A Report On Current Scenario and Future Trends in Enterprise Mobile Messaging in India

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A Report on Current Scenario and E
Future Trends in Enterprise Mobile N
Messaging in India. T
July 2008
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Research Commissioned by: Research Conducted by: U
ValueFirst Messaging Pvt. Ltd. Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management
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www.vfirst.com www.sitm.ac.in
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All print and electronic rights are the property of ValueFirst Messaging Pvt. Ltd. © 2008
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Disclaimer I
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All print and electronic rights are the property of
ValueFirst Messaging Pvt. Ltd. © 2008 A
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Executive Summary
Enterprise mobile messaging has grown exponentially in India. The current stage of
enterprise mobile messaging is nascent and a large number of enterprises that are currently
using mobile messaging services are in a nascent stage in terms of its utilization. There is a
critical need for the awareness of mobile messaging within enterprises for it to grow. Also,
tracking performance metrics and wide scale adoption beyond customer services will help the
enterprises benefit in a more effective manner.
Specifically,
• Features such as cost effectiveness, ease of use, wide reach, easy implementation and
real-time messaging capabilities have driven enterprises to adopt mobile messaging
services to improve their internal and external communication systems;
• Enterprise mobile messaging services have found critical usage in various areas of
functioning of an enterprise, be it marketing, customer services, supply chain
management or IT;
• The usage of enterprise mobile messaging services spans across verticals such as
banking and financial service institutions, stock broking, automotive, IT/ITES,
marketing services, manufacturing, healthcare, FMCG, real estate and retail.
KEY FINDINGS – CURRENT SCENARIO AND FUTURE TRENDS
• More notification and less promotional messaging - Over 70% of the enterprises
are utilizing mobile messaging services for the purpose of sending notifications, alerts
and reminders. Only 45% use them for promotional purposes, which is less than
expected;
• Lack of awareness - 41% of the

respondents admit that their knowledge
about the mobile messaging market is
either “average” or “poor”, implying a
general lack of knowledge about
enterprise mobile messaging;
• ROI calculations not done - 89% of

the enterprises are yet to implement
any performance measures to assess
the value proposition of the mobile
messaging services. This means that the
enterprise mobile messaging is yet to
reach significant spend for the
enterprises to keenly monitor the return
on investment.
• Real time messaging is the key -

Real-time messaging capabilities and
ease of use are the most important
features of mobile messaging services,
followed by cost effectiveness, according
to respondents.
• Customer services rules the roost – Over 56% of the enterprises are using mobile
messaging services to provide better service to their customers;
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
• Competitive advantage - 84% of the enterprises feel that using mobile messaging
services provide them with a competitive advantage over competitors not using such
services;
• Knowing is everything - Only 50% of the enterprises are able to make optimal use of the
mobile messaging services. Lack of knowledge about the different uses and benefits of the
services is the prime reason for sub-optimal use.
• Positive outlook - 87% of the enterprises say that their use of mobile messaging services
will increase significantly over the next one year;
• Replication of success - Over 60% of enterprises currently using the services are open to
expanding their usage to other areas of their business, which indicates excellent growth
possibilities for the mobile messaging services from early adopters alone;
• Higher adoption - A large number of new enterprises are expected to adopt mobile
messaging services over the next one year, which will take the mobile messaging services
beyond its current nascent stage in India.
FUTURE TRENDS
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HIGHER UPTAKE
• Awareness - Enterprises need to improve their knowledge about the mobile messaging
services and the various solutions available in the market in order to discover solutions
which are best suited to meet their needs;
• Measurement - Performance metrics such as time saved, increase in sales, or improvement

in customer response need to be defined by enterprises to determine the value provided by
mobile messaging services;
• Consulting - Mobile messaging services providers need to provide better assistance to

enterprises to help them discover various untapped areas where such services can help
improve business performance.
Table of Contents
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2. INTRODUCTION
3. RESEARCH SAMPLE
4. KEY FINDINGS
4.1 Business Function Supported
4.2 Competitive Edge
4.3 Optimal Use? Not Quite
4.4 Strength In Numbers
5. OTHER FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

5.1 Customers, Customers, Customers
5.2 Purpose Of Messages
5.3 Features – The Inside Story
5.4 Taking The Challenge
5.5 Benefits Aplenty
5.6 Exploring Different Avenues
5.7 What You Don't Know Can Hurt You!
5.8 Performance Measures
6. RECOMMENDATIONS
7. GLOSSARY
8. REFERENCES
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INTRODUCTION O
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Introduction
In the exponentially growing Indian telecom sector, Value Added Services (VAS) contributes
over 7% of the total revenue for operators. SMS is the highest contributor to VAS in India.
Easy to use, instantaneous and reliable, SMS is widely used by individuals all across the
country to communicate. Hence, it comes as no surprise that enterprises have also started
incorporating SMS based services to suit varied communication needs.
Enterprises have realized that improving efficiency within the organization requires improving
efficiency in their communication systems. Mobile messaging services are enabling
enterprises to send emergency alerts and notifications to support various aspects of their
business. Be it customer service, marketing, IT or SCM, these solutions have found invaluable
applications in the various departments of an enterprise. Organizations are continuously
experimenting with how these SMS based services can help improve workflows within their
enterprise and also enhance customer experience. The most common use of mobile
messaging services is believed to be for promotions.
Mobile messaging services providers are the companies that provide the interface between
the mobile operator and the enterprise, enabling messages in various forms and quantities to
be send to the target end-users. These service providers allow enterprises to integrate their
varied back-end IT systems with mobile phones using SMS services. They offer many
products and services targeted at the corporate, SMEs and other professionals, catering to a
variety of mobile messaging requirements of an organization ranging from mobile marketing,
intelligent pushing of messages to intelligent processing of incoming messages.
Enterprise mobile messaging has grown exponentially in India. The current stage of
enterprise mobile messaging in India can be categorized as nascent. There is a critical need
for awareness on mobile messaging services for it to grow. Also, tracking performance
metrics and wide scale adoption beyond customers services will help the enterprises take
benefit in a more effective manner.
Reducing cost, increased availability and improved performance of the mobile messaging
services in India is driving utilization to improve communication with various stakeholders of
enterprises. Contributing to the increasing adoption of the services are various features such
as reliability, easy implementation, wide coverage area, low cost and ease-of-use, apart from
the ability to send time-sensitive information to recipients without any delays.
Introduction
SMS services are of two main types – Push services and Pull services. Push services provide
the ability to deliver content services on a mobile handset. Examples of Push services would
be news headlines, weather updates, sports scores, meeting notifications, EMI notifications
and other reminders. Messages can be sent in large numbers to groups of users or can be
customized and personalized for individual users.
Pull services provide the ability to request information from the enterprises. The requested
service is sent back to the requesting handset via SMS. These services are used by
employees, business partners and customers. For example, a customer can request
information regarding status of delivery from a courier company.
The Push and Pull services have been adopted by enterprises spread over a large number of
verticals. IT companies have found use of these services in sending notifications about server
status and improving employee collaboration. Stock broking companies use these services to
send market information and recommendations to their customers. Banks and financial
service institutions use them to send account information and EMI reminders to their
customers, while hotels, clubs and marketing firms use these services for promotional as well
as notification purposes. SMS based services have also been found to be useful, inter alia, in
the retail, education, healthcare and automotive sectors.
It is interesting to note that the usage of enterprise mobile messaging services is spread
along various groups of users, starting from entry level managers in large enterprises to
SME/SOHO users to the mobile workforce of a corporation.
Introduction
Senior executives in enterprises use mobile messaging services to reduce decision making
time, while the sales/customer facing workforce uses the services to access information
and receive alerts while on the move. SME and SOHO users use the services to improve
efficiency and reduce costs, while mid-level executives use them to stay in touch with
their managers and subordinates.
This research shows the current scenario of the enterprise mobile messaging services in
India and predicts future trends, reasons for usage and knowledge levels of the
enterprises regarding mobile messaging services.
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Research Sample I
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Research Sample
The research was conducted in the months of April, May and June 2008. It considers
interactions with respondents from over 120 enterprises spread across a large number of
verticals. All the enterprises covered in the research were the existing users or active seekers
of mobile messaging services.
Responding enterprises included the following:
Designation:
The research sample included respondents with various designations such as Director,
Proprietor, CEO, Manager – IT, Manager – Operations, VP – IT, VP – Marketing and Assistant
Manager – IT, as well as Project Managers, Senior Executives and Team Leaders.
Vertical:
The research sample included respondents from various verticals such as Automotive, Banks,
Financial Services, Insurance, Stock Broking and ITES, IT Infrastructure Management,
Marketing Services, Retail, Education, Healthcare, Hospitality, Manufacturing, Media and
Entertainment, BPO and Pharmaceutical.
Region:
36% of the respondents were from Northern and Eastern India, 37% were from Western
India, while 27% were from Southern India.
Company size:
The respondents contacted represented many large, medium and small enterprises, with
annual revenues ranging from USD 23.2 billions to USD 12 millions.
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Key Findings O
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Business Function Supported
Even as new uses of mobile messaging services are being explored everyday, 56% of the
enterprises use these solutions to support and enhance customer service and to improve
customer relations. They realize that mobile messaging services are highly effective to stay in
constant touch with their customers, and provide timely notifications, alerts and reminders.
Also, not surprisingly, quite a few (34%) of these enterprises also use mobile messaging
services to support their marketing function. They find mobile messaging services to be one
of the quickest and cost-effective ways to generate awareness about their products or
services.
However, the study indicates that very few enterprises use mobile messaging services to
support other areas of their business such as Sales, IT and Supply Chain Management (SCM).
This is an indication that enterprises in India are yet to explore the full potential of mobile
messaging services, such as messaging sales staff or using mobile messaging to keep track
of deliveries from suppliers. This is also an indication of the fact that the mobile messaging
services is still in its early stages in India, with enterprises just beginning to explore its varied
uses. However, it is encouraging to know that 18% of the respondents are using these
services to support more than one business function.
Competitive Edge
Any solution which makes things easier for enterprises is always useful, but if it provides a
competitive advantage, it is a sure winner. 84% of the respondents feel that using mobile
messaging services provides them with an edge over their competitors not using such
services. Only 4% respondents said that these solutions do not provide any competitive
advantage, while the rest were undecided.
Most of the respondents who were uncertain also admitted that they had never really thought
about mobile messaging services. However, they would not be surprised if using the mobile
messaging services would them to get an edge over their competitors.
Hence, enterprises are taking advantage of mobile messaging services to provide better
customer service and improved business performance, which enable them to achieve
competitive advantage.
However, it must be noted that this advantage will reduce as more enterprises start using
these services and sustaining the competitive edge will largely depend on innovations in
utilization of the mobile messaging services to improve business performance.
Optimal Use? Not Quite
50% of the respondents claimed that they were making full use of the mobile messaging
services, while 30% said that they were unable to use them optimally and could achieve
better utilization of the services. The rest were uncertain. This uncertainty arises from the
fact that they have not kept track of their usage of the mobile messaging services.
Those who felt that they could make better use of mobile messaging services, gave the
following major reasons for sub-optimal usage:
• Lack of knowledge about the available solutions related to mobile messaging services
• Lack of knowledge about the various benefits/uses of the mobile messaging services
• Lack of technical know-how on implementation and operations challenges
Optimal use? Not quite
A majority (52%) of the respondents felt they did not have adequate knowledge about the
various uses and benefits of the mobile messaging services. This indicates that they could be
using the right solutions but applying them in a sub-optimal way or could be missing out on
other uses of the same solutions. For example, an IT enterprise could be using the solutions
only for emergency messaging to notify the concerned department when a server is down,
while the same application can be used to also notify their clients about the same, and to
give them an estimated time by which the server would be operational again.
33% of the respondents felt that they did not have adequate knowledge about available
solutions. These enterprises could be missing out on solutions already existing in the market
which suit their needs, or could be using outdated solutions. For example, an enterprise
might be manually resending undelivered messages, while new solutions in the market might
provide automated resending of such messages, thus saving valuable time and resources.
These findings indicate that enterprises have inadequate knowledge about mobile messaging
services available in the market and their various applications in business to create
competitive advantage and higher ROI.
Strength in Numbers
A large number (87%) of the respondents said there will be a definite increase in the number
of mobile messaging transactions made by enterprise over the next one year.
This forecast related to increased number of messaging transactions can be attributed to

various factors as outlined by the respondents. An overwhelming majority of the respondents
said their enterprise was in moderate to high growth phase and hence the number of
messages would increase. Others said they were discovering newer uses of mobile messaging
services, which will contribute to increased message transactions. A large number of
respondents recognized the close linkage between the number of mobile messaging
transactions and their business performance resulting in increased usage in the immediate to
medium term.
This highlights the trend that mobile messaging services are indeed succeeding in the Indian
market and with most enterprises looking to increase and expand the usage of mobile
messaging services, it is expected to grow.
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Other Findings O
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Customers, Customers, Customers
Over 80% of the enterprises use mobile messaging services for customer interaction. A little
over 25% enterprises confirmed using mobile messaging services for employee interaction.
A limited number of enterprises were using the mobile messaging services for internal
communication. Even fewer enterprises confirmed using it to communication to stakeholders
such as their partners/suppliers. Such lower usage corroborates the key finding ‘customer
services rules the roost’.
In addition to the above, lower usage of mobile messaging services for non-customer
interaction indicates a general lack of awareness about its usage to achieve 3600
communication with employees, business partners and other stakeholders.
For most enterprises, the relationship with customers impacts top-line. Hence, it is no
surprise that enterprises are aiming to leverage on the large availability of mobile handsets
and the use of mobile messaging services to enhance relationships with customers/prospects.
They were using mobile messaging services to enhance the customer experience and build
closer ties with their customers from a long-term perspective.
This was substantiated by the fact that almost three quarters of the respondents said that
primary reason for using mobile messaging services is to create value for customers.
Customers, Customers, Customers
The decisions related to adoption of mobile messaging services within an enterprise were
strongly driven by whether the services will provide their customers with a better value
proposition or not. Another important decision factor was improved collaboration within the
enterprise leading to more efficient processes and resource utilization. In conformation with
key findings as mentioned earlier in this report, very few number of enterprises decided to
use the services to support and manage their supply chain.
Purpose of Message
Enterprises are using mobile messaging services for various purposes such as sending
notifications, promotional purposes, emergency messaging and staff collaboration, lead
generation, sales MIS etc.
72% of the enterprises used mobile messaging services to provide various notifications,
alerts and reminders. These were for customers, employees or their business partners. For
example, most finance and banking enterprises used mobile messaging services to remind
customers about due payments, while stock broking companies used them to send
recommendations to clients on buying or selling. Similarly, certain IT firms used mobile
messaging services to notify the relevant employees whenever a service was degraded or
down, so that prompt action could be taken.
A considerable number (45%) of enterprises used mobile messaging services to promote

and increase awareness about their products and services. For example, recreation clubs
sent messages to existing members about new services launched while entertainment
companies send messages to customers about upcoming events and shows. However, this
study reveals that mobile messaging services were under-utilized for promotional
purposes.
Purpose of Message
The low usage of mobile messaging services can be attributed to the requirement of
compliance to the National-do-not-call-register related guidelines laid on Unsolicited
Commercial Communication by TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India). This has led to
marketers considering alternate technologies such as Bluetooth-based proximity marketing,
WAP-based services and mobile applications.
Features - The Inside Story
Enterprise mobile messaging is a powerful yet simple tool of communication that provides
variety of features. Be it the low transaction cost of SMS, simplicity of use, wide coverage or
the ability to provide real time information, there are many factors responsible for adoption
and growth of enterprise mobile messaging services in India.
35% of the respondents identified the real-time feature of mobile messaging services to
be the most important. They agreed that the possibility of receiving time sensitive
information to recipients was of utmost importance, and mobile messaging scored over
other modes such as email on its higher visibility and ability to receive information
without the internet. Enterprises claimed that mobile messaging services enabled them
to send instant critical information, timely alerts and reminders to the recipients.
34% of the respondents acknowledged the ease-of-use as the most important feature of
enterprise mobile messaging services. This feature was mostly selected by CXO level
users and higher level managers considering their focus to reduce the decision making
time and the simplicity of sending SMS. Using complex solutions could be more time
consuming. SMEs and SOHO users also identified this feature as quite a few of them
were not technology savvy and hence benefit from the simple usage of the mobile
messaging services.
Features - The Inside Story
The low cost of enterprise mobile messaging services was rated another important factor
by 20% of the respondents. As opposed to automated data transaction, voice calls
require more resources, especially when made to multiple people for the same purpose.
Hence, enterprises are adopting mobile messaging services. This feature was especially
beneficial to SME and SOHO users as they are always keen to cost and complexity
reduction.
Other important features identified were the wide coverage and quick response that
messages garnered from their recipients.
Taking The Challenge
When asked about the challenges that the enterprises faced while using mobile messaging
services, a surprising 89% of the respondents said that they had faced no challenges while
adopting the mobile messaging services. They found the solutions to be completely
compatible with their IT system and were able to easily integrate them with the functioning
of the enterprise. Also, they did not face any problems in justifying their use of the mobile
messaging services, claiming that the decision to use the services was an easy one.
A few respondents felt that the cost of implementation for the mobile messaging services
was on the higher side, claiming that the installation was expensive. Others did face some
integration and compatibility issues, with the application initially causing a few problems.
However, most of these problems were resolved, with most respondents were satisfied with
the subsequent performance of the mobile messaging services.
A tiny percentage (3%) of the respondent enterprises faced difficulties in measuring the ROI
from mobile messaging services. However, it should be noted that most of the others
admitted that they had not attempted to measure the ROI from mobile messaging services
to assess their performance.
Benefits Aplenty
Enterprises had experienced various kinds of benefits after using enterprise mobile
messaging services. The benefits considered for the purpose of this research report
were both hard and soft: Hard being quantitative and soft being qualitative in nature.
Various hard benefits experienced by enterprises are depicted in the pie-chart above.
52% of the enterprises experienced an increase in footfall or increase in number of
customers with mobile messaging services.
Banks and financial institutions saw a decrease in the number of defaulters due to
timely payment of EMIs after the use of mobile messaging services for EMIs payment
reminders.
IT infrastructure management companies reduced outage times, as timely messages

sent to server administrators enabled them to react faster and get the server
operational without any wastage of time, indicating clear ROI.
Managers experienced improvement in decision making time with the use of mobile
messaging services. The lower cost of the services enabled enterprises to achieve a
greater ROI. However, this benefit has not been explored to its full potential.
More importantly, 62% of the enterprises who use mobile messaging services for
promotional and marketing purposes have experienced an increase in the number of
customers. This implies that using these services is an efficient way to improve
satisfaction and further uptake of their services.
Benefits Aplenty
Many respondents have experienced soft benefits such as:
• Increase in employee responsiveness.
Many respondents said that mobile messaging services enabled them to keep their
employees informed about latest happenings, which resulted in better staff collaboration.
This helped to improve the efficiency of employees.
• Business Partner Satisfaction.
A large number of respondents claimed that use of enterprise mobile messaging services
helped them keep their business partners satisfied, by enabling their enterprise to send
important information to their business partners.
• Customer Satisfaction.
The most important benefit that enterprises experienced was the ability to keep their
customers satisfied by regular updates, notifications and reminders, which led to
increased customer loyalty. 86% of the respondents who used the mobile messaging
services with the aim of improving customer service said that did lead to increased
satisfaction among their customers.
Exploring Different Avenues
The research report repeatedly establishes that a majority of the enterprises use
mobile messaging services to interact with their customers and to a lesser extent
with their employees.
When asked of their intentions to use mobile messaging services to support other
areas of their business such as inventory management or sales, 26% of the
respondents said that they were indeed looking to extend their usage to other
departments. 36% of the enterprises had no such intentions. They believed that
they had explored all possibilities and were using the mobile messaging services
wherever it provided them a distinct advantage.
38% of the respondents said that they will use mobile messaging services in other
areas of business as and when the need arises. Many of them also admitted that
they were not sure about where else they could use the mobile messaging services,
and would definitely adopt if they discovered other areas where it would be
beneficial. This is in concurrence with the key finding related to ‘lack of knowledge’
about various uses of the mobile messaging services among enterprises mentioned
earlier in the report. However, 62% of the enterprises were open to expand the
usage of mobile messaging services to newer areas. This was a clear pointer to high
growth opportunity for the enterprise mobile messaging services from existing users
alone.
What You Don’t Know, Can Hurt You!
The knowledge level of the various enterprises regarding the mobile messaging services
and the various solutions available in the market was ascertained. With 41% of the
enterprises admitting that their knowledge about mobile messaging services was either
average or poor, the results were not too encouraging. Equally discouraging was the
fact that only 3% of the enterprises claimed to have an excellent knowledge about the
mobile messaging services.
This shows that lack of knowledge is

prevalent across enterprises, due to
which optimum utilization of services
has not become a reality.
Category wise
100%
90%
80%
70% Small
60% Medium
50%
40% Large
30%
20%
10%
0%
Excellent Very Good Average Poor
Good
Unsurprisingly, 67% of the enterprises that said their knowledge about the industry
was very good were large enterprises and also were also big users of the mobile
messaging services. Interestingly, however, slightly over 34% of enterprises that said
their knowledge was poor were large enterprises.
Amongst those that admitted poor or average knowledge of mobile messaging

services, a majority were small users.
The lack of clarity and knowledge about mobile messaging services resulted in 64% of
the enterprises expressing the desire for consulting service/facility from their service
providers.
64% of respondents expressed the need of consulting services for tapping the potential
of mobile messaging services in a better manner. It indicates that many of the
enterprises need constant guidance and assistance from independent service providers
to achieve optimum utilization of the services. Enterprises were looking at service
providers to guide them in the right direction and enhance their knowledge about
various uses and options of the mobile messaging services.
Performance Measures
Another aspect where Indian enterprises seemed to be lacking as opposed to their foreign
counterparts was with respect to incorporating performance measures. While companies
in regions such as North America and Europe have specific performance measures
deployed to assess the utility of the mobile messaging services, Indian companies are yet
to adopt the same.
89% of the respondents were yet to implement any performance measures for the mobile
messaging services. Although a few admitted that they were planning to adopt them
soon, a large number of them were yet to give it a thought.
Among those who already had performance measures in place, the most popular metric
was the increase in response from the customers after the utilization of mobile messaging
services as opposed to before adoption of the services.
A sample list of performance measures that are used was as follows:
• Increase in number of customers

• Downtime of mobile messaging services
• Number of received messages (for Pull services)
• Cost versus increase in revenue
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Future Trends
As enterprises are more gradually adopting the use of mobile messaging services to
improve their communication systems, the mobile messaging services in India is all set
to move beyond the nascent stage and truly start implementing enterprise mobile
messaging services at a higher level. Enterprises using mobile messaging services to
support multiple functions of business, most of them are looking to increase the volumes
of mobile messages. However, as their utilization would increase, enterprises need to
look at some key areas to improve their usage of these services.
Future trends for enterprises mobile messaging services:
• A majority of the enterprises are using mobile messaging services to support their
customer service. While this is good, other applications of these services need to
be explored. Enterprises will broaden their thinking by applying mobile messaging
services to areas such as inventory management, sales support and improvement
in employee collaboration.
• It will be advantageous for the existing users of mobile messaging services to

interact with various functions within the enterprise to share their experience to
pass on the benefits to them. This will involve understanding the needs of multiple
business functions and share best practices to improve business performance.
• The number of enterprises using mobile messaging services for promotional

purposes is less than expected. Enterprises are currently not leveraging on the
opportunity that mobile messaging services provide with respect to low-cost and
high reach in marketing their products and services. They will start using these
services more for promotions, especially targeted-marketing, since a majority of
enterprises that used them for promotional purposes witnessed increase in the
number of customers.
• Enterprises will performance measures/metrics to determine the value of the

mobile messaging services. Whether it is measuring the time saved, or mapping
the increase in the number of customers because of these services, such metrics
will help enterprises gauge the ROI from the services and also take them a step
closer to achieving optimum utilization of the services.
• Enterprises need to learn more about the mobile messaging services available in
the market and how their implementation can help achieve better business
performance. This will prevent organizations from using sub-optimal and outdated
solutions and help them shift to solutions which are better suited to their needs,
and in turn contribute to a better ROI.
• As more enterprises start adopting mobile messaging services, they need to think
of more innovative means of utilization of the services to sustain the competitive
advantage that they are currently experiencing.
Future Trends
Future trends for enterprises mobile messaging services:
• As there are many untapped areas within enterprises where mobile messaging
services can be used, the service providers will provide better guidance about the
usage of the enterprise mobile messaging services.
• Enterprise mobile messaging service providers will do well to learn more about
their customers to provide better consulting to them. As the findings show, a
majority of the enterprises will be looking for a consulting service from their
mobile messaging services providers. So, service providers will set up such a
facility to help their customers achieve optimum utilization of the mobile
messaging services. This will also enable them to stay in constant contact with
their customers and provide them with better advice.
• Enterprise mobile messaging service providers will also assist their customers in
setting up performance measures to assess the mobile messaging services as
they would have better knowledge about the various metrics usable as compared
to the customers.
• A lot of mobile messaging services will start in vernacular languages with a focus
on interactive messaging services in non-premium mode. This will help faster
exchange of information without the recipient having to pay premium charges.
• Many enterprises will start innovative and new-age services such as location-
based services and M2M (machine-to-machine) services in order to have
communication relevant to solve location-based issues or to communicate
between machines respectively.
• A lot of mobile messaging services will be a significant part of mobile promotions

focussed not on the conventional advertising but on mobile promotions.
• Mobile-commerce will be another major trend fuelling the usage of enterprise

mobile messaging services.
• Many services around mobile-email will drive the traffic of enterprise mobile
messaging services as a result of high usage of accessing email-on-the-move.
Glossary
BPO (Business Process Outsourcing):
Contains the transmission of processes along with the associated operational activities
and responsibilities, to a third party with at least a guaranteed equal service level and
where the client contains a firm control over the activities of the vendor for mutual long
term success.
EMI (Equated Monthly Installment):

A fixed payment amount made by a borrower to a lender at a specified date each calendar
month. Equated monthly installments are used to pay off both interest and principal each
month, so that over a specified number of years, the loan is paid off in full.
IT (Information Technology):
The study, design, development, implementation, support or management of computer-
based information systems, particularly software applications and computer hardware. IT
deals with the use of electronic computers and computer software to convert, store,
protect, process, transmit, and securely retrieve information.
ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services):

Any value-add services that rely on information technology as the means of production,
and the Internet as the delivery medium
SCM (Supply Chain Management):

The process of planning, implementing and controlling the operations of the supply chain
as efficiently as possible. Supply Chain Management spans all movement and storage of
raw materials, work-in-process inventory, and finished goods from point-of-origin to
point-of-consumption.
SME (Small and Medium Enterprises):

Companies whose headcount or turnover falls below certain limits.
SMS (Short Message Service):

A communications protocol which the interchange of short text messages between mobile
telephone devices.
SOHO (Small Office Home Office):

The category of business which consists of 1 to 10 workers.
Sources:
www.investopedia.com
www.wikipedia.org
References
Reports:
The Enterprise Mobile Messaging Benchmark Report – Aberdeen Group
Future of Mobile VAS in India – BDA Group
A Study of the Mobile Value Added Services (MVAS) Market in India – Boston Analytics
Websites:
http://in.biz.yahoo.com/070221/138/6cbsa.html
www.123oye.com/job-articles/bpo-entrepreneurship/mobility-solutions.htm
www.ciol.com
www.expresscomputeronline.com/20080324/market01.shtml
www.sitm.ac.in
www.vfirst.com
www.wikipedia.org

A Report On Current Scenario and Future Trends in Enterprise Mobile Messaging in India

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C

• Lack of awareness - 41% of the

• ROI calculations not done - 89% of

• Real time messaging is the key -

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR HIGHER UPTAKE

• Measurement - Performance metrics such as time saved, increase in sales, or improvement

• Consulting - Mobile messaging services providers need to provide better assistance to

5. OTHER FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

Responding enterprises included the following:

This forecast related to increased number of messaging transactions can be attributed to

A considerable number (45%) of enterprises used mobile messaging services to promote

IT infrastructure management companies reduced outage times, as timely messages

Many respondents have experienced soft benefits such as:

• Increase in employee responsiveness.

• Business Partner Satisfaction.

This shows that lack of knowledge is

Amongst those that admitted poor or average knowledge of mobile messaging

A sample list of performance measures that are used was as follows:

• Increase in number of customers

Future trends for enterprises mobile messaging services:

• It will be advantageous for the existing users of mobile messaging services to

• The number of enterprises using mobile messaging services for promotional

• Enterprises will performance measures/metrics to determine the value of the

Future trends for enterprises mobile messaging services:

• A lot of mobile messaging services will be a significant part of mobile promotions

• Mobile-commerce will be another major trend fuelling the usage of enterprise

EMI (Equated Monthly Installment):

ITES (Information Technology Enabled Services):

SCM (Supply Chain Management):

SME (Small and Medium Enterprises):

SMS (Short Message Service):

SOHO (Small Office Home Office):

The Enterprise Mobile Messaging Benchmark Report – Aberdeen Group

Future of Mobile VAS in India – BDA Group

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