more fibre-optic backhaul than Vodafone
How 3UK prices its service
Case study 2: Sweden – Telenor and its competitors
The network sharing issue
Telenor Sweden: heavy on the 1800MHz
Telenor Sweden was an early adopter of Gigabit Ethernet backhaul
How Telenor prices its service
Case study 3: Free Mobile
Free: a narrow sliver of spectrum, or is it?
Free Mobile: backhaul excellence through extreme fixed-mobile integration
Free: the ultimate in simple pricing
Discussion
IP networking metrics: not yet predictive of operator performance
Network sharing does not obviate differentiation
What is Vodafone’s strategy for fibre in the backhaul?
Conclusions

Figure 1: Strategic divergence in the US
Figure 2: Four carriers, four fates
Figure 3: Applying the screen to European carriers
Figure 4: Free Mobile, a disruptive force that’s literally off the charts
Figure 5: The differences are if anything more pronounced within Europe at the level of the major multinationals
Figure 6: Although Vodafone UK and O2 UK share a physical network, O2 is heading for VZW-like territory while VF UK is going nowhere fast
Figure 7: Strategic divergence in the UK
Figure 8: 3UK, also something of an ARPU star
Figure 9: 3UK is very different from Hutchison in Italy or even Sweden
Figure 10: 3UK has more spectrum on a per-subscriber basis than Vodafone
Figure 11: Vodafone’s backhaul upgrades are essentially microwave; 3UK’s are fibre
Figure 12: 3 Europe is more than coping with surging data traffic
Figure 13: 3UK service pricing
Figure 14: The Swedish market shows a clear winner…
Figure 15: Telenor.se is leading on all measures
Figure 16: How Swedish network sharing works
Figure 17: Network sharing does not equal identical performance in the UK
Figure 18: Although extensive network sharing complicates the picture, Telenor Sweden has a strong position, especially in the key 1800MHz band
Figure 19: If the customers want more data, why not sell them more data?
Figure 20: Free Mobile, network differentiator?
Figure 21: Free Mobile, the price leader as always
Figure 22: Free Mobile succeeds with remarkably little spectrum, until you look at the allocations that are actually relevant to its network
Figure 23: Free’s fixed-line network plans
Figure 24: Free leverages its FTTH for outstanding backhaul density
Figure 25: Free: value on 3G, bumper bundler on 4G
Figure 26: The carrier with the most IPv4 addresses per subscriber is…
Figure 27: AS_PATH length – not particularly predictive either
Figure 28: The buzzword count. “Fibre” beats “backhaul” as a concern
Figure 29: Are Project Spring’s targets slipping?

New Mobile & Digital Transformation Strategies: OnFuture EMEA Executive Brainstorm 2014, Day One (Wednesday 11 June)

New Mobile & Digital Transformation Strategies. Presentations and Voting Slides from the New Mobile & Digital Transformation Strategies stream of the OnFuture EMEA Executive Brainstorm, 11th June 2014, in London.

0845 Event Start: Welcome, Agenda, Introductions & Warm Up

Andrew Collinson, COO & Research Director, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (download here)

0900 Managing Disruptive Innovation in the Digital World

Chris Barraclough, MD & Chief Strategist, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (download here)

Peter Briscoe, Head of Innovation, Ericsson (download here)

Paolo Campoli, Service Provider CTO, Cisco (download here)

In the afternoon there were two parallel streams – Communications Services and In-Home and In-Store Services:

Stream A Workshops: Communications Services – Innovation for the Consumer and the Enterprise

1345 Future Communications: Radical innovation in voice, messaging and data services

Bob Brace, Senior Analyst, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (download here)

Rainer Deutschmann, SVP Core Product Innovation, Deutsche Telekom (download here)

Giles Corbett, Head of Libon, Orange (download here)

Dean Elwood, CEO and Founder, Voxygen (Panel Only)

Chris Barraclough, MD & Chief Strategist, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Moderator)

1430 Enterprise Mobility: A strategic approach to creating competitive advantage

Bob Brace, Senior Analyst, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (download here)

Albane Coeurquetin, Consultant, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (download here)

Michael Crossey, Director Product Marketing, Intel (Unavailable)

Alessandro Vigilante, VP Business Development & Strategy, Colt (download here)

Philip Laidler, Director of Consulting, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Moderator)

Stream B: In-Home and In-Store Services: the ‘Internet of Things…and of People’

1315 The ‘Internet of Things’ in the Digital Home: Towards a new ecosystem

Matt Jones, Consultant, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (download here)

Martin Harriman, Director of Digital Home, Telefonica (download here)

Kevin Petersen, SVP, AT&T Digital Home (download here)

Pilgrim Beart, Founder, AlertMe (download here)

Philip Laidler, Director of Consulting, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Moderator)

1430 In-Store Retail: How mobile technology can revive the high street, not kill it

Owen McCabe, Director, Kantar Retail (download here)

Omaid Hiwaizi, Chief Strategy Officer, Geometry Global/WPP (download here)

Graham Cove, Director of Wi-Fi, Everything Everywhere (EE) (download here)

Chris Barraclough, MD & Chief Strategist, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Moderator)

Final plenary session:

1615 Mobile Payments: Creating a viable ecosystem that enables true ‘mobile commerce’

Andrew Collinson, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Moderator)

Holger Rambach, VP Products & Innovation, Deutsche Telekom (download here)

David Pringle, Senior Associate, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Panel Only)

Phil Laidler, Director of Consulting, STL Partners/Telco 2.0 Initiative (Panel Only)

Voting slides from Day 1: New Mobile & Digital Transformation Strategies

Click here for Day 2 presentations – Next Generation Mobile Marketing & Commerce
Click here to go back to the main OnFuture EMEA London page

Telco 2.0: The $50bn Enterprise Mobility Opportunity: What’s stopping telcos winning 500% more business?

Overview of Key Findings

STL Partners believe that mobility – the use of mobile data, new devices, new applications and communications services – is one of the most disruptive forces in today’s enterprise market. We think that a business philosophy to embrace mobility as a strategic asset and opportunity, rather than simply a technical challenge, will be a critical success factor for all businesses moving forward. Telcos can be a key enabler and business partner in this transformation, but to do so they will need to significantly change their approaches to working with enterprise customers.Key findings

Our new global research, independently produced by STL Partners and kindly sponsored by SAP, shows that many telcos are both ideally positioned but underprepared to exploit this fast emerging and evolving opportunity. We found that among the 101 global enterprise and 44 telco executives we surveyed:

Mobility works – 80% of enterprise execs thought their mobile app based initiatives had met or exceeded expectations
There’s big latent demand for telcos – 5 times as many enterprises (i.e. over half the total) would buy services and solutions from telcos than currently do
But telcos need to address credible capability issues such as security, product portfolio, app development, and process and industry expertise
And most telcos are underprepared – only 16% have a defined market offer or strategy, and internal adoption of mobility lags many other industries, with only 45% of telcos we surveyed offering internal apps compared to 61% in the enterprise sample.

Figure 1: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco?
Figure 1: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco?

Source: STL Partners, On-line research, Enterprise >250 employees, Feb 2014(n=101)

Introduction

Background – the Business Context of Enterprise Mobility

Four major trends in demand are transforming the Enterprise Information and Communication Technology (ICT) market today:

In pursuit of greater agility, new sources of revenue, improved efficiency, and closer customer relationships, enterprises are exploring opportunities to mobilise strategic aspects of their business.
Enterprises are increasingly exploiting big-data, cloud, and mobile strategies to innovate and transform.
To focus on their core businesses, they are outsourcing IT infrastructure and technology services.
As employees increasingly use new digital technologies and services, enterprises have started to reduce spend on traditional telecoms services.

In response, telcos are looking to identify alternative ways to grow revenues from enterprise customers. This includes tools for the development, deployment, and management of enterprise apps, and managed infrastructure and technology services that offer flexibility and economies of scale.

In December 2013, STL Partners conducted a sizing study of the Enterprise Mobility market and identified a global opportunity of $50 billion (see Telco 2.0™ Executive Briefing: “The $50Bn Enterprise Mobility Opportunity: four steps for telcos to take today”). This precipitated further exploration into:

Enterprises’ opportunities and priorities for mobile solutions
Their drivers and expectations vis-à-vis Enterprise Mobility, and their attitudes towards telcos as a prospective partner
The practical and perceptual inhibitors causing telcos to arrive comparatively late to the Enterprise Mobility party
How telcos can achieve the greatest value for their customers – and themselves – by developing or assimilating the Enterprise Mobility capabilities they lack today

New Research

In the first quarter of 2014, STL Partners carried out a combined research programme consisting of:

a survey of 101 enterprises worldwide (organisations with 250+ employees)
a quantitative study of 44 telcos
in-depth qualitative interviews with strategists and proposition owners representing 11 telcos

Figure 2: Enterprise customers – on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 2: Enterprise customers - on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 3: Telco – on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 3: Telco - on-line survey respondents, per region

Table 1: In-depth qualitative interviews – contributing companies

Table 1: In-depth qualitative intervews - contributing companies

All the interviews were conducted on a confidential basis. Information and insights shared by the interviewees have therefore been anonymised. Names and titles have also been withheld.

The findings – which suggest telcos are even further adrift of a robust Enterprise Mobility proposition than initially thought – are detailed in this report, together with recommendations on steps telcos can take to accelerate their go-to-market strategy and make up for the early momentum they have lost.

Overview – the enterprise perspective

As demand for access to information on the go via mobile platforms is increasing, Enterprise Mobility is one of the hottest topics in IT. Mobile apps are fast becoming a business imperative to support better ways of working and business transformation. Enterprises must react quickly to harness the potential of mobile apps, while satisfying themselves that security, governance, and compliance across data, applications, and devices are fit for purpose.

Most Enterprises have started mobilising

Our study revealed that most enterprises have already mobilised at least some of their organisation’s processes and interactions, generally starting from the inside out by prioritising internal initiatives over customer-facing ones.

Figure 4: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises

Though we observed variations in adoption by sector and country that may indicate relevant differences (see Appendix – Industry and Regional Splits, page 48), the commonality of fundamental demand across regions and sectors is more significant.

Sales is the current lead application – but there’s more to come

Findings: field sales has always been a natural candidate area for mobilisation, borne out by the fact that more than half of enterprises in the study already had some form of sales app. While the Shop Floor currently has experienced the lowest adoption of enterprise apps, it is also one of the areas of greatest potential for mobilisation, with 41% of enterprises contemplating mobilising their production facilities, concourse, or retail environment. The highest levels of mobilisation or intent to mobilise were seen in Aftermarket Field Service, Transportation & Delivery, and Equipment Maintenance.

Figure 5: Internal / B2E mobile apps enterprises already have or are considering

Figure 4: Internal / B2E mobile apps enterprises already have or are considering

Opportunity: administrative apps are now a relatively mature, horizontal process market. Some telcos have had success selling these and it is an important area in which to have a compelling offering. However, such apps have lower price points and margins, whereas other sales and operational apps offer the potential for higher growth and greater business impact. Moreover, there is also potential for a new generation of intelligent sales apps to change sales performance in a more fundamental fashion.

Key Question: how can telcos best develop the agility and depth of ICT skills to sell and support both horizontal process apps and deeper vertical / operational needs?

Options: telcos have broad options to develop this internally, partner, or choose not to support these segments and their needs. See Four key enterprise mobility competencies for telcos, page 42.

In B2C: information first, marketing next

Findings: the customer-facing processes that had most typically been already mobilised were identified as Information & Reference (53%) and Paying Bills/Checking Balances (52%). The areas of greatest untapped interest in mobilisation were Social Media Sharing (33%), Marketing Offers (32%), and Scanning Barcodes/QR Codes (31%).

Figure 6: Customer-facing processes enterprises have mobilised or are planning to mobilise?

Opportunity: as an increasing volume of purchases are researched or made via mobile devices, traditional mobile marketing and shopping experiences in developed economies are likely to continue to evolve significantly.

Key Question: how can telcos develop and support the next generation of customer-facing mobile apps?

Options: again, telcos have broad options to develop this internally, partner, or choose not to support these segments and their needs. See Four key enterprise mobility competencies for telcos, page 42.

Executive Summary
Introduction
Overview: the enterprise perspective
Most Enterprises have started mobilising
Issues for Enterprises managing Enterprise Mobility
The results: 80 % of initiatives met or beat expectations
More than half the enterprise market would buy from telcos: 500% more than today
So why don’t enterprises buy from telcos now?
The telco perspective
Stages of mobile maturity among telcos
70% of telco execs found EM a ‘very attractive’ opportunity
Telcos are not ‘drinking their own champagne’
Only 16% of telcos have a defined strategy or market offer
Enterprises want apps, but are telcos listening?
Shifting culture: new markets needs new mind-sets, models and metrics
What sort of strategy to balance speed and risk/reward?
Enterprise Mobility success factors
Four key enterprise mobility competencies for telcos
Should telcos partner – and what are the criteria?
Steps to defining the strategy for telcos
Appendix – Industry and Regional Splits
Adoption and barriers by Sector and Region

Figure 1: Enterprise customers – On-line survey respondents, per region
Figure 2: Telco – On-line survey respondents, per region
Figure 3: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises
Figure 4: Internal / B2E mobile apps enterprises already have or are actively considering
Figure 5: Customer-facing processes enterprises have mobilised or are planning to mobilise?
Figure 6: Capabilities enterprise employees and customers are using
Figure 7: BYOD – Prevalence of corporate and employee devices
Figure 8: Number of devices across the surveyed enterprises’ workforces 16
Figure 9: Top challenges and obstacles in Enterprise Mobility
Figure 10: How do Enterprises manage app development?
Figure 11: How many enterprises use platform-based applications?
Figure 12: Strategic mobility enablers currently in place in enterprises
Figure 13: Presence of a formal enterprise mobility strategy vs. number of devices across the workforce
Figure 14: Success of Enterprise Mobility deployment(s) to date
Figure 15: Success of Enterprise Mobility deployment(s) to date – per role
Figure 16: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco?
Figure 17: What would enterprises consider buying from a telco – by role
Figure 18: Enterprises which would consider buying from a telco or already have
Figure 19: Why wouldn’t enterprises buy from a telco?
Figure 20: Enterprise Mobility maturity stages in telcos
Figure 21: Telcos’ concerns about core revenue declines
Figure 22: How attractive an opportunity is Enterprise Mobility to telcos?
Figure 23: Telcos are somewhat well-informed around Enterprise Mobility trends and development in mobile applications
Figure 24: Types of apps currently used within telcos
Figure 25: Processes / workflows telcos have mobilised or plan to mobilise with apps
Figure 26: Maturity of telcos’ own mobility programme
Figure 27: Telcos’ Internal enterprise app store deployment
Figure 28: Mobile portfolio management
Figure 29: Telcos’ biggest challenges or obstacles to internal mobilisation
Figure 30: Products and services telcos are currently offering, or plan to offer
Figure 31: Comparison between services enterprises would consider buying from telcos vs. services telcos are currently offering, or plan to offer
Figure 32: Telcos’ target market
Figure 33: Telco Barriers to taking Enterprise Mobility offerings to market
Figure 34: A hybrid approach can enable Telcos to achieve multiple concurrent stages of mobility evolution
Figure 35: Potential ‘Roadmap’ decisions for telcos addressing Enterprise Mobility
Figure 36: Business processes already mobilised by enterprises by industry sector
Figure 37: Internal mobile apps the utilities sector already have or are actively considering
Figure 38: Enterprise device landscape
Figure 39: Enterprise device landscape by region
Figure 40: Top THREE biggest challenges and obstacles in Enterprise Mobility by region
Figure 41: Enterprise mobile apps development / acquisition – per region
Figure 42: Enterprise mobile apps development / acquisition per industry
Figure 43: Platform-based applications per region
Figure 44: Enterprise app store penetration
Figure 45: Reasons Enterprises would not consider obtaining Enterprise Mobility services from a telecoms provider – per region
Figure 46: Reasons Enterprises would not consider obtaining Enterprise Mobility services from a telecoms provider – per industry

Why closing Telefonica Digital should make Telefonica more digital (and innovative)

Several different CSP organisation designs for Telco 2.0 Service Innovation

Telefonica is one of the companies that we have analysed in depth in the Telco 2.0 Transformation Index research. In this report, we analyse Telefonica’s recent announcement that it is restructuring its Digital Business unit. We’ll also be exploring strategies for transformation at the OnFuture EMEA 2014 Brainstorm, June 11-12, London.

Telco 2.0 strategy is a key driver of organisation design

We have defined Telco 2.0 and, specifically, Telco 2.0 Happy Piper and Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategies in other reports so will not focus on the implications of each on service offerings and customer segments here. It is, however, important to understand the implications each strategy has on the organisation in terms of capability requirements and, by definition, on organisation design – structure, processes, skills and so forth.

As Figure 1 shows, the old Telco 1.0 world required CSPs to focus on infrastructure-oriented capabilities – cost, service assurance, provisioning, network quality of service, and congestion management.

For a Telco 2.0 Happy Piper, these capabilities are even more important:

Being low-cost in a growing telecoms market gives a company an advantage; being low-cost in a shrinking telecoms market, such as Europe, can mean the difference between surviving and going under.
Congestion management was important in the voice-oriented telecoms market of yesteryear but is even more so in the data-centric market in which different applications (including voice) co-exist on different networks – 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, Fibre, Copper, etc.

Telco 2.0 Happy Pipers also need to expand their addressable market in order to thrive – into Infrastructure Services, M2M, Embedded Connectivity and, in some cases, into Enterprise ICT including bespoke vertical industry solutions. For sure this requires some new Service Development capabilities but, perhaps more importantly, also new partnerships – both in terms of service development and delivery – and a greater focus on Customer Experience Management and ‘Customer data/Big data’ in order to deliver valuable solutions to demanding enterprise customers.

For a Telco 2.0 Service Provider, the range of new capabilities required is even greater:

The ability to develop new platform and end-user (consumer and enterprise) services.
Brand management – not just creating a stolid telecoms brand but a vibrant end-user one.
New partners in other industries – financial services, media, advertising, start-ups, developers and so forth.

Figure 1: Capabilities needed for different Telco 2.0 strategies

Fig1 Capabilities need for different Telco 2.0 Strategies

Source: STL Partners/Telco 2.0

Most leading CSPs are pursuing a Telco 2.0 ‘Service Provider’ strategy

STL Partners analysis suggests that the majority of CSPs (and certainly all the tier 1 and 2 players) have at least some aspirations as a Telco 2.0 Service Provider. Several, such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom Orange, SingTel, Telefonica and Telenor, have been public with their ‘digital services’ aspirations.

But even more circumspect players such as Verizon and Vodafone which have to date largely focused on core telecommunications services have aspirations to move beyond this. Verizon, for example, is participating in the ISIS joint venture on payments, albeit something of a slow burn at present. Vodafone has also pushed into payments in developing markets via its successes with mPesa in Kenya and is (perhaps a slightly reluctant) partner in the WEVE JV in the UK on digital commerce.

Further back in their Telco 2.0 development owing to the attractiveness of their markets from a Telco 1.0 perspective are the players in the rapidly developing Middle Eastern and Asian markets such as Axiata, Etisalat, Mobily, Ooredoo, and Zain. These players too aspire to achieve more than Happy Piper status and are already pushing into advertising, content and payments for consumers and M2M and Cloud for enterprises.

Telco 2.0 Service Providers are adopting different organisation designs

It is clear that there is no consensus among management about how to implement Telco 2.0 services. This is not surprising given how new it is for telecoms operators to develop and deliver new services – innovation is not something associated with telcos. Everyone is learning how to take their first tentative steps into the wonderful but worrisome world of innovation – like toddlers stepping into the shallow beach waters of the ocean.

There is no tried and tested formula for setting up an organisation that delivers innovation but there is consensus (among STL Partners’ contacts at least) that a different organisation structure is needed to the one that manages the core infrastructure business. Most also agree that the new skills, partnerships, operational and financial model associated with Telco 2.0 innovation needs to be ring-fenced and protected from its mature Telco 1.0 counterpart.

The degree of separation between the old and new is the key area of debate. We lay out the broad options in Figure 2.

Fig 2 Organisation design models for Telco 2.0 Service Innovation

Fig 2 Organisation design models for Telco 2.0 Service Innovation

Source: STL Partners/Telco 2.0

For some, a central independent strategy unit that identifies potential innovations and undertakes an initial evaluation is a sufficient degree of separation. AT&T and Verizon in the US have gone down this route – see Figure 3.

Fig 3 Organisation design approaches of 9 CSPs across 4 regions

Fig 3 Organisation design approaches of 9 CSPs across 4 regions

Source: STL Partners/Telco 2.0

In this model, ideas that are deemed promising are handed over the operating units to develop and deliver where, frankly, many are ignored or wallow in what one executive described to us as ‘Telco goo’ – the slow processes associated with the 20-year investment cycles of an infrastructure business.

Players such as Etisalat, Mobily and Ooredoo that are taking their first steps into Telco 2.0 services, but harbouring great aspirations, have gone a step further than this and set up Central Innovation Units. In additional to innovation ideation and evaluation, these units typically undertake piloting, investment and, in some cases, some modest product development. This approach is a sensible ‘first step’ into innovation and echoes the earlier attempts by many multi-national European players in the early 2000’s that had central group marketing functions that undertook proposition development for several countries. The benefit is that the company can focus most resources on growth in existing Telco 1.0 services and Telco 2.0 solutions do not become a major distraction. The downside is that Telco 2.0 services are seen as small and distant are always far less important than voice, messaging and connectivity services or devices ranges that can make a big impact in the next 3-6 months.

Finally, the most ambitious Telco 2.0 Service Providers – Deutsche Telekom, SingTel, Telenor, Telefonica and others – have developed separate New Business Units The Telco 2.0 New Business Unit is given end-to-end responsibility for Telco 2.0 services. The units find, develop, launch and manage new digital services and have full P&L responsibility.

STL Partners has long been a fan of this approach. Innovation is given room to develop and grow under the guidance of senior management. It has a high profile within the organisation but different targets, processes, people and partnerships to the core business which, left unchecked, would intentionally or unintentionally kill the new ‘rival’ off.

Five Principles for developing a Telco 2.0 New Business Unit

Full control and responsibility. The unit must have the independence from the core business to be able to control its own destiny and not be advertently or inadvertently impeded by the core business. Telefonica, for example, went as far as to give its unit a separate physical location in central London.
Senior management support. While the unit is largely independent, it must be part of the corporate strategy and decisions about it must be made at the highest level. In other words, the unit must be tied to the core business right at the top of the organisation – it is not completely free and decisions must be made for the overall good of the company. Sometimes those decisions will be to the benefit or detriment of either the core business or the new business unit. This is inevitable and not a cause for alarm – but these decisions need to be considered carefully and rationally by the senior team.
Go OTT to start with. One of the challenges faced by senior managers is how to leverage the capabilities of the core business – the network, customer data, retail outlets, brand, etc. – in the digital services offered by the new unit. Clearly, it makes sense to use these assets to differentiate against the OTT players. However, STL Partners recommends not trying to do this initially as the complexity of building successful interfaces between the new unit and the core business will prove too challenging. Instead, establish some momentum with OTT services that the new unit can develop and deliver independently, without drawing on the core business, before then adding some specific core business capabilities such as location data, customer preference data or network QoS.
Don’t forget to change management incentives …There is no point in filling the new business unit with senior management and fresh talent imbued with new skills and undertaking new business processes and practices unless they are clearly incentivised to make the right decisions! It seems an obvious point but CSPs have a long and successful infrastructure legacy which means that management incentives are typically suitable for this type of business. Managers typically have to hit high EBITDA margins, revenue targets that equate to around 50% of the capital base being generated a year, strong on-going capital investment – things that are at odds with a product innovation business (lower EBITDA margins, much lower capital intensity). Management incentives need to change to reflect this and the fact that they business is a start-up not a bolt-on the core business. These incentives need to be specific and can affect those in the core business as well as new unit.For example, if collaboration between the new unit and the core business units is a key requirement for long-term success (to build Telco 2.0 services that leverage core assets), then instigate a 360º feedback programme for all managers that measures how effectively they collaborate with their counter-parties in the other business units. Scores here could be used to determine bonuses, share options or promotion – a sure way to instigate the required behaviour!
…and investor metrics. As mentioned above, a product innovation business has a different financial model to an infrastructure business. Because of this, a new set of investor metrics is required focusing on lower margins and capital intensity. Furthermore, users will often be a key metric rather than subscribers. In other words, many users will not directly generate revenue (just as they do not for Google or Facebook) but remain an important driver of third-party sponsorship and advertising revenues. Linked to this, ARPU will become a less important metric for the new business unit because the end user will be one of several revenue sources.

Many of the leading telecoms players have, therefore, done the right thing with the development of their digital units. So why have they struggled so much with culture clashes between the core telecoms business and the new digital innovations? The answer lies in the way the units have been set up – their scope and role, the people that reside within them, and the processes and metrics that are used to develop and deliver services. This is covered in the next section of this report.

Even the boldest players are too Telco-centric with their digital business units
Defining traditional and new Telco 2.0 services
Current digital business units cover all the new Telco 2.0 services but should they?
Option: Reduce the scope of the Digital Business Units
Telefonica’s recent closure of Telefonica Digital
How might Telefonica’s innovation and ‘digital services’ strategy play out?

Figure 4: Defining Telco 2.0 new services
Figure 5: The mixed bag of services found in current digital business units
Figure 6: Separate new Telco 2.0 Services from traditional telecoms ones
Figure 8: The organisation structure at Telefonica
Figure 9: Telefonica’s strategic options for implementing ‘digital services’

Mobile Marketing and Commerce: the technology battle between NFC, BLE, SIM, & Cloud

Introduction

In this briefing, we analyse the bewildering array of technologies being deployed in the on-going mobile marketing and commerce land-grab. With different digital commerce brokers backing different technologies, confusion reigns among merchants and consumers, holding back uptake. Moreover, the technological fragmentation is limiting economies of scale, keeping costs too high.

This paper is designed to help telcos and other digital commerce players make the right technological bets. Will bricks and mortar merchants embrace NFC or Bluetooth Low Energy or cloud-based solutions? If NFC does take off, will SIM cards or trusted execution environments be used to secure services? Should digital commerce brokers use SMS, in-app notifications or IP-based messaging services to interact with consumers?

STL defines Digital Commerce 2.0 as the use of new digital and mobile technologies to bring buyers and sellers together more efficiently and effectively (see Digital Commerce 2.0: New $Bn Disruptive Opportunities for Telcos, Banks and Technology Players). Fast growing adoption of mobile, social and local services is opening up opportunities to provide consumers with highly-relevant advertising and marketing services, underpinned by secure and easy-to-use payment services. By giving people easy access to information, vouchers, loyalty points and electronic payment services, smartphones can be used to make shopping in bricks and mortar stores as interactive as shopping through web sites and mobile apps.

This executive briefing weighs the pros and cons of the different technologies being used to enable mobile commerce and identifies the likely winners and losers.

A new dawn for digital commerce

This section explains the driving forces behind the mobile commerce land-grab and the associated technology battle.

Digital commerce is evolving fast, moving out of the home and the office and onto the street and into the store. The advent of mass-market smartphones with touchscreens, full Internet browsers and an array of feature-rich apps, is turning out to be a game changer that profoundly impacts the way in which people and businesses buy and sell. As they move around, many consumers are now using smartphones to access social, local and mobile (SoLoMo) digital services and make smarter purchase decisions. As they shop, they can easily canvas opinion via Facebook, read product reviews on Amazon or compare prices across multiple stores. In developed markets, this phenomenon is now well established. Two thirds of 400 Americans surveyed in November 2013 reported that they used smartphones in stores to compare prices, look for offers or deals, consult friends and search for product reviews.

At the same time, the combination of Internet and mobile technologies, embodied in the smartphone, is enabling businesses to adopt new forms of digital marketing, retailing and payments that could dramatically improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The smartphones and the data they generate can be used to optimise and enable every part of the entire ‘wheel of commerce’ (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce

The elements that make up the wheel of commerce Feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

The extensive data being generated by smartphones can give companies’ real-time information on where their customers are and what they are doing. That data can be used to improve merchants’ marketing, advertising, stock management, fulfilment and customer care. For example, a smartphone’s sensors can detect how fast the device is moving and in what direction, so a merchant could see if a potential customer is driving or walking past their store.

Marketing that makes use of real-time smartphone data should also be more effective than other forms of digital marketing. In theory, at least, targeting marketing at consumers in the right geography at a specific time should be far more effective than simply displaying adverts to anyone who conducts an Internet search using a specific term.

Similarly, local businesses should find sending targeted vouchers, promotions and information, delivered via smartphones, to be much more effective than junk mail at engaging with customers and potential customers. Instead of paying someone to put paper-based vouchers through the letterbox of every house in the entire neighbourhood, an Indian restaurant could, for example, send digital vouchers to the handsets of anyone who has said they are interested in Indian food as they arrive at the local train station between 7pm and 9pm in the evening. As it can be precisely targeted and timed, mobile marketing should achieve a much higher return on investment (ROI) than a traditional analogue approach.

In our recent Strategy Report, STL Partners argued that the disruption in the digital commerce market has opened up two major opportunities for telcos:

Real-time commerce enablement: The use of mobile technologies and services to optimise all aspects of commerce. For example, mobile networks can deliver precisely targeted and timely marketing and advertising to consumer’s smartphones, tablets, computers and televisions.
Personal cloud: Act as a trusted custodian for individuals’ data and an intermediary between individuals and organisations, providing authentication services, digital lockers and other services that reduce the risk and friction in every day interactions. An early example of this kind of service is financial services web site Mint.com (profiled in the appendix of this report). As personal cloud services provide personalised recommendations based on individuals’ authorised data, they could potentially engage much more deeply with consumers than the generalised decision-support services, such as Google, TripAdvisor, moneysavingexpert.com and comparethemarket.com, in widespread use today.

These two opportunities are inter-related and could be combined in a single platform. In both cases, the telco is acting as a broker – matching buyers and sellers as efficiently as possible, competing with incumbent digital commerce brokers, such as Google, Amazon, eBay and Apple. The Strategy Report explains in detail how telcos could pursue these opportunities and potentially compete with the giant Internet players that dominate digital commerce today.

For most telcos, the best approach is to start with mobile commerce, where they have the strongest strategic position, and then use the resulting data, customer relationships and trusted brand to expand into personal cloud services, which will require high levels of investment. This is essentially NTT DOCOMO’s strategy.

However, in the mobile commerce market, telcos are having to compete with Internet players, banks, payment networks and other companies in land-grab mode – racing to sign up merchants and consumers for platforms that could enable them to secure a pivotal (and potentially lucrative) position in the fast growing mobile commerce market. Amazon, for example, is pursuing this market through its Amazon Local service, which emails offers from local merchants to consumers in specific geographic areas.

Moreover, a bewildering array of technologies are being used to pursue this land-grab, creating confusion for merchants and consumers, while fuelling fragmentation and limiting economies of scale.

In this paper, we weigh the pros and cons of the different technologies being used in each segment of the wheel of commerce, before identifying the most likely winners and losers. Note, the appendix of the Strategy Report profiles many of the key innovators in this space, such as Placecast, Shopkick and Square.

What’s at stake

This section considers the relative importance of the different segments of the wheel of commerce and explains why the key technological battles are taking place in the promote and transact segments.

Carving up the wheel of commerce

STL Partners’ recent Strategy Report models in detail the potential revenues telcos could earn from pursuing the real-time commerce and personal cloud opportunities. That is beyond the scope of this technology-focused paper, but suffice to say that the digital commerce market is large and is growing rapidly: Merchants and brands spend hundreds of billions of dollars across the various elements of the wheel of commerce. In the U.S., the direct marketing market alone is worth about $155 billion per annum, according to the Direct Marketing Association. In 2012, $62 billion of that total was spent on digital marketing, while about $93 billion was spent on traditional direct mail.

In the context of the STL Wheel of Commerce (see Figure 3), the promote segment (ads, direct marketing and coupons) is the most valuable of the six segments. Our analysis of middle-income markets for clients suggests that the promote segment accounts for approximately 40% of the value in the wheel of digital commerce today, while the transact segment (payments) accounts for 20% and planning (market research etc.) 16% (see Figure 5). These estimates draw on data released by WPP and American Express.

Note, that payments itself is a low margin business – American Express estimates that merchants in the U.S. spend four to five times as much on marketing activities, such as loyalty programmes and offers, as they do on payments.

Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce

The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce Feb 2014

Source: STL Partners

Introduction
Executive Summary
A new dawn for digital commerce
What’s at stake
Carving up the wheel of commerce
The importance of tracking transactions
It’s all about data
Different industries, different strategies
Tough technology choices
Planning
Promoting
Guiding
Transacting
Satisfying
Retaining
Conclusions
Key considerations
Likely winners and losers
The commercial implications
About STL Partners

Figure 1: App notifications are in pole position in the promotion segment
Figure 2: There isn’t a perfect point of sale solution
Figure 3: Different tech adoption scenarios and their commercial implications
Figure 4: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce
Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce
Figure 6: Examples of financial services-led digital wallets
Figure 7: Examples of Mobile-centric wallets in the U.S.
Figure 8: The mobile commerce strategy of leading Internet players
Figure 9: Telcos can combine data from different domains
Figure 10: How to reach consumers: The technology options
Figure 11: Balancing cost and consumer experience
Figure 12: An example of an easy-to-use tool for merchants
Figure 13: Drag and drop marketing collateral into Google Wallet
Figure 14: Contrasting a secure element with host-based card emulation
Figure 15: There isn’t a perfect point of sale solution
Figure 16: The proportion of mobile transactions to be enabled by NFC in 2017
Figure 17: Integrated platforms and point solutions both come with risks attached
Figure 18: Different tech adoption scenarios and their commercial implications

The Future Value of Voice and Messaging

Background – ‘Voice and Messaging 2.0’

This is the latest report in our analysis of developments and strategies in the field of voice and messaging services over the past seven years. In 2007/8 we predicted the current decline in telco provided services in Voice & Messaging 2.0 “What to learn from – and how to compete with – Internet Communications Services”, further articulated strategic options in Dealing with the ‘Disruptors’: Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft/Skype and Amazon in 2011, and more recently published initial forecasts in European Mobile: The Future’s not Bright, it’s Brutal. We have also looked in depth at enterprise communications opportunities, for example in Enterprise Voice 2.0: Ecosystem, Species and Strategies, and trends in consumer behaviour, for example in The Digital Generation: Introducing the Participation Imperative Framework. For more on these reports and all of our other research on this subject please see here.

The New Report

This report provides an independent and holistic view of voice and messaging market, looking in detail at trends, drivers and detailed forecasts, the latest developments, and the opportunities for all players involved. The analysis will save valuable time, effort and money by providing more realistic forecasts of future potential, and a fast-track to developing and / or benchmarking a leading-edge strategy and approach in digital communications. It contains

Our independent, external market-level forecasts of voice and messaging in 9 selected markets (US, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, UK, Italy, Singapore, Taiwan).
Best practice and leading-edge strategies in the design and delivery of new voice and messaging services (leading to higher customer satisfaction and lower churn).
The factors that will drive best and worst case performance.
The intentions, strategies, strengths and weaknesses of formerly adjacent players now taking an active role in the V&M market (e.g. Microsoft)
Case studies of Enterprise Voice applications including Twilio and Unified Communications solutions such as Microsoft Office 365
Case studies of Telco OTT Consumer Voice and Messaging services such as like Telefonica’s TuGo
Lessons from case studies of leading-edge new voice and messaging applications globally such as Whatsapp, KakaoTalk and other so-called ‘Over The Top’ (OTT) Players

It comprises a 18 page executive summary, 260 pages and 163 figures – full details below. Prices on application – please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Benefits of the Report to Telcos, Technology Companies and Partners, and Investors

For a telco, this strategy report:

Describes and analyses the strategies that can make the difference between best and worst case performance, worth $80bn (or +/-20% revenues) in the 9 markets we analysed.
Externally benchmarks internal revenue forecasts for voice and messaging, leading to more realistic assumptions, targets, decisions, and better alignment of internal (e.g. board) and external (e.g. shareholder) expectations, and thereby potentially saving money and improving contributions.
Can help improve decisions on voice and messaging services investments, and provides valuable insight into the design of effective and attractive new services.
Enables more informed decisions on partner vs competitor status of non-traditional players in the V&M space with new business models, and thereby produce better / more sustainable future strategies.
Evaluates the attractiveness of developing and/or providing partner Unified Communication services in the Enterprise market, and ‘Telco OTT’ services for consumers.
Shows how to create a valuable and realistic new role for Voice and Messaging services in its portfolio, and thereby optimise its returns on assets and capabilities

For other players including technology and Internet companies, and telco technology vendors

The report provides independent market insight on how telcos and other players will be seeking to optimise $ multi-billion revenues from voice and messaging, including new revenue streams in some areas.
As a potential partner, the report will provide a fast-track to guide product and business development decisions to meet the needs of telcos (and others).
As a potential competitor, the report will save time and improve the quality of competitor insight by giving strategic insights into the objectives and strategies that telcos will be pursuing.

For investors, it will:

Improve investment decisions and strategies returning shareholder value by improving the quality of insight on forecasts and the outlook for telcos and other technology players active in voice and messaging.
Save vital time and effort by accelerating decision making and investment decisions.
Help them better understand and evaluate the needs, goals and key strategies of key telcos and their partners / competitors

The Future Value of Voice: Report Content Summary

Executive Summary. (18 pages outlining the opportunity and key strategic options)
Introduction. Disruption and transformation, voice vs. telephony, and scope.
The Transition in User Behaviour. Global psychological, social, pricing and segment drivers, and the changing needs of consumer and enterprise markets.
What now makes a winning Value Proposition? The fall of telephony, the value of time vs telephony, presence, Online Service Provider (OSP) competition, operators’ responses, free telco offerings, re-imaging customer service, voice developers, the changing telephony business model.
Market Trends and other Forecast Drivers. Model and forecast methodology and assumptions, general observations and drivers, ‘Peak Telephony/SMS’, fragmentation, macro-economic issues, competitive and regulatory pressures, handset subsidies.
Country-by-Country Analysis. Overview of national markets. Forecast and analysis of: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, US, other markets, summary and conclusions.
Technology: Products and Vendors’ Approaches. Unified Comminications. Microsoft Office 365, Skype, Cisco, Google, WebRTC, Rich Communications Service (RCS), Broadsoft, Twilio, Tropo, Voxeo, Hypervoice, Calltrunk, Operator voice and messaging services, summary and conclusions.
Telco Case Studies. Vodafone 360, One Net and RED, Telefonica Digital, Tu Me, Tu Go, Bluvia and AT&T.
Summary and Conclusions. Consumer, enterprise, technology and Telco OTT.

Digital Commerce 2.0: Disrupting the Californian Giants

Introduction

In this briefing, we analyse the Digital Commerce 2.0 strategy and progress of the incumbents – the big five Internet players in this market – Amazon, Apple, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Google.

STL defines Digital Commerce 2.0 as the use of new digital and mobile technologies to bring buyers and sellers together more efficiently and effectively. Fast growing adoption of mobile, social and local services is opening up opportunities to provide consumers with highly-relevant advertising and marketing services, underpinned by secure and easy-to-use payment services. By giving people easy access to information, vouchers, loyalty points and electronic payment services, smartphones can be used to make shopping in bricks and mortar stores as interactive as shopping through web sites and mobile apps.

This executive briefing considers how the rise of smartphones and the personal data they generate is disrupting digital commerce, and explores the mobile commerce strategies of the big five, their strengths and weaknesses and their areas of vulnerability.

Digital Commerce Disruption

Today, California is undoubtedly the epicentre of digital commerce. Amazon, Google, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Apple are the leading brokers of digital commerce between businesses and consumers in most of the world’s developed economies. Each one of them has used the Internet to carve out a unique and lucrative role matching online buyers and sellers.

But digital commerce is changing fast, forcing these incumbents to innovate rapidly both to keep pace with each other and fend off a new wave of challengers seeking to take advantage of the disruption resulting from the widespread adoption of smartphones, and the vast quantities of real-time personal data they generate. Smartphones with touchscreens, full Internet browsers and an array of feature-rich apps, are turning out to be a game changer that profoundly impacts the way in which people and businesses buy and sell: Digital commerce is moving out of the home and the office and on to the street and in to the store.

As they move around, many consumers are now using smartphones to access social, local and mobile (SoLoMo) digital services and make smarter purchase decisions. This is not a gradual shift – it is happening extraordinarily quickly. Almost 70% of Americans used their mobile devices to look up information while in retail stores between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2012, according to a survey of 6,200 people by customer experience analytics firm ForeSee.

At the same time, the combination of Internet and mobile technologies, embodied in the smartphone, is enabling bricks and mortar businesses to adopt new forms of digital marketing, retailing and payments that could dramatically improve their efficiency and effectiveness. The smartphones and the data they generate can be used to optimise and enable every part of the entire ‘wheel of commerce’ (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce

Digital Commerce 2.0 Wheel of Commerce

Source: STL Partners

The extensive data being generated by smartphones can give companies real-time information on where their customers are and what they are doing. That data can be used to improve merchants’ marketing, advertising, stock management, fulfilment and customer care. For example, a smartphone’s sensors can detect how fast the device is moving and in what direction, so a merchant could see if a potential customer is driving or walking past their store.

Marketing that makes use of real-time smartphone data should also be more effective than other forms of digital marketing. In theory at least, targeting marketing at consumers in the right geography at a specific time should be far more effective than simply displaying adverts to anyone who conducts an Internet search using a specific term.

Although the big five – Amazon, Google, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Apple – are the leading brokers of “traditional” online commerce, they play a far smaller role in brokering bricks and mortar commerce: Their services are typically used to provide just once element of the wheel of commerce. Consumers shopping in the physical world tend to use a mix of services from the leading Internet players, flitting between the different ecosystems. As they shop, they might use Google Maps to locate a store, Facebook to canvas the opinion of friends and Amazon to read product reviews or compare in-store prices with those online. They might even use Apple’s Passbook to redeem a voucher or PayPal to complete a transaction at point of sale.

Although they are all involved to a greater or lesser extent, none of the big five has yet secured a strong strategic position in this new form of digital commerce. Each of them risks seeing their position in the broader digital commerce market being disrupted by the rise of SoLoMo services that seek to meld merchants online and offline sites into a coherent proposition. As the digital commerce pie grows to encompass more and more bricks and mortar commerce, the big five may see their power and influence wane.

As it becomes clear that smartphones and personal data will transform the consumer experience of bricks and mortar shopping, the leading internet companies are being challenged by telcos, banks, payment networks and other companies racing to sign up merchants and consumers for nascent commerce platforms. In most cases, these new entrants are focusing on digitising traditional commerce, but will inevitably also have to compete with Amazon, Google, eBay/PayPal, Facebook and Apple in the online commerce space – consumers will want to use the same tools and platforms regardless of whether they are in the armchair or walking down a street. Similarly, a merchant will want to use the same platform to support its marketing online and in-store, so their customers can redeem vouchers, for example, digitally or in person.

The internet giants are, of course, expanding their SoLoMo propositions to cover more of the wheel of commerce. Amazon, for example, is pursuing this market through its Amazon Local service, which emails offers from local merchants to consumers in specific geographic areas. Google is combining its Search, Maps, Places, Offers and Wallet services into a local commerce platform for merchants and consumers. But global Internet companies based on economies of scale can find it hard to develop commerce services that take into the account the vagaries of local markets.

There is much at stake: Merchants and brands spend hundreds of billions of dollars across the various elements of the wheel of commerce. In the U.S., the direct marketing market alone is worth US$ 139 billion (more than three times the U.S. online advertising market, according to some estimates (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: A breakdown of the U.S. direct marketing and advertising market

Digital Commerce 2.0 US Direct Marketing and Advertising Market

Source: STL Partners

Another way to view the strategic opportunity is to consider the vast amount of money that is still spent on paper-based marketing in local commerce – householders still receive large numbers of flyers through their door, advertising local businesses. Moreover, many merchants still operate crude loyalty schemes that involve stamping a paper card.

Closing the loop: The importance of payments

One of the most important battlegrounds for the big five is the transact segment of the wheel of commerce. Although this segment is only half the size of the promote segment in terms of revenues, according to STL’s estimates (see Figure 5), it is strategically important. Merchants and brands want to know whether a specific marketing activity actually led to a sale. By bridging the online and offline worlds, mobile technologies can close that loop. If a consumer uses their smartphone to research a product and then pay at point of sale, the retailer can see exactly what kind of marketing results in transactions.

Note that payments itself is a low margin business – American Express estimates that merchants in the U.S. spend four to five times as much on marketing activities, such as loyalty programmes and offers, as they do on payments. But Google and Facebook, as leading marketing and advertising brokers, and some telcos, are moving into the payments space to provide merchants with visibility across the whole wheel of commerce.

In general their approach is to roll out digital wallets that can be used to complete both online transactions and point of sale transactions (either using a contactless technology, such as NFC, or a mobile network-based solution). The term digital wallet or mobile wallet generally refers to an application that can store debit and credit card information, loyalty points, electronic vouchers and value. A digital wallet can reside in the cloud or on a specific device or a combination of the two. The big five each have their own digital wallet.

Although Apple and Facebook have only enabled the use of their wallets within their online walled gardens, they are both gradually extending their transact propositions into bricks and mortar commerce.

Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce

Digital Commerce 2.0: Segments and Sizes

Source: STL Partners research drawing on WPP and American Express data

Digital wallets could be the key to unlock a broader and much more lucrative digital commerce proposition. Instead of asking merchants to pay per click, a digital commerce broker could ask them to pay per transaction – a no-risk and, therefore, very attractive proposition for the merchant.

Typically designed to support approximately half of the wheel of commerce (the promote, guide and transact segments), the digital wallet is widely-regarded as an important strategic platform. The theory is that digital wallet suppliers will be well-positioned to interact with consumers while they are shopping, brokering targeted offers and promotions.

Three of the big five – PayPal, Amazon and Apple – have each already signed up tens of millions of users for their online wallets, primarily because they reduce the number of keystrokes and clicks required to complete a transaction online. These Internet players are now weighing up how best to deploy these wallets at point of sale in physical stores. The leading online digital wallet, PayPal, faces increasing competition from leading players in the financial services industry, including Amex and MasterCard (see Figure 6), as well as innovative start-ups, such as Square.

Each of these players is taking a different approach, using different technologies to enabling transactions in store. They are also having to compete with other wallets from companies outside the financial services sector, such as Google, telcos and even retailers.

Figure 6: Examples of financial services-led digital wallets

Digital Commerce 2.0: Financial Services Wallet Examples

Source: STL Partners

In the transact segment, Google, the leading broker of search-related advertising, is scrambling to catch up, rolling out Google Wallet both to compete with PayPal online and enable payments at point of sale using Near Field Communications (NFC) technology. But the software has been through several iterations without gaining significant traction. At the same time, telcos, such as AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile in the U.S. (the partners in the Isis mobile commerce joint venture), are developing mobile-centric wallets that use NFC to enable payments at point of sale, supported by the SIM card for authentication. Major retailers are also rolling out digital wallets either individually or as part of a consortium. Figure 7 compares three of the mobile-centric wallets available in the U.S. market.

Figure 7: Examples of Mobile-centric wallets in the U.S.

Digital Commerce 2.0: Mobile Centric Wallets

Source: STL Partners

Executive Summary
Introduction: Digital commerce disruption
Closing the loop: The importance of payments
Internet players’ mobile commerce strategies
Amazon – impressive interconnected flywheels
Apple – slowly assembling the pieces
eBay and PayPal – trying to get mobile
Facebook – the rising star of mobile commerce
Google – try, try and try again in transactions
Conclusions
Mobile commerce is still up for grabs
Competition from telcos and banks
Areas of vulnerability

Figure 1: The mobile commerce strengths and weaknesses of the Internet players
Figure 2: The unfulfilled gap in the digital commerce market
Figure 3: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce
Figure 4: A breakdown of the U.S. direct marketing and advertising market
Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce
Figure 6: Examples of financial services-led digital wallets
Figure 7: Examples of Mobile-centric wallets in the U.S.
Figure 8: Google’s big lead in mobile Internet ad spending
Figure 9: Google handles one third of all digital advertising
Figure 10: The mobile commerce strategy of leading Internet players
Figure 11: How the fundamental Amazon flywheel increases working capital
Figure 12: How the Amazon Payments flywheel has evolved
Figure 13: Deals on display in the Amazon Local app
Figure 14: Apple’s Passbook app stores vouchers and loyalty cards
Figure 15: Facebook’s daily active users continue to grow
Figure 16: Facebook’s mobile daily active users
Figure 17: How consumers can redeem a Google Offer
Figure 18: Who is best placed to win in facilitating local commerce?
Figure 19: Google Wallet no longer needs to work directly with banks
Figure 20: The mobile commerce strengths and weaknesses of the Internet players
Figure 21: The unfulfilled gap in the digital commerce market
Figure 22: Internet giants and start-ups best placed to be infomediaries
Figure 23: How Telefónica compares with leading Internet players

Digital Commerce 2.0: New $50bn Disruptive Opportunities for Telcos, Banks and Technology Players

Introduction – Digital Commerce 2.0

Digital commerce is centred on the better use of the vast amounts of data created and captured in the digital world. Businesses want to use this data to make better strategic and operational decisions, and to trade more efficiently and effectively, while consumers want more convenience, better service, greater value and personalised offerings. To address these needs, Internet and technology players, payment networks, banks and telcos are vying to become digital commerce intermediaries and win a share of the tens of billions of dollars that merchants and brands spend finding and serving customers.

Mobile commerce is frequently considered in isolation from other aspects of digital commerce, yet it should be seen as a springboard to a wider digital commerce proposition based on an enduring and trusted relationship with consumers. Moreover, there are major potential benefits to giving individuals direct control over the vast amount of personal data their smartphones are generating.

We have been developing strategies in these fields for a number of years, including our engagement with the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Rethinking Personal Data project, and ongoing research into user data and privacy, digital money and payments, and digital advertising and marketing.

This report brings all of these themes together and is the first comprehensive strategic playbook on how smartphones and authenticated personal data can be combined to deliver a compelling digital commerce proposition for both merchants and consumers. It will save customers valuable time, effort and money by providing a fast-track to developing and / or benchmarking a leading edge strategy and approach in the fast-evolving new world of digital commerce.

Benefits of the Report to Telcos, Other Players, Investors and Merchants

For telcos, this strategy report:

Shows how to evaluate and implement a comprehensive and successful digital commerce strategy worth up to c.$50bn (5% of core revenues in 5 years)
Saves time and money by providing a fast-track for decision making and an outline business case
Rapidly challenges / validates existing strategy and services against relevant ‘best in class’, including their peers, ‘OTT players’ and other leading edge players.

For other players including Internet companies, technology vendors, banks and payment networks:

The report provides independent market insight on how telcos and other players will be seeking to generate $ multi-billion revenues from digital commerce
As a potential partner, the report will provide a fast-track to guide product and business development decisions to meet the needs of telcos (and others) that will need to make commensurate investment in technologies and partnerships to achieve their value creation goals
As a potential competitor, the report will save time and improve the quality of competitor insight by giving a detailed and independent picture of the rationale and strategic approach you and your competitors will need to take

For merchants building digital commerce strategies, it will:

Help to improve revenue outlook, return on investment and shareholder value by improving the quality of insight to strategic decisions, opportunities and threats lying ahead in digital commerce
Save vital time and effort by accelerating internal decision making and speed to market

For investors, it will:

Improve investment decisions and strategies returning shareholder value by improving the quality of insight on the outlook of telcos and other digital commerce players
Save vital time and effort by accelerating decision making and investment decisions
Help them better understand and evaluate the needs, goals and key strategies of key telcos and their partners / competitors

Digital Commerce 2.0: Report Content Summary

Executive Summary. (9 pages outlining the opportunity and key strategic options)
Strategy. The shape and scope of the opportunities, the convergence of personal data, mobile, digital payments and advertising, and personal cloud. The importance of giving consumers control. and the nature of the opportunity, including Amazon and Vodafone case studies.
The Marketplace. Cultural, commercial and regulatory factors, and strategies of the market leading players. Further analysis of Google, Facebook, Apple, eBay and PayPal, telco and financial services market plays.
The Value Proposition. How to build attractive customer propositions in mobile commerce and personal cloud. Solutions for banked and unbanked markets, including how to address consumers and merchants.
The Internal Value Network. The need for change in organisational structure in telcos and banks, including an analysis of Telefonica and Vodafone case studies.
The External Value Network. Where to collaborate, partner and compete in the value chain – working with telcos, retailers, banks and payment networks. Building platforms and relationships with Internet players. Case studies include Weve, Isis, and the Merchant Customer Exchange.
Technology. Making appropriate use of personal data in different contexts. Tools for merchants and point-of-sale transactions. Building a flexible, user-friendly digital wallet.
Finance. Potential revenue streams from mobile commerce, personal cloud, raw big data, professional services, and internal use.
Appendix – the cutting edge. An analysis of fourteen best practice and potentially disruptive plays in various areas of the market.

Customer Experience: Is it Time for the Mobile CDN?

Summary: Changing consumer behaviours and the transition to 4G are likely to bring about a fresh surge of video traffic on many networks. Fortunately, mobile content delivery networks (CDNs), which should deliver both better customer experience and lower costs, are now potentially an option for carriers using a combination of technical advances and new strategic approaches to network design. This briefing examines why, how, and what operators should do, and includes lessons from Akamai, Level 3, Amazon, and Google. (May 2013, Executive Briefing Service).

CDN Traffic as Percentage of Backbone May 2013

Introduction

Content delivery networks (CDNs) are by now a proven pattern for the efficient delivery of heavy content, such as video, and for better user experience in Web applications. Extensively deployed worldwide, they can be optimised to save bandwidth, to provide greater resilience, or to help scale up front-end applications. In the autumn of 2012, it was estimated that CDN providers accounted for 40% of the traffic entering residential ISP networks from the Internet core. This is likely to be an underestimate if anything, as a major use case for CDN is to reduce the volume of traffic that has to transit the Internet and to localise traffic within ISP networks. Craig Labovitz of DeepField Networks, formerly the head of Arbor’s ATLAS instrumentation project, estimates that from 35-45% of interdomain Internet traffic is accounted for by CDNs, rising to 60% for some smaller networks, and 85% of this is video.

Figure 1: CDNs, the supertankers of the Internet, are growing

Source: DeepField, STL

In the past, we have argued that mobile networks could benefit from deploying CDN, both in order to provide CDN services to content providers and in order to reduce their Internet transit and internal backhaul costs. We have also looked at the question of whether telcos should try to compete with major Internet CDN providers directly. In this note, we will review the CDN business model and consider whether the time has come for mobile CDN, in the light of developments at the market leader, Akamai.

The CDN Business Model

Although CDNs account for a very large proportion of Internet traffic and are indispensable to many content and applications providers, they are relatively small businesses. Dan Rayburn of Frost & Sullivan estimates that the video CDN market, not counting services provided by telcos internally, is around $1bn annually. In 2011, Cisco put it at $2bn with a 20% CAGR.

This is largely because much of the economic value created by CDNs accrues to the operators in whose networks they deploy their servers, in the form of efficiency savings, and to the content providers, in the form of improved sales conversions, less downtime, savings on hosting and transit, and generally, as an improvement in the quality of their product. It’s possible to see this as a two-sided business model – although the effective customer is the content provider, whose decisions determine the results of competition, much of the economic value created accrues to the operator and the content provider’s customer.

On top of this, it’s often suggested that margins in the core CDN product, video delivery, are poor and it would be worth moving to supposedly more lucrative “media services”, products like transcoding (converting original video files into the various formats served out of the CDN for networks with more or less bandwidth, mobile versus fixed devices, Apple HLS versus Adobe Flash, etc) and analytics aimed at content creators and rightsholders, or to lower-scale but higher-margin enterprise products. We are not necessarily convinced of this, and we will discuss the point further on page 9. For the time being, note that it is relatively easy to enter the CDN market, and it is influenced by Moore’s law. Therefore, as with most electronic, computing, and telecoms products, there is structural pressure on prices.

The Problem: The Traffic Keeps Coming

A major 4G operator recently released data on the composition of traffic over their new network. As much as 40% of the total, it turned out, was music or video streaming. The great majority of this will attract precisely no revenue for the operator, unless by chance it turns out to represent the marginal byte that induces a user to spend money on out-of-bundle data. However, it all consumes spectrum and needs backhauling and therefore costs money.

The good news is that most, or even all, of this could potentially be distributed via a CDN, and in many cases probably will be distributed by a CDN as far as the mobile operator’s Internet point of presence. Some of this traffic will be uplink, a segment likely to grow fast with better radios and better device cameras, but there are technical options related to CDN that can benefit uplink applications as well.

Figure 2: Video, music, and photos are filling up a 4G mobile network

EE traffic by category and source Percentage May 2013

Source: EE, STL

Another 36.5% of the traffic is accounted for by Web browsing and e-mail. A large proportion of the Web activity could theoretically come from a CDN, too – even if the content itself has to be generated dynamically by application logic, things like images, fonts, and JavaScript libraries are a quick win in terms of performance. Estimates of how much Internet traffic in general could be served from a CDN range from 35% (AT&T) to 98% (Analysys Mason).

As 29% of their traffic originates from the top 3 point sources – YouTube, Facebook, and iTunes – it’s also observable that signing-up a relatively small subset of content providers as customers will provide considerable benefit. Out of those three, all of them use a CDN, and two of those – Facebook and iTunes – are customers of Akamai, while YouTube relies on Google’s own solution.

We can re-arrange the last chart to illustrate this more fully. (Note that Skype, as a peer-to-peer application that is also live, is unsuitable for CDN as usually understood.)

Figure 3: The top 9 CDN-able point sources represent 40% of EE’s traffic

Source: EE, STL

Looking further afield, the next chart shows the traffic breakdown by application from DeepField’s observations in North American ISP networks.

Figure 4: The Web giants ride on the CDNs

Source: DeepField

Clearly, the traffic sources and traffic types that are served from CDNs are both the heaviest to transport and also the ones that contribute most to the busy hour; note that these are peak measurements, and the total of the CDN traffic here (Netflix, YouTube, CDN other, Facebook) is substantially more than it is on average.

To read the Software Defined Networking in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

Akamai: the World’s No.1 CDN
Financial and KPI review
The Choice for CDN Customers: Akamai, Amazon, or DIY like Google?
CDN depth: the key question
CDN depth and mobile networks
Akamai’s guidelines for deployment
Why has mobile CDN’s time come?
What has held mobile CDN back?
But the world has changed…
…Networks are much less centralised…
…and IP penetrates much more deeply into the network
Licensed or Virtual CDN – a (relatively) new business model
SDN: a disruptive opportunity
So, why right now?
Conclusions
It may be time for telcos to move on mobile CDN
The CDN industry is exhibiting familiar category killer dynamics
Regional point sources remain important
CDN internals are changing the structure of the Internet
Recommendations for action

…and the following figures…

Figure 1: CDNs, the supertankers of the Internet, are growing
Figure 2: Video, music, and photos are filling up a 4G mobile network
Figure 3: The top 9 CDN-able point sources represent 40% of EE’s traffic
Figure 4: The Web giants ride on the CDNs
Figure 5: Akamai’s revenues by line of business
Figure 6: Observed traffic share for major CDNs

Digital Commerce: Time to redefine the Mobile Wallet

Summary: The ‘Mobile/Digital Wallet’ needs to evolve to support authentication, search and discovery, as well as payments, vouchers, tickets and loyalty programmes. Moreover, consumers will want to be able to tailor the functionality of this “commerce assistant” or “commerce agent” to fit with their own interests and preferences. Key findings and next steps from the Digital Commerce stream of our Silicon Valley 2013 brainstorm. (April 2013, Executive Briefing Service, Dealing with Disruption Stream.)

Who is best placed to win in local commerce April 2013

Below are the high-level analysis and detailed contents from a 35 page Telco 2.0 Briefing Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service and the Dealing with Disruption Stream here. Digital Commerce strategies and the findings of this report will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. Non-members can find out more about subscribing here, or to find out more about this and/or the brainstorm by emailing contact@telco2.net or calling +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Introduction

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm 2013 series, the Digital Commerce 2.0 event took place at the InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco on the 20th March and looked at how to get the mobile commerce flywheel moving, how to digitise local commerce, how to improve digital advertising and how to effectively leverage customer data and personal data. The Brainstorm considered how to harness telco assets and capabilities, as well as those of banks and payment networks, to deliver Digital Commerce 2.0.

Analysis: Time to redefine the wallet?

The Executive Brainstorm uncovered widespread confusion and dissatisfaction with the concept of a digital or mobile wallet. Some executives feel that a wallet, with its connotations of a highly personal item that is controlled entirely by the consumer and used primarily for transactions, may be the wrong term. There is a view that the concept of a digital wallet may have to evolve into a more multi-faceted application that supports authentication, search and discovery, as well as payments, vouchers, tickets and loyalty programmes.

Moreover, consumers will likely want to be able to tailor the functionality of this “commerce assistant” or “commerce agent” to fit with their own interests and preferences, rather than having to use an inflexible off-the-shelf application. This gateway application may also act as a personal cloud/locker service, providing access to the individual’s media and content, as well as enabling them to control their privacy settings. In other words, ultimately, consumers may want an assistant or agent that amalgamates the personalised discovery services offered by apps, such as Google Now, online media services, such as iCloud, and the traditional functions of a wallet, such as payments, receipts, coupons and loyalty programmes.

Business model battles

The Brainstorm confirmed that the digital commerce market continues to be held back by the slow and familiar dance between the established interests of banks/payment networks, telcos, and retailers. Designing business models that sufficiently incentivise each partner is tough: big retailers, for example, are likely to resist digital commerce solutions that don’t address their dissatisfaction about transaction fees – there was some excitement about digital commerce solutions that workaround the major payment networks’ interchange systems.

Some of the participants in the Brainstorm held strongly entrenched views about which players can contribute to growth in digital commerce and should therefore benefit most from that growth. The arguments boiled down to:

The banking ecosystem believes it is well placed because of the requirement for transactions to be processed by entities with banking licenses and that comply with know your customer (KYC) regulations.
Telcos believe that, as digital commerce-related data travels over their networks, they will understand the market better than other players.
Retailers believe that they have the customer relationships and that digital commerce offers opportunities to strengthen those relationships and reduce the costs of transactions.

The length and complexity of the digital commerce value chain raises significant questions about whether one entity could and should own the customer relationship and manage customer care across the whole experience. Moreover, there may be a disconnect between elements of the value chain and the overall value proposition. For example, individual retailers may wish to offer fully-customised digital commerce experiences delivered through their own branded apps, but consumers may not want to see the complexity of the existing marketplace, in which they are asked to register and carry multiple loyalty cards, continue in an increasingly digitised world.

While the traditional players jostle for the best positions in the value chain, the door is wide open for market entrants to come with radically disruptive business models. Although telcos have the customer data to be play a pivotal role in digital commerce, other players will work around them unless telcos are prepared to move quickly and partner on equitable terms. In many cases, telcos (and other would-be digital commerce) brokers may have to compromise on margins to seed the market and ultimately gain scale – small merchants (the long tail), which have highly inefficient marketing today, have a greater incentive than large retailers to adopt such solutions. Participants in the Silicon Valley Brainstorm thought that either established Internet players or a start up would ultimately win over the banks and telcos in local commerce.

Consumers are most likely to adopt digital commerce services that offer convenience and breadth. Therefore, such services need to act as open and flexible brokers, which enable a wide range of merchants to use application programming interfaces (APIs) to plug in vouchers and loyalty schemes quickly and easily.

Mobile advertising – still very immature

Immature and messy, the mobile advertising market is still a long way from being as structured as, for instance, television advertising, in terms of standardising metrics for buyers and creating an efficient procurement process. The Brainstorm highlighted the profusion of different technologies and platforms that is making the mobile advertising market highly-fragmented and very resource-intensive for media buyers. In many cases, the advertising industry may be struggling to differentiate between mobile networks, mobile users and mobile devices. For example, a consumer using a tablet on a sofa may be seeing the same adverts as a smartphone user travelling to work on a train.

In essence, the creatives working in advertising agencies are not certain what messages and formats work on a mobile screen, as buyers don’t have reliable ROI data and the advertising networks continue to struggle to deliver precise targeting, stymied by multiple barriers, such as privacy fears, walled gardens and bandwidth constraints. As a result, there is widespread dissatisfaction among both media buyers and consumers with mobile advertising. The mobile advertising market needs robust tools and processes – standardised, proven formats and reliable, trusted metrics – to will enable brands to purchase advertising at scale and with confidence.

Some media buyers are looking for solutions that make the delivery of digital advertising more transparent to consumers, so they have a clearer understanding of why they are seeing a particular advert.

To address these issues, telcos, looking to broker advertising, need to create better platforms that are easy for media buyers to access, offer precise targeting and provide transparent metrics that are straightforward to monitor. Despite the formation of telco marketing and advertising joint ventures in some markets, such as the U.K., some advertising executives believe telcos don’t see a big enough revenue opportunity to build these platforms.

Instead of brand building and customer acquisition, which is the traditional use of mass advertising, it seems likely that the mobile channel will be used primarily for customer loyalty and retention. So-called active advertising (advertising that is designed to enable the individual to complete a specific task) may be well suited to mobile devices, which people typically use to get something done. As attention spans are short and screen space is limited in the mobile medium, the advertising value chain will need to change its mindset to put the needs of the consumer, rather than the brand, front and centre.

Big data – how to monetize?

The Brainstorm reinforced the sense that big data/personal data has the potential to create exceptional insights and disruptive new business models. But most people working in this space only have a high-level, theoretical view of how this might happen, rather than a collection of compelling case studies and use cases. Finding big data projects offering a respectable return on investment is going to be a hit and miss affair, requiring an open mind and the patience to experiment.

Although self-authenticated data could potentially make advertising and marketing more efficient, it may also increase transparency for consumers: The Internet has given consumers more control and is driving deflation in many sectors. The rise of personal data could have negative implications for companies’ profit margins as consumers use vendor relationship management systems to systematically secure the best price.

Many start-ups seem to still be pursuing advertising-funded business models, but big data and personal data business models may depend on a different approach. They should be asking: “How do you fund a search engine that is not ad-funded and can social networks not be ad-funded?” Computational contracts, which machines can execute and people can actually understand, could be part of the answer. Rather than trying to infer interests and movements, a social network might explicitly ask the following question. “If you give me your location and the brands you like, I’ll give you two coupons a day.” This is basically the Placecast model, which seems to be gaining traction in some markets. In any case, telcos and banks could and should use transparent and user-friendly privacy policies as a competitive weapon against Facebook and Google, which currently dominate the online advertising market.

The concept of companies interacting with individuals through the web presence of their objects, such as their car, their bike or their pet, seems sound. Both individuals and companies could benefit from a two-way flow of information around these objects. For example, a consumer with a specific make of printer or camera could benefit from personalised and timely discounts on accessories, such as cartridges and lenses.

Next steps for STL Partners

We will:

Continue to research and explore ‘Digital Commerce’ at our Executive Brainstorms, with particular emphasis on practical steps to create the Digital Wallet, enable ‘SoMoLo’, and the key role of personal data and trust frameworks;
Look further into the needs and applications of ‘Big Data’ into the field, as well as continuing our involvement in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) work on Trust Networks for personal data;
Publish further research on the business case for personal data, and a full Strategy Report on the Digital Commerce area.

To read the note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

Closing the loop between advertising and payments
First stimulus presentation
Second stimulus presentation
Innovation showcase
Brainstorm
Key takeaways
Advertising & Marketing: Radical Game Change Ahead
First and Second stimulus presentations
Final stimulus presentation
Brainstorm
Key takeaways
Session 3: Big Data – Exploiting the New Oil for the New Economy
Stimulus Speakers and Panellists
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions
Key takeaways

…and the following figures…

Figure 1 – Customer Data is at the centre of Digital Commerce
Figure 2 – What will North American consumers value most from digital commerce?
Figure 3- Leading players’ strengths and weaknesses upstream and downstream
Figure 4 – The key elements of the digital commerce flywheel
Figure 5 – Vast majority of commerce is still offline
Figure 6 – Linking location-based offers to payment cards
Figure 7 – Participants’ views on likely winners in ‘local’ digital commerce
Figure 8 – Mobile ad spend doesn’t reflect the time people spend in this medium
Figure 9 – What does the advertising industry need to do to stay relevant?
Figure 10 – Why personal data isn’t like oil
Figure 11 – A strawman process for personal data
Figure 12 – A decentralised architecture for the Internet of My Things
Figure 13 – Kynetx: companies can connect through ‘things’

…Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Dealing with Disruption Stream can download the full 35 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here. Digital Commerce strategies and the findings of this report will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. For this or any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Background & Further Information

Produced and facilitated by business innovation firm STL Partners, the Silicon Valley 2013 event brought together 150 specially-invited senior executives from across the communications, media, retail, banking and technology sectors, including:

Apigee, Arete Research, AT&T,ATG, Bain & Co, Beecham Research, Blend Digital Group, Bloomberg, Blumberg Capital, BMW, Brandforce, Buongiorno, Cablelabs, CenturyLink, Cisco, CITI Group, Concours Ventures, Cordys, Cox Communications, Cox Mobile, CSG International, Cycle Gear, Discovery, DoSomething.Org, Electronic Transactions Association, EMC Corporation, Epic, Ericsson, Experian, Fraun Hofer USA, GE, GI Partners, Group M, GSMA, Hawaiian Telecom, Huge Inc, IBM, ILS Technology, IMI Mobile Europe, Insight Enterprises, Intel, Ketchum Digital, Kore Telematics, Kynetx, MADE Holdings, MAGNA Global, Merchant Advisory Group, Message Systems, Microsoft, Milestone Group, Mimecast, MIT Media Lab, Motorola, MTV, Nagra, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Panasonic, Placecast, Qualcomm, Rainmaker Capital, ReinCloud, Reputation.com, SalesForce, Samsung, SAP, Sasktel, Searls Group, Sesame Communications, SK Telecom Americas, Sprint, Steadfast Financial, STL Partners/Telco 2.0, SystemicLogic Ltd., Telephone & Data Systems, Telus, The Weather Channel, TheFind Inc, T-Mobile USA, Trujillo Group LLC, UnboundID, University of California Davis, US Cellular Corp, USC Entertainment Technology Center, Verizon, Virtustream, Visa, Vodafone, Wavefront, WindRiver, Xtreme Labs.

Around 40 of these executives participated in the ‘Digital Commerce’ session.

The Brainstorm used STL’s unique ‘Mindshare’ interactive format, including cutting-edge new research, case studies, use cases and a showcase of innovators, structured small group discussion on round-tables, panel debates and instant voting using on-site collaborative technology.

We’d like to thank the sponsors of the Brainstorm:

Digital Economy: who will prosper in ‘The Great Compression’?

Summary: Value is squeezed out of industries as they become increasingly digital – i.e. accessed by mobile and online, driven by data and defined by software. We call the collective economic impact of this pressure ‘The Great Compression’. But which companies will survive and prosper – and how? 90% of the Execs at our Silicon Valley brainstorm identified ‘management mindset’ as a key factor in Telecoms, Media, Finance and Retail. (May 2013, Executive Briefing Service, Transformation Stream).

Scale of Transformation Needed April 2013

Below are the high-level analysis and detailed contents from a 62 page Telco 2.0 Briefing Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Premium Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream here. The Digital Economy, and the changes needed to ‘management mindset’, organisation, technology, and products, will also be explored further at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. Non-members can find out more about subscribing here, or find out more about this and/or the Brainstorm by emailing contact@telco2.net or calling +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Introduction

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm series, the Silicon Valley 2013 event took place at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco on the 19th and 20th of March, 2013. This report covers the Digital Economy track on the first day.

Summary Analysis: who will prosper in ‘The Great Compression’?

Telecoms, telco vendors, entertainment, device makers, financial services, retailers, entertainment services, and brands in developed economies are experiencing the ‘Digital Hunger Gap’ – a shortfall of revenues versus past levels as industries become increasingly digital i.e. accessed by mobile and online, driven by data and defined by software.

Other industries are also feeling pain from the process of becoming digitised which both changes the model and the dynamics of competition. Others, like consumer goods and car manufacturing, see opportunities to enhance services with digital connectivity to build loyalty and new value. Government services and healthcare face huge cost challenges. Digital services can be of huge value here, but the challenge for third parties is how to make money when money needs to be saved.

According to the participants in the Silicon Valley brainstorm, almost every industry faces massive changes in every area of its business model, with management mindsets most in need of a dramatic overhaul, and customer relationships marginally ahead in the total of partipants thinking a dramatic or significant change is needed.

Scale of Transformation Needed April 2013

New markets are emerging rapidly, particularly in Asia. However, many companies from North America and EMEA lack depth in local knowledge and face skills, cultural and political barriers to entry, and the mindset challenge of operating in a radically different economic environment.

As a result of the combined difficulties of growth in home markets and expansion abroad, there will be massive consolidation among traditional industry leaders in developed economies over the coming years. Those that are successful will continue to innovate as they consolidate, but it will be a huge struggle to survive for many.

We’re calling the collective economic impact of these pressures ‘The Great Compression’ as value is squeezed from existing industries. Those best positioned to profit through it have built defensible global or major regional strengths in horizontal areas with large-scale application and high barriers to entry, and/or that serve as ‘arms dealers’ to the rest of the digital economy. For example, chip makers and IP companies (e.g. ARM, Intel, Qualcomm), very large-scale / sophisticated IT manufacturers (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle, SAP), and ‘platforms’ (e.g. Apple, Google, Visa).

However, being well positioned is no guarantee of success, and all companies will face significant challenges requiring innovation and transformation. This in turn will require immediate and ongoing action by leadership teams in every company.

Digital innovation is increasingly itself becoming a little like the entertainment industry in that it is constantly seeking hits and highly vulnerable to hype. There are centres of innovation such as Silicon Valley and elsewhere, and there can only be a small number of highly successful ‘hits’ among the many thousands if not hundreds of thousands of attempts to make a hit. Finding, gaining a share in, nurturing, and ultimately profiting from these hits is a massive industry in itself. The recognised difficulty of doing this is a further barrier to success for many of the established players. Yet those that are to survive will need to overcome it.

Next steps for STL Partners

To define and detail the practical actions needed to drive cross-industry transformation and innovation (in terms of ‘management mindset’, organisation, technology, products, etc.) at our Executive Brainstorms in:
- Europe, London, 5-6 June 2013; MENA, Dubai, 14-15 November 2013; APAC, Singapore, 5-6 December 2013; Silicon Valley, San Francisco, 19-10 March 2014.
To publish 150+ page ‘Strategy Reports’ on:
- The detailed benchmarking of leading players’ Telco 2.0 strategies; Digital Commerce; The Future of voice and Messaging Services.
To publish c.15-30 page ‘Executive Briefings’ covering:
- Software Defined Networks (SDN); The business case for personal data; ‘Show me the (mobile) money’ – an Executive Briefing on the business case for Digital Commerce.

To read the Digital Economy note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

Session 1: Digital Transformation
Strategic Growth Opportunities for a Hyper-Connected World
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions
Questionstorming: how to overcome the blockers?
Key takeaways
Session 2: Digital Consumer
The New Mobile Battleground
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions
STL Partners’ next steps
Session 3: Digital Infrastructure
The Impact of 4G, Software Defined Networks & the Cloud
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions
Brainstorm Output: What new opportunities could new forms of digital infrastructure create? For whom? How?
STL Partners’ next steps
Session 4: The ‘Digital Me’
The role and value of ‘digital identity’
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions
STL Partners’ next steps

…and the following figures…

Figure 1 – Concurrent disruption in multiple lines of business
Figure 2 – Music since 1997, a case study
Figure 3 – Consolidation is a consequence of disruption
Figure 4 – Reviving the album format
Figure 5 – The future is brutal indeed
Figure 6 – The hunger gap, 2013-2017
Figure 7 – Measuring the impact of social…
Figure 8 – The bottom line impact of social at Bloomberg
Figure 9 – How realistic is the ‘Hunger Gap’?
Figure 10 – How accurate is the market sizing?
Figure 11 – How accurate is the forecast breakdown?
Figure 12 – What is the scale of the transformation needed?
Figure 13 – The ‘Telco 2.0’ opportunities for CSPs
Figure 14 – Learning about your customer from Amazon recommendations
Figure 15 – 80% are already engaged with BYOD
Figure 16 – Customer-centric commerce
Figure 17 – Mobile web user engagement takes off
Figure 18 – Are app stores that good for developers?
Figure 19 – Making mobile Web “more like apps”?
Figure 20 – What are the downsides of native apps?
Figure 21 – Would iOS users benefit from alternative app stores?
Figure 22 – when should you give data back to customers?
Figure 23 – How long before the ‘data surveillance backlash’?
Figure 24 – Will voluntarily provided info be better than surveillance?
Figure 25 – The media industry is static, the Web/tech players gain at telcos’ expense
Figure 26 – The evolution of connectivity products
Figure 27 – Integration between industrial, enterprise, and public network domains
Figure 28 – Key issues for an “elastic operator”
Figure 29 – Verizon’s enterprise platform
Figure 30 – Defining SDN – with Star Trek!
Figure 31 – Strategic conclusions on SDN
Figure 32 – Impact of SDN?
Figure 33 – Digital feudalism, enlightenment, or something else?

…Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream can download the full 62 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here. The Digital Economy will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. For this or any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Background & Further Information

Produced and facilitated by business innovation firm STL Partners, the Silicon Valley 2013 event overall brought together 150 specially-invited senior executives from across the communications, media, retail, banking and technology sectors, including:

AT&T, Bain & Co, Beecham Research, Bloomberg, Blumberg Capital, BMW, Buongiorno, Cablelabs, CenturyLink, Cisco, CITI Group, Cordys, Cox Communications, CSG International, EMC, Ericsson, Experian, GE, GI Partners, Group M, GSMA, IBM, Intel, Kore Telematics, MADE Holdings, Merchant Advisory Group, Microsoft, MIT Media Lab, Motorola, MTV, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Panasonic, Placecast, Qualcomm, Rainmaker Capital, Reputation.com, SalesForce, Samsung, SAP, Sasktel, Sprint, Telus, The Weather Channel, T-Mobile USA, UnboundID, University of California Davis, US Cellular Corp, Verizon, Visa, Vodafone.

We’d like to thank the sponsors of the Brainstorm:
Silicon Valley 2013 Sponsors

The Internet of Things (IoT): What’s Hot, and How?

Summary: ‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT) is one of the big ideas of the moment. But what are the areas in which value is being created now, and what is still technological hype? A summary of the findings of the Digital Things session at the 2013 Silicon Valley Brainstorm. (April 2013)

Building Blocks Urgently Needed for IoT April 2013

Below are the high-level analysis and detailed contents from a 47 page Telco 2.0 Briefing Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service here. The Internet of Things will also be explored further at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013, and we also run dedicated IoT Strategy Workshops. Non-members can find out more about subscriptions here or to find out more about any of these services, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Introduction

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm series, the 19th Telco 2.0 event took place at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco on the 19th and 20th of March, 2013. This report covers the Digital Things track on the second day, which was developed in partnership between STL Partners and Beecham Research.

Analysis: What’s Hot in the IoT?

‘The Internet of Things’ (IoT) or ‘The Internet of Everything’ is one of the big ideas of the moment. But how much is technological hype and how much is value-creating reality?

Its close relative and precursor ‘Machine-To-Machine’ (M2M) had until relatively recently evolved as a telco-centric concept. Unlike the personality, publicity and hype driven world of smartphones and the Internet, M2M has been deeply embedded in industry processes, and generally siloed in industry verticals. ‘Industrial M2M’ is not going away: indeed it’s gathering pace and taking on new directions.

But recently the idea of ‘The Internet of Things’ has become something of a meme. It is certainly a hot topic amongst Silicon Valley technologists and investors, and this was reflected in the enthusiasm shown by the participants at our Executive Brainstorm in March 2013.

Definitions of the IoT vs. M2M are not yet standardised, although some of the common themes that are emerging are that the IoT is frequently cited as:

More consumer-oriented than M2M. IoT is often B2B2C, and with the second ‘B’ sometimes meaning ‘Government’;
Dependent on cross-application data (data generated by or for one application being repurposed for another);
More like the Web – discoverable, ‘mashable’, self-registering… with all the potential hazards associated with the Web;
Bringing added value through revenue growth and/or enhanced customer experiences as well as reduced costs.

Some of the wider excitement has also been underpinned by futuristic predictions of 50bn connected devices, an idea which appeals to chip manufacturers, vendors, and telcos alike as they seek new avenues of growth. However, the questions of ‘but what will they be used for, why, and who will pay for it?’ have to date stood their ground, mostly unanswered.

Economic necessity: the mother of innovation

Now, though, a combination of pressing economic necessities, improving economics of delivery, and increasing technical capabilities is forcing these questions up the agenda. In the North American market, the areas that are progressing fastest have clear economic rationales:

In US healthcare, which spends 17% of GDP on health and accounts for 47% of the world’s total healthcare spending) there is the urgent need to make healthcare more efficient before it literally bankrupts the economy;
In the automotive industry, car makers desperately need new sources of differentiation and revenues (from in-life servicing) to survive, and this is driving widespread innovation;
In heavy Industries, it is estimated that a 1% improvement in productivity equals a 20-30% improvement in profitability, so there are clear incentives in what GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt calls the “Industrial Internet” too.

New blocks means new enablers are needed

With new opportunities come new challenges, and one of the biggest new challenges, arising from healthcare applications in particular, is how to manage the complexities of collecting, transmitting, storing and analysing highly personal and personalised health data safely, securely, and legitimately. The safety-critical control systems of the “Industrial Internet” are no less sensitive.

Evidently, effective security and trust networks are urgently required if the IoT’s potential is to be achieved, as the following chart shows.

Building Blocks Urgently Needed for IoT April 2013

In a world where people (and also jet engines) are having their health monitored automatically by numerous connected sensors, a lot of data is being amassed and needs to be monitored and analysed. Hence ‘Big Data’ is also a closely related topic to the IoT.

Hope, spectacle and speculation

There are several other areas that are sometimes included under the banner of the ‘IoT’, for example:

Clothing / ‘wearables’ – this covers a rapidly developing set of application areas, enabling technologies and related devices, including as Google Glass, Pebble Watch, Nike Fuel band and Adidas connected shoes.
Connected Media. There is a growing field of experimentation into and practice with connected signage that can show different messages and adverts, etc.
Experiments connecting virtually anything. Someone, somewhere is experimenting with a connected version of almost every object available. As just one example, in the Silicon Valley session, Centurylink said that they had asked school children to brainstorm what might be connected and why, and examples the students came up with included a connected tooth that senses the amount of sugar eaten. Another example, launched as a final product at CES, is the connected fork.
Tracking items. An example was given of the idea that many objects, including say a pothole in the road, could be given an identity and tracked thereafter so the fact that the pothole had been reported, and that work was scheduled, could be reviewed by anyone. Related ideas of the usefulness of being able to track goods of one sort or another, from understanding the road-miles of recycling individual objects through to tracking the whereabouts of virtually any object, have also been discussed.

There may indeed be opportunities in many of these areas, but the pressing economic, practical or social needs are not yet clear.

It is also not clear whether the definition of the ‘Internet of Things’ encompasses all of these ideas – although at present it would seem that anything that can be covered by this idea will be in someone’s world view.

What is clear is that the pace and diversity is increasing, and that new areas will continue to cross over from experiment to trial to mainstream development.

Next steps for STL Partners

We will continue to research and explore the ‘Internet of Things’ at our Executive Brainstorms, with particular emphasis on the areas that are most likely to ‘flip over’ from speculation to application.

We will also look further into the needs and applications of ‘Big Data’ into the field, as well as continuing our involvement in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) work on Trust Networks for personal data.

To read the note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

Session 1: Market Evolution towards Internet of Things – Strategies and Business Models
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions
Brainstorm Output: IoT Opportunities
Session 2: IOT Platform Requirements
Stimulus Speakers and Panellists
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, and discussions
Brainstorm: building blocks for IoT
Panel Discussion
Session 3: Big Data – Exploiting the New Oil for the New Economy
Stimulus Speakers and Panellists
Stimulus presentations
Voting, feedback, discussions

…and the following figures…

Figure 1 – Key considerations in M2M projects
Figure 2 – Vendor priorities in M2M/IoT
Figure 3 – From “M2M Now” to “Industrial Internet” and “IoT”
Figure 4 – The future M2M value chain
Figure 5 – Connected device growth forecast
Figure 6 – SmartThings.com
Figure 7 – M2M 1.0 = “save money”, M2M 2.0 = “make money”
Figure 8 – The Gap – What Else is Out There?
Figure 9 – Focus areas for M2M initiatives
Figure 10 – Focus areas in the M2M value chain
Figure 11 – The key questions in IoT
Figure 12 – Elements of IoT
Figure 13 – The challenges – power, IPv6, and privacy
Figure 14 – The US is enormous, but also very unusual
Figure 15 – Health – the ultimate channel business
Figure 16 – What is the scale of the IoT opportunity?
Figure 17 – IoT: what type of business models?
Figure 18 – Panasonic’s innovation priorities
Figure 19 – Panasonic’s new businesses in the US
Figure 20 – “Content mobility” is crucial to the connected car
Figure 21 – Cisco – focus on the industrial potential of IoT
Figure 22 – How this relates to service providers
Figure 23 – Which technical building blocks are most needed?
Figure 24 – Which business infrastructure components are most needed?
Figure 25 – Why personal data isn’t like oil
Figure 26 – A strawman process for personal data
Figure 27 – A decentralised architecture for the Internet of My Things
Figure 28 – Kynetx: companies can connect through ‘things’

…Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service can download the full 47 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here. The Internet of Things will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. For this or any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Background & Further Information

Produced and facilitated by business innovation firm STL Partners, the 2013 Silicon Valley event overall brought together 150 specially-invited senior executives from across the communications, media, retail, banking and technology sectors, including:

Apigee, Arete Research, AT&T,ATG, Bain & Co, Beecham Research, Blend Digital Group, Bloomberg, Blumberg Capital, BMW, Brandforce, Buongiorno, Cablelabs, CenturyLink, Cisco, CITI Group, Concours Ventures, Cordys, Cox Communications, Cox Mobile, CSG International, Cycle Gear, Discovery, DoSomething.Org, Electronic Transactions Association, EMC Corporation, Epic, Ericsson, Experian, Fraun Hofer USA, GE, GI Partners, Group M, GSMA, Hawaiian Telecom, Huge Inc, IBM, ILS Technology, IMI Mobile Europe, Insight Enterprises, Intel, Ketchum Digital, Kore Telematics, Kynetx, MADE Holdings, MAGNA Global, Merchant Advisory Group, Message Systems, Microsoft, Milestone Group, Mimecast, MIT Media Lab, Motorola, MTV, Nagra, Nokia, Oracle, Orange, Panasonic, Placecast, Qualcomm, Rainmaker Capital, ReinCloud, Reputation.com, SalesForce, Samsung, SAP, Sasktel, Searls Group, Sesame Communications, SK Telecom Americas, Sprint, Steadfast Financial, STL Partners/Telco 2.0, SystemicLogic Ltd., Telephone & Data Systems, Telus, The Weather Channel, TheFind Inc, T-Mobile USA, Trujillo Group LLC, UnboundID, University of California Davis, US Cellular Corp, USC Entertainment Technology Center, Verizon, Virtustream, Visa, Vodafone, Wavefront, WindRiver, Xtreme Labs.

Around 50 of these executives participated in the ‘Internet of Things’ session.

We’d like to thank the sponsors of the Brainstorm:
Silicon Valley 2013 Sponsors

Digital Entertainment: What Gets Measured Gets Money

Summary: For mobile entertainment services to generate revenues commensurate to the attention they receive, the industry needs to improve ‘discovery’ tools, create more effective creative inventory, and deliver proof of its effectiveness. A summary of the Digital Entertainment 2.0 session of the 2013 Silicon Valley Brainstorm. (April 2013)

Digital Entertainment 2.0: What Gets Measured Gets Money

Below are the high-level analysis and detailed contents from a 27 page Telco 2.0 Briefing Report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service here. The Digital Economy, Consumer Experience (including service ‘discovery’), Digital Commerce and the Internet of Things will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. Non-members can find out more about subscriptions here, or to find out more about this and other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

To share this article easily, please click:

Introduction

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm series, the Digital Entertainment 2.0 session took place at the Intercontinental Hotel, San Francisco, on the 20^th March, 2013. The title and objective of the session was ‘How to Make Mobile Work’.

Analysis: What Gets Measured Gets Money

The key steps for mobile entertainment services to generate revenues commensurate to the attention it receives in North America are: to improve measurement of the success of ‘discovery’ tools, create more effective creative advertising inventory, and deliver proof of its effectiveness, not just the attention.

Mobile is a ‘break out’ entertainment media

Mobile has for some time been an entertainment media in the eyes of consumers, and particularly younger ones who soak up ‘dead time’ by playing games, using apps and even just communicating for fun, although to date not all these forms of entertainment have been connected.

In the past 3 years there has been a significant increase in ‘on demand’ and mobile consumption in North American and European markets, particularly in these younger segments, although a key challenge has been that monetisation has not followed the use of time spent on mobile.

Mobile entertainment itself can be defined as related to a context (e.g. ‘out and about’, ‘dead time’, ‘second screen’), devices (featurephone, smartphone or tablet), or type of connection (e.g. none, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi). In general though, there are two main scenarios: mobile as a medium in its own right; and mobile as a ‘second screen’ experience. So in either scenario, we think the clearest answer to ‘what is the role of mobile?’ is that it is a ‘break out’ media, either extending the context of a form of entertainment, or extending the nature of entertainment in the existing context.

For video in North America, TV is still the dominant form of consumption, but mobile is growing rapidly as the ‘second screen’ that controls or supplements the main screen, especially with the explosive growth of tablets since the introduction of the Apple iPad.

Segmentation – there’s no single dominant business model

There has been much debate about the viability of different business models, broadly: advertising funded; consumer ownership; and subscription. While most participants believed that the ownership model would be most successful in music, where there is a higher likelihood that a consumer will want to listen to a track or album numerous times, ‘collectors’ or owners will still exist for videos, books and games.

Digital Collector Segment Size April 2013

Equally, demand exists for single ‘on demand’ services (e.g. pay per view), subscription (e.g. Spotify, cable), and advertising funded (e.g. YouTube). The balance is likely to change in video in particular with a move to increasing ‘on demand’ services in line with the current trend in consumer behaviour.

‘Discovery’: finding a model that proves it works

As the previously dominant channel-based model of curation in broadcast media gradually dissolves, and as the screen size, context and characteristics of consumption change, consumers face an increasing challenge finding out what they want to see, play or listen to.

Curation still exists through channel guides, taste-makers and review sites, and indeed through many offline sources, but is increasingly less the property of the content producer or distributor that it once was.

Content Discovery, one of the great buzz phrases of the industry, is therefore an ongoing challenge, and the application of networked computing power provide some advantages to connected and interactive devices like smartphones and tablets. Approaches used include:

3^rd party classification (e.g. by genre, subject), enabling more structured self-selection through menu choices etc.;
Recommendation engines (the Amazon/Netflix model), that can be based on a ‘Big Data’ approach (‘other people who bought this also bought that’) and/or semantic association (‘here’s another sentimental family comedy you might like’);
Social approaches, based on what your friends like or are watching, either through generic social media like Facebook, and specialised social media such as Zeebox.com (for video) and Goodread.com (for books);
Search – although this is non-trivial due to the volume of material in existence, and the ever-changing art of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – getting the right items at the top of the list.
Hybrid approaches that combine ‘Big Data’ with ‘semantic association’ (e.g. see Jinni.com) and/or other forms e.g. Social (e.g. see this intriguing article on the $1m recommendations challenge from Netflix).

For all methods, the inconsistencies of the metadata recorded (e.g. is the media described accurately using your terms) is frequently a challenging limitation.

To a degree though, content discovery has always been a process of ‘trial and error’. Consumers read, hear or see a load of ideas, try a few out, stick to the ones they like, and grow to trust the means of discovery that is most successful for them.

To this end, an element that appears to be missing in many discovery processes today is the measurement of success rate for the user – “was this a good recommendation for you”? In our view, discovery applications that accurately track success well (easily, with a good UI, and with a tangibly good and improving success rate) will ultimately prove successful. All of the above techniques could and to a greater or lesser extent do adopt this approach, although it isn’t yet clear which will perform the best in the market.

Delivering the goods

The challenges of delivering content, particularly large volume (e.g. HD Video) and/or latency sensitive content (such as multi-player virtual gaming), were not addressed in the Digital Entertainment session, though Software Defined Networking (SDN), which offers the promise of more efficient routing through networks for certain traffic, was discussed in the Digital Economy session. Content Delivery Networks and other Broadband design techniques have also been addressed at length in other STL Partners research and brainstorms

However, ‘Bandwidth’ was one of the key determinants of success according to the ‘BBC’ heuristic offered from Mitch Berman’s experience as a guide to how mobile entertainment will operate in different markets: Bandwidth; Business Model; and Culture. (NB We think this can also be seen as a shorthand variant of our business model framework, with culture being a key driver of the content proposition, bandwidth of the technical capability, and business model as the value proposition.)

Getting money commensurate with the time spent on mobile

A major challenge for advertising funded mobile entertainment is that there is a significant gap between the ratio of the amount of time spent viewing mobile and the money spent on it, and other forms of media. This is illustrated by the stats that:

For The Weather Channel, mobile is 1.5 X the traffic but less than 50% of the revenue;
10% of media consumption occurs online Vs. 1% media spend (from the presentation by Cary Tild, CIO GroupM in subsequent Marketing and Advertising session).

While this imbalance is genuine, there are important advantages and limitations to mobile as a medium that haven’t yet been fully exploited or overcome, respectively.

One of the major limitations has been the need for more effective commercial inventory on mobile. At the Brainstorm there was, for example, much discussion on the limitations of banner type ads in a mobile environment. Many more innovative forms are now evolving, illustrated by:

The Weather Channel’s experimental creative commercial content within its app, in which instead of a rectangular banner at the top of the screen, appropriate commercial content is embedded on background of the weather screen (e.g. a cloud-wrapped image from a mystery film on a cloudy day’s forecast screen);
New trial applications that insert products virtually in existing content (e.g. a soft-drink on a table in an old TV show, as demonstrated in test form by ReinCloud);
And subsequently, the launch of Facebook Home, designed to increase the commercial inventory available to Facebook by taking over the screen of a user’s smartphone.

In the same way that advertising has always evolved (from print to radio, radio to TV, etc.), there is still much to be learned through innovation and experimentation – and of course the related measurements of success.

Charging differently for content rights by content owners, e.g. by the use of content rather than as an upfront fee, was also discussed, although many content owners are reluctant to move to or even test this model as they see it representing a significant risk to existing revenue streams.

The digital economy core themes of ‘big data’ and ‘localisation’ were also raised, and an example given by the Weather Company of a highly effective promotion of grass seeds based on locality and the detection of key seasonal weather changes.

Finally, a key theme in common with the subsequent advertising session was that proving the effectiveness of models to consumers, brands, and investors was the key step for most mobile entertainment concepts. We see thoughtful design, coupled with trial and experimentation, effective measurement and the ongoing application of learning processes to be central to achieving that proof.

Next Steps

Effectiveness in the ‘discovery’ phase of digital service is a key success criterion, particularly in Digital Entertainment. We will continue to research and explore this area in our Executive Brainstorms in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

To read the note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

Brainstorm: Stimulus Presentations – summary and key points
Brainstorm: Table Discussions
Verbatim delegate questions & comments
Brainstorm: Panel Session in summary

…and the following figures…

Figure 1 – Traditional linear TV model is facing multiple disruptions
Figure 2 – Non-linear forms of TV becoming a massmarket requirement
Figure 3 – Tablets are changing the TV/video landscape
Figure 4 – The mobile problem
Figure 5 – Whither digital collectors?
Figure 6 – Shine on you crazy diamond?
Figure 7 – Sharing the locker?
Figure 8 – Do we all want libraries?

…Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service can download the full 27 page report in PDF format here. Non-Members, please subscribe here. The Digital Economy, Consumer Experience (including service ‘discovery’), Digital Commerce and the Internet of Things will also be explored in depth at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London, 5-6 June, 2013. For this or any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Background & Further Information

The 2013 Silicon Valley Brainstorm used STL’s unique ‘Mindshare’ interactive format, including cutting-edge new research, case studies, use cases and a showcase of innovators, structured small group discussion on round-tables, panel debates and instant voting using on-site collaborative technology. Around 30 executives from entertainment, media, telecoms and technology companies participated in this session in total.

The focus was on looking at “the true role for mobile” in the digital entertainment industry. Opening the session informally, various attendees were canvassed about their intentions & hopes for the day. This yielded a desire for information to assist in business modelling, to learn about the realities of the US entertainment market – or just to experience “inspiration and surprise” from a diverse set of speakers.

Objective: How to Make Mobile Work

The session covered three presentations and a demo, spanning the width of the entertainment business from TV to books, and from user behaviour to advertising. Its principle focus was around how content and telecom companies could generate sustainable businesses by leveraging the trend towards mobility – both devices and networks.

Designing compelling mobile entertainment experiences
4G: The impact on video distribution and consumption economics
Latest models for monetisation

The session included three Stimulus Speakers:

Andre James, Partner, Bain & Co
Alex Linde, Vice President, Mobile & Digital Apps,The Weather Channel
Keith McMahon, Senior Analyst, STL Partners/Telco 2.0

In addition, Dan Reitan, CEO, Reincloud gave an Innovation Showcase demo, after which these four were joined on the debate panel by two other industry luminaries:

David Gale, EVP New Media, MTV
Mitchell Berman, Principal, Blend Digital

We’d like to thank the sponsors of the Brainstorm:
Silicon Valley 2013 Sponsors

Digital Commerce: Show me the (Mobile) Money

Introduction

To read the note in full, including the following sections detailing additional analysis…

Executive Summary
Overcoming the Barriers
1. Understand the marketplace you are operating in
2. Develop compelling service offerings
3. The value network
4. Technology
5. Finance – the high-level business model
Conclusions and next steps
About STL Partners

…and the following figures…

Figure 1 – The Cycle and Functions of Digital Commerce
Figure 2 – Mobile wallets will take time to gain traction
Figure 3 – The mobile commerce flywheel
Figure 4 – The STL Partners Business Model Framework
Figure 5 – For banked consumers, digital wallets mainly offer convenience
Figure 6 – For the unbanked, digital wallets offer convenience and some savings
Figure 7 – For merchants, digital wallets help build deeper customer relationships
Figure 8 – Telcos’ potential revenue streams from a digital commerce service
Figure 9 – Telcos’ potential major costs in launching a digital commerce service
Figure 10 – Telcos’ mobile commerce revenues are likely to be modest
Figure 11 – Telcos have regular customer contact and real-time data
Figure 12 – Potential strategic actions for telcos
Figure 13 – Leading Internet companies have global reach and scale
Figure 14 – Potential strategic actions for Internet players
Figure 15 – Banks have local knowledge, payment networks trusted brands
Figure 16 – Potential strategic actions for banks and payment networks

The Great Compression: surviving the ‘Digital Hunger Gap’

Introduction

The Silicon Valley Brainstorm took place on 19-20 March 2013, at the Intercontinental Hotel, San Francisco.

Part of the New Digital Economics Executive Brainstorm & Innovation Series, it built on output from previous events in Singapore, Dubai, London and New York, and new market research and analysis, and focused on new business models and growth opportunities in digital commerce, content and the Internet of Things.

Summary Analysis: ‘The Great Compression’

In the next 10 years, many industries face the ‘Great Compression’ in which, in addition to the pressures of ongoing global economic uncertainty, there is also a major digital transformation that is destroying traditional value and moving it ‘disruptively’ to new areas and geographies, albeit at diminished levels.

In previous analyses (e.g. Dealing with the ‘Disruptors’: Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft/Skype and Amazon) we have shown how key technology players in particular compete with different objectives in different parts of the digital value chain. Figure 1 below shows via crossed dollar signs (‘New Non-Profit’) the areas in which companies are competing without the primary intention of driving profits, which means that traditional competitors in those areas can expect ‘disruptive’ competition from new business models.

Figure 1 – Digital disruption

Source: STL Partners ‘Dealing with the ‘Disruptors’: Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft/Skype and Amazon’

The Digital Hunger Gap

For the incumbent industry players we call the near-term results of this disruption ‘The Digital Hunger Gap’ – the widening deficit between past and projected revenues. Chris Barraclough, Chief Strategist STL Partners presented the classic Music Industry case study of the ‘Hunger Gap’ effects of digital disruption.

Figure 2 – The Music Industry’s ‘Hunger Gap’

Source: STL Partners

In a vote, 95% of participants agreed that something similar would happen in other industries.

Chris then presented our initial analysis of the ‘Hunger Gap’ for telcos (to be published in full shortly), and asked the participants where they thought the telco industry would be relative to its 2012 position in 2020.

Figure 3 – Participants’ views on forecasts for the telecoms industry

Source: Silicon Valley 2013 Participants / STL Partners

As can be seen, participants’ views were widely spread, with a slight bias towards a more pessimistic outlook than that presented of a recovery to 2012 levels.

Chris argued that as the ‘hunger gap’ widens, and before new revenues are developed, there will be massive consolidation and cost-reduction among incumbent players, and opportunities for innovation in services, but the chances of success in the latter are very low and require a portfolio approach and either deep pockets, exceptional insight, or considerable good fortune.

Richard Kramer, Managing Partner of Arete Research, also presented a deflationary outlook for all but the leading consumer technology players in the handset and tablet arena.

Participants then voted on which areas needed the most significant changes in their business – and existing managements’ ‘mindset’ was voted as the top priority.

Figure 4 – ‘Mindset’ is the biggest barrier to transformation

Source: Silicon Valley 2013 Participants / STL Partners

It is also notable that all categories averaged 3.0 or over – or needing ‘Significant Change’. This points to a significant transformation across all industries.

Content:

Opportunities
Telco 2.0 Strategies
Big Data and Personal Data
Digital Commerce
Digital Entertainment
Mobile Advertising & Marketing
The Internet of Things
Outlook by Industry
Next Steps

Figure 1 – Digital disruption
Figure 2 – The Music Industry’s ‘Hunger Gap’
Figure 3 – Participants’ views on forecasts for the telecoms industry
Figure 4 – ‘Mindset’ is the biggest barrier to transformation
Figure 5 – The ‘Telco 2.0’ opportunities for CSPs
Figure 6 – The impact of ‘Software Defined Networks’ (SDN)
Figure 7 – Will ‘Personal Data’ be more useful than ‘Big Data’?
Figure 8 – STL Partners’ ‘Wheel of Digital Commerce’
Figure 9 – Who will in ‘SoMoLo’?
Figure 10 – Significant changes in viewing habits
Figure 11 – Transformation needed in the advertising industry
Figure 12 – Growth projections for M2M ‘mobile’ (e.g. 3G/4G) connected devices

Digital Money 2.0: Overview and Introduction (STL Partners Presentation)

In Digital Money 2.0. Presentation by Charmaine Oak, Senior Associate Analyst, Digital Money, STL Partners, covering market definitions and an analytical framework for digital money business models. Presented at EMEA Brainstorm, November 2011.

Digital Money 2.0 small STL Partners Nov 2011

Download presentation here.

Links here for more on New Digital Economics brainstorms and Money and Payments research, or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Extracted example slide:

Introduction

Figure 1: Digital metrics should be driving change at CSPs but are themselves proving difficult to implement

Why metrics matter

Figure 2: “Build – Measure – Learn” concept

Figure 3: Business plan and financial metrics are out-of-date in a digital world

Introduction

Verizon’s performance in the US

Figure 1: Strategic divergence in the US

Figure 2: Four carriers, four fates

How do European Operators compare?

Figure 3: Applying the screen to European carriers

Figure 4: Free Mobile, a disruptive force that’s literally off the charts

Figure 5: The differences are if anything more pronounced within Europe at the level of the major multinationals

0845 Event Start: Welcome, Agenda, Introductions & Warm Up

0900 Managing Disruptive Innovation in the Digital World

Stream A Workshops: Communications Services – Innovation for the Consumer and the Enterprise

1345 Future Communications: Radical innovation in voice, messaging and data services

1430 Enterprise Mobility: A strategic approach to creating competitive advantage

Stream B: In-Home and In-Store Services: the ‘Internet of Things…and of People’

1315 The ‘Internet of Things’ in the Digital Home: Towards a new ecosystem

1430 In-Store Retail: How mobile technology can revive the high street, not kill it

Final plenary session:

1615 Mobile Payments: Creating a viable ecosystem that enables true ‘mobile commerce’

Overview of Key Findings

Introduction

Background – the Business Context of Enterprise Mobility

New Research

Figure 2: Enterprise customers – on-line survey respondents, per region

Figure 3: Telco – on-line survey respondents, per region

Table 1: In-depth qualitative interviews – contributing companies

Overview – the enterprise perspective

Most Enterprises have started mobilising

Sales is the current lead application – but there’s more to come

In B2C: information first, marketing next

Figure 6: Customer-facing processes enterprises have mobilised or are planning to mobilise?

Several different CSP organisation designs for Telco 2.0 Service Innovation

Telco 2.0 strategy is a key driver of organisation design

Most leading CSPs are pursuing a Telco 2.0 ‘Service Provider’ strategy

Telco 2.0 Service Providers are adopting different organisation designs

Five Principles for developing a Telco 2.0 New Business Unit

Introduction

A new dawn for digital commerce

Figure 4: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce

What’s at stake

Carving up the wheel of commerce

Figure 5: The relative size of the segments of the wheel of commerce

Background – ‘Voice and Messaging 2.0’

The New Report

Benefits of the Report to Telcos, Technology Companies and Partners, and Investors

The Future Value of Voice: Report Content Summary

Introduction

Digital Commerce Disruption

Figure 3: The elements that make up the wheel of commerce

Contents

Introduction – Digital Commerce 2.0

Benefits of the Report to Telcos, Other Players, Investors and Merchants

Digital Commerce 2.0: Report Content Summary

Introduction

Figure 1: CDNs, the supertankers of the Internet, are growing

The CDN Business Model

The Problem: The Traffic Keeps Coming

Figure 2: Video, music, and photos are filling up a 4G mobile network

Figure 3: The top 9 CDN-able point sources represent 40% of EE’s traffic

Figure 4: The Web giants ride on the CDNs

Introduction

Analysis: Time to redefine the wallet?

Business model battles

Mobile advertising – still very immature

Big data – how to monetize?

Next steps for STL Partners

Background & Further Information

Introduction

Summary Analysis: who will prosper in ‘The Great Compression’?

Next steps for STL Partners

Background & Further Information

Introduction

Economic necessity: the mother of innovation

New blocks means new enablers are needed

Hope, spectacle and speculation

Next steps for STL Partners