As employees spend more time on the move, businesses are increasingly looking for efficient and affordable mobile communication solutions that would not only allow them to be in touch with their mobile workforce, but also encourage productive employee-to-employee communication. At present, in India, the workforce mobility is mostly guided by business requirements. The same may not be true in the future. With office space increasingly commanding a huge premium, mobile telephony (and of course the Internet) is expected to encourage hot-desking as well as an increased on-site and off-site mobility. For corporate organizations in India, the challenge would not be how to provide each and every member of their workforce with mobile phones. It would be about how to design and execute their mobile communications strategy and integrate that with their existing fixed line voice network. This is something that would not be possible without the support from cellular service providers. This is where the role of the cellular service provider becomes important. However, the problem in India, is that while the cellular service providers have a lot of attractive and innovative schemes for the individual corporate users, none of them have anything that takes care of the mobile communication needs of the organization as a whole. Take a look at the following real life situations:

• Situation 1: A 300-strong corporate office located in one of the satellite towns dotting the landscape of Delhi, has a problem typical to the way things go in this country. At regular breaks every month, the company finds its fixed telephone lines cut or choked, thereby making its private voice communication network dead. Tired of the frequency with which it is cut-off from the rest of the world, the company frantically looks for an option to compliment its landline based PBX with a wireless solution. It soon finds one (one that does not circumvent regulations prohibiting integration of private voice communication networks with public networks): Integrate the PBX with the cellular network. An easy way out, given the number of solutions available in the market that promise to do the integration job effectively. The hitch: No cellular operator ready to offer a package that would match the operational viability of such integration. Their solution: Buy sim cards and integrate those with your PBX, something that would be bad economics for this would mean that the company is spending huge amounts on airtime charges.

• Situation 2: Another corporate hits upon the idea of arming its sales force with mobile phones, as part of its sales force automation drive. The idea is to provide the mobile salespeople access to updated business information, every time there is a need. Besides, the company also wants them to always be in touch with their other colleagues on the move. Is there a viable package being offered? No, there is nothing that offers discounts on intra-office, cell to cell communication, a successful practice in many countries apart from India.

Other Realities

Whatever the cellular service providers in India may say, the fact remains that they don’t have any specific offer or service for corporate organizations that would enhance efficiency in communication and thereby productivity. Many would argue that at the individual level, the mobile phone itself is a productivity enhancement tool. No one doubts a cell phone’s credential as an effective communication tool that has influenced the modern day business performance on the positive side. The significant point here is that mobile phones are yet to be successfully integrated with the private voice communication strategies of the corporate organizations. This is unlike many other countries, where cellular telephony forms an integral part of the private voice networks of the businesses. For example, in the first situation mentioned above, an ideal product or solution would be the one that provides local GSM switching and integrated PBX features in one compact package, enabling the cell phones to be integrated with an organization’s voice communication network. There are solutions, which not only allow calls to be diverted from the PBX to the cell phones, but also keep the PBX ringing even when the fixed line is dead. Then there are solutions, which enable the companies to run their own private GSM network within the perimeter of the office campus by linking GSM phones, PBX and IP based voice and data networks. This convergence allows the cellular phones to take on the role of the PBX desk phone while on the corporate property, making them cost-effective for more employees.

Why is it that such solutions are not popularly used in India, despite the fact that they are easily available and also, when there exists a need for them? Part of the responsibility would lie with the businesses themselves, as they may not be aware of the existing solutions that integrate cell phones with the private voice networks. It is also a fact that the cellular service providers have not done anything to inform organizations about the existence of such solutions. This is largely because of the fact that the service providers themselves do not have anything to offer in terms of specific packages. This means that even when the organizations evince interest in integrating their private voice networks with the GSM network, they find the idea expensive in the absence of specific packages from the service provider. "The initiative has to come from the operators. We would be happy to provide any help to an operator, if the operator comes to us saying that there is a corporate that has a congestion problem with their fixed line", says Ashwini Bakshi, general manager, Nokia India Limited.

In the second situation mentioned earlier, the best deal for businesses would be the one that attractively discounts intra-workforce cell to cell communication. While the service providers do provide discounts on the individual cellular connections, as well as on the airtime for corporate executives, there are no schemes similar to the one mentioned above. Such schemes are deemed to be successful, given the proven track record of mobile phones in enhancing productivity. "We have, for example, in some of the countries, sales force automation particularly for the utility industry. It makes sense to equip the field staff with mobile phones in these industries, so that they can access the information, either by responding to customer queries or by accessing the corporate Intranets to keep themselves informed about the top corporate orders. We believe that these kind of services will succeed, because it will help the users to get more business and improve their revenues", observes Bakshi.