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Retailers are just now investing in
technology (such as the services that
Mojo Networks offers). Hopefully, it
isn’t too late.
After all, Google says it can now
track purchases online and offline,
using all the data it collects plus ac-
cess to purchase data from about
70 percent of all credit card and
debit transactions in the U.S. Target,
meanwhile, has used a strategy of
buying or licensing designer goods
to have unique items that WalMart
and other outlets aren’t stocking.
Now with Amazon buying Whole
Foods, the brick and mortar grocery war
will begin. WalMart acquiring is
not going to be enough. One of the prob-
lems with most online stores is the clunky
and arduous checkout process. Amazon
is frictionless and user friendly. How
many online stores can say the same?
The component that most provid-
ers miss out on is user experience.
However, emphasizing user experi-
ence would require that a company
admit that Peter Drucker was correct:
“There is only one valid definition of
business purpose: to create a cus-
tomer… Any business enterprise has
two — and only these two – basic
functions: marketing and innovation.”
With more than 30 companies utiliz-
ing VeloCloud for SD-WAN technology
and upward of 400 powering UCaaS
with Broadsoft, innovation has been left
to the vendors. That leaves marketing –
the way to differentiate between service
offerings despite the technology that is
powering that offering. (SD-WAN and
VoIP are both technologies not products.)
Furthermore, this undertaking would
require a marketing head (or CMO), a per-
son who could craft the brand, the mes-
sage, the value and the lead generation,
for the service provider and its services.
Too many service providers think
if they build it, customers will come. It
By Peter Radizeski
Beware
theWay of
Brick ‘nMortar
Traditional retail is facing a major correction right
now. Online is easier with a better selection, but
that isn’t all of it. Stores often didn’t adapt to the
change in consumer buying and shopping habits.
Lessons in disruption from
your neighborhood retailer
doesn’t work that way. Even the supposed
magic of “growth hacking” requires mar-
keting, strategy and execution. It doesn’t
happen by happenstance or accident.
Service providers should learn from
industries being disrupted right now,
because sooner rather than later they
too will be disrupted. (Amazon launched
Chime and Cloud Contact Center as a
service; they will disrupt this sector soon.)
Retail offers an example of an industry
that ignored both the internet and chang-
ing buying habits. It was same old, same
old until the lights starting going dark.
In services, the bundles are the same.
The pricing is the same. The features are
the same. The deployment is the same.
This situation is ripe for disruption.
Consider the case of Google Fiber.
When Google decided to get into the
broadband game, it did it with pizzazz.
Following in the footsteps of Verizon
FiOS, it branded its broadband service
offering. It ended up branding Gigabit.
Today, gigabit is what people think of
when they think about fiber and broad-
band (even without knowing anything
else about those three terms.)
The pricing model was different – with
a free version. The packaging was cool.
The offices were hip and vibrant. They
built up anticipation – and with it came
demand. (You could argue about the de-
mand due to the staggering lack of paying
customers, but that too was by design.)
That kind of strategy is lacking in
most parts of telecom.
In VoIP, for the longest time, everyone
used a Polycom. It was unusual for any
VoIP provider to offer other brands (except
maybe Cisco). Then Polycom announced
it was merging with Mitel (it didn’t, but
channel management
Source: Google marketing slick
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