Analyst Angle: Get the message?

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our Monday feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from M:Metrics’ Seamus McAteer, Ovum’s Roger Entner and Current Analysis’ Peter Jarich.
Top analysts in any industry are able to get out ahead of key issues by developing an uncanny ability to toggle between the endless supply of minutiae and strategic thinking at a moment’s notice. So in an industry as frenetic as wireless it is advisable that any well-rounded (read: sane) analyst be disciplined about lifting his or her head up from the intricacies of market share modeling or a sea of survey data to stay in tune with big picture. It’s important to remind yourself that its okay to stop poring over P&L’s for a minute and that the latest flurry of company announcements will still be there when you get back. And for goodness sake step back from the constant drumbeat of new product pitches now and then or your head will explode!
Indeed, after 15 years in the wireless business, this analyst finds that donning the hat of a social anthropologist every so often is when true insight is gleaned into how megatrends will play out over time (admission: I’ve been meaning to squeeze in that social anthropology degree at some point-the hat is borrowed for now).
Nowhere is this more fascinating than when you look at the business world and the profound impact cellular communications has had on mobility patterns, efficiency and overall effectiveness. In historical context, mobile telephony is a hugely under-recognized source of productivity gains. You don’t need to be an economist or an organizational behavior expert to understand the value of immediate information, or how much time mobile communications saves from a logistical standpoint. Ditto for the Internet and the advent of e-mail. Enter mobile e-mail (a topic very near and dear to my heart) and it is clear that in some ways we are pushing the very limits of pervasive business messaging in terms of pure reachability. In other words, if you want to contact someone, there is very little standing in the way of it happening almost instantly (provided they want to be reached).
Yet for all the short term benefits and the ability to do more with less, haven’t we all feel at times as though we’ve perhaps lost something in the process? Has the new model of high-volume ephemeral interactions snuffed out the sparks of innovation that come from dedicating our best and brightest minds to a problem until it is solved? And (where I am going with all this), what will be the net impact of ubiquitous mobile messaging in such a “noisy” environment as that of e-mail?
There comes a point when a technology’s backlash is clear to see. Those of us with enough years under our belt can recall the pre-e-mail era of the interoffice memo. Some may even remember the days before voice-mail when “secretaries” (hey, just staying true to the nomenclature of the day here!) took messages, given you were a mid-manager or higher. Over the last few decades, however, an array of electronically mediated communications has utterly transformed how we communicate, and how business itself is conducted. It has increased efficiency in absolute terms, and brought flexible communications options to more workers. Unfortunately, it has also deemphasized the importance of real-time communications and made actual face-to-face meetings increasingly rare. Especially with e-mail, it has had the added side effect of making you a lot more accessible to folks you’d just as soon not hear from.
Another reality is that by blindly increasing our dependence on so-called “store and forward” modes of communication like voice-mail and e-mail, we have done a great disservice to timely business accountability and have, truth be told, stifled our very ability to think creatively in a collaborative setting. Don’t get me wrong, brief and concise communications that disposes with social pleasantries is clearly very efficient, and the benefits of teleworking are undeniably compelling for a host of reasons. But when Fred’s work relationship with Emily two doors down the hall has been 99 percent e-mail and voice-mail for years, well let’s just say that certain synergies are lost. Why maintain an office in the first place? Additionally, in the brave new world of e-mail (and now mobile e-mail) there is an expectation that every bit of correspondence will be read and responded to right away. Sadly, this quite often leads to mediocre responses.
Conversely, hiding behind store and forward messaging modes like voicemail and e-mail can undeniably curb accountability. In the old days when memos were on the periphery of the job, hearing “I must have missed the memo” could only do so much harm. However, today the e-mail inbox is the job for so many roles, and key items can easily get buried or lost in the shuffle. Even with spam under control and the best intentions of being responsive, I fear workers are in real trouble absent a more effective way to filter and prioritize relevant messages from the reams of irrelevant junk we are all sloshing around in up to our knees each day. These dynamics are not lost on a select few companies out there that have banned e-mail outright. Our own wireless industry’s Phones 4U in England springs to mind (they banned e-mail in 2004). In truth, not leveraging such a great tool at all is like going back to the Stone Age. What is needed is a breakthrough in how not only groupware, but groupware and PBX/public phone platforms are architected to work together and interact with the user more effectively. For all the billions Microsoft has poured into improving Exchange and Outlook (which an amazing percentage of the world is beholden to) information overload is only being alleviated incrementally. The next phase of VoIP integration into Outlook will be very interesting to watch in this regard (at the very least it certainly has PBX vendors on edge).
So e-mail is clearly not the panacea-at least not in its current form, and GREAT CARE must be exercised in mobilizing e-mail as we penetrate beyond high end users. Even among early adopters, who are arguably more adept at managing their inboxes and using their Blackberrys wisely, there is no shortage of executive Crackberry addicts with carpal thumb syndrome, born equally from an obsession with remote inbox hygiene as much as receiving and responding to key messages. Now imagine extending this problem to the rest of the company.
Consider the desktop environment as an important precursor. I would argue that working in a “connected mode” with real time notification of each and every received e-mail set to barge into your spreadsheet, document (or whatever else you are trying to gain some momentum on), constitutes a net productivity detractor rather than enhancer. I call this phenomenon “digital flyswatting” and will at times disable the feature in Outlook when I need all synapses firing to solve a problem. While on the go, I will also disable mobile e-mail push, and synch manually for the very same reason.
The dilemma is only exacerbated by delivering e-mails this way in the mobile realm. Being woken up at 3 a.m. by my first SMS spam some years ago only hinted at this. The next wave of e-mail adoption is clearly lower end users, and I believe they will be overwhelmed by the kind of push mobile e-mail that has defined mobile e-mail experience to date. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson, “You want mobile e-mail? You can’t HANDLE mobile e-mail!” Many people won’t be able to. Pushing the right e-mail out to the right user at the right time is critical moving forward. While I am confident that mobile e-mail will deliver positive ROI for all workers when price points dip low enough, I see filtering and prioritization emerging as key competitive base where mobile e-mail vendors will compete vigorously in the years to come.
Is there a broader solution in sight? The shift to VoIP and the ultimate convergence of wireless telephony, PBX’s and Groupware platforms holds great promise if the human elements are designed intelligently and leverage presence information for all its worth to situationally increase relevance while reducing obtrusiveness. Mobile instant messaging is the first wireless step forward in this direction, and I believe both IT-sanctioned and rogue use of mobile IM is set to grow significantly in the business world. SMS, which is not auditable and has difficulties bridging the fixed world for businesses, won’t cut it. Strategy Analytics believes that IM is going to be the next vital application in the enterprise mobile data arena.
Several key demand and supply side drivers are conspiring to set the stage for IM. Unlike many of us older frogs sitting in a pot of slowly boiling water, teens are astonishingly quick to pick up on the shortcomings of “old-fashioned” e-mail. They embrace IM and will be entering the workforce en mass in the years to come. What’s more, a great many enterprises are now making their decisions on secure behind-the-firewall EIM platforms. On the supply side, dominant platforms vendors like IBM, Nokia, RIM and particularly Microsoft (with LCS) have invested significantly to define mobile messaging roadmaps that integrate IM and presence. Infrastructure vendors such as Lucent/Alcatel, Ericsson and Nokia are all strongly pushing IP Multimedia Subsystems. Lastly, the wider availability of QWERTY devices at more attractive sub-$150 price points are pouring onto the market. All very encouraging.
Have we forever sacrificed well-considered, single threaded human communications at the altar of everything/anytime/anywhere multi-tasking? I am optimistically holding out that we’ll get it right sooner than later.
Questions or comments about this column? Please e-mail Cliff at CRaskind@strategyanalytics.com or RCR Wireless News at rcrwebhelp@crain.com.