Although some mobile operators seem concerned about their role – we feel that mobile providers need to embrace these new customers and their ability to introduce new and innovative solutions.  U.S. communications service providers seems to have embraced the role of OTT players, via key partnerships and the introduction of innovation or collaboration centers to foster M2M solutions. On the other side of the table, many international partners continue to assess their approach towards these vendors.

In my view, the M2M marketplace is far too vast to limit your options. With these endless opportunities – why not leverage other partners, with unique expertise, to create compelling offers for your end-customer?  Just remember that you need a well thought out M2M strategy, a compelling product and a flexible billing solution to capture the revenue.

As Cycle30 continues to engage the M2M community, it’s amazing to see how many people are unaware of the latest technology and access advancements that have been realized in the marketplace.  There are a number of new offerings that deliver mobile M2M solutions that are not bound by coverage or pricing limitations.

One interesting example is a global sensor that tracks luggage for domestic or world travelers – and it can be delivered at a very cost effective price to consumers. 

If a previous business case Return-on-Investment (ROI) did not pan out– I’d encourage you to definitely take another look. Common M2M solutions have a lifecycle of 5+ years – so you don’t have to get always be break-even within a 12 month period.

If you have questions on partnership opportunities, M2M solution advancements and/or are looking to build out an M2M business plan, I’d be interested in hearing your ideas. Post a comment or drop me an email.

If your business support systems are the heart of your business, then replacing back-office infrastructure like billing is something like open-heart surgery

But it’s a struggle. As our

One area I’m especially intrigued by are the sessions related to “smart grid/smart utilities.” It will be interesting to see what lessons the utility sector takes from the experience of telecoms.

My prediction is that there are many technology lessons to be learned; however, the primary lesson will be about the criticality of putting the customer at the center of the model. That means gaining a greater understanding of your customer, developing products/plans that meet their requirements and giving them access to information about their consumption patterns. Giving customers the power to be better informed and thereby better able to make choices to suit their individual needs.

It’s a lesson that took the telecom industry a while to learn and a valuable one that utilities should take to heart as soon as possible.

This topic is near and dear to my heart, but it’s just one of the many discussions I look forward to sharing with colleagues new and old at TMF Management World this year. Let me know your thoughts here, or better yet, meet us there and join the conversation.

The smart grid renovation of the utility market is going to create a torrent of usage data like nothing the utility industry has seen before. It’s something telecoms and wireless operators have dealt with for a while now: timely usage, two-way machine communications, and near-real-time account updates from the consumer device. And we in the billing and OSS space who serve these operators understand the data magnitude intuitively. But it’s going to be a change for utility operators who are used to gathering usage once every month or two. A reality check, you might say.

The buzz around Google and Zigbee in the home area networking space lends even more credibility to the size of the data project that lies ahead for all of us as the smart grid become reality. When the world’s most prevalent data miner gets involved, you know there’s value in the space. Jesse Berst at Smart Grid News raises the question this week of whether Google can overtake the Zigbee standard already begun.

It may be that utilities will borrow the experience and lessons learned by the telecom industry as they prepare to build the networks that will carry this data. Or, they may stay traditional and build it themselves. We’ll be discussing this with others in the utility space in a few weeks at the B/OSS Live event in D.C. Join us there or let us know your thoughts here. And stay tuned.

The companies destined to succeed are those that continually seek a culture of customer service. By that, I mean they seek to infuse their companies with values, processes and tools that help them understand and serve their customers — because the customers are their business.

Our goal at Cycle30 is to assist service providers, which are our customers, by providing some of those values, tools and processes that bring them closer to their own customers. We think service providers’ ability to truly know and serve their subscribers with perfect service is really the holy grail. Many seek this, but too many fall far too short of the goal

Technology is amazing. It helps us every day. But while it can bring enormous benefits, it can’t help you take care of customers if your values and processes aren’t in place as well. None of us can afford to forget that customers always hold the power in the customer-provider relationship: the power to trust you with their services, and, more importantly, with their hearts.

The downside, unfortunately, is that these RFPs drive vendor evaluations and selections, and this process can take months or even years in an enterprise, order-to-cash, billing decision for telecom, cable and utility BSS. After all the evaluation, some enterprises decide to do nothing.

RFPs help enterprise purchasers evaluate vendors on a scale from 1-10. Often, six to ten vendors blindly get the RFP with an invitation to bid and a subjective look into one’s true capabilities. The vendor’s answers to these RFP questions come down to making the cut or being eliminated. Many times, all this effort has run its course before one real conversation between customer and vendor takes place.

RFP processes don’t save time. In fact, they waste time on both sides, where vendors offer up proprietary information without visibility into the real nature and seriousness of the request. Customers waste time on analysis, ranking and meaning of the requirements and answers. Too much time wasted on both sides that could be avoided if communication and collaboration were better between customer and vendor.

Enterprise billing solutions are the kind that many companies really only want to select, implement and run once. So why not eliminate the lengthy RFP process and instead open up the vendor contest to a select few vendors that can do the job. Customers, do your homework upfront and put a realistic analysis together that not only has the technical requirements documented but also includes the more human or culture factors too. It’s more than just Vendor A or Vendor B meets/does not meet the requirement.

In the end, customers and vendors will have to work together daily so that they can collaborate when it’s time to execute. That means a lot more than whether the software solution meets that RFP requirement in Section B, Question 210. Eliminate these boring RFPs, start on the real objectives and goals at hand, open up the process, talk to your vendors frequently, and let them know what the playing field will be like and what it will take to win your company’s confidence.

In the end, organizations that eliminate the RFP process and just pick the few vendors that can execute is a better return on investment, and a more efficient selection process. And a vendor/partner that is truly the best in class and vested in the continued success of your organization.