The ideal e-commerce player - not on the web ?

Having seen the staggering growth of new e-commerce players in the market, and having had the privilege of working in one of the largest, there have been a number of occasions in which as a programmer my ideas were shot down in lengthy and energetic debates. That prompted the itch of "wouldn't it be great if" kind of situations. What would be an ideal type of situation if I were working in an e-commerce player ? How would you feel about these good-to-feel numbers:

• Transactions: the site should have at least 1 million transactions a day
• Customers: Nothing less than 1 million active customers
• Communication channel: There should be some channel which can reach out to your base instantly, and with sufficient eyeball time
• Product catalog: maybe restrict to just 50 to reduce complexity
• Availability: The product should be available in the inventory in less than an hour
• Delivery: If the product is in inventory, delivery should be instant
• Competition: in single digits

So, what if we had all this ? Using data mining on all transactions, I could probably recommend (Amazon style) to 10k customers a product that may interest them through a communication medium which forces a response, with  of course instant instant delivery on one-click purchase. I could allow third party developers to integrate with my platform and let them add products to my inventory, and use my delivery and communication infrastructure. Payments, web-services, segmentation, marketplace, etc etc. 

This is all old news and whats been done already by the giants. However, this got me thinking about my current sector which I had believed was not so glamorous. Telecom has been compared to the Internet sector as a slow, monolithic, ugly overweight beast which takes decades to get anywhere. Compared to the lightning fast Internet startups that are changing consumer habits in a matter of months, Telecom has been seen as being part of the Signalling era (computer graduates would have to dust their engineering books to know what that means..). 

But, in spite of all the outdated technological paradigm, what struck me was that the telecom sector is probably the best e-commerce player out there ! Some of the operators I work with have 10s of millions of transactions every day (voice, SMS, data, VAS, etc) initiated by a massively diverse consumer base of more than 30 million, with a near real-time communication channel (SMS / USSD) which forces the customer to respond and availability and delivery being a no-brainer. And competition is definitely in single digits. 

Then, why is the telecom sector so slow to innovate ? Is it the case of Microsoft realizing that the Internet had whizzed past them ? Where are the Groupons, LinkedIns and Facebooks of the telecom world ? Big Data has been with these operators for more than a decade, so where's the Google or Yahoo! that can convert this into $ billions ? 

My belief is that this sector has got to open up, challenge the status quo and adopt and create the latest technology trends cause they have the right context, environment and resources to take over. Let developers access your infrastructure, anonymized consumer base and use analytics to discover hidden treasures. Empower and engage consumers with new ideas, platforms and apps to play with. use technological innovations to create buzz and interest in the consumer segment. The future should see them creating and powering these innovations (and not outsource it!). Thats where the new ecosystem would generate far more value, innovation and curiosity than an operator dominated one.

Till that time, I'll keep day dreaming of my LinkedIn through call records idea for my next post...