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The Smart Techie was renamed Siliconindia India Edition starting Feb 2012 to continue the nearly two decade track record of excellence of our US edition.

March - 2009 - issue > Technology

Enterprise VAS Mobile Enabling Your Business

Jayakishore Bayadi
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Jayakishore Bayadi
"I can't squander a single jiffy. It costs me a lot," said a CEO. He travels across the globe on business purposes at least for 20 days a month. What is appealing is even on the move, he manages the daily affairs of his company in the headquarters and across the branches proficiently just by pressing few keys on his mobile phone. It may be a mighty Blackberry or an awesome iPhone or else could be just a stunning high-end phone, which can be used to send and receive Emails, messages and access any data residing in the back office. Thanks to Enterprise VAS, which made many CEOs to deliver more efficiently. Today, Enterprises from across the verticals are embracing the idea of adopting diverse mobile applications that offer tangible benefits like cost savings, making mobile applications an integral part of their communications strategy. In fact, increasing demands have led enterprises to a process of adding applications and moving toward a sophisticated mobile strategy for fully integrating workforce with various back-end systems.

With revenue from voice service plummeting, Mobile operators are looking at newer avenues for mobile Value Added Services (VAS). Soon, VAS will not be just entertainment-oriented services like full song download or selling ring back tones. Operators are realizing the huge potential of VAS in Enterprise arena. "The operators could take a market position as Enterprise 2.0 enablers," believes an Analyst. They are all set to deepen their relationships with their enterprise customers and to further monetise their network assets in the process.
In India, the ARPU is the lowest in the world, and hence the scope for innovative VAS is immense. Globally, mobile VAS accounts for 25-30 percent of the total value of what operators generate. However, in India, according to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), it is at 10 percent currently and expected to contribute 20percent of the mobile revenues over the next three years. The VAS industry in India is estimated to grow with 50 percent compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) in India's Mobile VAS industry, including Enterprise VAS, leading to a $348.8 million market by the end of 2009. Industry pundits opine that in 2009, the focus of mobile operators is, therefore, expected to shift from customer acquisition to VAS promotion. The primary focus will be on reinvention of traditional VAS and early adoption of high-end services like enterprise VAS.

Mobile Enabling Businesses
The Enterprise market represents high value services for an operator, as many of these types of customers will pay a premium for availability, reliability and quality of service. Current mainstream offerings to the Enterprise market are based around capacity and hosted services, sometimes complemented by IT outsourcing projects. But the challenge for the operators up to now has been how to offer services that can deepen the relationship with the Enterprise through increasing the scope of their service offering.

When we look at the typical enterprises, we see that after implementing the ERP or Oracle applications, they might have established connectivity to their regional nodes or nearby branches. However, they are still disconnected to the place where actual action is happening. Sales or field guys are still disconnected when they are on move. This leads to latency in processing of data and delay decision-making. And as decisions are always made on the basis of the data updated on previous day or few hours before, result would be not be precise. Furthermore, today users within Enterprise organizations as well, just like consumers, are seeking more openness and tailoring of information and content to suite their individual needs to compliment their job functions.


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