Top Concerns Facing Communications Service Providers

Top Concerns Facing Communications Service Providers in the Age of the Social Web Presented by: Jeff Edlund, SNCR Fellow, CTO HP Communications & Media Solutions 6 th Annual SNCR Research Symposium November 3-4, Harvard University’s Faculty Club www.sncr.org #SNCR

Bio: Jeff Edlund - #jedlundhp
CTO for HP’s Communications & Media Solutions (CMS) business unit
Owner and driver of the Innovation processes within HP CMS
Member HPL Advisory Board, ATIS Board of Directors, SNCR Fellow, Speaker and Author
SNCR #SNCR

Quantitative and qualitative study
Quantitative:
Online survey developed by SNCR Research Fellows + HP
David Strom – SNCR Fellow
Hosted on survey tool Qualtrics
Distributed to target respondent audience of CSPs via email and social media channels
Survey results based on 50+ individual responses
Qualitative:
Case studies collected via recorded telephone conversations using a discussion guide developed by SNCR Fellows
Research Methodology #SNCR

Breakdown of those who responded #SNCR

Geographical distribution of responses #SNCR

Why the interest in this research, now?
HP CMS’s primary customer is the CSP – Communications Service Provider and fresh insights are always needed on the evolving needs of this vertical market
Social media has emerged as a major factor in business
Learning's about social media will help guide our solution sets for this market place ensuring that the CSP can meets its customer demands
HP believes that social media will transform the way we all interact with our customers
#SNCR

Social Media
What are the impacts to the CSP?

Is Social Media impacting the CSP Network?

Data Growth – can the CSP keep up?

What’s in a Gigabyte? - more than you think but not much by Internet standards
One hour of SDTV video at 2.2 Mb/s is approximately 1 GB
1 episode of the popular US Television Series:
True Blood

What’s in a Petabyte? - now things are starting to get big
Consider:
AT&T has about 19 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day
The movie Avatar took 1 petabyte of storage to render the 3D CGI effects

What is a Zettabyte? - I don't think we have to worry about this one yet but maybe in 2025…
This is equivalent to the amount of data that would be generated by everyone in the world posting messages on the micro-blogging site Twitter continuously for a century
Research from the University of California, San Diego reports that in 2008, Americans consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information

What action is your business taking to respond to increased data traffic from social media?

Are you leveraging Cloud Services to meet infrastructure demands?

Where do you believe that social media will have the biggest impact in the future?

Impacts vary widely across the survey sample
“ No impact. It's just bits.”
“ They see us as a pipe, and it's true, we're not adding to the facebook or twitter experience.”
“ Our communications services today routinely include the use of social media, however, many clients still view traditional media as their primary channel to reach the public and key audiences.”
“ We sell WLAN equipment so I'm guessing that the use of social media has increased the traffic on our customers network by at least 25-50% or higher in some places like schools.”

Social Media
Threat or Opportunity?

Is the use of Social Media a threat or opportunity for your business?

Strong mobile trends for leading Social Companies * Source – HP CMS market research

What types of solutions are your customers asking for the most?

How will Social Media fit into your business strategy going forward?

What metrics are you using to track the effectiveness of your social media efforts?

Depending who is commenting, Social Media is full of polar opposites
“ Completely over-rated for many businesses. Typical IT industry hype....a bunch of twenty-something’s that know nothing about business advising senior execs who also know nothing about their own business....”
“ We have strong messages to share, and social media provides new ways to reach audiences in their preferred method of message delivery. We see social media as contributing toward brand awareness and industry leadership, while also helping to grow sales, etc.”

Social Media
Counting the Costs

Does your company have a strategy owner for deploying social media for your internal business

Who owns the Social Media strategy in your organization?

Is your company using social media to communicate with your customers to better understand their needs?

Does Social Media effect the cost to produce your goods and services?

Is your business currently offering any of the following personalized services?

Comments on the costs
“ Using social media, we can avoid some of the traditional costs of reaching customers. However, the need to dedicate resources to social media offsets much of the advantage.”
“ There's a greater expectation that it continually works, which is different than e-mail and occasional web-browsing.”

Social Media
So where is the CSP Opportunity?

What do you believe is the most important trend in social media today?
Use of Facebook as a two-way communications platform to replace e-mail
Immediacy and control of intercommunication
Consistency and sending out a clear, cohesive message to further enhance and protect a company's brand and reputation
Customer Service
Ease of content or information sharing
Monitoring and responding to interest and activity related to our markets and our company
Increased use of mobile
Social media measurement and analytics

Biggest CSP Opportunity – Relevancy!
“ When we've considered its use, we've struggled with the reality that as a communication provider we're not really relevant to our customers social circle. We're just there to facilitate, but we're not in their circle of friends, they don't really care about what we're doing or what our promotions are. They just want us to deliver reliable service and be able to deliver services on par with the (big boys).”

Thank you!

Top Concerns Facing Communications Service Providers

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Top Concerns Facing Communications Service Providers Presentation Transcript