Innovation Strategies: Telefonica 2.0 Vs. Vodafone 2.0

Summary: Telefonica and Vodafone are both European-based tier 1 CSPs with substantial revenues, cash flows and subscribers. They have both expanded beyond Europe – Vodafone into Africa and Asia and Telefonica into Latin America. However, their Telco 2.0 strategies are rather different. In this extract from our forthcoming report, A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0, we outline their Telco 2.0 strategies and their benefits and risks. (September 2012, Executive Briefing Service, Transformation Stream.)

Telefonica Strategy 2.0 Chart

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Below is an extract from this 14 page Telco 2.0 report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream here. Non-members can subscribe here

This report is itself an edited section taken from our forthcoming strategy report, A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0We will be sharing some of the findings, and exploring them in the market context at Digital Arabia, the Telco 2.0 invitation only Executive Brainstorm taking place in Dubai, 6-7 November, in and Digital Asia in Singapore, 3-5 December, 2012. 

To find out more about any of these services, apply for an invitation to the Brainstorms, and for any other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

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Two Different Telco 2.0 Strategies

‘Full Service Telco 2.0’ Vs. Telco 2.0 ‘Happy Piper’

In our reports the ‘Roadmap to New Telco 2.0 Business Models’ and ‘A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0’, we identify two archetypal Telco 2.0 strategies: ‘Full Service Telco 2.0’; and ‘Telco 2.0 Happy Piper’.

Figure 1 – Porter and Telco 2.0 competitive strategies

Telefonica Vodafone Telco 2.0 Porter diagram Sept 2012

Source: Michael Porter / STL Partners / Telco 2.0

  • Full-Service Telco 2.0’. In this ‘two-sided’ business model, CSPs have two clear customer groups: end-users and other 3rd Party Organisations who interact with end-users (what we call ‘Upstream’ companies – banks, retailers, advertisers, government, utilities, software developers other telcos). CSPs seek to compete with each other and with others, such as the ‘internet players’, by differentiating both in the end-user services (communications, content, etc.) and with the enabling services they provide to other service providers (identity and authentication, customer targeting/marketing services, payments, customer care, and so forth).
  • The ‘Telco 2.0 Happy Piper’. CSPs that pursue this strategy will focus on retail or wholesale connectivity to upstream and/or downstream customers rather than on higher-level (value-added) services. It is worth noting that although simplicity and cost control are key themes of the ‘Telco 2.0 Happy Piper’, there remains scope for revenue growth through providing ‘enhanced connectivity’ options.

Overview: Telefonica 2.0 and Vodafone 2.0

At a top-level, Telefonica is pursuing a ‘Telco 2.0 Service Provider’ strategy whereas Vodafone, although dabbling in Telco 2.0 services, is largely committed to a defensive approach to digital services (protecting voice and messaging) and is aggressively pursuing a ‘Happy Piper’ strategy. We illustrate a qualitative assessment of where the two CSPs sit on the Happy Piper-Service Provider continuum, together with a selection of other CSPs in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Positioning CSPs on the Happy Piper – Service Provider continuum

Telefonica Vodafone Continuum diagram Sept 2012

Source: STL Partners / Telco 2.0

Telefonica: Telco 2.0 Service Provider

Background: Digital Innovator

STL Partners believes that Telefonica is arguably the most advanced operator globally in moving from traditional telecoms (Telco 1.0) to a Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategy. This belief was reinforced by the reorganisation in Autumn 2011 in which Matthew Key, the European CEO, was appointed head of a new unit, Telefonica Digital, which has the objective to build the company’s presence and value in the digital world. A press release in September 2011 summarised the objectives of the division as being:

  • To take full advantage of the opportunities afforded by the digital world with respect to new products, services and value chains, both in markets where the company operates directly and those in which it has industrial alliances or the potential to operate directly in OTT (over the top) businesses.
  • This unit will be responsible for developing and globally exploiting businesses like, among others, video and entertainment, e-advertising, e-health, financial services, cloud and M2M. It will aim its activity both at the corporate and residential segments. 
  • To actively help the two major geographic regions, Europe and Latin America, take advantage of their distinguishing traits (relationship with and proximity to more than 300 million customers, capillarity, invoicing and distribution capabilities).
  • To attain this goal, the unit will develop top-flight global competencies in the areas of business intelligence, pricing strategies and management of alliances in the digital environment with respect to both hardware (i.e. devices) and software.
  • Generate new growth opportunities by investing in new digital businesses, while grouping together or reinforcing initiatives such as Amerigo, Wayra and Vc’s.

Figure 3: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategy

Telefonica 2.0 Strategy chart Sept 2012

Source: Telefonica

Telefonica Digital is a significant development in the company’s commitment to Telco 2.0 services for three reasons:

  1. For the first time a CSP has been transparent about how much revenue it is generating from non-traditional ‘digital’ services. In 2011, Telefonica Digital generated revenue of €2.4 billion and intends to grow this by around 20% a year to reach around €5 billion in 2015.
  2. Telefonica Digital is a relatively autonomous entity with separate headquarters (in London rather than Slough) and separate product and service development capabilities. It can both leverage Telefonica’s commercial distribution capabilities (via the operating companies) and, crucially, distribute services over-the-top via app stores and the internet. Essentially, it has been given the authority to compete with the core business as an in-house ‘OTT player’.
  3. It is specifically focused on the services layer – both end-user services and enabling services for third-party service providers (including advertising and security). It will leverage Telefonica’s network where it makes sense to do so (e.g. for M2M) but will not be tied to the network if it makes sense to build OTT services (e.g. Tu Me, one of its OTT voice services, is available for non-Telefonica customers). It also seeks to buy (e.g. Terra, Tuenti), build (e.g. Priority Moments) and partner (via various models including Wayra, in which Telefonica makes seed capital available to early stage businesses).

Figure 4: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 service portfolio

Telefonica digital innovation calendar diagram sept 2012

Source: Telefonica

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

  • Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 products and services
  • Vodafone’s approach
  • Background: safety first
  • Vodafone’s Telco 2.0 services
  • Vodafone One Net: Unified Communications in the Cloud for SMBs
  • Vodafone Freebees: Retaining the Pre-pay base
  • Summary: Strategic Evaluation

…and the following figures…

  • Figure 1 – Porter and Telco 2.0 competitive strategies
  • Figure 2: Positioning CSPs on the Happy Piper – Service Provider continuum
  • Figure 3: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 Service Provider strategy
  • Figure 4: Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 service portfolio
  • Figure 5: Vodafone – main messages are about being an efficient data pipe
  • Figure 6: Vodafone One Net – a defensive play in the SMB market
  • Figure 7: Telefonica and Vodafone Telco 2.0 strategies – evaluation

Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation Stream can download the full 14 page report in PDF format hereNon-Members, please subscribe here. For this or other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Companies and Technologies Featured: Vodafone, Telefonica, O2, Priority Moments, Top-Up Surprises, Freebees, Tu Me, Tuenti, Terra, OneNet, Wayra, M2M, OTT, Jajah, Happy Piper, Full Service, Telco 2.0.

Telco 2.0: Killing Ten Misleading Myths

Summary: ‘Telco 2.0’ has evolved considerably since we put forward the original concept for telcos’ future success in 2006. Here we dispel ten myths and misunderstandings that have also evolved that can misdirect strategy. (August 2012, Executive Briefing Service, Transformation Stream.)

impact of 2sbm aug 2012

  Read in Full (Members only)   To Subscribe click here

Below is an extract from this 24 page Telco 2.0 report that can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation stream here. Non-members can subscribe here and for this and other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

We are about to publish a new strategy report ‘A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0‘ and will be previewing findings at the invitation only Executive Brainstorms in Dubai (November 5-7, 2012), Singapore (3-5 December, 2012), Silicon Valley (19-20 March 2013), and London (23-24 April, 2013). Email contact@stlpartners.com or call +44 (0) 207 243 5003 to order the report or find out more.

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Executive Summary – Killing Ten Myths

As an organisation devoted to driving innovation, Telco 2.0’s thinking has continually evolved. Today, most of our work is focused on how to implement new business models, and helping industry players develop strategies and activities to address new threats and opportunities presented by adjacent players.

We have also learned that as the thinking has evolved it has spawned some myths and misconceptions. (NB. This is not an attempt to stifle insightful criticism or debate, as intelligent challenges and critiques are essential to the development of sound strategy and well informed decision making, and we welcome such challenges.)

What matters about these myths is that they can inject a misleading or distracting idea capable of derailing balanced strategic consideration. The propagandists’ favourite weapons of ‘fear, uncertainty and doubt’ can easily and accidentally be triggered in this way. To counter this, here in summary are our ‘Telco 2.0 realities’ to what we’ve found to be the most prevalent and injurious misconceptions of Telco 2.0.

Figure 1 – Telco 2.0: Misleading Myths Vs. Realities

Misleading Myths and Realities of Telco 2.0

Source: STL Partners / Telco 2.0

Background: Telco 2.0 – then and now

When we first started the Telco 2.0 Initiative in 2006, the decline of the traditional telecoms industry business model based on voice and messaging seemed a long way off to most. ‘Broadband’ and ‘mobile data’ were still relatively immature propositions with great prospects for growing the industry further. ‘Smartphone’ was barely even a word, let alone a global phenomenon, and ‘tablets’ were what you took for a headache.

Most of our initial concepts have stood the tests of time and hindsight well. We drove for radical change in how the telecoms industry looked at:

  • Voice and messaging communications services;
  • The separation of services and network;
  • How networks would be increasingly powerful and intelligent ‘at the edge’;
  • The ongoing empowerment and participation of consumers;
  • Platforms’ that enabled new business to consumer services by re-purposing telco assets.

Subsequently, we looked at:

Next Steps

Our next action on the overall Telco 2.0 strategy agenda will to be to publish a new report: ‘A Practical Guide to Implementing Telco 2.0’. We will also presenting key findings at the Digital Arabia (Dubai, 5-7 November 2012) and Digital Asia (Singapore, 3-5 December 2012) Executive Brainstorms.

We are also launching two new services:

  • The Telco 2.0 Benchmarking Index, starting with a major report on the strategies of the top and most innovative telcos, and showing how the world’s telcos measure up to the leading standards of innovation;
  • The Telco 2.0 Innovation Scouting Service, designed to identify and evaluate, in a structured but flexible process, the best innovations for client members.  The service focuses on a full suite of revenue-generating products and services but can encompass other initiatives such as process improvements in customer care, operations etc.

To find out more about these or apply for an invitation to the Brainstorms, please email contact@stlpartners.com or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003. Additionally, we’ll be publishing major new research into Strategies in Voice and Messaging, ‘Telco Strategies in the Cloud’, and the impact and opportunities of combining personal data and digital and mobile commerce.

The rest of this report outlines the myths and their antidote realities in more depth (first two sections previewed below).

Telco 2.0 is about transforming telecoms business models

Myth 1: Telco 2.0 is just about two-sided business models

The concept of the two-sided telecoms business model has certainly had an impact on the industry, as can be seen for example in the illustrations below from Vodafone and Telefonica investor presentations.

Figure 2 – The impact of the Telco 2.0 Two-Sided Telecoms Business Model

Impact of Telco 2.0 on Investor Presentations

Source: STL Partners / Telco 2.0

While we’re pleased to see the idea of the two-sided business model propagated, there is a degree to which the idea has been a victim of its own success. It appears that some people now think that the two ideas of ‘Telco 2.0’ and ‘Two-Sided Telco Business Models’ are one and the same, and that the two-sided model is the totality of Telco 2.0.

This is not correct. While we still use the concept of the two-sided telco business model as a tool to explain how operators need to consider how they add value to consumer and enterprises and show that revenues can flow from multiple sources, ‘Telco 2.0’ is much more than this and includes:

  • Extending and enhancing existing core services – voice, messaging, data, content – to deliver more value to customers.
  • Developing bespoke communications and IT solutions for specific vertical industries.
  • Leveraging infrastructure more effectively to improve the customer experience (offer greater speed and responsiveness) while reducing cost (offloading traffic onto cheaper networks) and generating new revenue (‘onloading’ traffic from more expensive networks).
  • Distributing existing products and services via new channels and to new customers such as embedding voice within enterprise business processes or bundling connectivity in with consumer products.
  • Deploying assets including identity and authentication capabilities and customer data to both improve customers’ experience of existing core services and develop valuable new services for third-party enterprises and consumers.
  • Developing products and services that are largely ‘OTT’ – independent of the network.

STL Partners believes that business model innovation equates to business transformation.  Innovation can occur or be originated in many different ways and that each of these can have a knock-on effect through an organisation and beyond it to other organisations and industries.  Our analytical framework for business model innovation covers 5 domains (see Figure 3).

Figure 3 – Analytical framework for business model innovation

STL Partners Business Model Framework

Source: Source: Faber et al; Designing business models for mobile ICT services, 2001; adapted and developed by STL Partners

Redesigning Telco 1.0 really matters

Myth 2: Telco 1.1 isn’t part of it

Figure 4 – Existing service revenues in the UK market

Current Data Revenue Growth EMEA June 12

 

Source: STL Partners / Telco 2.0

To illustrate the challenges facing the existing business model, Chris Barraclough, MD and Chief Strategist, Telco 2.0 / STL Partners, presented the above example analysis of voice and data revenues from the UK market at the EMEA Brainstorm in June 2012 as a preview of analysis we are conducting across the main markets in Europe. Two-thirds of the delegates supported this analysis, with over half saying they thought this was ‘about right’ – although just under a third thought it too pessimistic. Whatever the eventual outcome in the market, there is little doubt that the existing business model is under increasing pressure across many regions and for many operators.

There is a natural temptation when presented with forecasts like this for executives to just seek out the nearest red pen and start to cut their way to profits. While a degree of cost reduction is clearly required, this cannot be the sole strategy or commoditisation and a total lack of flexibility is the only possible outcome.

It is obviously important to extend the life of the core business model, and telcos have long been adept at lobbying the regulator as a primary strategy. Further to this, both continuing to re-price data and bundle in new services are also proven strategies. But this really cannot change the game enough and telcos need to fundamentally improve the interactions they have with their customers to retain any relevance as consumer-facing entities.

We have looked at many ways in which telcos can learn how to improve their customers’ experience from the leading web and physical retailers, with Amazon as a particular case in point. This is critical both to telcos existing business and to their prospects for building new businesses. Better service / product experience design and delivery, and the use of customer data to drive personalisation and intelligence in their experiences, are key opportunities to improve customer interactions for telcos, as shown in Figure 5 – The ‘Telco 2.0 Flywheel’.

Figure 5 – The ‘Telco 2.0 Flywheel’

Telco 2 Customer Experience Flywheel

Source: STL Partners / Telco 2.0

And quality is not the only issue: the quantity of customer interactions matters too, and for many telcos the quantity is now declining. For customers it is a simple equation: experience = relevance, so if your customers start using you less, you become less relevant.  Telcos need to find new ways to interact with customers.  

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

  • All telcos need to innovate
  • New Digital Business Models impact all global marketsTelcos need to act now
  • Some new models will create value
  • There’s more to strategy than ‘OTT’
  • Collaboration and Innovation both have roles
  • Strategy, platforms, people, and skills are the priorities
  • It’s not just a ‘Pipe Dream’

…and the following figures…

  • Figure 1 – Telco 2.0: Misleading Myths Vs. Realities
  • Figure 2 – The impact of the Telco 2.0 Two-Sided Telecoms Business Model
  • Figure 3 – Analytical framework for business model innovation
  • Figure 4 – Existing service revenues in the UK market
  • Figure 5 – The ‘Telco 2.0 Flywheel’
  • Figure 6 – Optimism in APAC
  • Figure 7 – Time remaining on key strategic control points
  • Figure 8 – Different Business Models need Different Metrics
  • Figure 9 – The six opportunity areas have different models
  • Figure 10 – ‘Under The Floor’ Pressures
  • Figure 11 – Six Telco 2.0 implementation strategies
  • Figure 12 – Telcos need new skills, systems, structures and incentives
  • Figure 13: The STL Partners 12-stage innovation development and launch process
  • Figure 14: A non-exhaustive collection of Telefonica’s Telco 2.0 projects
  • Figure 15: Vodafone – from splendid isolation in 2005 to local collaborator in 2011

Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing Subscription Service and the Telco 2.0 Transformation stream can download the full 24 page report in PDF format hereNon-Members, please subscribe here. For this or other enquiries, please email contact@telco2.net / call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Companies and Technologies Featured: ISIS, E5, Oscar, 4T Sverige, Vodafone, Telenor, Telefonica, Singtel, O2, Priority Moments, Top-Up Surprises.