A:Like everything else, mobile users in reference to an operator go through various life-stages. Broadly speaking a customer account goes through the following phases: acquisition, conversion, value-enhancement, retention, and phase-out. While during the acquisition phase the operator has invested in acquiring a customer, it is the later phases that he recoups and then further gains profitability. Knowing the different phases and acting on the phases have a two-fold benefit: firstly measuring it and secondly by exploiting consumer behaviour in the various stages allows accurate positioning of products in the right context. For example if a customer has hit the retention phase, up sell and cross-sells may not work very well as the basic value delivered by the operator to the customer may be in question in the customer’s mind. Retention programs such as right-sized promotions may be some freebies for renewed interest would work better. Another example, if a customer can enter into the value-enhancement phase (detection can happen by observing growth in usage, recharge, experimenting with data and other VAS services), cross-sells and up-sells in a very targeted and context-sensitive manner is likely to yield better results. Targeted and context-sensitive promotions or campaigns counter the pesky sms or voice blasts we’ve all so dislike.

A:Customer lifecycle management (CLM) allows an operator to understand what stage a customer is in and this in turn allows an operator to deliver real value to the end consumer. So this is a big departure from sms blasts, pesky pre-recorded calls. CLM brings in the required relevance. Imagine two extreme situations: I’ve just recharge my mobile with Rs 500 and I get an offer to recharge at Rs 200. At this point I couldn’t be bothered. Or, I’ve just recharged at Rs 500 with full talk-time and after that I get an offer to recharge at Rs 600 with Rs 600 worth of talk time and 500 sms free. My reaction would be, why couldn’t you tell me earlier? What the examples above point to, is the missing real-time context. Understanding the life-cycle and where a subscriber is in with regards to usage, recharge, VAS subscriptions, data usage, subscriptions etc, allows an operator to maintain an updated real-time context of a subscriber. This context then becomes a very powerful background in deciding what promotions are relevant to the subscriber.Contexts, therefore, allows an operator to chose the right promotions to deliver real value to the end consumer. Finally it is about win-win. A customer who perceives value trends to consume more and therefore increases individual profitability from an operator’s perspective.

A:Operators today (even the very established ones) find it difficult to have end-to-end systems that take data from BI, achieve required segmentation, run campaigns, measure results, do course-correction all in one place. The whole end-to-end consists of various pieces of technologies from different domains from IT systems to network technology (GSM nodes for example) and they have all either grown in-house or sourced in from various vendors. Tying them all together is a big challenge. The impact of not have a single-stop access and flow from one function to another makes the proposition very expensive. This is where our solution U&R Revenue Plus offers and end-to-end system that ties in all of the various elements and make is not only convenient but cost-effective to run an operation. The other challenge in implementation comes in because even with an end-to-end system it is difficult to have a one-scheme fits all approach. At a very notional level we understand there is a huge difference between engaging with a top-end set of customers vs. a bottom-end set of customers. Each set requires completely different approaches. While for the top-end loyalty programs works well, more targeted and instantly gratifying promotions are far more relevant the BoP segment. And if one were to drill down further one would find multitudes of variations necessitating a very sophisticated system that allow for rapid introduction of promotions on what the Web2.0 enthusiasts would call as the constant beta. One then finds the need to do a constant trial of various promotions with various hypothesized tipping points.

A:Our current focus is more on telecom operators. However, we are in the process of looking at propositions that bring different worlds together.