Movius Blog

Movius Achieves LEVEL 2 AAA Rating for B-BBEE Standards in South Africa- Again!

Jean Marie Richardson — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:03:00 -0500

For business ventures to be successful in South Africa compliance with B-BBEE standards (Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment) is CRITICAL. Today we have achieved another significant milestone for our business in South Africa!

Background on B-BBEE

B-BBEE requirements were introduced during the mid 90’s after the appointment of a democratic government in South Africa, and stem back to the release of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress coming to power. These standards are the underlying scoring system enforced in government programs designed to create more opportunity and foster entrepreneurship for PDI’s (previously disadvantaged individuals). B-BBEE scores are taken very seriously, and determine which businesses qualify to do business in South Africa.

What is B-BBEE?

B-BBEE or Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment is a drive by the South African government to encourage companies to empower black people including:

Black ownership, management and employment equity

Skills development of black employees

Procurement of raw materials, products and services from companies with a good BBBEE rating

Investing in black enterprises

Assisting the black community through socio-economic projects

Movius’ Rating

Movius Achieved LEVEL 2 AAA Rating for B-BBEE Standards in South Africa for the second year running! This is a great achievement and very difficult to obtain especially since Movius South Africa is a subsidiary of Movius Interactive Corporation headquartered in the United States. Our score card improved this year from 86.54 to 87.37 out of 100 possible points. This rating places us above our local peers and competitors by a large margin and demonstrates Movius’ commitment to the local market and excellence in achievement when measured against the required standards.

What does level 2 AAA rating mean for Movius?

To do business with top South African operators such as MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom and Neotel, the B-BBEE certification is now mandatory. We have systems installed in all of these operators and they cannot contract with companies that are not BEE certified

This rating allows our customers to attribute 125% of their spend with Movius toward their own BEE rating. BEE is a regulatory requirement. A high BEE rating is therefore a massive advantage in tender or bid situations

Our local customers all have BEE as a key qualifying factor in their KPI’s for any business discussion at all. Our support agreement with MTN SA could not and would not be renewed without Movius BEE certification.

This achievement opens more doors for Movius to do business with any South African based operator and to be favored in their procurement processes. Finally, it is recognition that Movius is an active contributor giving back to the development of this great country!

Amit Modi predicts top trends at Mobile World Congress

Jean Marie Richardson — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:05:00 -0500

Amit Modi, VP and General Manager of Products & Technology, predicts the top trends you can expect at 2011 Mobile World Congress

LTE Could be a Boost to Mobile Enterprise

Mike Edgett — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:23:00 -0500

There has been a lot of talk about the value of LTE for enabling high-bandwidth applications and services….primarily web browsing and associate services (e.g., You-Tube, Hulu, etc.). Recently, though, there have been a number of articles and studies talking about the value of voice over LTE. These include reports from industry experts including Brian Partridge at the Yankee Group (“IMS Finally Finds its ‘Calling” With Voice over LTE”, June 2010), Joe Madden & Stuart Carlaw at ABI Research (“Mobile HD Voice”, Q1 2010) and Michael Stanford in Internet Telephony (“Returning on Investment for HD Voice”, Sept 2010). All of these address the improved voice quality that carriers can deliver if they move to Voice over LTE. The question, though, is whether the investment is worth it.

It appears that one area that would bring all this together, both improved web browsing and improved voice, would be carrier solutions for the enterprise. Now carriers can provide a better voice communication experience as well as provide the bandwidth needed for collaborative business services such audio conferencing, web collaboration and even video conferencing. And this can all be provided on a mobile device, anytime and anywhere. While this may be years away as carriers finalize plans and actually roll out their complete LTE networks, the role of enterprise-focused communication applications in mobile is likely to grow.

Marketing Products to Aspirant Communities

Ian Moraes — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:09:00 -0500

I was reading an interesting article by Daniel Steenkamp who recently reported on factors underlying bottom of the pyramid vision success stories.

For a brief introduction on the bottom of the pyramid concept, watch this video by C. K. Prahalad.

Mr. Steenkamp notes a number of important factors including appreciating the market opportunity in addition to the social goodwill that can result from extending services or products to this segment of the market, adopting a business model that promotes socio-economic development of the market, and a rethinking of business processes and market strategies when serving the aspirant community.

The banking and communication sectors are realizing that the bottom of the pyramid provides a market opportunity for their services. This aspirant community has not been provided with relevant banking and communication services until recently. Mobile money for the unbanked targets the bottom of the pyramid and extends financial services to the unbanked. Mobile money leverages mobile operator networks to deliver these services. Similarly, a user in this segment cannot afford to own a mobile phone but wants to be reached and participate in the global mobile community. Virtual Subscriber Service is an innovative service that is being pursued by some leading African mobile operators to provide a user with a mobile number without needing to own a mobile phone.

When introducing mobile money for the unbanked and Virtual Subscriber Service, we should remember some of the points raised in the article I referenced earlier. Engaging with the target market to create viable usable solutions (e.g., using voice interaction rather than text for some communities) and pricing the solutions appropriately are obviously important. However, it is also important to leverage best practices to ensure a successful distribution channel for the services. For example, both type of services depend on a strong distribution network comprising agents to educate, evangelize, sign-up new subscribers and maintain subscribers. These agents need to be knowledgeable on both types of services, ubiquitous, accessible and trustworthy. The attractiveness for an agent becomes more compelling if both services are offered since they require a low cost structure, target the same market, symbiotically increase foot traffic, and constructed so the commission structure will incentivize agents to grow both businesses. For more information on this topic, please visit GSMA Mobile Money for the Unbanked.

Let me know of your thoughts on targeting products and services such as Virtual Subscriber Services for the aspirant community.

Keeping Technology Simple & Convenient

Ian Moraes — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 12:17:00 -0500

Over the last couple of weeks, my wife has been shopping for home and auto insurance. She used a temporary email address as she was concerned about subsequently receiving spam or unwanted email from insurance sales agents after she reached a decision. However, she had to provide a phone number to discuss and clarify quotes and so she provided her mobile phone number. She received numerous calls late in the evenings and she lamented at the lack of a second number availability on her existing mobile that would allow her to share this second number with the insurance sales agents.

One obvious way to address this need is to maintain two phones. In fact, a Skydeck survey reported that a quarter of cell phone users in the 30-65 age group in the US carry more than one handset. In another study, USA Today (2006) reported that 16% of customers had two phones for business and personal use.

A more convenient and cost-effective option for subscribers is the ability to have two numbers using one phone. This type of service would be even more valuable if it allowed the subscriber to control the service and send calls to the second number directly to voice mail when enabled. For example, it could be used for sending personal calls directly to voice mail during the work day. Mintel (2009) reported that the average Briton wants two mobile numbers to separate business and personal concerns. Other uses of a second line on your existing mobile might be to share a second number when participating in on-line auctions, dating services, or in situations where there is some level of skepticism in sharing one’s primary mobile number.

Movius offers a second line solution called Side-Line Service. What do you think of an add-on service that enables subscribers to have two mobile numbers on the same phone?

One Young World: Developing Soultions for a Better World

Ishmael Tsoaela — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:19:00 -0500

Recently, I attended the One Young World Conference in London. Movius was one of the sponsors of this global event. The purpose for this conference was to bring together potential future leaders who are actively involved in their community to bring about a positive change. More than 1000 attendees from more than 100 countries were brought together to discuss global issues and eventually come to a vote on resolutions which would be passed on to world leaders.

Movius Achieves Level 2 AAA Rating for BBBEE Standards in South Africa

Andy Minnaar — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:53:00 -0500

For those that do not know, BBBEE stands for Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment. An important topic if you are trying to do business in South Africa.

What is this all about?

In a nutshell BBBEE was introduced during the mid 90's after the appointment of a democratic government in South Africa. It stems back to the release of Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress coming into power. It is about the upliftment of PDI's (previously disadvantaged individuals).

The South African government launched a program based on a set of tenets designed to create opportunity for PDI's and foster entrepreneurship. A scoring system was introduced and companies are required to score at various levels, depending on turnover, to qualify for doing business with state entities and large South African companies. Companies that receive high scores get price advantages in state tender evaluations. In other words those contributing to uplift get favourable consideration.

BBBEE is taken very seriously in South Africa, to the extent that state and large companies will not do business with local companies that are not compliant and a companies own ratings are affected negatively if they do not award business to BBBEE complaint partners.

For Movius, we have achieved a level 2 AAA rating. This is a great achievement and very difficult to obtain especially since Movius South Africa is a subsidiary of Movius Interactive Corporation headquartered in the United States.

To do business with top South African operators such as MTN, Vodacom, Cell C, Telkom and Neotel, the BBBEE rating is now mandatory. The fact that Movius achieved such a high rating is significant! It opens doors to do business with any South African based operator and to be favoured in their procurement processes, because we are regarded as contributors giving back to the development of our great country.

For more details on Movius' achievement read our press release.

Interest from Telecoms in SaaS Model Begins to Grow

Javier Solis Garcia — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:31:00 -0500

For a long time, telecom operators have been regarded as a potential player in the SaaS (Software as a Service) model, a way of delivering applications by hosting them on a data center and making them accessible over IP networks. In 2006, Dr. Matthew Lucas posted an article Editorial: Software as a Service (SaaS) and the Telecoms in which he lists his top 10 reasons why telecoms should care about SaaS. It's worth a read.

A point I would like to make is that this approach to distributing applications not only allows operators to leverage their network infrastructure and sales channels but also one of their major skills, to deliver services within a SLA.

According to a release from Gartner in November 2009, SaaS is regarded as a growing business. In the last few months some of the major European operators have made movements in this sector and we see how the existing portfolio of enterprise operator-run value added services increases with new this new approach. For instance, Deutsche Telekom is reinforcing their position and is set to take over SAP European software business based on news in September 2009.

The SaaS model is not only restricted to large enterprises. Last year, Telefónica entered into an agreement with NEC for a Software as a Service platform that will target small and mid sized companies.

Let’s see what happens in 2010 with SaaS. I expect that it will continue to gain momentum.

Mobile Web Ramping Up?

Collin LeGault Rountree — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:13:00 -0500

Pew Internet & American Life Project reported on Internet status update trending (see results here). They have shown a significant increase in Internet users updating status on some social networking site. In April of this year it was at 11%. Five months later results showed 19% of Inernet users updating status on a social networking site. That’s nearly 1/5 of the Internet population updating their status somewhere.

“Three groups of internet users are mainly responsible for driving the growth of this activity: social network website users, those who connect to the internet via mobile devices, and younger internet users”

In this study, 54% of Internet users have some type of wireless access to the Internet (via cell phone, wifi, etc.). Of those, 25% use Twitter or some other service up from 14% in December of 2008.

“Owning and using a wireless Internet device make an Internet user significantly more likely to tweet.”

When asking wireless Internet users why they value their mobile connections, 50% say to stay in touch with other people. (I read this as status updates.)

Adding to these statistics, we should take a look at the Economy Internet Trends from Morgan Stanley on October 20, 2009 (see report here).

Pay attention to the following slides:

Slide 2: Mobile – Incremental Driver of Internet User /Usage Growth.
Slide 28: Mobile Internet – Is and Will be Bigger Than Most Think
Slide 29: Next Generation Platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) Driving Unprecedented Change in Communications + Commerce.
Slide 33: Mobile Internet Outpaces Desktop Internet Adoption

These trends go on and on throughout the report. If you have the time, I definitely suggest you read the whole thing.

In a previous blog entry I mentioned that the phone manufacturers needed to get on board. I think that if this trending data accurate, they need to get busy quicker than ever. Mobile devices are getting faster, smaller, and cheaper all the time. We are getting used to our data being out in the cloud. Will the big boys keep up?

Holiday Greetings!

Admin — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 13:10:00 -0500

Movius is wishing you a peaceful holiday season and a wonderful start to 2010!