Does this mean that vendors while selling the solution, do not reveal ‘something’ to which only they are privy and when handed over the operations they are well equipped or the resources with the service provider are not properly trained. Somewhere, we have a gap that is creating market for managed services.

Look at the services from a different angle and how it is impacting the schema of telecom market. Vendors are becoming more powerful in the space. They first sell the solution and then charge their customers for their operations. Since they get the direct control of the operations, many other allied decisions are then in their hands. So they become the real powerful influencers in the decision making process. Of course, that is going to directly help them business wise.

Telecom service providers might be getting financial and operational benefits by letting a third party to manage their services, but look at the associated issues.

1. The dependence on the vendor is increasing. In fact, the service provider is itself inviting a vendor to take charge of everything. Diversification is the best ever thought strategy for minimizing the risk- risk of anything including dependence on any or a few business associates including the vendors.

2. The people running the operations are from the vendor (managed services provider). It can never happen that they will look into the interests of the company in the same manner as their own employees would; particularly when the two are in conflict. Their bondage with the company will always be loosely knit.

3. Whatever smart contracts we may sign off, the managed service provider can pack up and leave the company in an awkward position. For the managed service provider only has financial stake and to some extend reputation. On the other side, the telecom service provider has a large stake – customers, business, market, services, brand and what not.

4. Competitive advantage and differentiation is what everybody out there doing business it trying to do. By bringing a third party so close to business, we are losing all this. How come can they facilitate this when they can be having our competitor as the other customer? Agreed that we can have a contract clause that they won’t do direct business with them, but soon after finishing the contract with us they can go with very valuable information to our competitors to ‘manage’ them now.

5. Sometimes, the managed services can also become an impediment to the expansion plans of a service provider. For instance, the operator wants to go ahead with an expansion plan using a particular technology and the managed service provider is not well equipped to handle it. In such scenario, they will always oppose it or suggest some other way of achieving it that could not be beneficial to the service provider. To allure them, they could offer them heavy discounts and show them the ‘benefits’ like interoperability with the existing system, homogeneity with the network and all that, but it could not be the way in which the service provider would want to.

My arguments don’t propose that the telecom service provider by contracting its operations to a third party leaves to think. It is not that they do not take all their strategic decisions on their own. But the issue is they have got in an outsider who tells them that we are here for you. Gradually the dependence grows on this outsider and turns into a key influencer. They could be coming up with solutions based on ‘Win-Win’ principle, but they will always try to skew the principle more in their favour.

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I think this had relevance to some extent in the back days. The Internet was not widely available. Even if it was there, it was not a broadband and downloading programs was not an existing concept. People would usually get free softwares through references. In such a scenario, it was true that the PC users would go by the softwares that were with the operating systems. So Internet Explorer, Media Player, etc. enjoyed the market leadership for just sitting in the machine along with the OS.

But now the scenario is completely different. Everywhere, machines are live and connected. People can download and install whatever software they wish including other browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. Similarly one can use Real Media or Jet Audio for playing multimedia content instead of Windows Media player. I really believe in this scenario when almost every machine is part of the Internet, Microsoft cannot be blamed for not giving a fair chance to its competitors. Take my example. I have been comfortable with Firefox rather IE, particularly after IE7 and at the same time changed a couple of machines since then. The moment I would get the machine, I would first download and install Firefox on my machine. For the past two machines I owned, I have never used IE. So how come did Microsoft not give a fair chance to its competitor like Mozilla of earning market share.

I think this issue was valid only if Microsoft would block installation or downloading of competitor products. This issue has not been heard of, since long time but people have raised fingers at Microsoft and even it had to pay huge fines or penalties which were unjustifiable, I believe.

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India has a complex demography and that is reflected in any of the exercises including elections that involves the whole country. The geographic diversity of people makes it tough at times even for the political parties to reach to them in just a few rallies. And then the key leader of each party must reach to every main voter pocket, else the opposing party will take the advantage by telling the inhabitants that the other party is neglecting them. So the key leaders have to address at every nook and corner for increasing the prospects of their party. It is based on the direct marketing principle – ‘Reach as many people as you can to expect higher success ratio’.

India has a very high threat perception as a nation. Due to so many factors, politicians have always been a soft target of terrorists and killing them makes big news. So the government – law and order ensuring agencies, have to make every possible effort to keep the politicians secure. At the same time during elections, politicians are in the field. The police and other security agencies are busy in ensuring safety of the politicians organising rallies and reaching to the masses. It demands a fool proof bandobast. This arrangement comes at a cost which is to be borne by the government, eating up a lot of tax payers’ money. Such arrangements get intensified as the information agencies get any further intercepts like the recent one, after which the home minister of India, wrote to 39 VVIPs about the increased threat perception to their lives.

This will never mean that these politicians will not attend rallies. Elections are do or die situation for politicians and they need to campaign to win. I am not any security expert, but surely, securing a single rally of each of these politicians could cost the government in crores (Millions) of Indian rupees.

In place of all this, the election commission and the political parties together with government must devise policies encouraging extensive usage of technology in campaigning. These could be from the basic medium like a radio to podcasts and webcasts. The leaders could also make use of television channels, although private, if there are some restrictions on using the state owned Doordarshan.

Using technology would be of great help to the politicians and it will surely save a lot of my money, being a tax payer. There is one advantage to face-to-face interactions – the politicians come to know about the response. But this can be very easily done under present technology available. Political parties can get statistics about how many people, from which regions, etc. heard their radio speech over an FM channel. Or how many people were watching them on a television programme. Similar statistics can be had for the web based tools. Even people can get back to these leaders through sms, emails or telephone calls. That will make the programme interactive. Some might have suspicions about the success of such campaigns, as how many people will be using a particular media. But at least a radio and a television set is available everywhere in India. One more good that technology could do, is single speech could be delivered in local languages across the country simultaneously. That way a national leader could be heard by people across the regions.

It is high time that the authorities must insist political parties to explore these alternative methods of reaching to masses. If they have any doubts, let them check with the general information about the political activities of India that people come to know through news channels over television, radio and sources over Internet. The results will definitely encourage parties to go ahead because these sources have made the leaders a public figure. That is why leaders like Sonia Gandhi, L K Advani, Lalu Yadav, Sharad Pawar (just for reference) and other stalwarts are known throughout the country even if people in many regions have not seen them physically.

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There is another aspect that this possibility has added to. Prospective buyers want to have a glimpse of the contents, particularly when the report is not tailor-made. One alternative that market researchers have been using is sending sample pages to the prospective buyers. But, this just gives an overview, rather than enabling them to go through the entire contents – something like having a trial version in case of softwares.

We need to have a similar trial version scenario in case of research reports as well. Adobe has come with some options so far which enables us to make pdf documents that cannot be printed or copied so that the content can be simply viewed. Sending a report in this way will not fetch anything as the whole content can be sent and the prospective buyer can keep the report for reference actually resulting in no sale.

Our suggestion to Adobe would be to have a time based access system for such publications. For instance, we could send a report to someone for review prior to a purchase. But that report could not be saved, printed, copied or any such function that could enable a reviewer to keep the report for reference. The market researchers must be able to upload the report on some web space with a user name and password which will get expired after a pre-set time period. In this way the market researchers would be able to share the entire report with the prospect buyers and if they decided to purchase it, they would get an activation code granting them a license making the report available with all features like saving, printing and copying. Unless the report is bought within a stipulated time, it will just be available for mere review. This would be a step further in high levels of customer services intended for future customers. Such an application will be surely useful in other areas and could open new opportunities in e-learning as well.

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On the other hand, data collection has also become relatively simple due to the influx of technology. We see many aides originating from technology like CATI (Computer Aided Telephone Interviews) and VRU (Voice Response Units) that have helped the researchers to gather data with convenience. Similary online tools have also helped a lot as researchers are now able to go across boundaries for a research and it is also convenient to the respondents to opine at their will.

Despite all this face to face interaction is very important in market research. It has not lost its relevance in most of the parts of the world. Except for US and few regions in Europe, these advanced tools for market research have not resulted in mass usage and acceptance. Either of cultural influences or lack of availability of such tools, market research is still pursued in conventional ways.

This has lengthened the process of market research and at times results in delayed delivery of results, poor quality of data collection and additional costs. It is becomming very impractical to employ a number of interviewers on part time basis for data gathering and expect dedication of full time employees from them. Plus, a typical process goes like this: Market Research Consultancy – Part time Interviewer – face to face interview – data entry – data analysis – reporting. One of the basics of communication is that it is imperative to loose some data (communication gaps) and as many as elements we have in the chain the information will be distorted.

Technologists can help us in this area as well. Data collection should be in real time. That is what makes market research easy, cost effective and superior in quality. Besides there is not much data distortion as not many elements remain in the chain. This is what makes the present tools effective for market researchers. The technologists must help market researchers in one more way that would make the stream smarter. There should an A4 device capable of connecting to the Internet that would be ofcourse touch screen based. This device can be held by the interviewers and while interviewing the respondents he can directly feed the data into the form and through Internet would be gathered in to centralised database.

This would help to collect the data in real time and would save the cost of data entry. The data collection would be paperless and because of less components in the channel, the data would be as good as gathered from the respondents and would speed up the entire research process. Usually surveys are spread over a large geography. By having data gathering in real time, the monitoring will also be efficient as it would be easy to montior and supervise the entire process resulting in strict adherence to quotas with respect to respondents.

By having such a device, market research will enjoy the benefits of technology that we are enjoying right now but only in the cases where the respondent has to self-serve. This will make the research cost effective, time efficient and of course smarter.

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As they say, every problem results in many opportunities, so will this recession. With so many companies closing, units closing and reduction in the staff in technology companies, many people will lose jobs and are losing them. These people have done nothing wrong as a result of which they are out of jobs or are expecting losing them. They were the brains behind these multi-billion dollar companies which not only drove the economies of any country but also triggered the economic growth world over.

So the present happening will not result in availability of human resources that is deadwood. It will comprise of people who really mean and define businesses. These would be innovators, technologists and other experts in the field. These people, by nature are not the ones who will just sit at home and wait for the waters to become conducive. Rather they prefer to sail in whatever conditions. What would that mean to the industry?

Besides meaning other things, it could result in boom in the start-ups dealing with technology. These experts will get a chance, although not in the way they would ever wish, to look at things in a different perspective and ultimately lead to opportunities. We can also expect some very specialized and to detail, things coming out in to the market.

Once the things will revive, the biggies in the market will pick some of these start-ups and acquire them resulting in fortunes to these individuals. Hope these individuals also take the things in the same spirit which surely they will.

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