The TM Form held its second Management World Asia event in late January in Singapore. According to TM Forum president Martin Creaner, who was the chair on day one, attendance was up 10% from last year and the exhibition featured 14 companies.
Kicking off the event was Telenor's head of Asia Sigve Brekke, who in his keynote insisted that telcos need to move from a technology-driven mindset to a people-driven mindset.
Brekke said there are very few examples of operators that are truly customer focused. He said it's essential operators think as consumer products companies.
"Everyone claims to be customer focused, but few really are. It's a people mindset issue, but is also an IT issue. Our industry is not good at using customer information. Few industries have this amount of data. Actually, the problem is we probably have too much information about our customers. Few take advantage of this information and are able to micro-segment their customer base to launch new types of services."
He said operators can take a larger share of the customer's wallet through micro-segmenting and at the same time reduce costs by having a more narrow marketing focus.
In another keynote, Blyk co-founder Antti Öhrling said messaging is the optimum format for mobile advertising and is an untapped opportunity for mobile operators.
Messaging currently accounts for about 55% of mobile advertising, with 25% going to apps/websites and 20% to search.
Instead of being overshadowed by more sophisticated formats in the future, he believes messaging will continue to dominate because when a message is relevant, it creates engagement with the customer and actually enhances an operator's service instead of deteriorating from it.