Networks Ignoring Corporate Customers - Report

Mobile operators are under-exploiting one of the industry's most profitable user groups. That's the warning from SmartTrust following research that shows a large proportion of mobile operators have been unable to exploit the revenue generating potential of the corporate market. Whilst accounting for just 20% of Western Europe's subscriber base, corporate users generate over 50% of all service revenues. Of this figure, corporate value added services account for just 3% of an operator's ARPU (average revenue per user) and 20% of data traffic. These figures suggest huge growth potential. However, value added services for corporate customers have fallen far short of those offered to the consumer market, limiting opportunities for growing data traffic.

Mobile operators have actively launched value added services such as news, infotainment and banking as a means of attracting new consumer users and increasing revenues beyond basic voice traffic. However, in the corporate market this has largely been unexploited with corporate customers generally targeted with simple discount / call rate incentives. With ARPU from voice traffic falling, operators need to address the issue now by offering tailored services that will stimulate an immediate growth in data traffic.

"Service differentiation for the corporate market is predominantly fought over price and discounted calls. The consumer market, however, has shown that users are genuinely attracted to services that add real value. For corporate customers, many operators have been unable to successfully address the opportunities," explains Fred Molenaar, commercial director at SmartTrust. "When you combine the sector churn rate with the fact that subscriber acquisition costs are more than double that of a prepaid consumer you begin to realise the importance of the sector."

Research from SmartTrust shows that corporate users are looking not only for better call control and service management but services that will allow them to integrate mobile devices with existing enterprise data and applications, allowing remote workers access to live data from the handset.

Danish operator SONOFON has been quick to recognise the potential for developing corporate data revenues and is targeting corporate customers with SmartTrust's Corporate Provisioning solution. Using the technology, corporate customers are offered tools that provide web-based administrative interfaces for individual or group-wide handset and SIM management. Offering two distinct solutions, for both the SME and LE markets, SmartTrust addresses the individual needs of the sectors, delivering simple tools to effortlessly migrate corporate data to mobile devices and enable the integration of the mobile device into existing systems and processes. Corporations are also provided with superior tools to manage the cost and usage of each individual phone.

"Corporate Provisioning provides a perfect means for introducing new areas of service to our corporate customers," explains Steen H

Posted to the site on 9th January 2003