Turbocharging Mobile Data Services for a Telecom Player

The context

One of the major Belgian telecom players consulted 4P square in order to help them with the market development of mobile data services. This was already a few years ago, even before the boom of the mobile apps market, but the approach that 4P square developed was very performing and the methodology can be used to develop other markets too. So even when you’re not active in the telecom business, this might be an interesting methodology for you.  So, this is why I would like to share the way we approached market development in an innovative way.

The approach

Step 1:

We started with a simple Pareto analysis. The basic question was: “Which industries can potentially generate 80% of the mobile data services?” Based upon this analysis, we selected six high potential industries for mobile data services: Banking & Insurance, Government, Public Transport, FMCG, Retail and Media.

Step 2:

In a second step we made an analysis of the key challenges of each industry and an international benchmarking study to determine best practises and top cases. We contacted the top players and invited them to Belgium to present their case to the top 10 of their industry in Belgium. It was certainly not difficult to convince those companies. People like to share their own success stories. Most speakers were prepared to come to Belgium to share their top case at cost of expenses.

Step 3:

In a third step we organised full day “Innovation days” for each industry separately. In a first series of sessions the speakers presented their cases. After the presentation of the cases we organised cross-company workshops to discuss the lessons learned from the presented cases and to conclude on potential copying of top international cases in Belgium.

Step 4:

In the last step all top 10 players of each industry where contacted by the business development team of our customer to discuss potential further development of mobile data services. This resulted in lots of new business and business opportunities.

The results

It was not always easy to discuss potential business ideas amongst the top 10 of each industry, from whom – by the way – more than 80% was present at the innovation days. Some people preferred being protective and to keep their ideas for themselves instead of sharing them with their competitors. But a lot of the participants understood that real innovation contributes to the benefit of a whole industry and that it delivers added value for each player. Some successful mobile data services that were implemented are: mobile ticketing in Public transport, SMS parking in Government and 4040 VTM in Media.