INFORMATION SERVICES MONTHLY www.ismonthly.com
AUGUST 2008
Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch? Jingle Network’s Scott Kliger talks to ISM
Show me the money! Monetising the mobile internet
Calling Time On Responsa The definitive global publication for the Information Services Commmunity
SPREAD THE WORD... Subscribe to ISM for FREE! Information Services Monthly is the business publication aimed at the global Directory Enquiries, Directory Assistance and Information Services sectors.
‘KCOM featured in issue one of ISM and as a direct result we got into discussions with a UK-based Directory Assistance provider who is considering outsourcing the service to us.’ Steven Cooper, Operations Director KCOM Contact Centres
“In addition to showcasing our ComNote® service in a highly effective ad, ISM featured WDN in a recent article on wireless directory assistance. We could not be more pleased with the favorable publicity and contacts ISM has generated for Wireless Directory Network.” William Spear, CFO, Wireless Directory Networks
“I want nothing more than to see a vibrant information services industry - I’m happy that Jordan Communications has jumped in to support that effort, and I was delighted to partner with ISM on EDM08 this year.” Stu Whitaker – President and CEO, Whitaker Associates
“Congratulations on the launch of Information Services Monthly. I received and read the inaugural issue and I must say that it is an impressive publication indeed. The stories and features were relevant and well written and I look forward to staying in touch with the industry through the publication.” Azim Tejani – COO, i411
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Contents News: Europe
page 6
Letter from America
News: Americas
page 12
News: Asia-pac/World
page 18
ISM’s US contributing editor, Susan J Campbell considers whether we have true localisation and personalisation – and will the new Presidency protect information, identity and civil liberties.
Vox pop
page 22
page 43
Nicola Byrne of 118 90, Kathleen Pierz of the Pierz Group, and Mark Steffen of Kooaba give us their views on Apple’s iPhone and it’s implications for information services. Employee Engagement page 34 Show me the money
page 24
Openwave’s Ed Moore speaks to ISM’s Liam Cowling about monetising the mobile internet.
How to keep your agents happy and motivated: ISM speaks to Derrick Hardman, Managing Director of Capital Incentives and Motivation, and Kuljit Kaur, Head of Business Development at the Voucher Shop.
European Directory Marketplace
page 38
EDM 08 conference report from Stu Whitaker.
Brave New World
page 46
The case for the Philippines. Rob O’Malley, the UK Managing Director of Cyber City Teleservices, a 3500 seat call centre operator in The Philippines.
J’Accuse: the sales guy! page 48 ISM publisher Julian Jordan argues that it’s time to hang the ‘white sock sales guys’ out to dry! Mobile Marketing Association launches new code of conduct page 28
With a new man at the top table, who said there’s no such thing as a free lunch. page 30 ISM’s Liam Cowling talks to Scott Kliger about the rise and rise of Jingle Networks.
Calling time on Responsa ISM talks to Steve Isaac
page 40
Editorial INFORMATION SERVICES MONTHLY
Editorial Director - Sean Smith sean@jordan-comms.co.uk Designer - Camilla Evans camilla@jordan-comms.co.uk US Contributing Editor - Susan Campbell susan.campbell@sbcglobal.net Commercial Director - Jacqueline Wallace jacqueline@jordan-comms.co.uk Publisher - Julian Jordan julian@jordan-comms.co.uk Features Editor - Liam Cowling liam@jordan-comms.co.uk Information Services Monthly (ISM) is published by Jordan Communications Ltd., Pendle Innovation Centre, Brook Street, Nelson, Lancashire BB9 9PU, United Kingdom
Welcome to this the second edition of ISM. We’d like to thank all those of you who have given us so much positive feedback and constructive comment after our fist issue. We have listened to the things you’ve been telling us and we aim to keep up the excellent work. One thing that’s been disappointing us here at ISM in the last month has been media coverage of the economic slowdown. We think that the mass media is inclined to get hysterical about cause célèbre from time to time and in doing so they seem to actively amplify the problem. In relation to economic circumstances this can be particularly damaging. It’s hardly surprising that consumer confidence is affected when people are hearing commentators talk up the current difficulties. However, consumer confidence impacts upon spending, so retail starts to take a hit. If this process is amplified, perceived problems become real problems – and so on and so on.
+44 (0)845 4900 588 www.ismonthly.com www.jordan-comms.co.uk
And, the herd mentality amongst the mass media is without doubt making things worse.
All rights reserved. No part of ISM may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording on any information storage or retrieval system without the written consent of the publisher.
Consequently we’ve decided that whilst we won’t be burying our heads in the sand, we are going to focus on trumpeting the achievements of the sector – because there’s more than enough of that to keep us busy. We won’t compromise our objectivity and we’ll report the truth as we see it – but we won’t get drawn into ’woe is me’ navel-gazing. Let’s face it, consumers have never been so hungry for information and there have never been so many emerging channels and opportunities for them to access it.
Opinions expressed in Information Services Monthly are not necessarily those of the editor, or of Jordan Communications Ltd.
Have a great month and keep up the good work. Sean Smith Editorial Director
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In Brief
NEWS: EUROPE
Downturn hits Spanish Telecom industry SPANISH telecoms regulator CMT has reported disappointing figures the first quarter of 2008. Total telecoms revenues were up 1.3 per cent, year-on-year, representing a major slowdown from previous quarters. Retail telecoms revenues grew 2.1 per cent, down on previous quarters, while wholesale telecoms revenues slipped into negative growth of 2.6 per cent. The largest retail segment, mobile, reported a small decline in revenues in the first quarter, while the second largest retail segment, fixed-line voice, reported a year-on-year decline.
French parliament looks to a mobile internet future FRANCE is pondering reserving part of the digital dividend — the spectrum that will be freed up once the analogue TV signal is switched off. In a report submitted to French Prime Minister François Fillon, a French parliamentary commission recommended that the 790 MHz–862 MHz sub-band be dedicated to electronic communication in order to boost take-up of mobile and fixed broadband services. This follows on from the UK government’s decision to auction off part of the digital dividend spectrum.
itsmy.com adds phone book Germany-based GoFresh has launched a mobile internet social phone book through the itsmy.com mobile social network. The mobile Web phone book consists of single contacts with all profile details such as phone numbers, pictures and links to favorite mobile sites. It also includes social features like direct access to community actions, messaging, sharing and voting.
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Ofcom takes mobile operators to task over content controls UK COMMUNICATIONS regulator, Ofcom, has warned mobile operators to ensure content providers clean up their act or face being cut off. The move will have implications for Information Services businesses – some of whom legitimately seek to provide content with an adult orientation, or which requires adult consent to transact. Ofcom’s warning follows recent premium rate scandals, and also research commissioned by Ofcom showing that most children wouldn’t report finding adult content on their mobile. Ofcom said operators should ensure phone users know how to block unsuitable material.
the information supplied by retailers, customer services and websites is easy to understand and accessible. This is particularly important where the default setting for content controls is off.” More young children were getting internet-enabled phones, increasing potential access to unsuitable material. Seven per cent of UK 8to 17-year-olds already access the internet via a mobile. “Mobile operators may need to consider if a binary system at 18 provides sufficient protection from inappropriate content for younger users, or whether a more granular system should be considered,” Ofcom said.
“Only 15% of adults who use a mobile and who have a child in their household are aware of age verification systems. We, therefore, recommend that mobile operators redouble their efforts to ensure that
Barrow centre wins 118 500 contract A CALL centre in Barrow, in the north west of England has won a contract to provide the international directory enquiries service for BT on the number 118 505. They have been handling 118 500 domestic inquiries since the call centre was set up in the mid 1990s. The staff’s commitment led to the call centre’s survival three years ago when BT decided to close its small exchanges and transfer work to much bigger ones. But the communications giant backtracked and said it was making an exception due to the team’s high performance. A spokesperson for Furness Enterprise (the local government
sponsored trade body), which campaigned for the centre to be saved three years ago, said: “We are delighted they have won this work and we hope it will mean more jobs in the future. “It reinforces the importance of BT’s directory enquiries service to Barrow. It fully justifies the intensive lobby that took place to persuade BT to keep the operation in Barrow three years ago.” He said as well as putting more work into the Barrow office – which also handles enquiries for Isle of Man Telecom – BT had bought the Ufindus business directory which is also based in the town, safeguarding 30 jobs.
The time for Mobile Directory Assistance has arrived!
nsumers Want Co – ity tiv ec nn Co ed Ne s er um Cons t both! Privacy Send a ComNote® and ge Wireless consumers are empowered by having immediate and direct control over the privacy status of their mobile number, by simply responding to an initial SMS message. ComNote® is a secure SMS notification technology that enables mobile subscribers to remain unpublished in directories, yet allows them to be contacted via text message without revealing their wireless phone numbers. Our software uses SMS text messaging to notify mobile consumers of a Directory Assistance request for their number, whether online or via operator. “ComNote® provides a secure, operator system-facilitated caller ID service, protecting subscriber privacy and providing a user friendly and seamless contact service.” - Jeffrey Strunk, CEO, Wireless Directory Network
Contacts:
www.wirelessdirectorynetwork.com Worldwide: Jeffrey Strunk at 001.207.939.0100 (m) or 001.207.237.3007 Europe: Enrique Martinez de Velasco at +34 609 002690
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In Brief
NEWS: EUROPE
LBS now and in the future THE Fifth International Symposium on LBS & TeleCartography is taking place in Salzburg, Austria from 26-28 November. Organised by the Mobile and Web-based Information Systems Group of Salzburg Research and the Cartography & Engineering Geodesy Research Groups of the Vienna University of Technology, the symposium seeks contributions from the fields of cartography, geoinformation, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, geodesy, and geomedia techniques. Everything from smart environments and active landmarks to location based media opportunities and 3-D mapping will be under discussion, and the symposium should provide a fascinating insight into the future possibilities – and the present realities – of this fast-evolving field.
X-Media development and Altimix join to create XIMEDIA software X-MEDIA Development, the solutions provider to the directory sector, has joined web developments specialist Altimix, to create XIMEDIA Software. XIMEDIA Software plans to offer innovative solutions for written and numerical (Web and mobile) communication, built by enrichment of the XIBUX platform (Information Management System). XIBUX enables the creation and management of a website or a group of websites in collaborative and multilingual working environment. XIBUX offers both end-
user and developer interfaces so that it can be used by a communication or a technical department. The deployment of their solution, they argue, will enable companies of all sizes and all sectors, to access the best of technology to efficiently manage their communication challenges (diffusion of editorial contents, interactions with customers, employees, suppliers, etc) X-Media, has developed and implemented software solutions for the media industry since 1992, and will become XIBUX’s first VAR for the Media sector. XIMEDIA Software is based in Marseille and Paris and has a presence in Milan. Jean-Michel Roasaz will be the President of the business and Said Djadane will take the position of Managing Director.
www.lbs2008.org
Thomson Local appoints Cross Eniro publishes interim report: January - June 2008 Eniro, the Scandinavian based search company has published its six-monthly interim report. January to June operating revenues amounted to SEK 3,054 M compared with 2007 when whole year revenues amounted to SEK 6,443 M. Net income for the period amounted to SEK 293 M and net income per share amounted to SEK 1.81 (2.66), with cash earnings per share amounting to SEK 3.17 (3.78) Eniro’s operations cover directories, directory assistance, Internet and mobile services. Eniro has operations in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Poland and has some 4,650 employees.
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THOMSON Local has announced that it has appointed Paul Cross as Product and Marketing Manager of its B2B data marketing division, Business Strata. Reporting to General Manager Raj Kakar-Clayton, Cross has been with Thomson Local for six years where he has held roles in Marketing and Product Management. Commenting on his appointment, Cross said: “I am looking forward to a new challenge and contributing towards the continued growth of Thomson Local’s direct marketing products and services. We have the market leading database and plans in place to further develop our offering to help the SME find, talk
to and win new customers. I am focussed on growing volumes and delivering greater levels of return on investment for our customers. Kakar-Clayton said: “Paul’s experience of Thomson Local’s customers’ needs will add significant value to Business Strata. With our recent partnership with Europages, a market leading database, and a determination to provide value, this is an exciting time for the company.
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In Brief
NEWS: EUROPE
Lloyd leaves 118118 SIMON Lloyd, commercial director at UK directory enquiries leader 118 118, is leaving full-time employment at the company but will still be retained on a consultancy basis. Lloyd, who joined 118 118 from Nokia last year, will not be replaced and UK marketing will now be handled by 118 118 CEO Gerry Murphy and head of marketing Catherine Boyd. Almost simultaneously, Infonxx Inc, owner of 118 118, announced the departure of European Chief Financial Officer Tyrone Davies. He is leaving the company to take the position of CFO for business information experts, the Creditsafe Group.
EU reports on rogue mobile download websites THE European Commission has published a report indicating that research into 500 websites offering downloadable mobile content, revealed that some 80 per cent breached regulations. The majority of the sites investigated by the report are not thought to have been oriented to information services, but services such as ringtones and phone wallpaper. Nevertheless, the report comes as a timely reminder to the industry, as mobile internet usage continues to see rapid growth. Unclear pricing and misleading information about what is free were the main source of complaints from consumers. In 2007, European ringtone sales stood at 691million Euros (£548m). PhonePayPlus, the regulator of services in the UK, says that there are a growing number of complaints
Millennial Media Integrates Bango Analytics into Decktrade Mobile advertising company Millennial Media, has announced that it has integrated Bango’s mobile analytics into its Decktrade marketplace platform. This move is intended to support Millennial Media’s commitment to an open market, providing Decktrade users with Bango’s mobile analytics’ service. Millennial says the move will enable Decktrade users to accurately track unique visitors responding to mobile ad campaigns, providing precise measurement and insight needed to optimise campaigns and maximise ROI.
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– more than 4,500 in the first three months of 2008 – and plans to introduce proposals to address the problems. Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango, whose company processes mobile payments, comments: “There are a few rogue mobile content vendors who have been bringing down the reputation of the industry with bad practicesthat are blatantly designed to con the consumer. The UK mobile payments standard, Payforit was created to catch these bad practices by making it much clearer what the consumer is paying for, with the option to cancel at any time. It’s good news for all us in the mobile content business that these rogue vendors are finally being investigated and hopefully will either shut down or be forced to change the way they sell their services.”
UK’s 118 118 to launch mobile directory? UK-BASED listings firm The Number 118 118 is reported to be planning a mobile phone directory, where they will supply numbers for consumers and businesses. The company has stated that it is aware that issues including invasion of privacy will be raised and that it is investigating consumer acceptance of such a service. Such additional extras could be seen as controversial in the UK, where call volumes have steadily declined since liberalisation and where the communications debacle that surrounded deregulation still irks consumers. However, declining call volumes are precisely the motivation
for many DA services to look at new revenue streams. If the proposed launch is successful, others are likely to follow where The Number leads. BT is reported to be ‘keeping a watchful brief’ on the initiative. The UK market has approximately 200 DA providers and is worth £250million, according to premium rate services regulatory body PhonePay Plus. The Number 118 118, BT’s 118 500 and Conduit’s 118 888 currently enjoy a combined market share of over 90 per cent of the market.
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NEWS: AMERICAS
Volt to sell directory interests to YPG Volt Information Sciences, announced last month that it has agreed to sell the net assets of its directory systems & services and North American publishing operations to Yellow Page Group (YPG) for a net purchase price of approximately $178million payable in cash at closing. The companies have signed an Asset Purchase Agreement, and the transaction is expected to close in September, subject to regulatory approval. The transaction includes the operations of Volt Directory Systems and Services, which provides telephone directory database management, sales and marketing services, licensing of directory production and contract management software systems and DataNational. DataNational is a publisher of independent community directories in selected Mid-Atlantic and Southeast markets under the Community Phonebook brand, but excludes the Uruguayan operations, which combined are reported as the Company’s Telephone Directory segment.
The operations to be sold reported sales of $68 million and an operating profit before allocation of corporate expenses of $17 million for last fiscal year ended October 28, 2007. The Company plans to use the proceeds, estimated to be approximately $110 million after tax and transaction related expenses to reduce debt and for other general corporate purposes. Steven Shaw, President and CEO of Volt Information Sciences, said: “The divestiture of Directory Systems & Services and DataNational will significantly strengthen our balance sheet and provide us with the capital to fund future growth opportunities in our core businesses.”
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Scientigo announces joint venture Monroe-based Scientigo Inc, a technology provider in local/mobile search and enhanced directory assistance solutions, has announced that it has entered into a strategic joint venture agreement to develop its URL, www.find.com. The joint venture, Will Find, LLC, will be owned by Scientigo and SEO Holdings, LLC and will focus on deploying the find.com domain as an easy to use, consumer friendly, premier search destination. SEO Holdings has developed a proprietary technology application, specifically, for find.com. It is currently in beta and is scheduled for a public launch at the end of August. Scientigo has remained focused on exploring strategic alternatives for maximizing the value of the domain and determined that a sale of the URL would not yield the value that could be achieved through the development of the Will Find joint venture. SEO Holdings is providing
the working capital to build out the website and will be responsible for the marketing of the site after its launch. Scientigo expects this joint venture to provide a firm foundation to support the company’s growth and ultimate future financial success. Scientigo also announced that it intends to reregister under the Securities Act of 1934 and bring its 34 Act reports current, with the goal of returning liquidity and value to its loyal shareholder base. The company says it anticipates providing shareholders with additional information about the Will Find joint venture transaction in the near future. Scientigo provides software solutions and media services to address emerging local search opportunities. The company has been focused in mobile and local search, with initial concentration in the enhanced directory assistance market.
Real-time local traffic info goes mobile LOCAL, personalised mobile content provider go2 MediaT has announced the arrival of go2 Traffic, which allows users with the ability to access real-time traffic information and alerts via their mobile phone.
to meet that demand,” said Rob Adler, CEO of Boston, MA-based go2 Media. “On-the-go access to realtime traffic information is another way to provide our users with compelling, easy and useful data.”
The service, which is only available in the US, enables drivers to make informed decisions about the fastest, easiest route to any given location, finding real-time local traffic conditions and commuter updates via NAVTEQ Traffic.com. go2 users also have easy access to NAVTEQ’s local travel essentials such as car rental locations, cheap fuel stops, garages and repair shops and so on.
“By working with go2, one of the mobile web’s premier content providers, we’re furthering our commitment to drivers to give them real-time information exactly when, where, and how they need it,” said Christopher Rothey, vice president, connected markets for NAVTEQ. “With highly localised, dynamic information, mobile marketers can make direct connections with hyper-targeted messages that are valuable to advertisers and beneficial to consumers.”
“Users want timely access to important content, and go2 Media is committed to expanding our network
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In Brief
NEWS: AMERICAS
Sun xVM VirtualBox wins OEM Agreements Sun Microsystems has announced new multi-year original equipment manufacturer agreements with Avanquest Software, Q-layer and Zenith InfoTech Ltd to expand the global reach of Sun xVM VirtualBox(TM). These companies join a growing ecosystem of partners committed to Sun xVM VirtualBox, the industry’s most popular crossplatform virtualisation software.
Omni Hotels abandons directories Omni Hotels, the luxury hotel brand has announced that it will immediately recycle its current stock of approximately 30,000 phone books and eliminate future use of phone books at all of its properties. Company PR suggests that the move is an environmental gesture. “Saying goodbye to phone books means Omni Hotels will preserve approximately 217,200 pounds of paper each year,” said Richard Maxfield, senior vice president of operations for Omni Hotels. “Our goal is to preserve more than 18,000 trees over the next decade. We feel good about the impact this initiative will have on the environment.” Omni will also begin providing complimentary local directory assistance calls.
Nuance reports 3Q loss Nuance Communications posted a loss for the fiscal third quarter that was 30 per cent wider than its yearago results. The company reported a loss of $9.9 million, or 5 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30, compared with a loss of $7.6 million, or 4 cents per share, in Q3 last year. Revenue climbed 38 per cent to $216.7 million in the latest quarter from $156.6 million a year earlier.
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Thrrum MMS Search brings mobile visual search to T-Mobile and Verizon 23half Inc, the California-based provider of wireless information services, has announced the availability of Thrrum MMS Search to T-Mobile and Verizon wireless subscribers. Thrrum MMS Search enables camera phone users to find and browse information related to their whereabouts using the MMS service integrated into their phones. Users can capture a picture of any text with their auto-focus or macro mode equipped camera phone and send the picture MMS to m@thrrum. com. Relevant search results are then sent to users’ phones. The Thrrum MMS Search service is presently in beta and is available free of charge to T-Mobile and Verizon wireless subscribers in the United States. “The Thrrum MMS Search service was introduced earlier this year for AT&T and Sprint wireless subscribers,” said K. Gopalakrishnan, CEO of 23half. “Now, T-Mobile and Verizon wireless subscribers also can point their camera phone at a book, a product label or any printed material, take a
picture and send a picture message to get relevant information right on their phone. With Thrrum, any text that you see around you becomes a hyperlink that can be ‘clicked’ upon with your camera phone.” With annual camera phones sales expected to exceed 1billion by 2010, ABI Research estimates camera functionality as the most preferred feature on mobile phones. Combined with ever increasing adoption of MMS usage, the connected camera in phones presents a new platform for innovation. Thrrum MMS Search brings together visual recognition technologies and information search in the context of camera phones. Based on technology first demonstrated by 23half in 2005 in the ‘nThrum’ technology demonstrator, Thrrum MMS Search presents a unique approach to hyperlinking the physical world with related information. The MMS Search technology is protected by an extensive suite of patents pending worldwide.
Falklands jobs ‘at risk’ CABLE & Wireless has told staff who provide the Falkland Islands 181 Directory Enquiries service that their jobs are “at risk”. Redundancies seem likely following a decision by the company to relocate the service to St Helena. Aaron Richardson, Director of Cable & Wireless South Atlantic Ltd, said he was optimistic that the development of other departments within the Falklands unit of the company could potentially mean the affected staff would be offered alternative roles elsewhere in the organisation.
“Initially, DQ will only be handled in our dedicated South Atlantic Directory Enquiries Unit (in St Helena) for nighttime calls. Once we are comfortable with our processes and procedures, and are sure that all technical elements are performing as intended, then we will move to phase two, whereby we will also cut-over all 181 traffic for the twilight shift.” From November 1, all Directory Enquiries (DQ) traffic will be handled by a 24-hour dedicated South Atlantic Directory Enquiries Unit based on St Helena. However, there will be a gradual migration of call handling over the coming 12 weeks.
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In Brief
NEWS: AMERICAS
JumpTap arrives on Madison Avenue JUMPTAP, the mobile search and advertising solutions provider, has announced its fifth global office. The opening of JumpTaps, New York office, on Madison Avenue was based around an invitation-only cocktail party at the rooftop garden of 250 FIFTH. Leading the New York office is Global Senior Vice President, Advertising Sales & Business Development, Evan Krauss and Chief Marketing Officer, Paran Johar. “JumpTap is making a significant investment in attracting top talent and growing our advertising team, evidenced by over 600 per cent growth this year alone,” said Johar. “We are seeing a continued progression in usage patterns on next generation devices and this week’s release of the iPhone 3G will continue to boost those numbers and serve as a catalyst for driving the mobile search and advertising industry forward.”
Verizon NJ to increase call charges Verizon telephone customers in New Jersey are to pay more to make local phone calls, as Verizon New Jersey has reached a deal with the state Board of Public Utilities to allow it to raise its rates for basic local telephone calling. This is Verizon NJ’s first increase since 1985. The agreement will affect nearly 1million phone lines, or about a quarter of Verizon’s lines in the state. The deal will also cut the number of free directory-assistance calls customers can make from four to two.
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Location Based Technologies receives european go-ahead for PocketFinder Location Based Technologies, the Californian family service provider of personal locator devices and services, has announced it successfully carried out the initial laboratory testing of the PocketFinder device required to receive GSM-type approval for connectivity on the European GSM wireless networks. “With initial GSM laboratory type approval we continue our commitment to bring PocketFinders to families all over the world,” said David Morse, co-president and CEO of Location Based Technologies, Inc. “We are in strategic partnership discussions with leading telecommunications companies and other industry leaders, globally, that are committed to bringing the best wireless LBS products and experiences to their customers. The PocketFinder and PetFinder are breakthrough products and services which will optimise the way families stay connected. We’re thrilled to have reached this stage of being able to begin production of our product to families around the world
and we recognise and appreciate all of our vendors who have helped us reach this stage.” Morse noted that the development team’s effort has been validated by completing initial GSM-type approval in the laboratory. “This means we can commence sales in Europe and on most other GSM wireless networks. US networks require additional certifications that are under way,” he added. The PocketFinder family of products uses advanced technology to help families stay connected. The smallest known single-board GSM/GPS device easily fits into a pocket, purse or backpack, and can be accessed via the internet, cell phone or landline to show its location in real time. In addition, the devices include several advanced features, such as allowing users to designate customisable alert areas as electronic ‘zones’ to notify them when a family member or pet leaves or enters a specified area. The devices can even track vehicle speeds to ensure family members are driving safely.
WeFi delivers mobile internet with one-touch access Delaware-based WeFi Inc., the creator of the community-based global Wi-Fi network, has announced the launch of a revolutionary new ‘one-touch internet’ feature for Windows Mobile. The service will provide users with seamless access to the best Wi-Fi connection relative to their location at the simple click of the touch-screen.
“WeFi understands that when on the move, people are looking for a service that is fast and easy,” said Zur Feldman, CEO of WeFi. “Although most cellular phones today incorporate capabilities to enable internet connectivity, people seldom enjoy these features because they are so hard to access on their device. We are proud to truly open the door to mobile internet for everyone for the first time with just one touch”.
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In Brief
NEWS: ASIA PAC
Earn while you call UAE-BASED software solutions and wireless applications specialist Javna has launched an innovative mobile advertising application which enables users to earn money while using it. MobiAid allows advertisers to reach targeted sections of the community by allowing users to join various marketing programmes according to their tastes. Javna’s CEO Mansour Mansour said: “MobiAd meets the growing needs of companies for innovative and out-of-the-box marketing techniques that ensure the achievement of the campaign goals while maintaining high levels of customer satisfaction. It was a big challenge to intelligently combine the two goals.”
Ericsson spans digital divide in Bangladesh Ericsson has launching a pilot in Bangladesh to demonstrate how to improve productivity and quality of life in the country with the use of high-speed internet services through 3G/HSPA technology. The pioneering project, called Alokito Bangladesh (Enlightened Bangladesh), will demonstrate highspeed internet access and a range of advanced services - including mobile health and mobile learning - in the region of the capital, Dhaka, running from the start of August to the end of October this year. The pilot will focus on interactive long-distance education and distance health care, highlighting the potential benefits of bringing basic services to communities that lack them today.
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Warid introduces location based services first time in Pakistan KARACHI based Warid Telecom has come first to market with its launch of Location Based Services (LBS) in Pakistan. The launch will enable Warid mobile subscribers to locate the whereabouts of their family members, friends or colleagues through a Warid connection. Similarly, the Place Finder Service locates place of interest like restaurants, hotels, banks, ATMs etc. The company claims that subscribers can utilise the location based facility just by sending an SMS and that subscribers using MMS and WAP enabled sets can also view the locations on a map. The map service is currently available for the cities of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Peshawar. Warid plans to expand this service to other cities.
Warid’s Chief Executive Officer Marwan Zawaydeh said ‘Warid Telecom is a pioneer in launching numerous services for the first time in the country. The Location Based Service is a great new tool for Pakistani users to stay in touch with their dear ones and locate a place of interest. We will continue to provide the latest technology to users that they actually need’. The Chief Commercial Officer Thomas Yeo added ‘The Location Base Service is another demonstration of how Warid is being able to harness the technology to offer our customers the convenience of locating their friends or a place of their interest. At Warid, we believe in innovating ourselves to delight our customers and we are confident that our customers will continue to enjoy the services provided by Warid.’
NTT DOCOMO to drop 2G mova service? NTT DOCOMO, the Japanese mobile giant announced today that it will stop accepting applications for its 2G mova mobile phone service nationwide on November 30. The company also announced that it will waive the normal charge of 2,100 yen (including tax) for any mova user who transfers to a FOMA™ subscription beginning August 8. Given that mova subscribers have been steadily migrating to DOCOMO’s 3G service, FOMA, the company has decided to eventually discontinue mova and concentrate on FOMA. The timing of the mova service’s
actual termination will be decided depending on market factors such as how fast mova users continue to migrate to FOMA. In addition to terminating mova service, DOCOMO will also stop offering the free battery pack by the end of November. Presently, DOCOMO offers a battery pack free of charge to members of DOCOMO Premier Club (DOCOMO’s loyalty point program) on the condition that they continue to use mova service for at least two years. Additionally, DOCOMO will stop accepting applications for its car phones by the end of November.
Zain Group, the telecoms and mobile operator has announced it has rebranded its entire African operations from Celtel to Zain. The move coincides with the linking of the world’s first borderless mobile service ‘One Network’ across two continents. Zain currently services over 50 million customers in 22 countries across the Middle East and Africa – 14 of those country operations across Africa will immediately rebrand to Zain. To mark the launch of its new identity across Africa, Zain also announced the creation of the world’s first crosscontinental borderless network, extending its ‘One Network’ service between Africa and the Middle East. The service will be available to 500 million people from the west coast of Africa to the Middle East, covering an area larger than the USA. One Network allows Zain customers’ affordable cross-border communications.
“This truly is a defining moment in the history of global telecommunications. The connecting of One Network across two continents demonstrates how under one brand, Zain is able to offer enhanced mobile telephony services. It will now be easier and more affordable to keep in touch and support cross-continent business,” commented Dr. Al Barrak. Chris Gabriel, CEO Zain in Africa said: “Our African customers will embrace the vibrant, colourful Zain identity. As one brand, we are better positioned to offer more innovative services and the best network coverage on the continent.”
According to the UCC report there were 175,568 active mobile Internet users in Uganda between January and March 2008. These users accessed the Internet through either data-enabled handsets or at fixed WiFi hotspots. Infocom launched the mobile Internet in Uganda in 2006 with hotspots in Kampala, however, the mobile Internet was only widely introduced in Uganda in June 2007 through MTN’s launch of Mobile Office.
Mapping local classified search AN INTERESTING take on the notion of local classifieds come with the launch of eMapia, a global service which aims to make the online shopping experience easier by integrating Google Maps technology which allows vendors to add their listings and link them to their specific location on a map. Users can zoom into a particular location on a Google Map and can click through from the map or the list of products to view more details about the item and the seller. Put together by the same team who created the Darrb community shipping and delivery service, eMapia is run from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates but has ambitions to expand its user base worldwide. www.emapia.com Asia ahead on fibre roll-out Asian countries continue to surpass Europe and North America in the adoption of fibre-to-the-home technology, according to a new study.
Ugandan Mobile internet usage increases The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) is set to announce increases in mobile internet usage, as the country benefits from operators investing millions of dollars into network upgrades.
In Brief
World’s first borderless mobile network connects Africa and Middle East
NEWS: ASIA PAC NEWS: WORLD
MTN Mobile Office enables subscribers to access their e-mail accounts, calendars and contacts, as well as surf the Internet, from anywhere at anytime. “There are people out there who need to maintain mobility, even when they get out of the formal office environment, and that is the market we are targeting with this service,” said Uganda Telecom’s business development manager, Farouk Kiwala. Infocom has also broadened the scope of mobile Internet offerings over the past year, expanding WiMax and introducing a new broadband offering called SpeedMax
South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan and Taiwan now occupy the top four positions in the FTTH Council Global Ranking, with Asia accounting for more than 27 million of the world’s estimated 32 million fibre-to-thehome (FTTH) connections.
Bridge Closure: Nigerian comms benefit Telephone and Internet revenues have increased in the Lagos area due to a surge in usage by customers in the 12 days partial-closure of the Third Mainland Bridge. Home-working has driven the surge with Visafone (telecoms and mobile Internet provider) reporting that minutes of use have gone up by about 13 per cent, whilst their subscriber base has gone up by about 150,000 nationwide. In the same period, uptake of mobile internet services has increased 15 per cent.
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In Brief
NEWS: ASIA PAC NEWS: WORLD
India’s OnMobile launches mobile search services India’s leading VAS player, OnMobile is preparing to launch search services on mobiles. The company already offers voice-based music search services named MSearch to its mobile subscribers. It now plans to extend this service to include general search services as well. Arvind Rao founder and CEO of OnMobile claims that its MSearch services in tie-up with Vodafone registers 1.5 million searches daily. The general search services on mobiles are expected to flourish in the country, as India has a mobile subscriber base that is many times higher than its internet subscriber base. Penetration levels of mobile internet services in India are expected to surge after the introduction of 3G services in the country.
India: second largest mobile market India’s mobile telephony is the second-largest wireless market in the world, according to a World Bank study. The mobile sector has experienced rapid growth - with 250 million wireless subscribers in the country, according to the report entitled, ‘The Role of Mobile Phones in Sustainable Rural Poverty Reduction.’ China is currently the world leader in the mobile telephony, adding around 6-7 million new subscribers per month, whereas India adds about 8-9 million. The study says that mobile telephony has helped generate GDP, created jobs and helped increase productivity, in the mobile and other sectors. The growth in mobile usage was attributed to new pricing models and concluded that if prices of multimedia functions are dropped, it could lead to an economic transformation of rural areas.
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Entertainment drives Indian/Chinese mobile internet NEW research conducted by The Nielsen Company shows that entertainment-themed websites are the most popular with mobile Internet users in the growing Indian and Chinese mobile markets. This contrasts with the more mature American and European markets, where information and news draw the most mobile browsers. Entertainment, gaming, and music websites rank among the top 5 categories visited in the countries, but do not have a place among the top US and Europe rankings. Whilst users across the United States and Europe see their devices as a resource for information services, the findings suggest that mobile Internet
users in China and India are more reliant on mobile phones to provide them with entertainment content, The data comes from the Nielsen’s Mobile Media Marketplace report which measures mobile behavior in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries to provide a consistent global view of mobile market development and the growth of mobile media consumption. The research also shows that mobile internet usage continues to gain traction worldwide. More than 11 per cent of Russian mobile users have accessed the Internet on their mobile device, trailing only the US, UK and Italy. China’s mobile internet penetration is on par with Germany’s at 6.8 per cent.
North Korea to provide internet service from 2009? North Korea seems set to launch an internet service from next year. Kim Sang-myung, a group of former North Korean professor, who defected in 2004 said, “According to the Internet Access Roadmap it launched in 2002, North Korea will begin providing Internet service for special agencies and authorised individuals as early as next year.” An expert on North Korea’s information technology and a professor of computer engineering at North Korea’s Communist University, Kim is currently a professor at Kyonggi University and a fellow at the Institute of North Korea Studies. Implementation of the roadmap, has been sought by several key
North Korean institutions, including the Workers’ Party, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the Ministry of Electronic Industry, and the North Korea Academy of Sciences. North Korea will build an infrastructure for a high-speed internet by creating a fibre-optical backbone between Pyongyang and Hamhung and extending them to Chongjin and Shinuiju. North Korea has recently succeeded in consolidating security solutions for the prevention of online leaks of data to foreign countries and of online intrusions, and inenhancing service stability.
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Vox Pop: from vox po·pu·li Pronunciation: [voks pop-yuh-lahy] Noun: Voice of the people; popular opinion. Popular opinion or sentiment. Origin: < Latin vōx populī : vōx, voice + populī,genitive of populus, people. >
Few product launches have been as widely anticipated as the Apple 3G iPhone. The company sold around half-a-million devices in the first weekend in the US alone, and with mobile internet usage seeing a ten-fold increase amongst iPhone users, could the launch prove revolutionary for information services?
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Will the newly launched 3G iPhone see the mobile internet ‘come of age’? “I’m not sure about 3G iPhone. Sometimes I get the feeling that technology gets the better of companies who want to keep pushing the boundaries in finding the next thing to market to give their products the edge. Unfortunately I think they leave the bulk of customers behind. What Apple have been incredible at is delivering one touch services to the consumer. Even standard 3G mobiles didn’t make the breakthrough that we all thought would happen. How many people still just use their phones to text and call people?”
Do you think being ‘geo-tagged’ will be a great opportunity for social networking and letting your friends know where you are, or does it present a threat to privacy and raise questions about civil liberties? Name:
Nicola Byrne
Work:
MD of 11890
Home town & country:
Dublin, Ireland
Favourite music:
Prince
Favourite Manchester Utd sports team: Mood:
Upbeat, positive, creative and very happy
“I know that personally I’m not happy with the idea that people would know where I am all the time. I think it does impinge on my privacy and I’d be even more unhappy knowing that I gave control of that information to a telephone provider – who can then sell me on to advertisers as soon as I set foot out the door. This is a direct marketer’s dream and a consumer’s biggest nightmare.”
As for the new iPhone, will you be getting one? “I have an 8gb iPhone and it is wonderful – on the basis that I initiate the searches and not vice versa.”
Will the newly launched 3G iPhone see the mobile internet ‘come of age’? “We are in still in the ‘early adopters’ stage for mobile Internet. Recent research conducted by The Pierz Group shows that just over 45 per cent of Americans can access the Internet with their mobile phone, but only 7 per cent reported having done so within the past month. Given the price of handsets and service plans, it will be some time before any type of critical mass is established. Europeans are more comfortable with mobile data apps. Once iPhones are more widely available in Europe, there will be a significant upturn in mobile data usage. Compelling applications optimised for a small screen will be the key to driving usage beyond the initial iPhones hype.”
Do you think being ‘geo-tagged’ will be a great opportunity for social networking and letting your friends know where you are, or does it present a threat to privacy and raise questions about civil liberties? Name:
Kathleen Pierz
Work:
Managing Partner of The Pierz Group
Home town & country:
Michigan, USA
Favourite music:
Folk and latin music
Favourite The St Mary’s Eaglets sports team: Mood:
Massive home improvement mode for the summer
“Most new technologies take some time to get right. Mistakes in the use, or misuse, of the technology will be made by consumers, service providers and, no doubt, by those in authority too. To instantly pinpoint an individual is unprecedented in human history – that’s great for tracking down friends, or even your teenage children, but not everyone wants their location to be broadcast. Over time, consumers will settle for trade-offs in privacy versus convenience.”
As for the new iPhone, will you be getting one? “I’m tempted, but I’m fairly addicted to my BlackBerry. Typing quickly and managing email whilst on the go is a huge benefit. It would be hard to give up that capability in favour of the very cool iPhone interface. My youngest teenager, however, said she expects her next handset to be an iPhone. Given that I pay her mobile bill, I’d say she shouldn’t get her hopes up any time soon.”
Will the newly launched 3G iPhone see the mobile internet ‘come of age’? “Definitely. Over 80 per cent of all iPhone owners already access the mobile internet – five times more than the average mobile consumer. A sophisticated device, combined with faster networks, bundled services, and reduced prices for data packages will help the mobile internet to come of age – with the iPhone becoming the most popular device among mobile internet users.”
Do you think being ‘geo-tagged’ will be a great opportunity for social networking and letting your friends know where you are, or does it present a threat to privacy and raise questions about civil liberties? “Privacy is a big concern when it comes to geo-tagging. The good thing about geo-tags is that you only need to be as specific as you feel comfortable with. As with many other privacy issues on the internet, geo-tagging can be managed if the user takes the time to think about what he does and doesn’t feel comfortable with. If he uses a service where he’s able to geo-tag content, he should be able to control who knows his location and what they are allowed to do with that information.”
Name:
Marc Steffen
Work:
Marketing and sales Manager of kooaba
Home town & country:
Zurich, Switzerland
Favourite music:
Alternative rock
As for the new iPhone, will you be getting one?
Mood:
Excited that kooaba’s visual search client for the iPhone will be in the iTunes App Store soon.
“Being able to easily browse the mobile web at the best possible speeds, enjoy all my digital content like music, TV shows, and movies on a widescreen display and find locations and get directions by GPS with one device – it’s hard not to get one.”
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MOBILE INTERNET
Show me the “Service management is all about managing internet infrastructures and browsing infrastructures. Messaging products covers things like MMS messaging to email platforms and voice mail messaging platforms. Location systems focus on the provision of location data between the network and the application vendors, so that new and innovative services can be developed. We can provide infrastructures that can scale to the biggest deployment an operator might require.”
Mobile internet pioneer Openwave is a specialist in software application development and infrastructure, but will the company be able to fully monetise the mobile internet? Ed Moore, (pictured) head of Openwave product development in Europe, talks to ISM’s Liam Cowling. A former CTO for the Carphone Warehouse Group, Ed Moore has been involved with the mobile internet since its inception. He has been with Openwave for about a year-and-a-half, since they acquired his start-up company, Wider Web, which focussed on making content suitable for mobile browsing. He sees his role at Openwave in terms of a career which has gone full circle. “I’m with Openwave who are thought of the originators of the mobile internet, who designed the first technologies and really pushed the proposition through to the market.” So what does he see as the Openwave vision? “We’ve recently divested ourselves of our client business so the three main areas are messaging systems, service management products and our location suite. Basically we’re suppliers of technology and services to mobile and broadband operators.
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Given the almost daily reports of growth in mobile internet usage across most demographic groups and in most territories, consumer demand is clearly driving this burgeoning market. Openwave have found over the last year that demand is increasingly accelerating, agrees Moore, and their customers are expecting yet more growth. “With my direct experience in the service management arm, we look at scalability around internet access and browsing access – and some of the increase in capacity plans that we get from our mobile operator customers are quite staggering, to be honest,” says Moore. “We work in real time – and where our gateways are deployed, either every transaction or almost every transaction is coming through those gateways – so as soon as there is an increase in usage it’s very apparent from our platform’s performance. “As an example, without naming the customers, we rate our systems based on the number of transactions per second they can cope with. We’ve got operators who have been running historically at 300 transactions per second who have suddenly gone to 1000 transactions per second. And we’ve got systems which have been close to 1000 transactions per second where the operators are designing 10,000 transactions per second platforms now. And this isn’t us trying to promote something we can do, this is operators coming to us and saying, based on our packages and our perceived projections, this is where the gateways are going to go to.”
Surely, this exponential growth in demand will raise questions in terms of platform performance – especially when you consider that first generation iPhone users had a typically increased mobile internet usage of a factor of 10. Now that the 3G iPhone and the competitor ‘son of’ iPhone devices are out there in the marketplace, in terms of their platform, do Openwave have inbuilt redundancy or a contingency to handle this level of growth? Moore remains relaxed about the suggestion. “When I was talking about 10,000 transactions, it’s more of an illustration of growth – with businesses wanting to get to 10,000 from the 1000 mark” he says, not unduly concerned. “Our biggest platform now is at 150,000 transactions per second, so Openwave has scalability and redundancy covered. That’s why we’re trusted with big deployments. The current rate of growth is surprising people and happily keeping us busy at the moment.” As far as information service providers are concerned, the demand is out there and the platforms can handle the traffic – but how are you going to make money? Openwave’s proposition is about making the monetisation of the mobile internet a quick and easy reality for its customers. It’s a refreshing change to hear a technology business that starts from the question of addressing demand, as so many businesses obsess about what they can do, rather than what consumers actually want or require. Does Moore agree that the first and most obvious way to address demand – and give consumers what they want – is the personalisation of services? “We obviously do a lot of work on generic platforms and have technology enablers, but a lot of our focus is around personalisation and profile engines which are tied into our advertising platforms,” replies Moore. “We are trying to tie content and advertising directly to
MOBILE INTERNET
money
perceived and new personal preferences and wants. Some of our latest products – like rich mail – are all about allowing users to set up their experience to deliver a personal experience that fits into their lives. It’s not about trying to tell people what they want, but giving them the tools by which they can adjust their own experiences accordingly.” “One of the things we’re doing in our open internet suite is allowing a lot of real time preference changing. Little things like speeding up browsing by allowing the consumer to take all the images off in the browsing experience. Someone else might want a rich experience, so they opt for all the styling and images. What we’re doing is introducing that level of flexibility.” For those in the information services sector, going beyond that basic level of personalisation and bundling it up it with services that are location based and location specific, starts to present a very exciting proposition indeed. Does Moore think that we will see this sort of synergy any time soon? “Absolutely. In our service management business, we’re aiming to deliver smarter mobile services. So there’s a lot of new work in R&D looking at how we can add intelligent browsing, in order
to introduce new services or improve the ones which are currently available. Location would be one element of that.” The old fashioned Telco view of the world, where if you wanted a telephone number, they’d say ‘well we have the data base, he needs the number, so he can call directory assistance and we can give him the number’ is an inherently short-sighted position. It overlooks the fact that directory assistance is actually a marketing play – because a significant number of requests for numbers are actually requests for business numbers and there’s an opportunity to communicate with the consumer at a point where they actually want to make a transaction. The ancien regime of information services acknowledges this, but nevertheless, generally expects consumers to proactively find the information they require at any given time. Clearly, there are lots of dynamics in old school services which aren’t thoroughly exploited. However, if we move forward, is it unreasonable to think that we’d move to a world where instead of having to proactively search for the information, that information which is personalised and pertinent finds the consumer?
This is the vast opportunity that is presented by location based services. Consumers could then set preferences on a mobile internet device (MID), and be tipped off if they were in the vicinity of something of specific interest to them. Moore envisages all this and more. “That type of integration of information and prognosis is something we’re actively working on, not in release products but it is in engineering work,” he says. “We will start to see some stuff being demonstrated by the turn of the year. By the middle of next year, I’d say we’ll have some very interesting products and ideas hitting the market.” Moore is also excited by the ongoing converged communications agenda, citing smart call products as one area that Openwave are promoting heavily at the moment. He sees such services as providing a liberating user experience. “People are jumping from one channel to the next. Even back in the old days of Carphone Warehouse, I could see people researching on the internet, visiting a shop to try something then coming back to the internet to purchase. And convergence is doing similar types of things – we’re just making it happen more seamlessly.”
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MOBILE INTERNET However, smart calls are just one of a number of key industry trends that Moore sees as emerging at the moment – particularly around the mobile internet and the way he sees that leading into information services. He continually uses the phrase ‘intelligence’ to describe what he sees as more responsive and personalised services that are beginning to emerge. “That’s the bit that we’re working on and you’ll see more of it – intelligence. There’s very little intelligence applied at the moment, but the next phase of activity will mean that we can bring to people more intelligent and more personalised services. In terms of information services, I expect a whole raft of new and interesting applications to appear.” Some interesting questions are raised by the developments that Moore alludes to. For example, do people consume information differently when they browse on the mobile web? Typically, with desktop browsing, people have a greater opportunity to be circumspect – as browsing is quite context oriented – so your desktop browsing is usually at home or at work. Though you might look at a sports, news or social networking site on a desktop browser, the very fact that you are mobile will determine what sort of information you are looking for. This is why at ISM we see the mobile internet as an information services play – if you find yourself in an unfamiliar city at short notice, you might find yourself having to make hotel and restaurant reservations, or looking for cinema or theatre tickets.
over the last two years either start to climb or appear from nowhere until they were dotted around the top ten. So you get things like Google, Yahoo and social networking sites, plus some of the main news sites. “That’s been the interesting thing. What’s been driving people’s level of access is the fact that with enhanced devices, plus with technology such as ours around, you can pretty much do from your phone what you could previously only do from your PC.”
“If you look at the top ten sites being accessed at the moment on the mobile internet, social networking sites feature heavily and we’ve literally watched them
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“I think we’ll see an increase on current levels of mobile browsing between 10 and 100 per cent,” he decides. “Most operators still have only a fraction of their customers who do any browsing from their mobile phones. Figures of 20-25 per cent of mobile customers are still seen as really good in the industry. Devices will be on average three times
Moore sees this trend continuing as we progress over the next couple of years. Openwave are looking to provide the intelligence to enable browsing behaviour to get more specialised and personalised – and that all becomes more likely when you start to tie in factors like location. A straw poll around the ISM office, shows that we fit the pattern. Our mobile browsing behaviour has significantly increased over the last 12 months. However, we all agree that the user experience isn’t fantastic – it’s a bit clunky, the screens on mobile phones aren’t that big, and so on. However, if you have a play with a 3G iPhone (and I’m sure this applies to other next generation devices), download speeds are pretty good, whereas on my old Nokia E65 it’s often like going back to the dial-up age in terms of time spent loading an internet page. Moore agrees that this is an area that needs to develop, but he’s convinced it will be only a matter of time.
Moore is broadly in agreement, although he sees the mobile internet developing with differences in usage emerging. “What I’ve seen over the last 18 months or so is the behaviour of people switching from their pc browsing to mobile browsing. People used to use their mobile browser occasionally to do something specific and one of the trends we’re seeing – and what’s been a driver for the increases in usage – is that the stuff people can do on their PC, they can pretty much do on their mobiles now.”
Moore is very confident that in the coming year or two we will see spectacular progress, but how does he imagine things will look in five years? And beyond?
“Slow download speeds were what you expected with the dial-up internet, so you’d build it into your routine. So you literally did press the button, go and do something else. Now you just expect it to be there all the time. We’re aiming for 10-30 second download times depending on the handset and network you’re on. So that’s not too dissimilar to what you get on a PC.”
faster than they currently are – but what you’ll also see is vast improvement around navigation and intelligent use of the data and personalisation coming to the fore. It’s still very early days for that type of activity. Directory services that find what you want will also be intuitive and find things that are similar to what you asked for too.” This is potentially a very encouraging development, because ‘organic’ search, using published directories allows for this level of cross fertilization – which is much less likely with search engines. The problem with services like Google is that you enter a key word and you go straight to the thing you’re interested in without looking around. “Precisely,” Moore agrees. “When I flick through Yellow Pages I might be looking for a plumber but I might get to pizza before that and think well, I’ll order one whilst I’m waiting for the plumber. You don’t get that with a lot of electronic stuff, which is why I’m very interested in the whole area around directories and strange links between stuff you wouldn’t necessarily expect.” One online model that could be replicated in an information services context is the Amazon ‘people who bought what you’re buying also bought this’ button. Similarly, if such a model was allied with location based services,
MOBILE INTERNET a genuinely exciting information service would emerge. An embryonic version of this exists in the Telmap Navigator solution that we’ve been trialling in the ISM office. A new application for BlackBerry devices, the Telmap Navigator is essentially an advanced sat nav, but besides doing the obvious stuff it also points out places of interest, speed cameras etc. You can also ask it to point out specific businesses or types of business. It’s not difficult to perceive that this kind of application, with a few more layers of intelligence, could allow you to set preferences in such a way that it delivers personalised and relevant information that is also location specific without having to request it – allowing you to find that Lebanese restaurant or jazz club that you never knew was just round the corner. This is the kind of future that Moore believes is achievable. Indeed, he feels it is within touching distance.
“If I’m in London, and I’m not pressed for time, I tend to walk between different meetings,” Moore tells me. “So you end up walking several miles and you roughly know where you’re going and you chance upon things. You can imagine being told things of interest that happened here as you go through an area. I found a building where Lenin stayed which is round the back of Islington – it would have been great if my phone could have told me. I could have been one street away and never have noticed. Or if I liked sports trivia, Sir Matt Busby (the much revered coach of Manchester United from the1960s) lived in this house for two years.” “There is all sorts of interesting and exciting information based on location. I think we’ll see much more of that – and the richer the data sources are and the more flexible the interfaces are, the more personalisation and the more effective it will become.”
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MMA releases Global Code of Conduct With the information services sector looking increasingly to mobility and with ad-generated revenue high on the agenda, the Mobile Marketing Associationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Global Code of Conduct will have implications for years to come. Here ISM outlines what the code means for you.
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The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), which represents 650 member companies worldwide, has released its Global Code of Conduct, designed to address the effective and responsible use of the mobile channel worldwide. The MMA Global Code of Conduct is intended to provide guidelines that all mobile marketeers should consider and build their mobile marketing initiatives around, or as they put it, “guide companies within the mobile ecosystem so that they can effectively, and responsibly, leverage the mobile channel for marketing purposes, whilst always protecting the consumer experience”. Produced by the MMA’s Privacy Committee, the Global Code of Conduct updates the 2007 revision and aligns the code with generally accepted global privacy principles. It has five categories: Notice: The fundamental principle of the MMA Privacy Code of Conduct, informing users of the marketers’ identity or products and services offered and the key terms and conditions that govern an interaction between the marketer and the user’s mobile device. Choice & Consent: Respecting the right of the user to control which mobile messages they receive by obtaining consent (opt-in) and implementing a simple termination (opt-out) process.
Customisation & Constraint: Ensuring that collected user information is used to tailor communication to the interests of the recipient and is handled responsibly, sensitively and in compliance with applicable law. Mobile messages should be limited to those requested by the user and provide value such as product and service enhancements, contests, requested information, entertainment or discounts. Security: The implementation of reasonable technical, administrative and physical procedures to protect user information from unauthorised use, alteration, disclosure, distribution, or access. Enforcement & Accountability: The MMA expects its members to comply with the MMA Privacy Code of Conduct and has incorporated the code into applicable MMA guidelines, including the US Consumer Best Practice Guidelines. Until the code can be enforced effectively by a third party enforcement organisation, mobile marketeers are expected to use evaluations of their practices to certify compliance with the code. The MMA is a global non-profit trade association established to lead the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. The MMA’s objective is to be an action-oriented organisation that aims to clear
“The MMA believes that strong consumer privacy standards are essential to the success of mobile marketing by protecting mobile users from unwanted communications on their mobile devices. It is only through industry support of strong privacy guidelines that the power of mobile marketing can reach its full potential,” said Russell Buckley, MMA Global Board Chairman and Managing Director, Europe for AdMob.
obstacles to market development, establish mobile media guidelines and best practices for sustainable growth, and evangelise the use of the mobile channel. They have more than 650 member companies, representing over 40 countries around the globe, including all members of the mobile media ecosystem. The Mobile Marketing Association is headquartered in the United States and in 2007 it formed the North America, Europe Middle East & Africa, Latin American and Asia Pacific branches. The MMA is now also taking public consultation on guidelines for mobile advertising. The public can comment via the MMA website until 5pm GMT on September 5th, 2008 when the document will be finalised and re-released in early October. “In order for the mobile marketing industry to grow, guidelines that ensure ease of entry for brands and agencies and consistency of experience globally are vital,” said Laura Marriott, MMA President. “The MMA feels that it is important to open its Mobile Advertising Guidelines for public comment to ensure their acceptance across the wireless and advertising industries and to further the causes of industry standardisation, best practice and positive consumer experience.” www.mmaglobal.com/uk
“It is the heart and soul of the MMA to ensure a positive, consistent consumer experience, encouraging marketers to get the consumer interaction right first time round so that mobile interactions from brands are not viewed negatively,” said MMA President Laura Marriott. “The MMA Global Code of Conduct creates clear and consistent global guidelines for the careful treatment of each and every consumer interaction to help build a sustainable industry for mobile marketing.”
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With a new man at the top table -
Who said there is no such thing as a free lunch? Having just switched roles from CTO to Chief Executive, Jingle Networks founder Scott Kliger (pictured) talks to ISM’s Liam Cowling. When somebody tells you their ambition is to create the next Google, you’d generally take it with a pinch of salt, but Scott Kliger doesn’t sound like a man who’s joking. “Like any good entrepreneur, I looked at what makes Google successful and really there are three things. They give high quality search results to consumers for free, they allow advertisers to target consumers based specifically on what it is they’re looking for, and advertisers only pay for success. Success in the Google model is defined as a click or a visit to the advertisers website which has commonly become known as pay-perclick advertising.” “I looked at that and thought if that model moved to another medium it could be very, very successful and I very quickly focused on the telephone as a great medium for being able to do that.” The application of this idea has seen Jingle Networks grow since September 2005 into a free DA service with monthly call volumes in the order of 20million. Kliger’s career started at IBM in the late 80s. Stints followed at Word Perfect and
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Lotus before Kliger started Narrative Communications. Narrative was at the forefront of the internet boom and formed a company called Enliven which was the first rich media company to use media advertising products on the internet – consequently, Kliger is often considered the father of rich media advertising. A couple of acquisitions later and Kliger was running advertising technology for Excite At Home, a business that he concedes became “quite a train wreck and I got to experience the full ride!”
as an advertising medium for local businesses is that such businesses are faced with the requirement of having to build and maintain a website and understanding how to manage a payper-click campaign. This inspired Kliger to consider the Directory Assistance market. “The 411 market in the US is a huge industry but consumers had to pay for it. I think it makes no sense that a consumer who wants to transact business with someone has to pay $1.50 or more to be able to find the phone number of the business they want. Clearly businesses are willing to pay and should pay in order to attract their consumer – that’s the way it works in every other medium.” The company was launched in September 2005 and Kliger describes it as “a rocket ship ride ever since”.
Following September 11th and the bursting of the internet bubble, Kliger saw the economic climate of the time, and says he quickly learned that he liked to start and run companies more than invest in them. After a couple of years he came to his moment of epiphany and decided he was on mission to build the next Google. The limitation of Google
“From the moment we announced the service and put the phone number out there in September of 2005, the trajectory has been upward and to the right. And, the most amazing thing about it is we’ve done all that with basically a zero dollar spend on consumer marketing.” Despite the limited spend on marketing and public relations, Jingle’s free411 service has enjoyed significant visibility in the States. Kliger puts this down to the fact that journalists like to write about
anything that’s damaging to telecoms businesses. This, he feels, taps into the consumer zeitgeist, because so many people think they’ve been over-charged or mis-sold by telcos. Consequently, free411 has seen significant coverage in publications such as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. This fuelled a flurry of conversations on consumer message boards and blogs which translated into free411 frequently receiving media hits across multiple channels like TV and radio.
an audio that Kliger calls the ‘switch pitch’ – trying to capture the customer at the point of connection. Jingle gets paid in such cases for successful connection on a pay per call basis. They offer to text message every phone number to the customer and use this opportunity to include a text ad in each SMS. And of course, in their yellow pages category search service, much like the internet, advertisers can pay in order to be at the top of the list. A combination of these models now yields average revenues somewhere in the range of about 7 cents per call.
However, Kliger concedes that the biggest media coup and certainly In addition, the service now has close to 130,000 advertisers the single biggest catalyst to growth FIVE YEAR GROWTH IN TELEPHONE NUMBER LOOKUPSin the system and that’s comprised of about 500 major happened in March 2006 when Tyra 10% Other national and regional advertisers that Banks decided to tell her audience on 71% Search Engines Jingle Network’s direct sales force has her daytime talk show that her friends IYP 46% signed up. And, those include some of had told her to call 1800free411 rather the most recognisable brand names 139% Free DA than pay $1.50 to find a phone number. in the world including the likes of -18% Fixed Line DA McDonalds and Wal-Mart, as well as “Literally over night we transcended 0% Wireless DA thousands of local businesses in literally just being an internet type email and every yellow page category, whether its -17% WP blog phenomenon to being mainstream car insurance, car repair, travel agencies and consumer focused. From thenYPDAon -17% or beauty salons. things have grown to the point where It allJingle sounds Source: Networks impressive, but cutting we now receive about 20million phone to the chase, advertisers are looking calls per month, we captured by our for ‘more bang for their buck’, that is, account 5-6 per cent of the US directory a return on investment. Indeed, if an assistance marketplace and probably advertiser has spent a big chunk of most impressively, we’ve managed to their budget working on their brand attract competition from all of the largest and building awareness, it’s reasonable and most sophisticated players in both to assume that people calling directory assistance are more likely to make a FIVE YEAR GROWTH IN TELEPHONE NUMBER LOOKUPS FREE 411 CALLERS ARE YOUNGER request for them – as a result, the ‘switch pitch’ surely undermines their hard work in favour of a less well known brand. I put this to Kliger, but he’s unfazed. 10%
Other
IYP
Wireless DA
139% -18%
-17%
YPDA
-17%
21.6%
All
22.0%
35 to 44
Free 411 Callers
14.7%
“It really depends on the advertiser and their campaign goal. For instance, on the sponsorship side either McDonalds or General Electric – they don’t have Jingle Networks any interest inSource: driving phone calls to their business – they’re big brand advertisers that have a message that they want to get it out there that’s consistent with what they’re marketing in other mediums. Typical measures for those guys are the brand metrics of brand awareness, brand retention and brand favourability. We’ve done some extensive surveys in branding for some of these guys which shows that as a medium, advertising on the telephone – in particular on free411 – yields higher results than other media they’ve tested. 22.7%
25 to 34
0%
WP
21.9%
45 to 54
46%
Free DA Fixed Line DA
24.7%
55+
71%
Search Engines
18 to 24
39.2%
8.6%
13.7%
Source: Jingle Networks
the technology and telecommunications industry and some of the largest corporations in the world. Microsoft, Google, AT&T and Verizon – all have free offerings.” This is all impressive stuff but the question remains how does Jingle Networks monetise the business, especially as previous Chief Executive Officer George Garrick was once quoted as saying that the business loses 5 cents on every call that it processes? Kliger points to several different ways that free411 brings in revenue. Firstly, there’s a 10-12 second ad that plays at the front of a call. The second thing Jingle Networks does is play an ad targeted at the consumer’s specific request, so if a caller asks for Budget car rental, Avis (Jingle Network’s national sponsor in the car rental category) play
“And really it makes sense intuitively when you think about it, because unlike anything else that’s out there – unlike friends, television, radio and even unlike the internet, there’s no other place where you can literally whisper directly into the consumers ear, and have a one to one conversation with them at a time when you know they’re attentive.”
So from a brand advertising perspective free411 works, so what about direct response advertisers? Here Kliger is typically bullish: “For the direct response advertisers whether they’re looking to further their communication with the customer by engaging them to send a text message or looking for a direct phone call from them the results are very, very good. They range, depending on the advertiser and the offer, from the 1.5 per cent response, to as high as 6 or 7 per cent. And lastly, with a truly targeted switch FREE 411 CALLERS ARE YOUNGER 24.7%
55+
21.9%
45 to 54
21.6%
Free 411 Callers
14.7% 22.7%
25 to 34
18 to 24
All
22.0%
35 to 44
39.2% 8.6% 13.7%
Source: Jingle Networks
pitch, when a caller requests a business in a particular category, and we have a direct competitor with an offer in that category – and it’s strictly about connecting the call or getting a lead, we see response rates anywhere from 2 per cent on the low end, to 70 per cent on the high end. The conversion rate is not only tied to the specifics of the offer that’s being made, but also what the consumers looking for and how tightly they have an affinity with a particular brand or product. “So if they’re calling in either a category search or asking for a locksmith or tow truck, they really don’t care who the provider is they just want the service and those are where we achieve conversion rates in the 50 per cent range. In instances where callers might have an affinity – and car rentals is a great example where people will typically say use Avis or Budget – but they get a clear agreed offer for 50 per cent off, or a free weekend day, then we easily achieve conversion rates in the 20-30 per cent range for those types of promotions.” In addition, regarding the companies engaged in building a brand and generating awareness, Jingle Networks offers a protection from having a competitor advertise against them and their specific phone number. “Wal-Mart’s a great example here, they advertise on our service in terms of upfront sponsorship ads and in particular to target areas where they’re opening new stores. So their sponsorship ad would say: ‘did you know there’s a new
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Wal-Mart coming to your area?’ But at the same time Wal-Mart’s phone number is one of the most single requested phone numbers in DA and they’re very cognisant of not wanting one of their competitors like Kmart or Target purchasing a switch pitch ad, so when Wal-Mart’s number is requested we play ads promoting their products or services like photo development or the pharmacy.” With such a focus on DA as an advertising medium, you could be forgiven for assuming that other questions that perplex DA providers would be lower down Kliger’s agenda, but he seems happy to talk about rates of accuracy and quality of service. Jingle Networks has ‘extensive internal testing and monitoring goals’, additionally they engage third party companies, such as the Paisley Group to randomly test the free411 service and to benchmark them against their competitors in both the free space and paid DA space.
Kliger responds intriguingly: “The in-call advertising model is one we’re watching very closely. I said at the beginning the model for this was Google – it’s a very successful model to follow and we’re not looking to reinvent the wheel we’re just looking to succeed in the space we’ve pioneered.” Kliger says his vision from the time they started the company was to build and follow the success of Overture or Yahoo search marketing. Their model dates back to 1997 when they launched Go2.com which was in effect, the first pay-per-click internet site search engine. Once they won a consumer audience, they then sold to advertisers and enticed them to the service. And, once they had a large base of advertisers in addition to having their own consumer-facing brand, they then distributed to advertisers through an ad network model.
Kliger adds: “Now, seven weeks after the campaign they’re still seeing an increased growth rate against their base line in each of those markets. This confirms what we’ve always been aware of – friends tell friends to stop wasting money on finding phone numbers. So in terms of market potential we think we’ve only just scratched the surface.” Nevertheless, we suggest that there are still opportunities for Jingle Networks to broaden their offering – something along the lines of the VoodooVox model. We’re interested to hear Kliger’s reaction to the concept of playing ads to people whilst they’re in a call queue for a call centre.
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“International is very interesting for us on a couple of different fronts. Certainly in terms of the free411 business itself – because of the way that the North American dialling pattern works, the next logical markets would be Canada and Mexico – and certainly when you contemplate either of those you have to contemplate foreign language support because of French/Canadian and also Spanish. Also the Spanish speaking directory assistance market place in the US alone is an extremely large and a very interesting market too. “Again, if we look across the pond, at the European opportunity, it would be much more a technology infrastructure play and our ability to take our ad management, ad targeting and campaign delivery system and partner with companies that are interested in delivering truly ad supported solutions in those markets. It’s on our road map but not something we’re making any announcements on at this point.”
So with the success of their proposition and the continued growth that the service enjoys, what is the target for the US? Surely, there’s a limit to the US market share that they can win – and if that’s the case will Jingle Networks be launching new propositions to broaden their offering? Kliger points out that every quarter Jingle Networks fields a survey where they measure awareness of DA and use of their service as well as all the competitive services. Awareness across the US of any alternative pay 411 is less than 30 per cent of the population. Meanwhile Jingle Networks has just completed a five-week advertising campaign – their first media based consumer marketing promotion. They focused on ten markets in the US, using radio as the medium to address their audience. Kliger says that they saw an immediate growth of volumes in each of those markets.
Networks is if they replicate the free 411 model elsewhere. Currently however, their marketing is largely B2C and aimed at driving volumes in the core business. Would they consider a B2B approach, where they could go into new markets directly or by licensing their technology platform to players in alternative markets or territories? It’s a possibility that Kliger enthuses about.
Kliger sees Jingle following a similar path – they launched free411 in order to attract consumers. Then due to their volume of consumers, they have sufficient leverage to get through the doors of the likes of McDonalds and Wal-Mart. “We have therefore been able to aggregate a large base of both national and local advertisers using all of this audio content or help them create the content as the case may be, in order to serve ads onto free411. “The next logical step for us, given our advertisers have an insatiable demand for awareness or new business, is to distribute those same kinds of ads where there are consumers and where the medium will play on the telephone or other audio channels. Now primarily the first and best bet for us is in the 411 space, but beyond that, to the extent that there is demand we would absolutely take our technology platform and extend our relationship with advertisers and distribute them everywhere.” Besides looking at new types of advertising propositions, one obvious area of potential growth for Jingle
Clearly though Jingle is a market savvy business and if the demand emerged, you get the distinct impression that they’d move quickly. Kliger isn’t fazed for example by the notion that cultural factors may help Jingle’s propositions work well in the States, whereas there are certain European markets where such an overtly commercialised DA service might not be embraced quite so readily.
“I think the principle absolutely applies everywhere, which is that businesses should pay, and are willing to pay, in order to find consumers and get consumers to connect with them. And the notion, even in the deregulated markets that exists throughout Europe now, that consumers have to pay in order to get information about a business
they want to transact with, just makes no sense at all. Frankly, its only a matter of time before that model is spun on it’s head and everybody in the industry sees that. If not this year, certainly next year, I think you will see free ad-supported information services on the phone beginning to take hold in Europe. A lot of people have waited to see if we could make money at it and now that we’ve demonstrated that, we’ll probably see a whole new set of market entrants.” Beyond the future scope for Jingle Networks specifically, Kliger is upbeat about the future evolution of information services generally. “What we started in 2005 could have happened, from a technology perspective, probably 10 years ago and for a while in the late 90s there was a race toward the whole notion of voice portals. And Tellme, now part of Microsoft, helped pioneer some of that effort. Certainly all the major search properties dabbled in telephony and none of them were really able to gain traction in terms of mainstream consumers. On the other side services like In Phone which Metro One launched as a premium concierge-type service on a fee base, investing a significant amount of money trying to make that work and that didn’t get any success either. “I think when you look at the reasons for those failures, high telecommunications costs existed at that point – and they made an ad-supported model prohibitive. That’s now gone away, with the advent of voice over IP and SIP, the incremental cost of delivering a telecom minute is close to zero. And so now the telephone starts to look a lot more like the internet and the internet bandwidth space which is absolutely key to making ad-supported models work. So, I’d strongly encourage anyone that wanted to get involved in this space to come and talk to us about the market – we could get you up and running and evaluate a potential partnership.” Perhaps there is such a thing as a free lunch after all.
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WORKFORCE
Keeping employees engaged Despite the onward march of technology, automation and innovation are yet to oust the human element from information services. The way your people deliver the service to your customers could be the key to retention and even survival. ISM asked two industry experts how to keep DA agents happy and motivated.
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WORKFORCE
Set achievable targets “No one single element is likely to switch people off a motivation programme more comprehensively than a seemingly impossible target. This is particularly important when addressing low achievers.
Don’t forget the poor performer
“Targets must be realistic and fair and the best way of setting objectives or targets is often to ask individuals to set their own. This means that commitment to achieving the target is greater because the figures are ‘mine’ not ‘yours’. They actually become ‘ours’.
“Managers usually agree that motivation programmes are about encouraging and recognising performance improvement.
“The top 10 per cent – these are regular high achievers, motivated by personal success and peer group recognition. The middle 80 per cent – these constitute the backbone of the group who achieve without being dramatically successful. The bottom 10 per cent – this group holds consistent non-achievers and new recruits who have yet to deliver their new potential and whose performance level is set by lack of momentum and experience rather than an innate lack of interest of ability. “The key to a successful motivation scheme is generally to maximise improvement among the ‘average achievers,’ who make up the middle 80 per cent of any team, as well as the top producers. However, it is too simple and easy to regard the below average operator as ‘on the way out’ or ‘too set in their ways to improve’ and so not worth the bother. Consequently, the poor performers are often ignored or taken for granted yet they frequently have the biggest potential for development. “These team members may respond well to a carefully structured incentive programme and there are a number of simple steps that can be taken to ensure the motivation programme addresses this group.
“The award values need not be huge, but the impact of having frequent winners can be vast. This is where vouchers come into their own as an instantly available, low-cost option. Capital Bonds, for example, are available in £1 to £20 denominations.
Present rewards publicly “The efforts and achievements of all these, and any others in this category who perform well, should be publicly recognised at company meetings with personal presentations by a senior manager, as well as in any communications.
Derrick Hardman, (pictured) Managing Director of Capital Incentives & Motivation.
“In order to do this successfully, it is essential to have an understanding of the composition of groups of agents. Generally, they consist of:
“Nothing de-motivates the poor performer more than seeing others streaking ahead from the start, leaving them with no chance of catching up. If everyone starts afresh each month, the poor performer has another chance to compete on equal terms.
Have lots of winners “Nothing succeeds like success. A cliché this may be, but in the world of motivation, being able to recognise and reward all those who have succeeded provides a more positive environment than one with lots of losers. Of course winners must be genuine, but the process can be helped along by the creative use of the reward structure.
“Poor performers may appear to offer little, but when they improve it is not only good for results but also for morale of both the individual and the team. Give them a chance to seize the limelight for themselves; they will value the experience of being recognised by peers. “This does not have to mean lavish expense. A simple ceremony that demonstrates the importance of individuals’ contributions will repay the cost a hundred fold.
Make frequent awards with special categories “Key to generating interest among agents is making awards frequently. To focus on the bottom 10 per cent, motivation schemes should include special categories such as ‘Performance of the Month,’ ‘Biggest Improvement’ or a category of ‘Best Performance by a New Starter’ (for those with, perhaps, less than six months service in the role). “A ‘Biggest Improvement’ award, for example, can re-vitalise an employee to keep trying by giving them the opportunity to qualify for an award in the next month, despite early poor performance. “For the experienced staff member who is below average, there could be a reward for the ‘Best Comeback’.
“By raising the performance of the bottom 10 per cent, the whole group becomes more effective and their raised confidence in their own abilities will benefit the business overall in the long term. However, successful motivation requires a balance that recognises others’ needs. At the other end of the scale, your top performers should not be ignored. They will respond to different stimuli and you should recognise their need for rewards and recognition within the framework of the motivation programme.”
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WORKFORCE
targets or products, as well as wider recognition for nomination schemes or awards for outstanding achievement. “However, this is not a short-term fix and to be truly effective, incentives and motivation programmes must be well planned, long term and consistent if they are to create sustained improvement.
Choosing a motivation scheme that works for you Kuljit Kaur, (pictured) Head of Business Development of The Voucher Shop, explains how flexible benefits can help drive performance and improve staff motivation. “Research shows that the more motivated and engaged staff a company has, the better the levels of work performance. Simply put, this translates into a more profitable business and it therefore makes sound business sense to invest in your agents just as you would your customers. “There are a range of factors that influence staff motivation including the basics such as working conditions, pay and benefits. However communication, recognition and rewards can play a huge part in making staff feel valued and appreciated. “According to research conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) – the UK’s leading professional body for those involved in the management and development of people – motivated employees perform better, are less likely to be absent or quit. “Flexible benefits can help drive performance and improve staff motivation such as offering vouchers as part of a flexible benefits programme that stretches salaries further, or longservice awards that recognise and reward staff loyalty. “Vouchers are always a popular choice as they allow the participant flexibility in how they spend their reward. They can, for example, be used as simple incentives to focus sales staff on specific
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“Employee motivation schemes are at their most effective when the process of earning the reward and the reward itself is aligned with the employee’s lifestyle rather than grafted on to it. Choosing a gift voucher as a means of reward provides the power of choice for individuals and their families. The most important element is that the voucher should ideally be spent on a treat or special purchase rather than the weekly shopping. “Feedback from customers has shown that employers are also increasingly looking for cost-effective ways to offer benefits to part-time employees and others on lower salaries. At the same time these employees are looking for benefits that will enable them to make their salaries stretch as far as possible. “One way of doing this is to offer a variety of flexible benefits on top of any fixed package. One option that remains popular with both employers and employees are schemes whereby employees can set aside a certain proportion of their monthly wages to buy discounted retail vouchers. This can result in substantial savings in their household budget over the course of a year, plus it gives them the flexibility to save for bigger annual events such as a family holiday. “And, now is a good a time to boost performance within the company, especially with the ongoing ramifications of the economic slowdown. Equally, Christmas is an expensive time for everyone, so any opportunity to boost
income around the festive season will be welcomed by staff. “Whatever programme of rewards and recognition a company uses, the scheme must be clearly communicated, achievable and appropriate to the audience, whether that be in the form of e-shots, mailers or posters. Our experience means we understand what works with staff and how to communicate with them effectively. Most importantly, we can take the administrative burden away from already busy managers and team leaders to deliver all aspects of employee programmes. “When it comes to rewards, the more flexibility the better. Vouchers are the ideal solution as they can go towards reducing that Christmas shopping bill for seasonal treats at home. “We see a huge increase in voucher redemptions from long-running incentive programmes as well as seasonal tactical campaigns in the run-up to the festive season. So we know they work. “But they can work all year round and it’s imperative that flexible recognition and incentive rewards are also used on an ongoing basis in order to provide an instant reward for a job well done. Vouchers, like pets, are not just for Christmas.”
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European Directory Marketplace EDM08 conference report Stu Whitaker, (pictured) tells ISM about some of the lessons to come out of Whitaker Associates recent event in London. OVERVIEW
“We had two key objectives in mind when we organised EDM08, which was held in London in June. First, we wanted to expand on the previous year’s focus on mobile search. We sought to do that by developing a program that addressed what we see as key components of the mobile search ecosystem: operators, advertisers, technology, and content. “Second, we wanted to emphasise the importance of innovation in the directory and search space. Innovation is particularly important for established firms which are vulnerable to startups that adopt technology rapidly. We sought to emphasise innovation by the introduction of an Innovation Showcase at which businesses with innovative products and services could present their concepts to investors and other delegates. “Unfortunately, today we are in an extremely difficult investment period, as reflected by the announcement that for the first time in 30 years, not a single venture capital-backed firm raised capital in the US through an IPO in the second quarter of the year. Yet despite these difficulties – and in some instances, because of these difficulties – innovation continues.
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“We are in a period of tremendous uncertainty and transition across a broad range of the information services market, from directories to search to mobile to fixed communications. Though stock market prices can react to events instantaneously – for instance, when a buy-out offer is announced – stock prices more often adjust to market changes over a period of time. “The stock price of directory publisher Yell, for example, has declined more or less steadily over the 12 months ending July 1, 2008 – 86.3 per cent over the past year, 84.2 per cent over the past six months, and 61.3 per cent over the past three months. Likewise, shares of directory assistance provider telegate have fallen 52.3 per cent in the past year, 23.5 per cent in the past six months though it has risen 13.8 per cent in the past three months. “And not all directory and search stock prices have fallen. Baidu’s stock price has risen 89.1 per cent in the past 12 months, lost 18.5 per cent in the past six months, and gained 16.3 per cent over the past three months. The news is not all bad, by any means.
“Stock prices are based on the market’s assessment of the future prospects of each organisation, though assessments of future prospects may differ more widely in uncertain times. Last year, when Bill Gates said that no one under the age of 50 would use Yellow Pages in five years, many agreed with him, though many, particularly in the Yellow Pages business, disagreed vehemently. If the declines in prices for Yell and telegate are any indication, it seems that over the past year the market has come to share Gates’s view, putting tremendous pressure on a wide array of directory firms. “While the impact of market perceptions of publicly-traded firms are readily visible, market perceptions impact privately-held firms as well. A good example of a privately-held firm suffering from overall market difficulties, as well as from difficulties in the directory space, is kgb (nee INFONXX), which filed a registration for public sale on December 14, 2007, and has yet to go public. “While every firm hopes for improvements in overall market conditions, each needs to adjust their businesses to reflect not what the realities used to be and not what they wish realities were, but what the business realities are today. Many have made these adjustments, though some firms and organisations have yet to do so. “Each of the participants in this space has their own perspective on the market as a whole and on their own offerings in particular, and each positions their offerings and their firm accordingly. How one perceives each offering depends in no small part on how one sees the market.
“Delivery of phone numbers by themselves is no longer a challenge – the challenge is to employ technology to deliver richer communications and information that could only be imagined a few years ago. Unlike what they say in the movies, if you build it, they may not come, so the challenge everyone faces is to create services and business models that make delivery of these new services economically viable. “Different participants in different segments of the directory and search space – operators, advertisers, technology providers, and content providers – have different perspectives and strategies, so a good strategy for one firm doesn’t necessarily represent a good strategy for another. One of the biggest mistakes we have seen some firms and industry associations make is to view the internet, WAP, SMS, and other mobile services as a threat. We don’t believe it’s helpful to view these innovations as a threat. We think they should be viewed as opportunities.
“Google recently reported that it has seen 50 times more searches on Apple’s first generation iPhones than on any other mobile handset, and the rush is on to deliver more web-friendly mobile phones in the form of next generation iPhones, android devices, and other competitive handsets.
“Key to iPhone’s success is user experience. We believe that firms who can improve the user experience, through social networking, mobilespecific content, greater relevance, more content, semantic search, targeted ads, and through other means, are absolutely on the right track.”
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Calling time on R
From designing products for air traffic control centres, Isaac then went into The City and designed dealing rooms for banks. “That’s where I really learned how to make products that address demand - it’s a very dynamic industry that’s highly competitive and always wanting to innovate, because that’s how you stay ahead of the curve. And I suppose that’s my mentality. It was easy designing products in the city; you basically looked at the market, identified their problems, and then designed a product to solve a particular problem. And actually that probably sets the scene about how I approached the telecoms market. But that’s a very different market.”
For a man who has just wound up his information services business, Steve Isaac is remarkably chipper. But devoting more time to his other passion – running a catered ski chalet business in France’s Paradiski (La Plagne & Les Arc) – is hardly a case of drawing the short straw. He tells Liam Cowling what went wrong. TRAINED as an engineer in the aviation industry, Isaac is a chartered engineer. However, he then studied management and as he puts it, “discovered marketing”. “When I discovered marketing, I discovered that the way to design products is to look at people, markets and society. Identify their needs and problems and then use your engineering skills to design products that address a need.”
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After being in the City of London, Isaac spent a period of semi-retirement running a ski business – a period he credits with really helping him learn about consumers, that is, real, individual, paying customers. Prioritising his child’s education saw Isaac return to the UK around the time that the dotcom bubble burst. “I felt frustrated because I could never find anything on the internet. You’d search for something, then get 2000 responses and then spend all morning phoning round – which seemed more like wasting time than saving time.” “I thought that this technology that is supposed to make my life easier is, in fact adding to the complication because it’s being used inappropriately. All this new tecnology has provided suppliers with yet more weapons to bombard customers who aren’t even interested in listening. We’re becoming electronically deaf because we don’t want to wade through all this rubbish. So that’s kind of where I started from with Responsa.”
Isaac felt that things needed to be turned round, with technology helping us as consumers – instead of companies finding new channels to advertise their wares. His task was to design a product which allows consumers to say, ’this what I want, now let the suppliers do all the chasing to solve my problem’. Isaac’s hunch was that the internet was only a stepping stone and that the future would be mobile. He then took this thought and ran with it – as he saw it as giving consumers an opportunity to advertise what they wanted and let the suppliers do all the running around. “So the obvious way to do it was voice – the consumer says it and waits for the response to come back. Now the response can come back as voice or an image which I can read. So if I ask ‘where am I?’, it would come back as a map on my screen. If I want the football score they’ll send me a text and if I want to talk to somebody about my leaking roof, I really need to talk to a person. Mobile is ideal for that - and that was the germ of Responsa, the foundation of a new concept which is ‘ask for anything’.”
So the basis of the Responsa proposition was an easy access and immediate concierge-style service. It ticked boxes for Isaac because, as an engineer who was introduced to marketing he felt that technical business would tend to focus on the supply side of the equation without truly considering demand – that is the things that consumers actually wanted. However, he needed to go one step beyond that and show that the model could make money. Responsa and its extension of ‘ask for anything’ essentially gets the customer to tell you their problem. This is very powerful and commercial.
“There are a number of ways to monetise this model. Firstly, there’s the classic telephone service model, where customers will pay something to have a problem solved or obtain some information. This is very efficient in terms of generating revenue. If you have a service where people, whenever they’ve got a problem, call you with their requirement - you now own an opportunity to make money, because you’re providing a service. You can make a little bit of money on things like, for example, football scores because the consumer will pay a little bit for those sorts of things - but he won’t pay much (increasingly these services are free to the consumer). “Secondly, there is the traditional advertising model, where a supplier pays to be listed within your service, on the expectation that you will bring him customer leads (Yellow Page model). “But thirdly and very importantly, Responsa can act as a broker service automatically matching buyers to sellers and can take a cut from the value of the transaction that Responsa facilitates. I call this a transactional or brokerage model. This is very efficient in terms of generating revenue, and is illustrated by the fact that a plumber will pay a lot to be able to go and fix somebody’s boiler, or a garden centre will pay a lot to be able to quote for garden furniture.” So in effect, Responsa took the Yellow Pages model, where they sell advertising that will bring a supplier leads and applied a kind of Google-style rationale to it. “What we sold to suppliers was the right to the first one in the queue to deal with an actual need,” says Isaac. “So for example, right now I’m trying to buy a quad bike. If I had Responsa, I’d literally say, ‘I’m looking for a quad bike new or nearly new, I don’t want to spend more than C6000’. That lead is probably worth C500 to anybody that responds to the request. Whereas publishing an advert to sell quad bikes in an area is only worth C40- C60. You’re gearing up by a factor of ten, because advertising misses a lot. You might get 1 or 2 per cent response rate on an advert whereas you could get better than a 50 per cent response on an actual request.” So Isaac patented and built a system which would provide a mechanism to sellers where they got a unique request from a customer who has an absolute need. Sellers were delivered, in other words, highly qualified leads. When they were ready to buy.
“Now as a supplier that’s what you want. You can also tell from tone of voice, which you can’t from email or text, if you as a supplier want to accept the request that’s been made for your product or service. You can tell if someone is basically serious or not.” Isaac did his research and felt that there was a potentially massive market for directory services – although he concedes that it has declined over the last decade. He attributes this decline to yellow page services being considered old-fashioned by the under 40s. However, whilst he recognised the massive classified ads market, Isaac felt that Responsa could do better, by complimenting the advertising model with a transaction based model and providing an organisation with two sources of revenue.
At this point, Isaac had built the proposition and was ready to launch, what to most marketeers sounds very compelling – a means of lead generation that enables you to cut the wheat from the chaff, rather than a volume of leads that might be low quality. It’s difficult for anyone optimistic about the industry to understand why this proposition didn’t fly from this point on. Responsa initially targeted two markets – the directory enquiries space and published directories. Having completed development of the product by mid 2002, Isaac found the published directory space the most attractive. “We started approaching the research market and said that yellow pages is the market to go for. They’ve got more money and they’re in this space anyway. Their market’s declining and they’ll want to move their product on. However, what I discovered was they were fat and comfortable and didn’t feel their market was going to disappear soon.” This factor, claims Isaac, was exacerbated by the fact the publishers were being courted by venture capitalists who saw them as cash cows. Additionally, the space was feeling a degree of renewed confidence, because these large and slow organisations aren’t the most responsive, and as a result, they hadn’t
heavily invested in the dotcom era and felt they’d been proved right , with the internet bubble having burst they thought they’d weathered the storm. Isaac still doesn’t believe they have. “They haven’t because the internet was – and is – coming back. So, I thought Responsa was perfect for them. In all these organisations you can always find people who say, ‘this is brilliant, this is just what we ought to be doing’. And it’s dangerous because you end up devoting time and energy to interested individuals, but culturally they sit within organisations that are not geared up for change. “I came from a City of London financial background, where banks are doing things all the time and they are quick to innovate. What I didn’t understand was there are systems set up in these target organisations that ensure they do what they’ve always done. At the very top of yellow pages organisations are people who’ve spent all their lives selling advertising and printing books and ultimately that’s all they want to continue to do. So they’re very interested in things that help them sell advertising better and things that help them print books easier or cheaper. They’re less interested in things that are going to move them away from what they know. So there can be an inherent cultural inertia in an organisation.” One such avenue, where Isaac spent a lot of time and effort chasing a particular joint venture, was a very expensive waste of time. Isaac admits it was a frustrating process – first Responsa began to haemorrhage funds and then the partner quietly dropped them. Rather magnanimously, Isaac says there were some other factors that impeded Responsa, including a lack of sales expertise. “And I’m a slightly pushy guy. I know it sounds a bit arrogant, but I know the product is solid. We researched the market – we felt we had the killer application. So whether pushiness or arrogance, it was just really enthusiasm – but in a market which is slow to innovate, it wasn’t perhaps the best tone.” Additionally, Isaac felt that at the time DA businesses were too wrapped up in the processes of market liberalisation and the subsequent land grab for call volumes to be taking a perceived risk on a revolutionary proposition. They simply wanted to get their number up and running fast and as a result, Isaac didn’t find them to be very responsive to his message.
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So after several years of innovation, what’s the status of Responsa now?
through businesses like Amazon, eBay and Google.
“It’s all there and it all works. We’ve done consumer trials, focus groups. It’s a well thought-out product, and it’s only one part of a much bigger concept called ‘ask for anything’. So the assets of the business are still there along with a huge font of knowledge, based on six years experience of the market.”
“They absolutely could do this and they might, but they’ll probably stick closely to what they already do. An all encompassing ‘ask for anything service’ is probably best brought to the market by a new entrant, but they need to be well funded and have a strong management team – and hopefully they’d come without baggage. Also you might get the more dynamic organisations like Tesco or Virgin getting involved, or even people like Amex who currently have a concierge service. Innovation isn’t going to come from where you think.
Isaac’s prognosis for the information services sector over the next couple of years is a mixture of good and bad. Clearly, he sees problems in organisations that are culturally and institutionally set up to do what they’ve always done. He also has very limited faith in the ability or willingness of telcos to innovate much beyond putting in cables in the ground, building aerials and providing bandwidth. This he sees as frustrating as many of them have a brand which is much wider and could lend itself to doing all sorts of things to do with information and servicing communities’ communications. Similarly, Isaac sees only limited scope of progress
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“The best case scenarios then, for both Responsa and the industry, is probably a new brand that’s well funded and well managed, that actually goes out and launches an ‘ask for anything’ service and has a culture of ‘we are here to help you solve problems’. That’s a huge opportunity and could generate a £100’s millions in the UK alone. It would become like the fifth emergency
service. So when you move into a new house for instance, you will always have the fifth service number next to your telephone, to help with all the things you don’t know.” Isaac actually thinks that realistically Responsa will be one of those footnotes in history, when in years to come there’s a service that does the same thing, someone will say, ‘did you realise there was a patent done in 2001 that did exactly this but it never got anywhere?’ “However, the best case for me is to have a serious organisation that wants to buy our technology and consultancy services.”
Despite the setbacks Isaac is upbeat: “Responsa was another life. I learned lots – not always good lessons but there’s no such thing as negative experience. And I certainly understand how different aspects of society work now and in the meantime, I’m going to enjoy myself running a top quality skiing chalet business. So if you’re interested in a holiday you could do a lot worse than coming to us! www.pisteside.com”
ISM US contributing editor Susan J Campbell (pictured right) asseses the opportunities afforded by consumersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; desire for localised, personalised services and the risks to privacy and civil liberties inherent in such services, and how the forthcoming US presidential election might impact upon the sector. AS A global society of humans, we yearn for the attention and closeness of others. We have an inherent desire to interact with other humans, especially those that are similar to ourselves, whether it is in taste, religious belief, ethnic background or something as simple as residing or working in the same locale. This desire is one root cause for the success of social networking sites. Consumers find like-minded people on these sites and not only interact with them, but gather information from them on where to eat, buy the latest fashions or which new blockbuster is worth seeing at the theatre. This growth in the use of social networking sites is changing the way in which we as consumers are living. It is changing the way we receive information, the way we interact with people and the way that we operate within the economy. Couple this phenomenon with that of the trend towards mobility and companies vying for the consumer dollar are facing a whole new ballgame. For those that understand and embrace these trends as opportunities for driving additional revenue and growth, the outcome can be considerably profitable. Those that do not will likely find themselves losing customers and straining to compete. There is also a movement towards more personalised search which ties into this notion of mobility and the increase in social networking. Search has traditionally been focused on a key set of words or questions provided by the user and the most popular choices
are produced, based on users who could originate from throughout the whole world. What if that search could instead produce information that is most relevant to that particular user? What implications will it have for those who are driving the mobile search phenomenon? When we take a closer look at search, social networking and the profiles necessary to generate information that is relevant to that particular user, a certain amount of information is shared with all parties involved. This information is also reliant on location based services that are imperative for personalised search, yet could pose a threat to privacy. If it indeed poses such a threat, does it also mean that our civil liberties are at risk? If so, how does the industry overcome such obstacles to realise the potential within these consumer trends? The United States is on the brink of significant change as its citizens are to endure yet another election year. The country is in the midst of a controversial war and will be asked to decide between two very different candidates to take on the role of commander-in-chief of what many consider to be the most powerful nation in the world. This change in leadership can have an impact on the future of certain technologies as regulations put in place may either limit the user or the enterprise or both. The next presidentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s platform pertaining to the internet, communications and privacy will have far-reaching implications for not only the US economy,
but also how the country interacts with the global economy. Given the emerging technologies and consumersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; desire for increased mobility and protection of personal information, the industry is facing opportunities laced with challenges. Finding the right balance can produce the ultimate success.
Impact on Marketing Over the last 15 years, the exponential growth of the internet, gathering and transfering information has reached a point where societies throughout the world have come to rely on this portal for everyday processes. Consumers and businesses alike significantly increased email communications, for example, causing this medium to challenge the telephone as the primary interaction channel. This consistent use of email for communication created a significant opportunity for marketeers to use the medium to send messages to potential customers. While some might find it annoying, email marketing campaigns catapulted into a multi-billion dollar segment of the industry. What was once a significant marketing opportunity is now being trumped by social networking and other forms of communication. In a recent report, JupiterResearch found that the rising popularity of social networking sites and other forms of communication such as text messaging and cell phone use are beginning to have an impact on the effectiveness of email marketing. In fact, 22 per cent of email-users indicated that they now use social networking sites instead of email to communicate.
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In 2007, 51 per cent of email users were inspired to make at least one online purchase due to an email advertisement. That figure shrank to 44 per cent in 2008. This is a considerable drop in marketing effectiveness and one that companies must pay attention to if they hope to continue to drive these purchases. If consumers are moving away from email and into social networking sites for communication, this must be the growing focus for marketeers. “There will be new opportunities to target consumers. Local companies and national brands will be most affected by these new technologies,” says Azim Tejani, Chief Operating Officer of Intelligenx, a next-generation search technology company based in Northern Virginia. “Consumers could opt into receiving special deals for predetermined merchandise if they happen to be in the proximity of a sale. Targeting mobile local search consumers will just be another channel for different types of advertising. There are different mindsets and different types of brand advertising objectives that can be achieved. For example, what types of restaurant close by serve Guinness?”
Personalisation in Search Search plays a significant role in the lives of consumers, especially when they are mobile. The ability to search according to an individual’s own preferences can not only save a considerable amount of time, it can also help to promote certain products or services. What’s more, consumers like personalisation. They desire it, pay for it and even demand it from vendors. In terms of search, it guarantees that the information that is provided to the user is relevant for their purposes. To ensure that the search provided is relevant to the user, it needs to not only get to know the user through personalisation, it needs to capture the user’s state of mind at the moment that he or she is making a query. This is as important for the commerce of search as it is at that moment when the consumer is looking for a local business that he or she is preparing to make a buying decision. The search engine must facilitate a way to capture the user’s intent by providing an interactive search experience. This is imperative in mobility as the consumer could be within mere minutes and/or steps of making that purchase. ”We strongly expect that personalisation will take place at the community level – where one user’s query might be affected by another’s, where the profile of a
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community can be used to guide future searchers of people in that community or affinity group,” says Tejani. “Like Amazon’s recommendations for users who buy a particular book – Amazon can deduce that the user may also be interested in particular other books. Instead of recommending specific results, a search engine may inform users about the things that other similar users have expressed interest in.” The smaller screen and text input capabilities on a mobile device do present their own challenges in mobile search, requiring that search providers examine the factors within mobile applications and ensure that their solution delivers a satisfying experience for the user. This is critical to the search provider in order to drive usage. Tejani points to category-driven searches as the key to usage, as their inherent dynamics help to provide mobile users with access to very large amounts of information through a small footprint. The most important job of a search company is to provide information that is relevant to the user and to do so requires the creation of sophisticated profiles of both the user and the content. This is something of a challenge as enterprise search vendors have spent millions of hours profiling only content, not users. The success of the Amazon model demonstrates the profitability which can come from well-defined user profiles. Knowing information about the user also makes it easier to find and suggest relevant content. The social networking site may have the upper hand in this scenario – there is a reason why the user is a member of the site – but this information alone is not enough to provide the user with the most relevant information.
Location based services and civil liberties Dynamic and personalised mobile search, whether it is within the social networking context or not, is only possible with the use of location based services or LBS. Location-aware mobile certainly changes the game in local search because the technology enables the user to find exactly what they want in the area in which they have conducted their search. While this contributes to a more satisfying experience and ensures that the mobile user gains real-time access to information while on the go, it does require information on the user and his or her whereabouts. According to Tejani, “Mobile search coupled with LBS is indeed a game
changer. The mindset of a user who is ‘out and about’ looking for a business is very different to that of a user sitting at home conducting research to make a significant purchase or set of purchases. “When a consumer is out driving she may be interested in a close-by restaurant or she may be looking for the closest store that carries a particular product or service. In the case of the user at home – a major home remodeling or a lawyer for estate planning are very different. Mobile will enable several other unique dynamics like time or location sensitive promotions or coupons.” Is this in direct conflict with civil liberties? The US Privacy Act of 1974 states: “No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains.” What this act and the subsequent Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 fail to address are services that track actual location, such as RFID and GPS. The challenge to the industry is that consumers want access to information that is close-by, especially when they are mobile, but they also want more personalisation. Do consumers know that their location can be tracked by engaging in such services? If they did know, would they stop using these services? The reality is that location based services rely on knowing the location of the user and this raises concerns over both privacy and civil liberties demanding some sort of control or standard, either in selfregulation or governmental regulation. In the LBS industry, neither currently exists. Before a resolution can be implemented, industry players must first identify what protections can be afforded that still protects the consumer’s right to information in a free market.
Change in Leadership The United States is in an interesting situation with the upcoming election and the two candidates’ views on technology, the internet and the future of e-commerce. Barack Obama clearly divulges his policy on his website, stating that he plans to, “ensure the full and free exchange of information through an open internet and diverse media outlets.” The Democratic candidate also states his policy for protecting the privacy of American citizens, a key pledge at a time when we desire more privacy and, simultaneously, more personalisation.
Republican candidate John McCain has very little to say on this platform and even admitted last fall in the Republican YouTube debate that technology was one area where he would likely turn to a vice president for help. While his honesty might be refreshing, given the role that technology and the internet play in the economy, is a lack of policy acceptable to the American people? The reality is that the American citizen has more control over technology and its use than any political figure. What the consumer demands, the consumer gets; it is Marketing 101. But it is our leadership that can make a difference in whether or not our information, identity and civil liberties are protected. As these areas are likely to gain more attention as consumers become more educated about the technologies at their disposal, government regulations that are put in place to protect the consumer are more likely.
part, McCain has not taken a formal stance on these issues as he himself has claimed to need more education before implementing policy. The challenge here will be where that information originates and how it is perceived as helping or hurting the American consumer.
The popularity of social networking has helped to drive the demand for this medium, making it an attractive platform for consumers and marketeers alike to try and influence the opinions and actions of others. As personalised search continues on its innovative path and becomes more user-focused, the attention around LBS and civil liberties is sure to intensify. While a change in leadership for the American people may not immediately impact their ability to interact as they desire, the amount of information that can be shared that will generate the relevant information they demand may be at risk. Only over time will we realise the full potential of this market and its impact on how we live.
Privacy protection to the point of stifling competition and free commerce however, may not be in the consumersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; best interest. In his stance on safeguarding our right to privacy, Obama focuses on powerful databases that are used to fight terrorism; surveillance laws; sensitive information such as e-health records and location data; and the increase of the Federal Trade Commissionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s enforcement budget to track and prohibit the activities of cyber-criminals. This light touch on location based data is an acknowledgment of an opportunity, rather than an outright policy that provides protection to either the consumer or the industry. For his
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BRAVE NEW WORLD
Brave New World: The Philippines With the costs of using a Philippines call centre now comparable with India and substantially cheaper than many other offshore locations such as South Africa or Eastern Europe. Rob O’Malley, UK Managing Director of Cyber City Teleservices, a 3500-seat call centre operator in the Philippines, tells ISM about on the opportunities presented to the Information Services sector by the country. “OVER recent years, we have seen an ever increasing number of American directory assistance services offshoring all or part of their call centres. With strong competition and high costs, many British companies have also looked at similar options. For example, 118118 uses its parent companies call centre in the Philippines to handle calls during high demand, but some of the other providers have operations in India and elsewhere.
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“The current trend in the directory assistance market seems to be to handle the bulk of the calls in a captive call centre based in the UK with the overflow handled offshore. In order to make this truly efficient, the ideal way is to pay an outsourced company on either a cost per call or a cost per minute basis rather than a fixed hourly rate. This enables you to scale down in the in-house centre without having to worry about losing calls during peaks and troughs.” “Another important factor is the length of the call, with directory assistance companies very keen to keep call durations to a minimum. In this respect, O’Malley suggests that some companies have found that using Indian agents has posed a problem since they speak English as a second language and consequently use more words than a Filipino who naturally thinks in English. Culturally, O’Malley believes that the Philippines has more in common with the West than India does and suggests that the Filipino accent is far easier to understand for Westerners. “Whilst there has been some negative public perception of some Indian call centres, the total call centre market in the Philippines has rapidly expanded.
Whilst much is made of call centres from the UK moving to India, US businesses have increasingly turned to the Philippines, where proportionately to its 90million population, the industry is actually bigger than India. “The key attraction of the Philippines is its highly skilled, motivated, Englishspeaking workforce,” says O’Malley. “A recent survey of top executives conducted by Hong Kong’s Political and Economic Risk Consultancy rated the Philippines better than virtually any country in Asia on the quality, cost, and availability of skilled labour. The call centre industry is now worth more than $3billion annually and more and more UK call centres, including T-Mobile and HSBC, are off-shoring there. And, the quality of the agents is so good that most consumers don’t even realise that their call is being answered overseas. “The key driving force behind directory assistance companies using the Philippines is the standard of English. Every graduate speaks fluent English and does not have the same accent issues associated with some other off-shore destinations.” www.cctll.co.uk
BRAVE NEW WORLD
The economy of the Philippines THE Philippines is a country undergoing an industrial and technological revolution. However, the traditional economy is based on agriculture. Historically, the Philippine economy was largely based on the Manila Galleons and latterly bilateral trade with the United States during the American era. By the 1960s, the Philippine economy was regarded as the second-largest in Asia, next only to Japan. However, the presidency of Ferdinand Marcos proved disastrous to the Philippine economy, seeing the country slide into severe economic problems. The recovery started in the 1990s with a program of economic liberalisation and the breaking of Marcos-era monopolies and the system of cronyism. The Asian Financial Crisis harmed the Philippine economy to an extent, and contributed to the lingering decline of the value of the Philippine peso and falls in the stock market. However, the country proved more resilient than many of its Asian neighbours. This fact is credited to the fiscal conservatism of the Philippine government – which derives partly as a result of decades of monitoring and fiscal supervision from the IMF.
The Philippines was a founding and active member of the UN and is a founding member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The Philippines is also a member of the East Asia Summit, an active player in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group, and is a non-NATO ally of the US but also a member of the Non-Aligned Movement.
patron saints. One of the most visible Hispanic legacies is the prevalence of Spanish surnames among Filipinos. This peculiarity, unique among the people of Asia, came as a result of a colonial decree for the systematic distribution of family names and implementation of the Spanish naming system on the inhabitants of the Philippines .
The Culture and people of the Philippines
Throughout the country’s history, various ethnic groups as well as immigrants and colonisers have intermarried, producing Filipino mestizos. These mestizos, apart from being of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, can be descended from any ethnic foreign forebears. The percentage of Filipinos with foreign ancestry is unknown, however, due to factors such as the Spanish colonisation, the American occupation, and Chinese immigration after World War II; many Filipino mestizos are now of Spanish, American and Chinese descent.
FILIPINO culture is a fusion of preHispanic indigenous Austronesian civilisations of the Philippines mixed with Hispanic and American. It has also been influenced by Chinese, Arab and Indian cultures. The Hispanic influences in Filipino culture are largely derived from over three centuries of Spanish colonial rule. These Hispanic influences are most evident in literature, folk music, folk dance, language, food, art and religion, such as Roman Catholic religious festivals. Interestingly, there was relatively little Mexican influence in the Philippines, despite the ties to a Mexican-based administration and the galleon trade. Filipinos hold major festivities known as barrio fiestas to commemorate their
The Philippines is the world’s 12th most populous country, with a population of over 90million as of 2008. Eight per cent of Filipinos live abroad as migrant labourers. Roughly half the population resides on the island of Luzon, whilst Manila, the capital, is the eleventh most populous metropolitan area in the world.
Recent growth has been steady rather than spectacular – by 2004, the Philippine economy experienced 6 per cent growth in GDP and 7.3 per cent in 2007.
COMPARING OFF-SHORE DESTINATIONS
The politics of the Philippines SINCE the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship, which ended with the 1986 ‘people power’ revolution of Corazón Aquino, the Philippines has had a presidential form of government, where the president functions as head of state, head of government and commanderin-chief of the armed forces. Presidential elections take place every six years and the president appoints and presides over the cabinet. The country’s bicameral congress is composed of a senate, which serves as the upper house and whose members are elected nationally to a six-year term, and a house of representatives serving as the lower house, whose members are elected to a three-year term.
Country
Population
English Speakers
%
Philippines
88.5 Million
42.5 Million
48.02%
South Africa
44.4 Million
13.7 Million
30.87%
Pakistan
163.7 Million
17 Million
10.38%
India
1.135 Billion
90 Million
7.93%
Kenya
37.5 Million
2.7 Million
7.20%
China
1.324 Billion
2.5 Million
0.19%
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J’accuse - the sales guy ISM’S publisher Julian Jordan believes the advance of the ‘sales guy agenda’ within the information services sector will eventually mean that businesses lead on price, rather than offering value added services at a premium. Maybe, he argues, it’s time the ‘white-socks’ sales guy was hung out to dry. In a recent conversation with the CEO of a well-known telecoms business, he wheeled out the old cliché that a good sales guy is worth his weight in gold. I retorted that I’d like to see a good number of them tied to their weight in lead – then dropped in a lake. He laughed, slightly anxiously. Let me explain my outburst. I don’t really believe in the extermination of sales people – some of my best friends are sales people after all. I understand that some of them are fully house trained and can dine in polite company, even using knives and forks. So, no, I don’t believe they are all bad - I just blame them for many of the problems which affect the world. And, really, it’s not so much the sales guy per se – it’s got more to do with the sales guy’s agenda or rationale. Let’s look at a couple of pertinent examples. First, let’s examine the role of the ‘sales guy agenda’ in the US sub prime market. There you had a highly competitive scenario, where high-risk, low-margin customers were targeted – the so-called NINJAs (No income, no job). Now, I’m all for extending opportunity to people who might otherwise be economically marginalised, but did somebody not see the inherent risks? Did anybody calculate a projected level of default? It seems not.
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As a result, we have a wide-ranging credit crunch - which according to the most paranoid and pessimistic commentators, actually represents the early stages of a global economic meltdown. My own view is that we might see a few quarters of negative growth (I won’t use the ‘R-word’ in case you get spooked), or ‘stagflation’ – a period of stagnant growth matched by growing inflation. My second example is the telecoms field. I’ve experienced a good deal of the world of B2B and B2C telecoms over the last couple of decades. For those jaded telecoms people who are totally imbued with the ways of the industry, let me remind you that as a result of modern telecoms we can talk to pretty much anybody on the planet, with a good quality call – and at a cost which gives access to pretty much everyone. To put this in context, in 1984 (when BT was privatised in the UK), a three-minute national call would have cost 56p. Today, I can talk to someone in the US for an entire hour, for free. To my grandparents’ generation this would have seemed simply incredible, almost magical, yet we take it for granted. And therein lies the problem – because, in my opinion, this ‘magic’ has been devalued by the ‘sales guy’s agenda’. The liberalisation of the telecoms industry has brought vast and undoubted benefits, but the downside of the free market is that there’s always some sales guy who’s prepared to shave a fraction off the rate you’re currently paying. The telecoms reseller channel is full of them – ‘white socks’ sales guys who are so intent on selling at all costs that they’d probably pimp out their own grandmothers. They’ll drop their trousers on price, then the next guy will come along and do the same. So, we’ve seen
the commoditisation of voice and broadband – and as a result, we now expect to receive all that magic for free. No surprise then that there was an uproar when Directory Assistance was liberalised, because people actually had to pay for the privilege of receiving what was once completely free. The way out of this conundrum for most service providers is to downplay price and talk about their superior levels of customer service instead. But when everybody is saying it, it becomes something of a hollow platitude. Meanwhile, smaller players – even those with innovative niche offerings – have found it harder and harder to compete and we’ve seen significant market consolidation. And in both the broader telecoms world or the information services arena, this flies in the face of the liberalisation agenda, because we risk seeing the market controlled by fewer and fewer players, offering less consumer choice So while the telcos and ISPs are all busy telling me how great their customer service is – and how this differentiates them from the competition – the truth is that as a consumer I’m starting to think that it doesn’t matter how good customer service is. I only ring them when things go wrong after all. To be frank, I’d prefer to pay for my broadband and know that the money was going to some misanthrope I never have to speak to, rather than a very nice person with a great telephone manner who treats me really nicely every time my ‘free’ broadband connection falls over. I don’t think we actually need sales guys and their ‘dirty minutes’ market or their free broadband market, perpetually shaving fractions off rates – we need to put some margin back into the business. I, for one, would happily pay for a stable broadband connection, I’ll happily
pay to talk to my kids if I’m away on business, and I’ll happily pay for good information services that address my requirements regardless of location. Now, before all the sales guys take offence and decide to gang up on me round the bike-sheds, let me offer a few words of comfort. I know what you do is necessary. I know that there are those who are ‘hunters’ that just keep going for the sale and will gobble up all that ‘low hanging fruit’, then gobble up some more. I also know that there are those that are ‘farmers’ - once you’ve corralled that customer,
you want to keep them there and fatten them up. Well, it’s the farmers who I want to appeal to. Those who persistently roll over on price are degrading everything we do – to take a more strategic approach you need to work on retaining customers in order to up-sell or cross-sell. After all, what is the point in committing all that time, money and effort getting customers through the front door, if they then walk straight out of the back door? To take this more strategic approach, you need to build awareness, promote your brand, and extend the penetration of your values, because that builds familiarity and
understanding of your service offering – and only in that way can you build trust. It’s no coincidence that, 25 years after privatisation and liberalisation, BT retains roughly 70 per cent of the UK residential and business telecoms markets. The challenge facing those of us who work in information services is not to devalue what we do by being obsessed with leading on price. We need to find a way of providing an evolving range of value added services that meet consumer demand and find new and innovative ways of bringing together buyers and sellers. You never know, you might even be able to charge a premium – after all, remember that it’s magic that you’re selling.
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Responsa
Infovision
Jordan Comms
The responsa service has been developed, consumer tested has been operational in Slovakia as a T-Com service. The service is protected by patents, trademarks, and extensive copyrights; it comes complete with technology, business models, consumer and supplier information and sufficient marketing material to enable a fast launch in a marketplace. Responsa is looking for potential investors to either fund joint venture trials with incumbent Telco’s and directory providers, or to use it’s patented, disruptive technology service to bring a value added, branded proposition to a mass consumer market, competing with incumbents.
InfoVision Group (IVG) is one of the largest independent IT enabled services companies in India. With over 15 years of experience its 11,000 employees are focused on delivering solutions in running call centres, database management and back office support services for domestic and international customers.
We are an independent public relations and marketing agency, based in the North West of England. Specialising in the Telecoms, IT and Financial Services sectors, we will help you to establish who you are, what you do and what you stand for, amongst your target audience. Build awareness and generate leads with our targeted, measurable and effective campaigns. Turn your targets into prospects and prospects into
InfoVision Group 339, Udyog Vihar, Phase IV, Gurgaon 122015 Phone communicationsjordan: +44 (0)1282 878305 www.infovisiongroup.com
+44 (0)1282 878305
customers. Pendle Innovation Centre, Brook Street Nelson Lancashire United Kingdom BB9 9PU +44 845 4900 588 +44 845 4900 589 info@jordan-comms.co.uk www.jordan-comms.co.uk
steve.isaac@responsa.co.uk www.responsa.co.uk
Wireless Directory Networks
Soft Method SoftMethod has a proud tradition of delivering excellent software services to businesses for over 30 years. Since 1975 we have been developing high quality customised, bespoke software solutions for businesses involved the commercial, transport and communication sectors. spieljochstr. 34 81825 münchen Germany tel +49.89.437787.0 fax +49.89.437787.99 info@softmethod.de www.softmethod.de
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WDN’s ComNote® is a secure SMS notification technology enabling mobile subscribers to remain unpublished in directories, yet allows them to be contacted via text message without revealing their wireless phone numbers. “ComNote provides a secure, operator system-facilitated caller ID service, protecting subscriber privacy and providing a user friendly and seamless contact service.” - Jeffrey Strunk, CEO, Wireless Directory Network Village West #2 3002 Main Street Carrabassett Valley, ME 04947 USA Worldwide: Jeffrey Strunk at 001.207.939.0100 (M) or 001.207.237.3007 Europe: Enrique Martinez de Velasco, WDN-Europe 34-609-002690 www.wirelessdirectorynetwork.com
First Angel First Angel Film provides high impact digital video production & marketing services for websites. We specialise in creative video solutions for any business, organisation or project. Whether it’s a simple video to demonstrate your products, or an original full web ad campaign, First Angel will walk you through the process step by step, ensuring your satisfaction with every stage. First Angel Film, 21 Stoney Knoll, Bury New Road, Salford, Manchester M7 2BR UK +44 (0) 845 051 0370 www.firstangelfilm.co.uk
PBXnSIP Optics Reaching your full potential month after month, year after year is hard work, even for the most dedicated person. That’s why every single Olympic athlete has a coach. The coach doesn’t compete but he is a vital component. It’s the same in life and business – if you are really serious about reaching your potential you are going to need help to get there. Optics is about giving you the chance to win gold – whatever that means for you. Optics Ltd 30-32 Albert Drive Orrell Park Liverpool L9 8BQ UK
We bring the PBX and SIP together… Embrace Mobility: Use your cell phone with the pbxnsip PBX Increase Productivity: Save a few minutes every day Stay Independent: The choice of a large range of available VoIP equipment
Kensington Steele Whatever your requirements, raw data or high end leads, we can help. But we don’t stop there. With over 25 years experience at all levels of data supply & lead generation we research, advise and recommend the best ways to minimise data waste and achieve maximum results from your efforts. +44 (0)845 22 54 515 or visit www.kensingtonsteele.co.uk
Aspect Court 47 Park Square East Leeds LS1 2NL +44 (0) 113 350 8795 Email John Bennett at: jb@pbxnsip.com www.pbxnsip.com
+44 (0) 151 523 6986 info@optics.ltd.uk www.optics.ltd.uk
ADVERTISE HERE CALL US ON +44 (0)845 4900 588
Tariff Consultancy
TT Office TT-Office provides businesses with a one stop shop approach to a full hosted service solution, delivered in an easy to understand user friendly format. We provide, supply, install and configure the network, phones, applications and all interconnects to deliver a solution with minimum complexity and
Tariff Consultancy Ltd is a new consultancy focused on pricing and tariff research, analysis and consultancy across mobile operator businesses internationally. www. telecomspricing.com (previously www.mobilepricing.com) is the resource centre for information, data, analysis, reports, studies, consultancy, research, symposia and events related to fixed and mobile pricing.
maximum effectiveness.
Tariff Consultancy Ltd, 47 Cecil Road, London, W3 0DB
Contact – Warren Hill + 44 (0) 845 271 7102 marketing@tt-office.com www.tt-office.com
+44 (0) 208 993 6861, Mobile: 0777 625 4827 + 44 (0) 870 922 3452 info@telecomspricing.com
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Mobile Tariff Tracking, Benchmarking and Analysing Post and Prepaid Pricing covering all 5 continents plus Voice and Data Roaming, Mobile Broadband, Mobile TV, Mobile Music, Triple and Quadruple Play pricing and more...