Tag: Turkcell

Are telcos smart enough to make money work?

Telco consumer financial services propositions

Telcos face a perplexing challenge in consumer markets. On the one hand, telcos’ standing with consumers has improved through the COVID-19 pandemic, and demand for connectivity is strong and continues to grow. On the other hand, most consumers are not spending more money with telcos because operators have yet to create compelling new propositions that they can charge more for. In the broadest sense, telcos need to (and can in our view) create more value for consumers and society more generally.

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As discussed in our previous research, we believe the world is now entering a “Coordination Age” in which multiple stakeholders will work together to maximize the potential of the planet’s natural and human resources. New technologies – 5G, analytics, AI, automation, cloud – are making it feasible to coordinate and optimise the allocation of resources in real-time. As providers of connectivity that generates vast amounts of relevant data, telcos can play an important role in enabling this coordination. Although some operators have found it difficult to expand beyond connectivity, the opportunity still exists and may actually be expanding.

In this report, we consider how telcos can support more efficient allocation of capital by playing in the financial services sector.  Financial services (banking) sits in a “sweet spot” for operators: economies of scale are available at a national level, connected technology can change the industry.

Financial Services in the Telecoms sweet spot

financial services

Source STL Partners

The financial services industry is undergoing major disruption brought about by a combination of digitisation and liberalisation – new legislation, such as the EU’s Payment Services Directive, is making it easier for new players to enter the banking market. And there is more disruption to come with the advent of digital currencies – China and the EU have both indicated that they will launch digital currencies, while the U.S. is mulling going down the same route.

A digital currency is intended to be a digital version of cash that is underpinned directly by the country’s central bank. Rather than owning notes or coins, you would own a deposit directly with the central bank. The idea is that a digital currency, in an increasingly cash-free society, would help ensure financial stability by enabling people to store at least some of their money with a trusted official platform, rather than a company or bank that might go bust. A digital currency could also make it easier to bring unbanked citizens (the majority of the world’s population) into the financial system, as central banks could issue digital currencies directly to individuals without them needing to have a commercial bank account. Telcos (and other online service providers) could help consumers to hold digital currency directly with a central bank.

Although the financial services industry has already experienced major upheaval, there is much more to come. “There’s no question that digital currencies and the underlying technology have the potential to drive the next wave in financial services,” Dan Schulman, the CEO of PayPal told investors in February 2021. “I think those technologies can help solve some of the fundamental problems of the system. The fact that there’s this huge prevalence and cost of cash, that there’s lack of access for so many parts of the population into the system, that there’s limited liquidity, there’s high friction in commerce and payments.”

In light of this ongoing disruption, this report reviews the efforts of various operators, such as Orange, Telefónica and Turkcell, to expand into consumer financial services, notably the provision of loans and insurance. A close analysis of their various initiatives offers pointers to the success criteria in this market, while also highlighting some of the potential pitfalls to avoid.

Table of contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Potential business models
    • Who are you serving?
    • What are you doing for the people you serve?
    • M-Pesa – a springboard into an array of services
    • Docomo demonstrates what can be done
    • But the competition is fierce
  • Applying AI to lending and insurance
    • Analysing hundreds of data points
    • Upstart – one of the frontrunners in automated lending
    • Takeaways
  • From payments to financial portal
    • Takeaways
  • Turkcell goes broad and deep
    • Paycell has a foothold
    • Consumer finance takes a hit
    • Regulation moving in the right direction
    • Turkcell’s broader expansion plans
    • Takeaways
  • Telefónica targets quick loans
    • Growing competition
    • Elsewhere in Latin America
    • Takeaways
  • Momentum builds for Orange
    • The cost of Orange Bank
    • Takeaways
  • Conclusions and recommendations
  • Index

This report builds on earlier STL Partners research, including:

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Telco apps: What works?

Introduction

Part of STL Partners’ (Re)connecting with Consumers stream, this report analyses a selection of successful mobile apps run by telcos or their subsidiaries. It explains why mobile apps will continue to play a major in the digital economy for the foreseeable future before considering the factors that have made particular telco apps successful. Most of the apps considered in the report are from Asia, primarily because operators in that world have typically been more aggressive in pursuing the digital services market than their counterparts elsewhere. Note, the list of apps analysed in this report is far from exhaustive – there are other successful telco-run apps on the market.

The ultimate goal of this report is to explain how apps can engage customers and give telcos greater traction with consumers. Although many apps are rarely used and quickly discarded, the most popular apps, such as Instagram, Spotify and YouTube, have become an integral part of the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people. Some apps, such as Uber and Google Maps, regularly provide people with services and/or information that make their lives much easier – getting a taxi or navigating through an unfamiliar city is now much easier than it used to be. Indeed, a well-designed app dedicated to a specific service can deliver both relevance and revenues.

This report builds on previous STL research, notably:

Can Netflix and Spotify make the leap to the top tier?

AI in customer services: It’s not all about chatbots

AI on the Smartphone: What telcos should do 

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Why apps matter for telcos

Telcos’ most successful digital services, notably SMS, pre-date the smartphone app era.  Even more recent triumphs, such as the M-Pesa, the ground breaking mobile money service in Kenya, were originally designed to work on feature phones.  Many similar services, such as MTN Money and Orange Money, aimed at the large numbers of people without bank accounts in Africa and developing Asia, continue to be accessed largely through text-based menus via SIM toolkit.

But the widespread adoption of smartphones in developed and developing markets alike mean that telcos everywhere need to ensure all the consumer services they offer can be accessed via well-designed and intuitive apps with graphical user interfaces. By the end of 2017, there were 4.3 billion smartphones in use worldwide, according to Ericsson’s estimates. Moreover, smartphone adoption continues to rise rapidly, particularly in Africa, India and other developing countries. Ericsson reckons the number of smartphone subscriptions will reach 7.2 billion in 2023 (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: The number of smartphones in use is rising steadily across the world

Global App take up

Source: Ericsson Mobility Report, June 2018

Subscriptions associated with smartphones now account for around 60% of all mobile phone subscriptions, according to Ericsson, which says that 85% of all mobile phones sold in the first quarter of 2018 were smartphones.

With smartphones the default handset for people in developed markets and many developing markets, apps have become a major medium for interactions between consumers and service providers across the economy. Now approximately ten years old, the so-called app economy is worth tens of billions of dollars per annum.

Although there has been a backlash, as people’s smartphones get clogged up with apps, the sector still has considerable momentum.

The most popular apps, such as Uber and Amazon Shopping, combine ease of access (straightforward authentication), with ease-of-use and ease-of-payment, enabling them to attract tens of millions of users.

With some justification, proponents contend that apps will continue to be one of the main drivers of the digital economy for the foreseeable future. The broader app economy will be worth $6.3 trillion by 2021, up from $1.3 trillion in 2016, according to App Annie. Note, those figures include in-app ads and mobile commerce, as well as the revenues generated through app stores. In other words, this is the total value of the business conducted via apps, rather than the revenue accrued by app stores and developers. This dramatic forecast assumes the ongoing shift of physical transactions to the mobile medium continues apace: App Annie expects the value of mobile commerce transactions to rise from $344 per user in 2016 to $946 by 2021.

Although most of the leading apps are free, many do generate a subscription fee or one-off sales. Annual consumer spending in app stores is set to rise 18% between 2016 and 2021 to reach $139 billion worldwide, according to specialist app analytics firm App Annie, which also forecasts the total time spent in apps will grow to 3.5 trillion hours in 2021, up from 1.6 trillion in 2016.

In reality, some of these aggressive forecasts may prove to be too bullish, as consumers begin to make greater use of messaging services and voice-activated speakers to interact with local merchants and purchase digital content and services.  Even so, it is clear that the leading mobile apps will continue to be a major consumer engagement tool for many brands and merchants well into the next decade. In some cases, such as Spotify or the fitness app Strava, the user has typically put significant effort into creating a personalised experience, helping to cement their loyalty.

In developed countries, some telcos, notably AT&T and Verizon, have belatedly and expensively acquired a major presence in the app economy by buying leading digital content producers and service providers. With the $85.4 billion acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T is now the owner of HBO Now, which was the third highest app by consumer spend in the US in 2017, according to App Annie. HBO Now also ranked fifth in Mexico and eighth in the world on this measure. Having acquired Yahoo! and AOL apps over the past few years, Verizon ranked eighth among companies in terms of downloads in the US in 2017.

The delicate transition from SIM toolkit to app

But expensive acquisitions are not the only way into the app economy. For telcos that have developed consumer services from the ground-up, the rise of the smartphone offers opportunities to provide much richer functionality and a more intuitive interface, as well cross-selling and up-selling. In Kenya, Safaricom has been expanding the mobile money transfer service M-Pesa into a much broader financial services proposition, while prodding users to switch from the SIM toolkit to the app, which can properly highlight M-Pesa’s wider proposition. At the same time, the telco has integrated M-Pesa into its customer service app, mySafaricom, helping it to promote its broader telecoms offering to frequent users of its mobile money services.

However, Safaricom is well aware that it needs to tread cautiously, continuing to cater for those customers who are comfortable with the SIM toolkit experience. Its softly-softly approach is to reassure Kenyans that they can always fall back on the SIM toolkit, if they don’t like the app.  In a Safaricom-sponsored article from August 2017, Emmanuel Chenze wrote the following on the online site, Android Kenya:

“For over a year now, Safaricom has had the mySafaricom application available on the Google Play Store for users to be able to better manage the services they receive from the telecommunications company. However, it wasn’t until March this year when the application was updated to include M-PESA.

“With M-PESA finally integrated, the over 1 million smartphone users can now take full advantage and transact even faster thanks to the app. While good ol’ SIM toolkit still works wonders and remains a good backup option when you’re not connected to the internet or when the mySafaricom app is acting up, using the application, which has since been updated to reflect Safaricom’s recent rebranding, is way better than using the otherwise cumbersome SIM toolkit.”

If they can make their apps straightforward and easily accessible, Africa’s telcos could still become major players in the app economy – as Figure 4 indicates, the number of smartphones in use in sub-Saharan Africa could double between now and 2023. That gives telcos a major opportunity to promote their apps to first-time smartphone users as they buy their new handsets. Pan-Africa operator MTN is pursuing this strategy with its MTN Game+ , Music+ and video apps (see Figure 4).

Figure 4: MTN is pushing its entertainment apps to new smartphone users

Safaricom app chart

Source: MTN interim results presentation for the six months ended June 2018

In Asia, some telcos have successfully developed widely used apps from scratch, notably in the customer care space, as explained in the next section (continued in full report).

Table of Contents

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Why apps matter
  • The delicate transition from SIM toolkit to app
  • Telcos can build on customer care
  • My AIS – a top ten app in Thailand
  • Takeaways
  • Information apps have traction
  • Call management apps prove popular in South Korea
  • T Map in top ten apps in South Korea
  • Takeaways
  • Telcos’ entertainment apps go regional
  • PCCW’s Viu plays in sixteen markets
  • Liberty Global
  • Takeaways
  • Turkcell: Using apps to up engagement
  • Competitive in communications
  • Takeaways

Table of Figures

  • Figure 1: Alternative routes for telcos to build out their app proposition
  • Figure 2: Overview of the telco-owned apps covered in this report
  • Figure 3: The number of smartphones in use is rising steadily across the world
  • Figure 4: MTN is pushing its entertainment apps to new smartphone users
  • Figure 5: My AIS supports payments and loyalty points, as well as usage monitoring
  • Figure 6: The True iService app has a clear and straightforward graphic interface
  • Figure 7: True Digital’s app portfolio covers everything from coffee to communications
  • Figure 8: WhoWho helps user manage incoming calls on phones and wearables
  • Figure 9: SK Telecom’s T map app for public transport covers trains, buses and taxis
  • Figure 10: KKBOX Claims Strong Customer Base Among iPhone Users
  • Figure 11: Turkcell’s broad portfolio of apps covers content and communications
  • Figure 12: Turkcell’s BiP Messenger is designed to be fun
  • Figure 13: Turkcell is focused on how much time customers spend in its apps
  • Figure 14: Turkcell’s foreign subsidiaries are much smaller than its domestic operation

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Connecting Brands with Customers: How leading operators are building sustainable advertising businesses

Executive Summary

2015 has witnessed the turning point at which internet access on mobile devices exceeds desktops and laptops combined for the first time and, worldwide, digital advertising has followed the audience migration from desktop to smartphone and tablet.  A new ecosystem has evolved to service the needs of the mobile advertising industry. Ad exchanges and ad networks have adapted to facilitate access by brands to an ever-wider range of content on multiple devices, whilst DMPs (Data Management Platforms), DSPs & SSPs (Demand Side and Supply Side Platforms respectively) are fuelling the growth of ‘programmatic buying’ by enabling the flow of data within the ecosystem.

There is an opportunity for telcos to establish a sustainable and profitable role as an enabler within this rapidly developing market

Advertising should be an important diversification strategy for telcos as income from core communications continues to decline because they can make use of existing assets (e.g. audience reach, inventory, data), whilst maintaining subscriber trust. Telecoms operators’ ability to use their own customers’ data (with consent) to improve their own service offerings is a key advantage that provides a strong basis for developing advertising and marketing solutions for third-parties.

Walking in the footsteps of giants does not kill the opportunity for telcos

Facebook and Google will represent more than half of the $69 billion worldwide mobile-advertising market in 2015. This dominance has led some operators to question whether they can build a viable advertising business. However STL Partners believes that there has never been a better time for many operators to consider ramping-up their efforts to secure a sustainable practice through leveraging the value of their own customer data. In fact, many telcos are actively working with OTT players such as Google and Facebook to assist them in understanding territory-specific mobile behaviour.

Three telcos lead the way in advertising – Sprint, Turkcell and SingTel – and provide important lessons for others

In the main body of this report, STL Partners identifies the role that each telco has chosen to perform within the advertising ecosystem, assesses their strategy and execution, and identifies the core reasons for their success. The three case studies display several common characteristics and point to six Key Success Factors (KSFs) for a telco advertising business. The first is a ‘start-up mindset’ pre-requisite for establishing such a business and the other five are core actions and capabilities which mutually strengthen each other to produce a ‘flywheel’ that drives growth (see Figure 1).  As a telco exec, whether your organisation is just embarking on the advertising journey, if it has tried to build an advertising business and withdrawn or, indeed, if you are well on the way to building a successful business, we outline how to deliver the following six KSFs in the downloadable report:

  1. How to secure senior management support
  2. How to develop a semi-independent organisation with advertising skills and a start-up culture
  3. How to build or buy best-in-class technical capability and continuously improve
  4. Demand-side: How to build value for subscribers
  5. Supply-side: How to build value for media buyers and sellers
  6. How to pursue opportunities to scale aggressively
Figure 1: The Telco Advertising Business Flywheel

Why now is the right time for telcos to take a more prominent role within mobile advertising

After years of hype, mobile advertising is now starting to mature in terms of technical solutions, business models, and customer acceptance. The catalyst for this growing awareness of the potential of mobile advertising is the increasing demand for first-party (own customer) data to personalize and contextualize marketing communications both within telcos and more widely among enterprises as a way of improving on coarse-grained segmentation. Telcos hold more and better data than most organisations and have wonderful distribution networks (the network itself) for managing information flows, as well as delivering marketing messages and services.

 

For those within and outside telcos that are developing marketing and advertising solutions, we would love to hear your stories and facilitate discussions with your peers, so please do get in touch: contact@stlpartners.com

 

  • Executive Summary
  • Introduction
  • Why is advertising important for Telcos?
  • Walking in the footsteps of Giants?
  • Case study 1: Sprint
  • Summary: Reasons for Sprint’s success
  • A track record in innovation
  • Making data matter
  • How successful is Sprint’s strategy?
  • What does the future hold for Sprint?
  • Case study 2: Turkcell
  • Summary: Reasons for Turkcell’s success
  • A heritage in mobile marketing
  • Retaining control, enabling access
  • Co-opetition from a position of strength
  • How successful is Turkcell’s strategy?
  • What does the future hold for Turkcell?
  • Case study 3: SingTel
  • Summary: Reasons for SingTel’s success
  • Assembling a digital marketing capability through acquisition
  • Retaining revenue within the value chain
  • Providing technology at scale
  • How successful is SingTel’s strategy?
  • What does the future hold for SingTel?
  • Conclusion and recommendations

 

  • Figure 1: The Telco Advertising Business Flywheel
  • Figure 2: Time Spent per Adult per Day with Digital Media, USA, 2008-2015
  • Figure 3: Mobile Internet Ad Spending, Worldwide, 2013 – 2019
  • Figure 4: Mobile Marketing Ecosystem (extract)
  • Figure 5: The “Wheel of Commerce”
  • Figure 6: The Digital Gameboard – an OTT view of the world
  • Figure 6: Sprint’s data asset overview
  • Figure 7: Sprint’s role in the mobile advertising ecosystem
  • Figure 9: Top App Widget
  • Figure 10: Visual voicemail
  • Figure 11: Turkcell’s role in the mobile advertising ecosystem
  • Figure 12: Turkcell’s mobile marketing solution portfolio
  • Figure 13: Turkcell’s permission database overview
  • Figure 14: SingTel’s role in the mobile advertising ecosystem
  • Figure 15: SingTel’s digital portfolio prioritisation
  • Figure 16: The role of first-party data
  • Figure 17: The promise of first-party data
  • Figure 18: The Telco Advertising Business Flywheel

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:

  1. Look at why it is important to capture, synthesise and act upon appropriate metrics.
  2. Examine traditional and new approaches to the use of performance metrics and identify the factors that contribute to success and failure.
  3. 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

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.

 

Telco 2.0: how to accelerate the implementation of new business models

Summary: Opportunities exist for operators to support third-party businesses in Customer Profiling, Marketing offers, ID & Authentication, Network QoS, and Billing, Payments & Collection. However, our in-depth research among senior execs in ‘upstream’ industries (e.g. retail, media, IT, etc.) and telcos shows that poor communication of the telecoms value proposition and slow implementation by operators is frustrating upstream customers and operators alike. Our new analysis identifies strategic customer segments for telcos building new ‘Telco 2.0’ business models, key obstacles to overcome, six real-world implementation strategy scenarios, and strategic recommendations for telcos. (March 2012, Executive Briefing Service, Transformation Stream.) Google's Advertising Revenues Cascade

 

  • Below is an extract from this 29 page report, kindly commissioned and sponsored by Openet and independently produced by Telco 2.0. Openet developed the initial research concept and scope. The research, analysis and the writing of the report itself was carried out independently by STL Partners.
  • Members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service can download this report in full in PDF format here.
  • Alternatively, to download this report for free, join our Foundation 2.0 service (details here) by using the promotional code FOUNDATION2 in the box at the bottom of the sign-up page here. Once registered, you will be able to download the report here.
  • We’ll also be discussing our findings at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London (12-13 June, 2012).
  • To access reports from the full Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service, to submit whitepapers for review for inclusion in this service, or to find out more about our services please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

Preface

This research has been designed to explore how valuable new telecoms solutions could be for third-party companies (a key part of Telco 2.0), as well as to evaluate the barriers to effective implementation. Third-parties (upstream customers) and operators were interviewed to explore their thoughts in this key strategic area for the telecommunications industry.

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Executive Summary

Headline Conclusions

  • Opportunities exist for operators to support third-party businesses in Customer Profiling, Marketing offers, ID & Authentication, Network QoS, and Billing, Payments & Collection.
  • Poor communication of the telecoms value proposition and slow implementation by operators is frustrating upstream customers and managers within operators themselves.
  • There are four upstream customer segments. Two of these are particularly important for the operators to address when developing go-to-market approaches:
  • Enthusiasts who need full-service Telco 2.0 solutions now;
  • Non-believers who need to be educated on the value of telecoms enabling services and convinced of operators’ ability to implement.
  • There are few material barriers to developing solutions except operators’ inability to implement effectively:
  • Although lack of cross-operator solutions and regulatory impediments are considered significant in Europe and the US.
  • There are four key reasons for the slow implementation by operators:
  • Reason 1: Insufficient investment by operators in services and service enabler platforms.
  • Reason 2: Financial metrics which do not encourage investment in new business models.
  • Reason 3: Inability to pin down the optimal timing for investment in new business models.
  • Reason 4: A prisoners’ dilemma over whether to collaborate or compete with other operators and with upstream customers when implementing solutions.

For the complete recommendations, detailed conclusions and full analysis, please download the report by following the instructions at the top of this page.

 

Introduction, Objectives and Methodology

The research consisted of interviews with 26 major corporations that use telecoms networks to deliver services to consumers including players from advertising, media, financial services and retail (upstream customers or ‘third-party’ companies). Interviewees where senior managers who were responsible for the provision of services via digital channels and thus were familiar with the challenges and opportunities they faced in this developing market segment. Additionally, STL Partners interviewed senior managers from 16 major mobile and converged communications service providers (see Figure 1 below for more details on participants).

The objectives of the research were to determine:

  • What Telco 2.0 (enabling) services would upstream customers like to see from communications service providers?
  • What are the most common use cases and attractive commercial models for such services?
  • What are the current barriers to realising the Telco 2.0 opportunity and what needs to be done to overcome these barriers?

Figure 1: Interviews conducted with players from telecoms and adjacent industries

Companies interviewed for this report

Source: STL Partners

Interviews were 30-60 minutes in length and largely qualitative in nature. Some quantitative questions were asked so that the relative attractiveness of Telco 2.0 solution areas and the size of implementation barriers could be evaluated. The interviews were also designed to uncover differences in perspective between:

  • Operators and upstream customers;
  • Upstream customers from different industry groups – Advertising, Media, Financial services and IT;
  • Operators from different geographic regions – Europe, North America, Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia Pacific (APAC).

Interviews were conducted with senior decision-makers and influencers and, to ensure discussions were full and frank, the content of interviews has not been attributed to individual companies.

Report Contents

 
  • Introduction
  • Real potential value in Telco assets but implementation proving difficult
  • Defining the opportunity areas
  • Strong overall alignment across all eight areas between operators and upstream customers
  • Averages hide variations in upstream customer responses
  • Operators consistent about opportunities apart from Identity & Authentication solutions
  • Telco ability to implement is seen by all as the key barrier…
  • …although operators in Europe and US also see lack of cross-operator solutions and regulation as key barriers
  • Four upstream customer segments require different solutions from operators
  • Operator segment mix looks very different to upstream
  • Why are operators finding implementing Telco 2.0 so hard?
  • Reason1: Insufficient investment by operators in services and service enabler platforms
  • Reason 2: Financial metrics which do not encourage investment in new business models
  • Reason 3: Inability to pin down the optimal timing for investment in new business models
  • Reason 4: A prisoners’ dilemma over whether to collaborate or compete with other operators and with upstream customers when implementing solutions
  • Conclusions and recommendations

Report Figures

 
  • Figure 1: Interviews conducted with players from telecoms and adjacent industries
  • Figure 2: Broad alignment on opportunity areas from operators & upstream customers
  • Figure 3: Upstream customers – variation even within industry sectors for specific Telco 2.0 solution areas
  • Figure 4: Perceived lack of telco interest in developing new solutions for upstream customers
  • Figure 5: Regional differences in operator opportunity sizing for Identity & Authentication solutions
  • Figure 6: Telco operational and organisation limitations seen as the biggest barrier to success
  • Figure 7: Regional differences in perception of key barriers to Telco 2.0 implementation
  • Figure 8: Upstream customer segments
  • Figure 9: Telco go-to-market approaches for upstream customer segments
  • Figure 10: Telco segments – Telco 2.0 could be valuable but can it be realised?
  • Figure 11: An historical lack of investment in services by operators threatens voice, messaging and newer Telco 2.0 solutions
  • Figure 12: Current operator metrics discourage investment in new business models
  • Figure 13: New business model investment timing dilemma
  • Figure 14: The prisoners’ dilemma
  • Figure 15: Six Telco 2.0 implementation strategies
  • Figure 16: Value-creating and value-destroying approaches
  • Figure 17: Geography determines the most important Telco 2.0 implementation strategies

To access this report:

  • The 29 page Telco 2.0 Report can be downloaded in full in PDF format by members of the Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service here.
  • Additionally, to give an introduction to the principles of Telco 2.0 and digital business model innovation, we now offer for download a small selection of free Telco 2.0 Briefing reports (including this one) and a growing collection of what we think are the best 3rd party ‘white papers’. To access these reports you will need to become a Foundation 2.0 member. To do this, use the promotional code FOUNDATION2 in the box provided on the sign-up page here. Your Foundation 2.0 member details will allow you to access the reports shown here only, and once registered, you will be able to download the report here.
  • We’ll also be discussing our findings at the EMEA Executive Brainstorm in London (12-13 June, 2012).
  • To access reports from the full Telco 2.0 Executive Briefing service, or to submit whitepapers for review for inclusion in this service, please email contact@telco2.net or call +44 (0) 207 247 5003.

About Openet

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Openet is a leading provider of Service Optimization Software (SOS) tailored to meet the evolving needs of communications service providers, or CSPs, including wireless, wireline and cable network operators. Openet’s integrated, high-performance software solutions provide real-time policy management, rating, charging and subscriber data management solutions to enable real-time, contextual network resource allocation and monetization decisions based on information about the end user and the service being used. CSPs use Openet’s SOS solutions to enhance quality of service, create a more personalized end user experience, develop new business models and dynamically control network resources. Openet’s SOS solutions are used by more than 80 customers in 28 countries. For more information, please visit www.openet.com.

Organisations interviewed for the report: Televisa, BBC, Intuit, Google, Tesco, MTV, Intel, TiVo, Sling, Ogilvy, Fox, Omnicom, Microsoft, Visa, Barclaycard, Ultraviolet,  PRS, American Express, MasterCard, CitiGroup, On Live, Warner Bros, MEF, Gap, Salesforce, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint,  Deutsche Telekom, Du, Teliasonera, Orange, Everything Everywhere, Turkcell, Qtel, Etisalat, Singtel, Axiata, Telekom Indonesia, TIM, Tele2.