UK BUSINESS SAVING COSTS USING TODAY’S 2G MOBILE SERVICES FINDS OVUM

The findings of a survey conducted by Ovum research in the United Kingdom to determine the wireless needs of U.K. businesses are listed below.

• Key industries call for mobile sector to demonstrate how new revenue streams can be generated

• Mobile world divides between those involved in 3G roll-out and those like M7 Networks

that use today’s network to deploy existing technologies (integrating SMS with voice, Web and WAP) to do real business

More than half of UK enterprises (50 UK businesses interviewed) are in the process of mobile enabling their business according to research from Ovum for M7 Networks.

Business sees the key benefit for wireless solutions as being the need for new levels of flexibility and productivity rather than as a source of new revenue.

says Keshinee Shah of Ovum. " Today’s climate sees the mobile sector enabling business to make major improvements in productivity and efficiency. Evidence of how businesses can achieve or create new revenue streams and improve their customer experience will drive the next stage of growth."

With over 82 per cent of businesses stating that they have information that would be advantageous to customers and employees remotely, 52 per cent also believed that today’s 2G network (GSM) could help deliver this critical information.

According to Bill Erickson, President and CEO of M7 Networks, "It’s time to dispel the myth that all UK businesses are holding back for 3G to offer their employees and customers multimedia services. We now have evidence that they are looking at 2G to give access to critical information to drive productivity. It is now critical that the mobile industry provides evidence of how business can generate new revenue streams."

The research found that UK enterprises are holding back on developing new revenue generating services because the mobile industry is failing to communicate their service offering effectively. A ‘clear understanding on the return investment’ and ‘seamless integration into existing corporate applications’ were considered as the two most important enablers to encourage UK enterprises to wireless-enable their business.

The study also found a wide range of barriers holding back UK enterprises from wirelessly enabling their business. The primary concerns were lack of knowledge and confusion (74 per cent), reliability (60 per cent), high costs (56 per cent) and security (44 per cent).

Established to address these issues, M7 Networks is the first company in the UK to offer a mobile carrier-class open platform that helps businesses launch services without having to invest in the highly expensive infrastructure required to manage and deploy secure, reliable and scalable mobile applications.

"UK business is in a particularly strong position to capitalise on the massive take up of mobile devices by integrating SMS with voice, web and WAP. The UK hype over high bandwidth 3G services and the lack of businesses like M7 Networks has meant that companies have lost sight of what they can do with the existing 2G mobile network," says Bill Erickson.

Both the media, and financial and professional services sectors show much earlier interest in Business to Consumer (B2C) applications, and are likely to adopt Business to Employee (B2E) applications. All seven retailers and five of the seven media companies were deploying mobile services now or in the next six months.

"Users want a ‘solution solving service’," says Keshinee Shah of Ovum. "It is up to mobile service providers to clearly communicate their offering and demonstrate return on investment."

According to Bill Erickson, "It is critical that the mobile industry takes notice of these findings. We need to clearly demonstrate how mobile services can achieve financial benefits and how all the different technologies and devices can be integrated to give one simple solution."

M7 Networks looked to Ovum, the world’s leading mobile research authority, to cut through the hype and find out what UK business is really doing. Ovum found that wireless services were considered critical in giving mobile workers the ability to react quickly to changing business conditions. Access to corporate information and applications to workers in particular roles (particularly sales and services) will also shorten the length of key business processes.

When asked about when and why they would deploy services, the majority of businesses stated that they were looking to do it now or within the next six months and the reasons stated were primarily about efficiency, flexibility and better communication. This is despite the fact that they all believe there are many barriers preventing them to wirelessly enable their

The research was conducted with 50 businesses representing the following industry sectors (10 Finance, Insurance & Professional Services, 8 Media, 5 Pharmaceutical, 7 Retail, 7 Utilities, 8 Transport & Logistics and 8 Other)

100% of industries surveyed have information that would be advantageous to access away from the desk (employees and customers). Slightly less than 50% of those organisations surveyed did have a mobile business strategy.

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