Mobile Network Operators(MNOs)’ and Communication Service Providers(CSPs)’ foray into the digital services space in the last one year saw a string of new service rollouts in sectors which most of these players had literally zero presence in the past.
Today, there is a surge among these players, and an intensifying competition between them, to tap the growing opportunities in sectors such as Broadcasting – mobile TV and video-on-demand; Health – mobile health; Entertainment – mobile ticketing, mobile music and mobile gaming; Financial –mobile money, mobile wallet and NFC-based in-store payments; Advertising – mobile ad services; and a wide range of other emerging digital-mobile verticals that continue to expand their Digital Services portfolios.
Tom Nix,
CEO,
Scala
MNOs’ and CSPs’ business expansion into these newer verticals has typically revolved around linking up 4 major ingredients – the connectivity, the cloud, the content(including mobile apps) and the consumer’s device. There are however, newer and more exciting verticals that have started to spring out of this mix, for example, in the digital retail segment. The presence of the ‘screen on the wall’ that provides cloud-based digital content, tailored contextually to the needs of the environment and the target users, is one such example. Tara Neal of PCC Mobile Broadband spoke to Tom Nix, CEO of Scala, a provider of intelligent digital signage solutions on how these new age flexible displays are extending the mobile users’ experience across retail stores, cafes and restaurants, transport terminals, cinemas and a wide range of other places.
According to Tom, the advancement in today’s digital signage solutions enable clients, for example retailers, to leverage information and analytics to really transform their customers’ in-store experience. This comes at a time when most retailers are repositioning their outlets as a ‘service’, bundling their merchandise with in-store experience, and deploying digital solutions to enable the transformation of conventional stores into new age ‘experience’ outlets.
Contextual Information
Towards this end, the digital screens are revolutionizing user experience in a number of ways, said Tom, primarily by providing contextual information that meets their needs, and that allows stores to capitalize on the customer’s moment of engagement. The contextual information is delivered to the customer either via the digital screens placed in strategic locations, or on the customers’ own devices, for customers who have opted-in to receive this information when they are in a store.
The opportunity to ‘communicate’ to the customer in real-time via dynamic content sees retailers pushing out promotions that are aligned to the season, day of the week, time of the day, the in-store customers’ profile, the store’s inventory as well as other attributes such as the local weather and local events. Apart from promotional content, the contextual information extends to providing full information about a product, via the use of beacons and bluetooth connectivity, enabling customers browsing through the store to access the price list, product options, complementary products, customer reviews and link up to the store’s online site to compare prices and promotions.
The same information provided to the store’s sale staff, said Tom, allows sales assistants to help customers with their store navigation, product recommendation and enquiries, providing powerful tools in the hands of the staff to enable them to be well equipped with the know-how of the products they are promoting and to ensure that customers are well served.
Tom highlighted the fact that while digital screens have evolved tremendously to feature sleek designs and high quality displays, the key component to their digital retail offering is content, the content strategy as well as the analytics, all of which are bundled as part of their solution. Content and content strategy leverage a wide range of sources, both internal (customer info, purchasing history) and external (social media, market demand, customer spending patterns, competitor data, price movements, demographics etc) as well as the analytics provided within the solution. These analytics track various data collected from the end nodes (the digital displays) across the client’s stores and merge these with data sources from the client’s own systems, enabling Scala to provide insights such as the impact of a particular content type on consumer behaviour including product enquiries, in-store and online purchases as well as engagement on social media.
Elaborating on Scala, Tom said that the company has powered over 500,000 screens across 90 countries since its inception in 1987. SSP which operates brands such as Upper Crust, Starbucks and Burger King, uses Scala’s Digital Menu Board to power the delivery of content and messages across its food outlets. Another client, Argos, the UK retail giant known for its catalogue-based ordering and in-store warehouse-connected purchasing, is using Scala’s digital signage solution to drive digital point of sale systems, to manage customer communications and to deliver a comprehensive in-store brand experience to customers, with tablet based in-store product browsers replacing print catalogues. Other big names served by Scala include Rabobank, IKEA, Bloomberg, Tommy Hilfiger, TMobile, Virgin Megastores, Disneyland Resort Paris, McDonald’s, Warner Bros., Mercedes-Benz, DNB, Hard Rock Hotel, Shell, Esso, Ericsson and IBC-13.
The Digital Retail Promise for MNOs and CSPs
Scala has recently announced a global partnership with BT to supply digital solutions for in-store interactions for retailers, banks, automotive showrooms, restaurants and hotels. The partnership will see Scala powering content and messaging to “digital touchpoints” in stores, such as tablets used by sales assistants and walk-in customers and multiple screen video walls. BT’s extensive global presence and expertise in both IT and connectivity complements Scala’s own expertise in hardware, content delivery and analytics, enabling both companies to maximize their synergies while delivering a complete solution for enterprises.
For other MNOs and CSPs, the huge shift in how the retail experience is delivered today points to increasing monetization opportunities in this segment. Apart from fiber and wireless connectivity, this shift hinges on the enterprise Cloud capabilities needed to ensure real-time integration between the information residing within the enterprise’s own systems (such as consumer data) with Mobile Applications accessed by their customers and the Content delivered on in-store and public digital displays and customer devices. All these capabilities are already part of MNOs/CSPs retail and enterprise portfolios and by partnering with solution experts such as Scala, and leveraging their infrastructure and content capabilities, MNOs/CSPs can expand their presence in the digital retail segment, tapping into their own big data insights to enhance these solutions and their delivery while making the most out of the retail industry’s move towards digitalization.
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