2015 Trends

Emagine: Steve Evans' & Dave Peters' 2015 Trends

The main battle between incumbent mobile operators in Africa over the next five years will be in mobile broadband.

The voice market in many countries is reaching its nadir and growth in voice revenues in most countries is flattening off. Data revenues are increasing rapidly, driven by the enormous demand to access the internet. Operators in Africa are uniquely placed to provide broadband services to the market. A dearth of fixed line infrastructure means they are the de facto suppliers, or in many cases the only suppliers, of these services, so they are poised to be the main winners in this battle.

However, they will need to hold their nerve and ensure they can fund the necessary investments, initially in 3G and then 4G. This is not for the faint hearted! The new funding round provides an opportunity for a change in market position as laggards in the investment game will undoubtedly find their market share threatened. Of paramount importance for mobile operators in 2015 will therefore be the ability to fund their investments in mobile broadband, and in a timely fashion.

Getting the investment in place however is just part of the journey. Once mobile operators have delivered on the ‘hygiene factor’ of infrastructure and are operating it in an efficient and reliable manner (no mean feat), they will need to hone their marketing skills and customer management capabilities. After all, mobile operators are in a unique position. They have customers; frequently millions of customers with whom they communicate on a daily basis and on whom they can collect copious amounts of information. They are ideally poised to be the ultimate customer management organisation. But today they are a long way from achieving this, even in more developed markets.

We are moving towards marketing to a segment of one, but as yet we are years away from reaching the target. The mantra of ‘know your customer well and deliver what your customer needs’ however has never been more true, especially in the highly competitive mobile operator landscape where there is a lot of scope for customer churn. For African Telcos, the challenge of winning new customers whilst satisfying existing users in order to increase revenues cannot always be met by repeatedly offering new services or tariffs. A better strategy is to look to customer relationships and find out how their experience can be improved.

Technology is now at a point where it can analyse and learn from the big data generated by customers. With the ability to map detailed profiles on each individual customer, the holy grail of tailored, one-to-one marketing is within reach. The opportunity is huge both for the operators themselves and for the partners who will help them reach this goal. Companies such as Emagine are at the front line of this race to better understand customer needs on an individual basis and to dynamically react to the opportunities that arise, optimising the services being offered. Given the scope to drastically reduce customer churn and boost ARPU by being able to really understand each customer’s needs and preferences, we believe that operators in developing markets have a lot to gain by getting this element of their marketing strategies right.

Steve Evans is the Executive Adviser to Emagine International. Dave Peters is the firm's CEO.



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