The Think Tank - Driving New Market Synergies
Information and communications technologies are the core enabler driving innovation across numerous business and consumer markets worldwide. These new products and services impact every aspect of our business and professional lives - making them simpler, more productive and fun. They also represent significant revenue potential for Communications Service Providers and their supply chain.
But keeping up with all the cutting edge developments, customer requirements and new business models is a daunting task and trying to figure this out on your own is risky. Success depends on understanding the answers to a few critical questions about the market and your company’s objective including:
- Which market opportunities have promise – which should my company invest in and when?
- What business models will be the most successful for my company? Where can we add value?
- Who can provide impartial guidance and knowledge? Where can my company learn from others facing these same decisions?
Helping members navigate this maze is the focus of the TM Forum’s Think Tank. Here in one place members can find a range of information and strategies plus engage with people from these new areas, network with peers, share ideas and learn from each other. We invite you to participate.
How Can I Be involved?
The Think Tank functions like an interest group - digging into a topic, assessing how ICT services can be applied, where CSPs can add value and what synergies exist with TM Forum work. These interest groups also serve, as a business incubator where concepts can take root and ideas can be made tangible in the form of a Catalyst or other project.
As with any Interest Group, any member is able to join and participate in the discussion or other activities.
There are currently Interest Groups in 3 areas – Energy Smart Grid, eHealth and M2M and will soon begin exploring ePayments. If you want a way to get in on the ground floor, contribute your expertise and help shape future developments, joining one or more of these is the perfect way.
How Does Think Tank Work? What Deliverables Does it Produce?
The Think Tank follows a relatively straightforward process:
Investigate & Assess: When a new issue first comes on the radar – eHealth for example – the Think Tank first engages with selected experts and members who have subject knowledge. From this comes an assessment (a whitepaper or briefing) of whether or not there are opportunities for communications companies in this space and if so, what can TM Forum do to help them succeed.
Foster Discussion & Interest: Once an assessment has been made, an Interest Group is launched is where the topic can be looked at from all angles. The idea is to gain a broader perspective on the issue, gather new ideas and a thorough debate can take place. One key aspect is to identify who the leading players are, what does the ecosystem and value chain look like and who should we reach out to and involve to help move things forward.
Explore Requirements & Frameworx Applicability: Having debated the issue, the next step is to examine the requirements of the key players – especially the CSPs – to see in detail where TM Forum should focus their efforts. Can existing assets such as Frameworx be applied or modified as a solution? Is there new work that needs to be done? What other groups are active that we might partner with? Here, members can take an active role in steering the discussion and setting the agenda.
Produce Tangible Assets: With an understanding of what’s needed and members interested in working on the issue, the final stage is to develop some tangible deliverables. For example, it might make sense to do an early stage Catalyst or produce a comparative report highlighting the gaps in Frameworx and where work needs to be done.
What's Happening in Each Area?
eHealth
eHealth holds the promise of enabling healthcare providers to deliver better care, more efficiently and effectively to a wider population while reducing or eliminating administrative and operating costs. It’s actually comprised of several sub-topics including mHealth (the use of mobile devices to monitor and report on patients), Electronic Health Records, Health Information Exchanges, Medical Informatics, Distance Medicine and more.
The market potential is enormous and it’s an area where Communications Service Providers (CSPs) and Information and Communication Technology suppliers (ICT) have the potential to play a significant value-added role especially as it relates to leveraging mobile capabilities, cloud-based services or anywhere service quality, security & privacy are important.
The major challenges are the complexity and size of the ecosystem. The interest group is engaging with TM Forum members active in this space as well as reaching out to healthcare companies to get them involved.
Smart Grid
Energy companies around the world are moving to implement Smart Grid strategies, which is a massive business transformation exercise on several fronts. Smart Grid introduces totally new concepts and skill sets to the workforce in addition to the complete re-engineering of core business processes, systems, software applications and a myriad of hardware and devices.
TM Forum has developed a significant storehouse of knowledge, technology & best practice on how one transforms large-scale operations environments from a mass-market, utility-style environment to one where a variety of services and options are available at a range of different prices with high levels of customer control. Frameworx provides a structured approach for how to create, deliver, manage and monetize a wide range of ‘Smart’ services.
Right now there are several discussions taking place with energy companies and suppliers on which areas hold the most value for collaborating, plans for a Smart Grid Catalyst and more.
M2M
M2M is a broad term given to a collection of numerous niche markets and applications – each with its own set of requirements as well as its own characteristics of price, cost and margin.
M2M allows devices to communicate with other devices of the same ability and in some cases, a monitoring and data collection system. Vending machines automatically requesting to be filled, remote sensors controlling when and when sprinklers on large farms should turn on, a car communicating diagnostics to a central maintenance facility – even your phone syncing with iCloud are all examples of M2M.
The opportunities here for CSPs are almost endless but the first step is to understand the business models and requirements for each industry’s application. Financial services will have different needs from healthcare, which will be different from agri-business, energy and utilities, distribution and fleet management.
ePayments
There’s a huge buzz around ePayments – especially using mobile devices. In addition to CSPs, banks, credit card companies, handset makers and many more have designs on being players in this sure to be large market. On the surface it seems a natural fit for a lot of what TM Forum is doing.