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By Srikanth RP
MUMBAI: Tata Teleservices is betting big on the strength of its network across India to carve out its own unique space in the enterprise arena. While the bulk of the company’s revenues still comes from voice and data, the managed services segment is growing at a faster pace.
The strength of diverse channel partner network of 750 channel partners across more than 60 cities, has helped it cater to a huge SMB base of customers. Understanding the fact that SMB customers do not have the capability to interact with multiple customers, the firm provides SMB customers the option of dealing with a single vendor to provide a complete solution. This strategy has helped it increase its market share in the SMB segment, which contributes about 45% of the country’s industrial production.
Besides the plain vanilla voice and data-based services, the company has also tried to offer innovative solutions such as fleet management, vehicle tracking and automated meter reading services. Location based services are a huge draw, and the company is relying on its geographical reach to offer unique solutions to its customers.
“We have not even scratched the surface of what is undoubtedly a huge market. We have seen some good success stories,” says Prateek Pashine, Head-Enterprise Business, Tata Teleservices, on the potential of Location Based Services.
In a diverse geographically spread market like India, Tata Teleservices has found huge demand for its Location-Based Services (LBS). One example of LBS is the firm’s offering ‘Tata Docomo SmartBus Tracker ‘ which has been specially designed for schools to manage their fleet of buses effortlessly and on a real time basis.
In the current scenario, where safety of children is paramount, this solution helps the school in understanding the whereabouts of the child by knowing the exact position of the fleet of buses. The administrator can easily manage the vehicles using a very simple and user friendly web interface with further access to information through alerts over SMS or email. With the help of a web-based interface, the administrator can view information related to the bus on a map. The administrator can track distance from a bus stop, know when the ignition is switched on and off along with over speeding notifications. With an interactive map view of running buses, the administrator can view and get alerts if any bus deviates from their predefined route.
Parents receive alerts stating on how soon the bus will be reaching to their bus stop or the school. This simple but innovative solution, has been received remarkably well in the market, with more than hundred schools opting for this solution.
Pashine says that having location-based tracking is a tremendous business advantage, and can be used in almost every service industry. To explain his point, he gives the example of a market research firm. “We recently deployed a tablet-based survey solution comprising of a mobile app along with location-based tracking for a market research firm which has close to 800 employees on the field. Instead of a paper-based process, the market research staff now can fill in details instantly on their tablets, and this data is available immediately to the top management. Additionally, location-based tracking helps the market research firm to track the genuineness of the survey filling by tracking the geo coordinates of their field staff.”
Pashine believes that the same concept can be used in every service industry. For example, every manufacturing firm or electronics firm which relies on service engineers to repair devices, can use this solution to improve the productivity and efficiency of their task force.