All enterprises want attention

The telecom industry needs to pay greater attention to enterprises and offer realistic partnerships if more businesses are to invest in multimedia solutions, a new survey shows.

The report, UK Enterprises with Cutting Edge Mobile Solutions, was developed by Ericsson Consumer & Enterprise Lab’s Enterprise Insight Program and focuses on why businesses are choosing the mobile route.

The report reveals that these cutting-edge enterprises can be found in almost any industry, but are better defined as having senior executives who believe in the advantages of new technology.

Renis Rahn, from Consumer & Enterprise Lab, says: “Being ‘cutting edge’ is more to do with the technology-adoption profile of the people making decisions in the company. Pioneer-type decision makers are much more willing to dig in and pull the pieces of the puzzle together themselves – they have an innate belief in the power of technology to help their businesses, even if they don’t have absolute proof.”

Such an example is Anglia Business Solutions, a software and IT consultancy firm with a mobile field force of 30, more than 80 percent of its staff. The company has issued its employees with SmartPhones with a Windows platform and synchronized e-mail, so they can access the exact information they could at their desks while on the road.

The company wanted real customer benefit and improved business performance and achieved both. Despite this, Anglia was critical of the telecoms industry, saying: “Vendors of mobile solutions are more interested in the mass market than in supporting business applications.”

Researchers looked at dozens of other enterprises to get a solid view of the market. The findings include:

* The industry must be more proactive in providing better solutions, better partnerships and an environment for innovation.
* Standardization must be achieved faster.
* Hardware needs to be more affordable.
* Product life cycles must be extended from the current 6-8 months to 3-5 years.

Rahn says it is important for the industry to understand why some companies are cutting edge, and learn what the next wave of businesses want. “We were surprised at the degree to which these companies felt they had to do all the work to piece together the solutions themselves.

“But we can see many opportunities for a player to come in and coordinate this work for the companies that don’t have such pioneer types driving the process.”