MIS Asia: Cognizant’s Vice President of Technology Practice Guides Communication Service Providers on Pioneering the Smart-Life Market

“The consumerization of IT has caused market saturation for “triple-play” phone/Web/TV services, as well as for voice/data/text wireless plans. This threatens the growth and margins of communication service providers (CSPs),” writes Yoosuf Mohamed. “One possible way for CSPs to grow user base, margins and revenue per customer is to look into the smart-life market.” Excerpts:

“New smart-home offerings use existing infrastructure to provide new security, convenience, entertainment, and tele-health services that extend beyond current offerings. This is cost-effective for CSPs to deploy and manage due to the reliance on existing networking and organizational infrastructure.

To put it simply, smart-life services leverage computing power, the cloud and established wired and wireless communication infrastructures to make life easier, safer and more convenient, pleasant and efficient for consumers.

To look further than smart-home, CSPs can explore delivering new offerings that encompass services outside of customers’ homes, steering towards the Smart Life.

In order to successfully pioneer the smart-life market, CSPs have to educate the market and their own sales force on the real value that smart-life offerings can bring by making it comprehensible and user-friendly. In addition, CSPs need to be willing to incrementally roll out new offerings, while providing high-quality support to resolve customers’ issues quickly and efficiently.

As a start, organizations’ assets need to be organized, available, and accountable for meeting the new strategic needs in the emerging smart life market – one that is more flexible, iterative and fast-moving. This flexibility will then allow CSPs to test new services and markets at a relatively low cost and at low risks.

CSP leaders must inform, convince and collaborate with internal and external stakeholders in order to drive smart-life initiatives. To better position themselves, organizations need to be aligned to meet the functional demands and that will provide the full support demanded by consumers. It is also important for CSPs to partner with businesses that can support the full spectrum of services that allows efficient scalability. CSPs should also structure the organization to fully support smart life, from selling consumers on the concept, to comprehensive and convenient customer support on an ongoing basis, while approaching the correct demographic/segment as the market requirements evolve.”

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