Why is the CEBP value proposition being stolen away from Telcos?

# Martin Geddes: Telcos will not be the hubs of multi-sided markets in connectivity. Commerce platforms will give away access to drive transactions.

According to Martin, I’ve been looking in the wrong place for UC/CEBP inspiration.  For background, one of the key opportunities in multisided Telco related markets has been CEBP.

Geddes is typically right on target.  For the most part, the innovative activity is not coming from Telcos or telco inspired and dependent firms, it is or will come from companies that are focused on driving consumer or business transactions.

Several major examples have made news examples.
Amazon’s Kindle has come with wireless data connectivity as a free feature for years. Of course, the KindleFire is being positioned as a one stop commerce platform. Gaming stations have Unified Communications tools baked into their systems. In theory, Microsoft’s cloud initiatives dovetails nicely with their Skype acquisition. Given track records for Skype and Microsoft it is premature to make any real predictions about successful integration and collaboration efforts.  

One can certainly see mobile content providers giving away or subsidizing the sale of low cost mobile entertainment, sms, communication devices to teenagers and young people globally under the assumption that all this demographics’ entertainment purchases will flow through their mobile entertainment, communication,commerce platforms.  

Providing mobile phones to remote villages around the globe  to encourage the use of mobile commerce via sms is already happening. Similar to  credit card companies in the US over the last five decades, get the commerce platform in the hands of the consumers anyway possible.
It seems that the important innovations so far, are with consumer driven initiatives. Obviously some of these niches like gaming, app stores, and mobile payments are very big.

Are any of these innovations and the value they are creating being driven by Telcos? Not really, as Telcos continue to deal with commoditization issues the only differentiator over the last few years has been provided by Apple’s alignment with ATT.

So, from the Telco perspective, how do we bring more CEBP/UC style innovations directly to businesses?

The irony is this challenge is no longer a technology problem.  The tools, talents, platforms or apis required to integrate most communications functionality into practically any business process are understood and affordable. Many Telcos have platforms that allow for new services and apis to provide innovative solutions to clients.  Furthermore, the client use cases and return on investment calculations are already proven.

The challenge that has not been overcome by most Telcos and telco dependent companies is their view of the customer world is horizontal.The “most” creative  Telcos and vendors may admit to several types of customers: consumers, business- class, and enterprise...alas small, medium and large is the same customer segmentation done by my local ice cream shop.

The challenge for Telcos and their vendors  is one of organizational structure and culture change on the revenue generating side of each company. Sales and marketing teams in CLECs and the vendors that support them have to get hyper focused on industry verticals...or at least CEBP vertical solutions.

Here are two examples of vertically specific opportunities that would allow Telcos to move beyond the selling of commodity voice and data services.

Healthcare is the vertical with the most money sloshing through it in the US today.
1.  The Federal government is providing $42,000 subsidies for physicians to adopt EMR technologies.  Amazingly, few of the EMRs that I have reviewed have any real communications functionality embedded in their platforms.  Here are two challenges to be solved by UC/CEBP.
First, making sure that patients don’t miss appointments has hard ROIs understood by everyone in healthcare. Secondly, the ability to securely transfer EMRs  within and between healthcare organizations and physicians has lots of lags and drags in the process.

K-12 and Higher Education continues to see above average growth while serving the most connected of our generations.
2. Outbound messaging and surveying applications have become  a standard  requirement for most schools and towns within the last six years.  Why couldn’t a CLEC provide school districts or municipalities  partner with Student Information Systems  or Municipal CRM platforms to provide outbound  student/citizen messaging applications as part of the voice and data packages.

Identifying the right types of  CEBP functionality  to add real value for customers is a matter of focus. Regardless, it does come down to a fundamental question.  Are the Telcos and all the Telco dependent firms really willing to think about customers with a bit more complexity than small, medium, or large. Then, are the best firms willing to align their sales and marketing organization to take ownership of this communications value proposition?