Assume That Organisation Is Undertaking A Decision To Design And Deliver A New Product Or Service - Assignment Example

Designing and Delivering a New Product or Service with Which to Enter a New Market Student’s Name: Course: Tutor’s Name: Date Abstract India has been toying with the idea of mobile money transfer for years now. Unfortunately, none of the attempts made by private enterprises or publicly owned enterprises has succeeded in meeting the M-Pesa threshold, which is renowned the world over as the prototype of how mobile money transfer should work. This paper identified Loop Mobile as an Indian organization, which although modest in size, can establish the concept of mobile money transfer successfully. The paper notes that India shares similar demographics with Kenya (the East African country that launched the first mobile money transfer successfully), and although the latter’s success in mobile money transfer was partly because of the lack of retail banking infrastructure, the clamour for mobile money in the former is evidence that Indians would embrace the concept despite their country’s fairly well established retail banking system. Introduction India has been weighing the idea of mobile money transfer for years now. Evidence from online sources indicates that some of the companies that have tried the mobile money transfer concept include ‘My Mobile Payments Ltd’ (Gulati, 2012); ICICI Bank Limited (Mobile Money Africa, 2012); the Department of Posts (DoP) (PTI, 2011); and Nokia (Reuters, 2012) among others. In all the identified companies, none has successfully managed to replicate the success that a similar platform operating in Kenya, and dubbed M-Pesa, has recorded since its inception in 2007. Some like Nokia have even given up and closed shop arguing that money transfer was not one of its core businesses (Reuters, 2012). But why should one expect mobile money to succeed in India? After all, the retail banking infrastructure is fairly well established hence meaning that people can receive, and transfer money with relative ease. Well, to start with, because Indians, especially those in the retail business would benefit from the flexibility that mobile money transfer would bring about; secondly, India, just like Kenya has a significant population working in urban areas and needing to send money to their families in the rural areas; and third, because a great percentage of Indians, just like the case in Kenya, have embraced mobile telephony. Instead of the mobile phone being a communication gadget only, there is potential that companies can design and deliver the mobile money transfer service to augment the functions of the mobile handset. Loop Mobile has been selected as the model company for this exercise because in addition to being among the first major mobile companies in India, competition from other mobile service providers has limited its growth. A new service modelled alongside the M-Pesa prototype would therefore give it a competitive edge over the others. Further, Loop Mobile was chosen because the M-Pesa experience has proved that a mobile service company is better placed to handle and implement the mobile money concept, as opposed to other aligned companies such as phone manufacturers, banks or other third party organisations like the department of posts as identified above. Before furthering this discussion however, one needs to understand Loop Mobile as a company and M-Pesa as the prototype used for this exercise. The latter is necessary because not everything about M-Pesa would work out in India owing to the social, economic, political and even cultural differences between the Asian country and Kenya. Loop Mobile Established in 1994, Loop Mobile is India’s oldest mobile telephone service provider, which initially started as BPL and rebranded in 2009 to its current brand name (Loop Mobile, 2011). The company attained ISO certification in 2008 following a trend where it met and exceeded benchmarks set by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Statistics released in 2011 indicate that Loop Mobile has three million subscribers across India, which represents 0.03% of the total mobile phone market. Like all companies operating in the exceedingly competitive Indian market, Loop Mobile is faced with several threats in its operating environment. One of the outstanding threats that the company faces is the rising number of competitors in the Indian market. The future is especially tricky for the mobile service provider since India has low barriers to entry into the mobile telephony market; combined with the high population that forms an attractive market for investors, this means that Loop Mobile needs to find a competitive edge that will keep it relevant and competitive in the market. The first signs of Loop Mobile’s ill fortunes have started showing following its intention to rollback its operations from all other parts of India except Mumbai. On April 10, 2012, the company announced that it would shut its operations in 13 locations following its license cancellation occasioned by a high court ruling (Loop Mobile, 2011). Although this paper will not delve into details surrounding the high court ruling, it is worth noting that the decision occasioned by the same has made Loop Mobile to lose approximately 2,616 of its 3,150,308 subscribers if the 2012 statistics are anything to go by. To cover its reduced market share, it is evident that the company needs to consider a new product line. Perfecting what others have failed to do in mobile money transfer is therefore an ideal opportunity that Loop Mobile can utilise. A major weakness that arises following the rollback of its operations from 13 locations in India is that that the mobile money transfer (at least on the M-Pesa prototype) is rolled out on the host mobile service provider’s network. This therefore means that outside Mumbai, Loop Mobile will need to devise a strategy where its subscribers within Mumbai can effectively transfer and even receive money from subscribers registered with other mobile companies outside its focal area. The objective of such an approach would be to have as many Loop Mobile subscribers within Mumbai use and benefit from the mobile money transfer. Due to the limitations posed by Loop Mobile’s limited market within Mumbai, it can be more innovative in its product in such a manner that it will sell the rights to use the same innovation to other companies in other areas that it does not have access to. Even more appropriate for Loop Mobile would be the creation of business ecosystems, which are defined as economic communities “supported by a foundation of interacting organisations and individuals” (Moore, 1996, p. 26). A business ecosystem is ideally made up of the main organisation that has developed the new product/service (in this case Loop Mobile as the mobile service provider), financial institutions such as banks, agents, utility companies, regulators, employers, retailers and the consumers among others. As indicated by Nazareno (2008), each of the identified players has a role to play in order to make mobile money transfer a success. For example, mobile money would not be successful if utility companies or retailers refused to accept it as a form of payment. M-Pesa As the first successful mobile money transfer service, M-Pesa is a widely researched platform. The ‘M’ stands for Mobile, while ‘Pesa’ is a Kiswahili language word meaning money. Loosely translated therefore, M-Pesa stands for mobile money. As a collaboration between two mobile service providers i.e. UK’s Vodafone and Kenya’s Safaricom, M-Pesa is today hailed as a groundbreaking innovation that can be replicated in developing and even developed countries in order to not only ‘bank the unbanked’ but also to facilitate ease of transactions through the mobile phone (Jenkins, 2008, p. 5). M-Pesa’s greatest achievement so far has been the fact that it has supported the financial inclusion of a wide group of people, who would otherwise waste resources or opportunities as they try to access traditional financial institutions. In Kenya, M-Pesa users can pay bills, purchase airtime, send money, withdraw cash, buy goods, and withdraw cash via M-Pesa-enabled automated teller machines (Jenkins, 2008). In other words, registered Kenyans no longer waste their time waiting in queues in order to pay utility bills. Additionally, they do not have to carry large amounts of cash since products or services can be paid for using M-Pesa. Even the inconvenience of having to purchase airtime credit from the stores has been drastically reduced. Assuming that Loop Mobile has decided to launch mobile money transfer services, what lessons could it then learn from M-Pesa? First would be the fact that as the mobile service provider, it has a major role to play in creating the business ecosystems described above. As Nazanero notes, “the mobile operator spins the thread that knots all these relationships together” (Nazareno, 2008). Secondly, Loop Mobile can learn vital lessons about targeting the right markets and customers. M-pesa was first launched in urban centres and as more people subscribed to the concept, its penetration into rural areas in Kenya increased. Today, M-Pesa agents can be found in even the remotest towns in Kenya as long as the mobile service provider’s network covers the area (Jenkins, 2008). Markets There is little doubt that Loop Mobile would have a rich market with its money transfer service. The reasons for a potentially rich market are based on the fact that in India, approximately 46 percent of the 403 million mobile phone users do not have bank accounts (Editorial Team, 2009). This means that financial inclusion in the country is quite low compared to other countries like Britain where over 90% of the population have bank accounts (Editorial Team, 2009). Although it is hard to get the exact statistics of cell phone ownership vs. bank account ownership in Mumbai, this paper will treat the statistics available for India as being a reflection of the situation in Mumbai. In a country where money orders, cheques and demand drafts (DD) are considered as the main money transfer options, people who do not have banks accounts are therefore limited in the transactions they can engage in. Specifically, remittance business has been considered as a core business area reserved only for banks in India. Unfortunately, those who do not have bank accounts are effectively locked out of the remittance business. As a mobile network operator, Loop Mobile hence has a significant opportunity to provide the infrastructure needed to necessitate money transfer among those people who do not have bank accounts, but have mobile phones. Additionally, Loop Mobile can also provide advisory services to insurers, banks, utilities companies and other players in the business ecosystem defined above. Loop Mobile’s advice to companies that will use its mobile money transfer service will be critical especially for purposes of reaching out to customers beyond the mobile service provider’s traditional markets. Using the M-Pesa prototype, it is evident that Loop Mobile will also need to establish retail outlets and sales agents where customers can sign up for the mobile money transfer services, and also top up their money accounts, or withdraw cash. Looking at the M-Pesa model as illustrated in Figure 1, the retail outlets and agents appear to be the mobile money ecosystem’s backbone; hence, Loop Mobile can either model its retail outlets and agents similarly, or device a new approach to connecting itself and providing its services to all mobile phone users. Figure 1: The mobile money ecosystem as used by M-Pesa Source: Jenkins (2008) Additionally, retail outlets and agents seem to play a vital role in expanding the business ecosystem. As noted by Kramer, Jenkins and Katz (2007) for example, agents are not only able to market the money transfer service to new customers, but are also a vital in observing consumer behaviour since they maintain contact with the consumer market. As such, they are an important source of market intelligence, which can be used to identify consumer needs, wants and preferences hence forming the basis of future product or service development (Kramer et al., 2007). Another market opportunity for Loop Mobile is related to Ivatury, Gautam and Ignacio’s (2008) observation that traditional banking institutions tend to concentrate more on offering their services to middle-to-high income earners. Consequently, people in the low-income bracket are left without financial services that can assist them in transferring or saving the little amount of money they can spare. In India especially, banks maintain a ‘know-your-customer’ policy where account holders need to provide personal information including their addresses to the bank (Editorial Team, 2009). Such a policy locks out people who do not have definite addresses or permanent residential address. Usually, such people are in the lower-income segment. With mobile money transfer services however, such a problem can be overcome, with the lower income earners who own mobile phones being able to deposit the little spare money they have into their virtual mobile accounts. Customers Evidence from countries that have used mobile money transfer services successfully indicates that customers are quick to embrace the service where there is an appealing value proposition. In Kenya for example, the ease, cost-effectiveness, security and convenience of sending money has made M-Pesa a widely acceptable concept (Ivatury et al., 2008). A report released by Ignacio and Radcliffe (2011, p. 171) for example noted that “M-Pesa has propagated down market” meaning that people within the low-income bracket are increasingly using the money transfer service. Simply put, there were unmet customer needs that the mobile money transfer could satisfy. As observed above, the situation in India is no different; whereas the banking infrastructure is well laid out, not everyone can benefit from them. The low numbers of people with bank accounts as discussed elsewhere in this report is proof that indeed customers have unmet financial needs. It is such niche in the market that Loop Mobile should fill. But what exactly are customer needs? For starters, they need to find a convenient way of saving their monies; secondly, they may need an affordable and convenient manner of executing person-to-person money transfers; third, they may also want an easy way of paying their bills without necessarily having to wait in long queues as they await their turn on pay-points. Finance There is little doubt that investing in a mobile money transfer service is no small task especially financially. Quite a significant amount of finances will be committed in the research and development phases of the service development, and even later when the service is being rolled out. In line with contemporary financial theory as indicated by Puxty, Dodds and Wilson (1988, p.169), Loop Mobile, just like other companies elsewhere, has three funding options, which include internal financing, external financing, or equity financing. Ideally, the first financing source should be internal since most firms submit to the trade-off theory, which according to Weaver and Weston (2007, p. 466), “considers the tax deductibility of interest from debt financing a strong motivator for increasing leverage”. Further, it is most likely that the management of Loop Mobile will want to use as little debt financing as possible, since such funds will ultimately be paid back with interest. But how is internal financing possible? Well, according to Chandra (2005), most firms use their internal earning accruals to finance new projects. The financing option is advantageous because the management does not have to contact outside sources for financing. Additionally, “retained earnings effectively represent infusion of additional equity in the form” hence eliminating any “issue costs and losses on account of under pricing” (Chandra, 2005, p. 15.5). More over, when a firm funds new projects with internal finances, there is no dilution of control in its management. Further, internal financing does not have negative connotations as would be the case if borrowing to finance a new project is made public. The second financing option is debt financing, which means that Loop Mobile can borrow from government or financial institutions in order to fund the project. According to Chandra (2005), the advantages of debt financing include the interest expense is tax deductible; the company owners do not lose control of the firm’s management; shareholders have an option of “defaulting their debt obligations” if there is a precipitous decline in the firm’s value (Chandra, 2005, p. 15). On the counter side however, debt financing has its share of disadvantages, which include repayment obligations and fixed interests; increase in financial leverage, hence a higher cost of the firm’s equity; and restrictions on the firm’s borrowing capacity occasioned by debt contracts (Chandra, 2005). In Loop Mobile’s case, the fact that the proposed money transfer service is an intangible asset will add to its disadvantages in that the firm will have to convince the lenders about the viability of the service. Additionally, the mobile service provider may need to use some of its tangible assets as collateral to guarantee payments to the lenders in future. The third funding option is through equity financing as indicated by Weaver and Wenston (2007). If Loop Mobile chooses equity financing, it would need to sell some of its shares in the new service to a company which has the financing capabilities to enable the development and rolling out of the new service. Equity financing was the funding option that M-Pesa adopted where Safaricom agreed to a 60%-40% share split with Vodafone (Kramer et al., 2007). Notably however, and like all the other funding options, equity has its fare share of advantages and disadvantages. On the good side, equity financing provides firms with long-term financing beyond what they can afford through internal payment accruals; secondly, a firm is not compelled to pay dividends to the equity financiers if it does not have sufficient cash. Additionally as noted by Chandra (2005 p. 15.4) “equity capital has no maturity date and hence the firm has no obligation to redeem”. Finally, equity capital enhances the creditworthiness of a firm since it cushions lenders. The disadvantages of equity financing include control dilution, meaning that the decision-making in the firm is not as centralised as would have been the case if internal funding was used. As Chandra (2005, p. 15.5) notes, “the rate of return required by equity shareholders is generally higher than the rate of return required by other investors”. In other words, equity financing is an expensive funding option for a company. This is worsened by the fact that equity dividends are paid after tax hence making their relative cost more. In view of all the three aforementioned sources of financing, Loop Mobile will need to gauge the advantages in each option against the disadvantages and decide which option is best suited in its case. In addition to finding the sources of financing for its new money transfer service, Loop Mobile would also need to develop accounting and financial management systems that not only handle the income generated from the transactions, but which also ensure that the customers’ money is safe and well accounted for at all times. In such a case, Loop Mobile will need an accounting information system that supports the transaction processes that will happen on a day-to-day basis across its network. Additionally, the accounting information system should be designed in a manner that facilitates internal decision-making in Loop Mobile by being a source of trend analyses and qualitative and qualitative data. The resources required by Loop Mobile in order to establish a reliable and efficient accounting information system include computerised processors, data depositories, manual or computerised procedures, input/output devices, and any other miscellaneous resources that may be important in facilitating faultless mobile money transfer and the arising accounting issues. Ideally, the accounting information systems like anywhere else should effectively enable the management at Loop Mobile to have proper records on the transactions occurring on the mobile money transfer platform, as well as the billing records, accounting records and cash receipts. All purchases, payments and cash distribution activities should be on record as do other activities like inventory, payroll, general ledger and production (Puxty et al., 1988). Ideally, the accounting information systems for use by Loop Mobile should possess organisational capacity for purposes of creating interrelationships, integration and meeting the company’s central financial objectives through the generation of financial reports and budgets as suggested by Wilkinson, Cerullo, Raval and Wong-on-Wing (2000). Additionally, the accounting information system should possess the capacity to handle data (i.e. raw facts and figures), and information (i.e. processed data) (Wilkinson et al., 2000). People The capacity of Loop Mobile to operate a successful mobile money transfer service will no doubt depend on the people included in the business ecosystem. As indicated elsewhere in this report, the business ecosystem consists of different players who work together to make the entire process complete and hence satisfactory to the consumer; profitable to the shareholders and fitting to the different social, cultural, legal and political expectations. As indicated in management literature, the capacity of people to serve the strategic objectives of a firm largely depend on the knowledge and skills they posses (Hengst & Sol, 2001). This therefore means that Loop Mobile will have to place people with the right set of skills and knowledge in its different positions if at all it will need to succeed in its endeavours. Notably, different aspects of the proposed money transfer service will require different skills and knowledge. In the development phase for example, a lot of technical and innovative skills may be required. In the implementation phase, a lot of managerial skills will be required especially in relation to rolling out the service, contacting retail outlet agents, forming working contracts with them, and even training them on not only how to handle mobile money transactions but also on how to handle customers well. As Hughes (2008 cited by Jenkins, 2008) indicates, money transfer systems based on a mobile phone platform usually involve a lot of small-scale players. Such include the retail outlet owners and the agents who often lack vital business skills such as cash management, accounting and business planning. As such, Hughes (2008, Cited by Jenkins, 2008) stresses the need for a mobile service provider to ensure that all the people in the business ecosystem are well equipped with the prerequisite skills. Training is one way that the management of Loop Mobile can ensure that all agents and retail outlet owners have the required skills and knowledge. Hughes further stresses that agents are the touch points that the mobile service provider has to its customers, and as such, the mobile service company should “do a good degree of due diligence on them, enter into contracts with them, and do a lot of training” (Hughes, 2008, cited by Jenkins, 2008, p. 17). Operations The idea of designing and delivering money transfer services was in itself a reflection of how information technologies have brought change into business processes. As Gurbaxani and Whang (1991, p.59) once predicted, “more than being held by computers, companies will live by them, shaping strategy and structure to fit new information technology”. Money transfer services are testimony that this prediction has indeed come true; this is especially relevant if one considers that beyond the transactions that take place, the operations are supported by an intricate web of information systems based on electronic data interchange (Gunasekaran et al., 2002). For Loop Mobile to effectively manage it resources and operations, there is no doubt that the use of information systems will be paramount; after all, the mere design of the money transfer service will be hosted on an IT-mediated infrastructure. Without going into the technicalities of how the system will run, it is vital to note that Loop Mobile will need to consider the type of business it operates, its organisational life cycle and its competitive environment as the main aspects that will determine the information systems that it will put in place. According to Mukherji (2002), such considerations are important if an organisation is to succeed in integrating its organisation structure with computer architectures. It is worth noting that Loop Mobile will need an information system that though decentralised, will manage to handle requests from different retail outlets and process them in a fast and reliable manner. Using the example of M-Pesa, it is clear that the information systems used by Safaricom in Kenya allow some form of interaction with customers and retail agents on an SMS-based platform, and this enhances the quality, capability, reliability and the quantity of operations that the system handles at any one time. Loop Mobile can choose to use similar information to Safaricom’s, or it can choose to model a new system based on its unique needs and priorities. Either way, its choice of system must meet the objectives of enhancing the management of resources or operations of the company as indicated by Mukherji (2002). In order to exploit the information systems fully, Loop Mobile will need to keep on researching and innovating new and effective ways of using the system in order to enhance the functions and processes that its customers can access through the money transfer service. Going back to the example of M-Pesa, it is worth noting that at inception, the money transfer was designed for purposes of enhancing person-to-person money transfer via a mobile-phone enabled platform (Omwansa, 2009). As more people accepted the service however, a need to enhance the system to cater for other transaction needs such as paying for goods at a retail outlet or paying bills using the money transfer system arose. As a result, Safaricom introduced a ‘Pay Bill’ option on its M-Pesa menu (Omwansa, 2009). Similarly, Loop Mobile will need to induce flexibility in the information systems in order to make it able to handle processes brought about by new business needs. Overall, the impact of information systems on the processes related to the management of resources and operations in firms cannot be underrated. As Gerstein and Shaw (1992) and Morris (1992) note , organisations are now able to cope with dynamic and complex forces facing them, which include globalisation, demographic changes, increased competition, extra-economic goals, diverse customer expectations, and other dynamics emanating from the workforce and the ownership. This then means that Loop Mobile should not expect anything different; effective use of information systems in relation to the proposed money transfer system will be a major determinant regarding whether the new service will succeed or fail. Communication and Information Technology (CIT) Changes that occur in the external and internal organisational environment represent an everyday struggle for organisations as they try to adapt to the change. Among the commonly cited ways of adapting to change is through CIT, which according to Malone and Crowston (1994) and Hengst and Sol (2001), has become a business trend that firms use to increase capabilities while decreasing costs. Through communication information technologies, organisations are able to handle communication processes more easily, and any information-intensive processes too. In Loop Mobile’s case, the use of CIT will probably increase and change communication processes in the organisation. Additionally, CIT use will probably have an effect on how the organisation communicates to the different stakeholders within its business ecosystem. Already, based on the M-Pesa prototype, it is obvious that the proposed mobile money transfer service will expand the organisational boundaries of Loop Mobile. This means that more communication and information exchanges will take place. Given that the proposed service is technologically enabled through the mobile phone, it is obvious that CIT is a vital component of Loop Mobile’s future strategies. For CIT to serve the strategic objectives that Loop Mobile may have regarding the mobile money transfer service, there will be a need for the different stakeholders to comprehend its essence and usefulness in communicating and sharing information. Ideally, as suggested elsewhere, Loop Mobile, being the owner of the proposed service, should have the responsibility of gauging how other stakeholders understand and accept different concepts championed by the company. Similarly, it would be Loop Mobile’s prerogative to ensure that all players in its business ecosystem understand the importance of incorporating CIT in their respective business and management processes. If one of the business ecosystem player’s disregards the use of CIT, it is probable that maximal benefits of its use will not be realised, not only by Loop Mobile as the host company, but also by the customers served by the disregarding player. Business policy and strategy To succeed in the proposed mobile money transfer service, Loop Mobile will need to devise a business policy and strategy that addresses the unique consumer needs in India, and specifically Mumbai, which is its core operation area. Its customer proposition value should not only cite the speed of money transfer, but should also assure the target customers that their money will be safe. Additionally, the service should enhance the convenience of sending money, paying utility bills, saving or point-of-purchase processes. As Mas and Radcliffe (2010) observe however, it may require cold business logic and consistent execution” of identified processes for anything similar to the proposed mobile money transfer to be successful; at least that is what happened in M-Pesa’s case. Specifically, it is noted that M-Pesa’s “success is a vivid example of how great things happen when a group of leaders from different organisations rally around common challenges and ideas” (Mas & Radcliffe, 2010, p. 8). Such views are indicative that M-Pesa adopted a business policy that was inclusive of representatives of different interest groups that would benefit from the success of the money transfer service. While India has some similarities to Kenya, Loop Mobile does not have to replicate what Safaricom did; rather, it can learn from the latter’s experience and mould its unique business policies and strategies that will serve its interests in its target market. During policy and strategy formulation however, Loop Mobile will need to consult and find backing from different stakeholders who include the Indian Government as the regulator, legal counsel, and other corporate and individual participants who may provide it with the technical, financial, legal, and political support needed to make the mobile money transfer endeavour a success. In conclusion, it is worth noting that all forms of entrepreneurship involve risk. As such, Loop Mobile should weigh the risks involved in setting up the mobile money transfer service proposed herein against the potential benefits. The mobile company’s risk appetite should be based on knowledge gained through careful analysis gained from a careful study of the market. Only when Loop Mobile is confident that the risk is worth taking should it go ahead and commence designing and delivering the new service to the identified consumer market. 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