By Erin Harrison
In order for service providers and enterprises to gain a competitive edge, they must tap into their innovation resources on a continual basis – not just looking at technical or service-related angles, but also taking into account new markets brought on by the advent of social media.
However, according to a recent Alcatel-Lucent whitepaper, Creating Revenue from Adjacent Markets with Social Advertising, “in an application and content market characterized by proliferation, innovation can happen anywhere, from any aspect of the business. It is critical to consider which business models, use cases and business cases can deliver innovation to all value chain participants: consumers, enterprises, advertisers, strategic industries and service providers.”
Service providers that carefully consider their assets and use them to construct innovative adjacent market offers have the opportunity to generate more revenue therefore leading to higher average revenue per user (ARPU) from businesses and consumers.
Having a coordinated and comprehensive innovation plan can create positive business outcomes for all involved partners.
While service providers have their own unique challenges in delivering innovative services that monetize their strengths, they also have different, valuable assets: their network, relationships and management assets from billing to support. As Alcatel-Lucent points out, most service providers have developed long, trusted relationships with consumers and enterprises as part of their classic service provision.
Mobile advertising is one such way that service providers can leverage their position in the marketplace. Service providers can provide mass personalization with more services that satisfy the needs of their customers in a more granular and relevant way, by taking advantage of their strengths in local areas and targeting their customers. Alcatel-Lucent subsidiary, Optism™ in fact, is enabling the mobile advertising market by bridging the gap between operators and advertisers through partnerships that help service providers turn their subscribers into advertising audiences through a fully-hosted, end-to-end solution.
As Alcatel-Lucent summarizes in its white paper, “Innovative packaging of new services to existing customers, such as SMBs or enterprises with which there is already a strong and trusted relationship, leverages key service provider strengths that web providers cannot easily replicate.”
Utilizing customer analytics can also carve out service providers’ niche with innovative services that will be popular. In addition, network analytics ensure that the services will generate more revenue than network problems or costs.
The increasingly mobile world is creating opportunities for new partnerships and business models that will allow operators of networks and third parties leverage their respective strengths to effectively monetize these opportunities. Having the right platforms and tools in place to be able to react quickly and analyze results in or to adapt to fast-changing market conditions will be critical to maximize success.
