BEIJING, Aug. 3 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- CCID Consulting, China’s leading research, consulting and IT outsourcing service provider, and the first Chinese consulting firm listed in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Stock Exchange: HK08235), has released an article focusing on carriers who are exploring the SMB e-business market from product to service.
In the past few years, driven by multiple factors including technology development, market demand and industrial monitoring policies, transformation has become a development trend for carriers. Pressed by such pressure, all carriers have started to implement transformation one after another and actively explored new markets.
Personal mobile services, home entertainment services, SMB e-business and comprehensive group customer communications services have become the key business areas for carriers. Competition associated with personal mobile services and group communications has become increasingly fierce. ARPU value continues to decline. However, hindered by factors such as content delivery, networking environment and technology standards, home entertainment services develop very slowly. Re-considering SMB e-business, it can be found that e-business plays an increasingly important role in driving the business growth of an SMB. Currently, SMBs in China are huge in number. In addition, they are developing rapidly. However, the population rate of e-business is less than 5% among SMBs. With the increasing maturation of the developing e-business environment, the SMB’s e-business demand has also changed from website construction to e-payment, transaction platforms and backend information management, etc. Carriers have clear advantages in terms of user resources, information integration, brand image, service quality and the delivery of comprehensive solution to SMBs. They can give their advantages associated with network and platforms a full play and provide integrated information resource for SMBs as e-business service providers. Thus, the SMB e-business market is the real blue sea, in which carriers may swim freely.
Obviously, opportunities always come abreast with competition. Besides China Netcom, China Telecom and China Mobile, who have found the potential of SMB e-business market, Alibaba and Global Sources have all worked hard in this field for several years. Particularly, Alibaba has launched Alisoft at the beginning of the year in order to provide its customers with internal enterprise management software based on an e-business platform, which includes ERP, CRM, accounting management, human resources management, import/sales storage management, as well as supply chain management, etc. It happens to hold the same view with China Telecom, China Netcom and China Mobile, which attach importance to e-business, broadband services and mobile e-business respectively. However, the only difference lies in the point that carriers start from communications networks and have implemented a kind of strategy to regard IT as its key player and broadband as its basis, while Alibaba focuses on the e-business platform and proceeds from the aspect of consolidating information flow, aiming to help SMBs to solve problems associated with enterprise and business management. It can be predicted that carriers will fight with the third party e-business service providers in the SMB e-business market.
Although carriers have advantages over networks and resources, they do not know much about SMBs’ e-business demands. They still follow the mode of standardized products and product consolidation platforms and hope to explore the SMB market via products. However, most of the SMBs are still in their rapid development stage and exploring the market via an e-business platform is still their key demand. In addition, SMBs have a limited understanding about e-business. Their IT applications foundation is relatively poor. They are also limited in terms of capital investment. Their level of acceptation to e-business products is rather low. Range of application to e-business products among SMBs is also quite narrow. Therefore, carriers can only witness slow development in the SMB e-business market. There is still a long way to go in terms of market positioning, development mode and market promotion.
CCID Consulting believes that learning how to change from product orientation to service orientation is the key for carriers to explore the SMB e-business market. In fact, the change from communications products to e-business actually indicates the process from product to service. Communications products may meet the basic demand of customers, while carriers meet the demand simply via maintaining the network. However, in the e-business market carriers need to help enterprises to enhance market competitiveness and internal management levels, which requires carriers to have a sound understanding about the operation mode, industrial characteristics and business mode of SMBs as well as attract SMBs to get involved in the service process to grow with carriers responsible for the delivery of e-business services.
Currently, finding out how to provide customers with creative services and manage service quality have become the new challenges for carriers. CCID thinks that carriers shall improve themselves via the following aspects: first, they shall internally specify the service processes of e-business. Only by having standardized processes can they evaluate service quality on a quantitative basis; second, they shall group a highly qualified service team; and finally, they shall package their services so as to provide sustained services. Externally, they should firstly segment the market effectively to get a good understanding of SMB’s demand for basic IT construction, internal management and transaction platforms; secondly, they need to consolidate links such as IT and e-business solutions, the third party e-business platforms, and e-payment, etc., in accordance with the industrial chain division of e-business so as to define competition relations between the upper and lower streams of the industrial chain; and finally, based on development and promotion modes, they should select model mode and auxiliary mode based on the growth characteristics of SMBs in different geographical areas. They can then give full play to their advantages over channel and brand so as to promote e-business among the vast number of SMBs.
All in all, carriers have great potentials in the SMB e-business market.
About CCID Consulting
CCID Consulting Co., Ltd. (also known as CCID Consulting), the first Chinese consulting firm listed in the Growth Enterprise Market of the Stock Exchange (GEM) of Hong Kong (stock code: HK08235), is a direct affiliate of the China Center for Information Industry Development (hereinafter known as CCID Group). Headquartered in Beijing, CCID Consulting has so far set up branch offices in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Harbin, with over 300 professional consultants and industry experts. The Company’s business scope has covered over 200 large- and medium-sized cities in China. Apart from home market development, CCID Consulting is establishing international cooperation links across the United States, the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, by setting up agents in the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, Italy and Russia, with the aim of going global.
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Cynthia Liu
Coordinating Manager
CCID Consulting Co., Ltd.
Tel: +86-10-8855-9080
Email: liuyan@ccidconsulting.com
