Livewire

One of the challenges in a rapidly changing, converging telco and media landscape is how do we understand, interpret and measure value from a consumer's perspective.  With new service offerings and technology capability emerging, synthesizing and shifting constantly, how can we evaluate the value proposition of each or compare the value of one operators triple-play offering over another?

Just because something is new, or sexy, doesn't make it a killer app or the "next big thing".  A company needs a way of assessing the value of their communication services offerings and opportunities for innovation without resulting in costly duplication.

Value of the consumer communication experience can be defined in reference to the following three aspects;

• Presence - is the combination of the current user identity/role, their location, the time and their level of mobility;
• Experience - defines the consumer experience in leveraging communications including the service(s), application(s), device(s) and quality of service provided; and
• Content - is the value contributed from a consumer's capacity to find, generate and consume relevant content.

A consumer in assessing a providers value will look at each of these aspects and ask themselves relevant questions;

• Does my provider give me service anywhere I am likely to be - home, office, overseas, rural communities?
• Can I get my favorite tv/sport/stock information anywhere and anytime?
• Does the quality of service justify expensive convergence devices/services?
• Etc.

Often the answers to these questions present a fractured picture.  A consumer can access some of the content, some of the time and sometimes its easy.  Much like providers themselves the industry is still very siloed in the value they provide - cable operators have better sport, telco carriers provide better quality of service for telephony, media operators have stronger content ecosystems.  Customers are refusing the triple/quad-play path simply because the value to the consumer is not provided.

How can operators/providers improve the consumer value of their offerings.  Consider each of the aspects of consumer value - Presence, Experience and Content - as circles whose size is determined by maturity and breadth;

• For service offerings where all three intersect, this is an integrated offering which can be leveraged (e.g voice telephony for carriers) to provide improved service;
• For service offerings where only two of the three aspects are mature/broad (e.g internet providers with broad content ecosystems) this is an opportunity to enhance the offering to be an integrated capability (i.e by broadening coverage of the presence aspect); and
• For offerings with only one aspect (i.e a content generator only) this is a gap which must be addressed through development of a new service line or partnering to deliver higher value to the customer.

This framework for understanding consumer value is a start for operators and providers to consistently evaluate their value proposition and asses the impact of market strategy on that  value proposition.  The broader and more mature your services are in these aspects, the more concrete and compelling is the value to each consumer.

Having conceptualized and assessed the consumer value proposition, the next challenge comes in developing a platform which enables a competitive value chain to optimize cost, provide personalized/differentiated offers and support the rapid innovation demanded by today's customers.

But that's a subject for another day, another blog.