Communications & High Tech
Behind the Screens
Angelo Morelli is the
global lead for New-Product
Development and
Innovation for Accenture
Communications &
High Tech.
angelo.morelli
@accenture.com
Emmanuel Lalloz is the
global marketing lead for
Accenture Communications.
emmanuel.lalloz
@accenture.com
Communications & High Tech
Behind the Screens: New, Easy, Connected
Keys to high performance in a convergent world
By Angelo Morelli and Emmanuel Lalloz
The world is moving through a period of rapid and
revolutionary advancements in information commu-
nications and technology capabilities, even at a
time when the global economy is moving backward.
Both optimism and frank awareness of the chal-
lenges ahead were themes of the 2009 Mobile
World Congress, held in Barcelona in February. On
the one hand, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put it
during his keynote address to the Congress, no mat-
ter what the economy holds in store over the next
few years, technology-fueled innovation is on a
steep, upward trajectory of success.
On the other hand, many commentators at the
Congress shared the sense that such innovation in
the mobile industry depends on moving to a more
open development environment less restricted by
incompatible operating systems and devices. While
sharing Ballmer's general optimism, other execu-
tives at the Congress expressed concern that the
current development environment and the prolifera-
tion of operating systems may lead to islands of
products and services, which can stifle rather than
accelerate innovation.
Accenture believes that stimulating innovation in
the communications and high-tech industries is
also much more than a technology issue. The world
will continue to see proliferation of services and
"screens"—the types and numbers of networked
devices. That means, however, that behind those
screens there needs to be a lot of work done from
a consumer-centric point of view, making the
experience of using the products and services
both powerful and simple.
As Telefónica's executive chairman César Alierta
said in his address to the Congress, the industry's
success "will come from providing the consumer
with a much better experience based upon
providing value.”
New, Easy, Connected!
Mobile World Congress 2009
Barcelona, Spain
16-19 February 2009
As companies plot their strategies for achieving
high performance over the next few years, they
should be thinking about at least three things: They
need to think new, think easy and think connected.
Make it new
Innovation doesn't stop during an economic down-
turn. In fact, it's more important than ever.
Accenture research into previous recessionary peri-
ods shows a clear ability of the better market per-
formers to pull away from their competition during,
and then especially immediately after, a recession.
A commitment to innovation is a big part of that
differentiation.
New Accenture research—released during the 2009
Mobile World Congress—indicates, however, that
companies in the communications and high-tech
industries are struggling when it comes to effective,
cost-efficient new-product development. Our
research found that 70 percent of telecommunica-
tions carriers, high-tech companies and media firms
stopped development of at least some of their ser-
vices and products last year. The biggest reason:
budget overruns linked to slow and inefficient
development processes and a shortage of people
with the experience to generate innovations or
manage the new-product development process.
In today's economic environment, it's crucial for
companies to increase their return on investment in
innovation and product development. So the waste
implied in a high rate of abandoned projects is a
cause for concern.
On the positive side, our research found a correla-
tion between companies that meet or exceed their
new-product launch plans—a group we term innova-
tion masters—and those that leverage third parties
and specialized providers in an open development
environment. Whereas average new-product launch
times across our global sample was six
months, companies leveraging an open
development model were significantly
more likely to have launch times under
three months.
These innovators are also less timid in the
types of offerings under development. The
majority of companies in the survey are
focused on new products that are really
only extensions of existing offerings,
Innovation masters, by contrast, are more
likely to be branching out into new areas
such as personal information management,
fixed-mobile convergence and services
based on social networking applications.
An open environment can increase costs
and risks, however, and that was under-
scored by our research. The innovation
masters were more likely to report that
they experience cost overruns in new-
product development.
What can be done to balance speed-to-
innovation and cost? Accenture has made
a significant investment in a platform for
mobile-services development that we
believe is a big part of improving develop-
ment times while also reducing costs and
risks. Accenture Mobility Operated Services
is a managed-services approach to rolling
out new mobile services quickly and cost
effectively. A wide range of applications is
already available, including mobile money
management, telematics, voucher and tick-
eting and many others.
A key enabler of this managed-services
approach to new-product development is
the Accenture Service Delivery Platform,
which combines hardware, software and
services into a common architecture that
enables cross-industry enterprises to cre-
ate and deliver solutions across different
networks. Accenture’s SDP is integrated
with leading communications service
providers’ and business partners’ platforms.
If one combines the deep knowledge of
industry verticals that Accenture has with
its experience developing a wide range of
mobile applications and services, this man-
aged services development model is a
powerful value proposition for companies
looking to "make it new" in the mobile
world.
Make it easy
What do consumers want most when it
comes to their devices and services? They
want to start them up and have them
work immediately. Easy. Simple. But for
an industry with a history of loading up
products with functions and features that
require lengthy user guides, "easy" doesn't
necessarily come easy.
Accenture recently surveyed groups of
technology savvy or "tech forward" con-
sumers in the United States, Europe, Japan,
Brazil, China and India to get their opin-
ions about the growth of networked
devices and the manner in which their
lives may be changed as a result. These
consumers are already juggling multiple
devices. High percentages own mobile
phones, computers, digital cameras, mobile
music players and so forth. Most expect
the number of networked devices in the
world to grow dramatically. So what they
want and need is the assurance that com-
panies will make the use of products and
services easy for them. That means that
interoperability and simplicity are keys
to a company's achievement of high
performance.
Consumers are also looking for easy, uni-
fied service and support—a single source to
go to if devices and services don't work
properly or are difficult to configure. Such
support can actually be a revenue genera-
tor for companies. Other Accenture
research has found that significant per-
centages of consumers are willing to pay
for help in getting the most functionality
they can out of their digital, networked
environment. This is an area where carriers,
with their existing infrastructure for cus-
tomer service, may have an edge in the
marketplace. It's therefore also an opportu-
nity for possibly monetizing the service
and making it available to other types of
organizations—turning a cost center into a
revenue generator.
"Make it easy" can mean something else
from the business's perspective rather
than the consumer's. So-called "application
stores," which are also a part of the
Accenture Mobility Operated Services
business model mentioned earlier, make it
easier to roll out new services. For multiple
industries, Accenture offers a "mobile ser-
vices store"—applications built on our soft-
ware platform that are ready to go with
minimal configuration.
Make it connected
In today's world, devices by themselves no
longer matter as much; what counts is a
network-connected device. Accenture has
characterized this trend of device connec-
tivity under the name "trivergence"—
whereby a device, as well as its data
and controls, are coordinated over the
ubiquitous network.
Consumers expect the number of net-
worked devices in the world to grow dra-
matically—as does the technology indus-
try. David Clark, senior research scientist
at MIT and one of the chief architects of
the Internet, suggests that a network of
one trillion devices is not too far off. (And
if the mobile industry makes just $1 from
each device per year, that's a new trillion-
dollar industry.)
The big question, then, is how to harmo-
nize the demand for connectivity with the
demand to make it easy. Currently, when
consumers in most parts of the world
cannot even port their mobile phone from
one carrier to another, an open mobile
environment may seem like a pipe dream.
But it's also essential.
The mobile innovation panel held on the
second day of the 2009 Mobile World
Congress was an insightful look at this
challenge of creating a more open mobile
world. The CEOs present, including Steve
Ballmer of Microsoft and Olli-Pekka
Kallasvuo of Nokia, were in strong agree-
ment that a more open and interconnect-
ed technology environment is essential if
the industry is going to fulfill its potential
over the next decade. Certainly many
challenges lie ahead, but the force of his-
tory appears to be with the move to open
environments.
Accenture: Behind the screens
In the end, then, the essentials of "new,
easy and connected" reveal themselves to
be different facets of the same issue: the
drive to create a more open environment
that can drive innovation, make devices
and services easy to use, and deliver con-
nectivity of devices anytime, all the time.
Accenture is committed to that vision of
an open future and is working "behind the
screens" with companies throughout the
communications, electronics and high
tech, and media and entertainment sec-
tors. We believe that if companies keep in
mind the imperative to "make it new, easy
and connected," the years ahead will offer
more opportunities than ever before to
achieve high performance.
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