Welcome to PR Vibes, created by Calysto Communications to provide you with key insights into the publications and events in the communications industry. Today, we’re featuring an interview with Terry Waters, who joined Yankee Group as president and CEO approximately one year ago. Terry shares his thoughts about Yankee Group’s focus on the mobility landscape. Enjoy!
As CEO of Yankee Group, you’re charged with managing your firm’s strategic direction. Can you share your vision going forward?
Over the past 12 months, Yankee Group has evolved its research mission to be the preeminent research and advisory firm equipping companies to profit in a mobile world. I believe this plays well to our brand and is a natural evolution for the firm based on what is happening in the communications and mobility space. Our focus going forward is on analyzing the attitudes, behaviors and usage patterns of mobile users, exploring enabling communications technologies and understanding emerging business models across the mobile ecosystem. Our analysts will provide a range of actionable data, insights and advice to technology, marketing, strategy and product executives driving the mobility revolution in leading companies worldwide. With this focus, we believe we will help our clients make smarter technology-enabled business decisions, achieve greater operating efficiencies and drive top-line revenue growth.
Prior to my tenure, Yankee Group was focused on helping our clients understand and address opportunities from the evolution of global connectivity, what Yankee Group termed “The Anywhere Revolution.” However, as global connectivity has become a reality, market forces are shifting the focus toward mobility. To this end, we are “turning our telescope around” and making the end-user our vantage point for research, insights and advice. Going forward, we are analyzing what is enabled by ubiquitous connectivity—how content, applications and services will be truly mobilized, and how client experiences will be enabled in a mobile world—at work, at home or on the go. What we’re hearing from our clients, and the market at large, is that they want to better understand mobile user behaviors, attitudes and usage patterns as well as the dynamics of the mobility ecosystem, its technology directions, and the business opportunities it presents to grow top-line revenue and market share.
How do you define “mobility”?
Historically “mobile” and “wireless” have been used interchangeably, but wireless users— consumers or enterprise workers—were not truly mobile. Users had portable devices that had wireless access from predetermined locations with preloaded content and applications. Yankee Group believes true mobility requires the device, the user and the application, content and/or service to be untethered. We are seeing major advancements in the market over just the last 12-18 months as users move from portability to true mobility. In fact, the advent of faster, more ubiquitous connectivity combined with smarter devices means content, applications and services can be accessed from “the cloud” anywhere, anytime, from any device—giving birth to true mobility for the first time.
Bottom line: Mobility is more than just wireless. It allows for the seamless, fluid access to any content, application and service from any device, by anyone, from anywhere at any time.
What are your research coverage areas going forward?
Over the past several months, the Yankee Group research team did a comprehensive review of all our current research categories and, based on market and client feedback as well as our new focus on mobility, we made several decisions. We will continue to focus on core communications and mobility topics, including: B/OSS, Consumer Mobile Services, Core and Edge Network, Client Experience, Devices, Enterprise Mobility, Mobile Applications, Mobile Cloud, Mobile Infrastructure, Mobile Transactions, Policy Management, Security, Service Delivery Architecture, Service Provider Strategies, and Unified Communications and Collaboration. In addition, we are expanding our focus on the rapidly growing M2M and Mobile Video sectors. Finally, we are shifting our focus away from stand-alone Fixed Broadband coverage (XDSL, cable modems, fixed wireless, FTTx, IPVPN/MPLS, VPLS, Ethernet and ISDN) as it is not core to our mobility direction; however, we will continue to cover Fixed Broadband as it relates to mobility and how the fixed infrastructure coupled with mobile technologies enables the seamless, fluid access to any content, applications and/or services from any device, by anyone, from anywhere at any time. We have published these new research categories as well as provided an updated editorial calendar for the next six months on our Web site.
Do you anticipate any changes in the products and services you offer?
Our core product offerings, consisting of written research, rich data and strategic insight, will continue to evolve to meet the needs of our clients. For 2012, we will be delivering enhancements to our products and services, both in how our content is presented to and accessed by clients as well as in the precision, depth and breadth of our analysis into all aspects of the mobile ecosystem. We will continue to provide global coverage as well as regional insight on key geographic markets around the world that are being impacted by the mobility revolution. Our goal, as always, is to continuously improve our value to our clients and to be their trusted advisor for mobility issues and opportunities.
One trend we have seen this year is the need for more targeted insight into specific emerging technology and new business models enabled by mobile technologies. With this in mind, we’re developing new offerings targeted at specific market segments that are particularly dynamic. In June of this year, we launched our first product of this kind, Mobile Money Strategies, which cuts across our research, data and insights to deliver a holistic view of the mobile money market— mobile payments, mobile transactions, mobile commerce—and its impact on technology enablers, financial services providers and retailers as they evolve their offerings to serve mobile users. This focus has been well received and based on client and market feedback we’ll be exploring other target segments to provide similar offerings in 2012.
You’ve talked about changes in your research team. One of these is the creation of a Data Sciences team—can you tell us about that?
As an early believer in the power of data and fact-based research, Yankee Group offers its clients two families of data products. Our Forecast and Monitor product family delivers a complete picture of the communications and mobile industry. Our Forecasts offering includes five-year market forecasts across nearly 60 countries. Our Monitors track current financial and product activities for more than 100 communications and mobile companies worldwide.
Earlier this year, we introduced an online data visualization tool, revolutionizing the way clients view, use and track the more than 1 million data points within our Forecast and Monitors product suite. This new online capability brings strategic market forecasts to life. Clients have given us great reviews on this new offering, and we will continue to explore ways to unlock the value of our Forecast and Monitor data for our clients going forward.
Our Consumer and Enterprise Survey family of products includes more than 16,000 survey responses annually, covering a wide range of topics. Our analysts use the data to support the insights and recommendations in our research. We also use these analytics to distill trends and insights to help inform our outlook for the future of mobility and the mobile ecosystem. We are working toward deploying a similar online data visualization tool for our Survey clients to unlock the value of this unique consumer and enterprise data and provide an improved experience for everyone.
In July, we created a Data Sciences team to manage our data assets, continue to improve our methodologies and deliver greater value from these assets to our clients. The team’s objective is to work with our analysts and our clients to apply data to models that support our research hypotheses going forward. This team consists of senior-level analysts who have been following the communications and mobility space for many years, combined with data analysts who have been developing our Forecasts, Monitors and Survey methodologies for many years. Recent work from our Data Sciences team includes analyzing piracy on smartphones and mapping the major tablet and smartphone suppliers’ market opportunities. We’ve received great feedback from our clients that our data insights are helping them make strategic business decisions that help drive operational improvements and top-line revenue opportunities.
In addition to the Data Sciences team, you’ve also introduced a new analyst Affiliate Program, which is a rather different approach for the traditional research firms—can you tell us about the new program and how it aligns with your research mission going forward?
We are applying a popular model already adopted in the professional services world—across law firms, consulting firms, public relations firms, marketing agencies, universities, etc.—to the technology research and advisory services marketplace. Our approach is differentiated from other research firms in the industry whose core value proposition is being an Affiliate Network, without any industry and/or technology analysts on staff full-time.
The new program benefits Yankee Group clients by providing access to a broad team of best-in-class mobility experts as part of their Yankee Group relationship. Affiliates are part of ongoing research, interaction and consulting support, and are aligned with key Yankee Group research programs and initiatives. This program is aligned to our research mission to be the preeminent research and advisory firm equipping companies to profit in a mobile world.
Participation in the program also creates significant opportunity for Affiliates, who benefit from exposure to Yankee Group’s client base, visibility on our Web site and in publications/blogs, and revenue associated with their relationship with us. This approach also helps Yankee Group address a wider array of topics related to the mobile ecosystem and provides us with broader geographic coverage and deeper expertise in more specialized and/or adjacent topics.
You’ve recently introduced a free daily newsletter, Mobile Now—can you tell us about the development of that new offering?
The mobile ecosystem is one of the most dynamic technology marketplaces in history. Our goal with Mobile Now is to keep our clients abreast of all that’s going on across the ecosystem on a daily basis.
Mobile Now serves to help readers better identify, understand and respond to the daily dynamics of the mobility revolution. In addition to the daily push e-mail that goes out every morning at 6 a.m. ET, the Mobile Now portal provides daily commentary from analysts on the top story of the day plus data and graphics from our own proprietary forecasts, user behavior studies and mobile usage surveys. Finally, the portal provides users with a collection of news articles curated by Yankee Group editors and analysts from leading news sources worldwide.
Mobile Now content is delivered to subscribers via a daily newsletter and/or on the go via RSS on any mobile device. We have gotten fantastic feedback from our Mobile Now subscribers on the scope of topics, the timeliness of delivery and the quality of analyst commentary. The portal and newsletter is open to all—you can check it out at mobilenow.yankeegroup.com.
Is the profile of a Yankee Group client different now than it was before? Who is your target audience?
Over the past year, I have met with more than 200 of our key clients around the world. Everyone has told me mobility is the opportunity space. The pace of change is accelerating and the levels of complexity are increasing as every commercial and public-sector enterprise around the world is affected by mobility. Our goal is to provide insight and advice to anyone and everyone who has a stake in the mobility revolution. This revolution is touching more than just the technology providers, mobile device players and communication service providers that are our more traditional clients. Financial services, retail, publishing, health care, technology, energy, public sector organizations—all are being impacted by mobility, and they all have immense opportunity within the ecosystem to build strong internal and external relationships with clients, suppliers, partners and employees through the thoughtful deployment of mobility solutions. We want to be their trusted advisor, providing a range of actionable data, insights and advice to technology, marketing, strategy and product executives driving the mobility revolution in leading companies worldwide.
Any closing thoughts?
It’s an exciting time to be at Yankee Group and to be at the center of the mobility revolution. As new “smart” devices, mobile technologies, cloud-enabled content, business applications and consumer services come online every day, we have a great opportunity to serve our clients. Our investment in our business continues to be strong and client-focused, with an ultimate goal of being the go-to research and advisory firm helping equip companies to profit in a mobile world.
Thank you for providing me the opportunity to share my thoughts with your readers!