View things from the consumers’ perspective, expert urges telcos

Combining technology and business today is like, as musician Edie Brickel put it, "walking on slippery rocks." Technology has become a huge enterprise that so-called innovations can be easily hyped and labeled "the next big thing" with corporations rushing head over heels to reap profits from this new craze.

"Sometimes, people don’t see what’s a fad and what lasts – and the results can be devastating," said technology strategist, best-selling author and venture capitalist Peter Cohan who flew to Manila from Boston for a one-day presentation and business talk at Beyond WAPPcceleration, a symposium on the wireless revolution, held last Tuesday at the Makati Shangri-La Hotel.

Cohan had with him a few words of caution, pieces of advice, and several insights on the things to come in the information and communications technology scene.

"Some businesses spend too much money on technology that quickly falls apart or on something that is unproven," he said. "I think rather than figuring out what consumers want to use, the industry players should actually ask them what they want to use or monitor their behavior and follow what they’re doing."

Cohan cited the disappointment that consumers had over WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and the supposed benefits of mobile commerce. In 1999, he recalled, everybody was virtually praising to high heavens the capabilities of WAP and the advantages it provides. But WAP turned out to be tedious and slow.

"Anybody who tries something that fails, (distances himself) from that technology. There’s really a danger in hyping something before you really know what you’re talking about," Cohan pointed out.

Taking note of the huge success of SMS (Short Messaging Service) and the uneventful introduction of GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) in the country, Cohan advised industry players to develop more value-added services based on tried-and-tested platforms like SMS rather than jump wantonly into new technologies.

"It will be more of an issue of what’s the right service, maybe not so much technology but more of the service to go with them," said Cohan when asked about his views on the Philippine wireless scene in a few years.

He added: "The question telecoms companies should ask is, when people are texting, is there some additional thing that they’re doing, that companies might be able to develop a wireless service to take advantage of it? A company that is offering texting services should be having focus groups and talking to those people who are using their services and ask them whether there are other services that they’d like to have as an extension to texting. Then they can create some other needs that this technology can help fulfill."

"The key thing is the Philippines has got something going here. You have this incredibly rapid adoption of SMS...and I think you don’t want to stray too far from that. Local companies can create something like texting that has the same degree of demand without having to go into the next generation of technology to support whatever application," he said.

Cohan stressed that telcos should look at things more from the consumers’ perspective and find out what specific services they want to use rather than the technology the companies wish to employ.

Cohan revealed that he had a meeting with several telecoms executives and he noted that their mentality was to follow what the demand was.

"They want to make sure that the services they develop can be self-sustaining as a business," he said. "I told them not to invest too far ahead of the demand as much as possible. So I see more services evolving from SMS in the Philippines."