ValueFirst has launched a nation-wide survey on Enterprise Mobile Messaging – Current Scenario and Future Trends in July 2008. Respondents included senior management from over 120 large & medium enterprise customers of ValueFirst: Below are the Executive Summary and Key Findings of the report.

Enterprise mobile messaging has grown exponentially in India. The current stage of enterprise mobile messaging is nascent and a large number of enterprises that are using mobile messaging services are in a nascent stage in terms of its utilization. There is a critical need for the awareness on mobile messaging to grow. Also, tracking performance metrics and wide scale adoption beyond customer services will help the enterprises take benefit in a more effective manner.

Specifically,

1. Features such as cost effectiveness, ease of use, wide reach, easy implementation and real-time messaging capabilities have driven enterprises to adopt mobile messaging services to improve their internal and external communication systems;

1. Mobile data services have found critical applications in various areas of functioning of an enterprise, be it marketing, customer services, supply chain management or IT;

The usage of mobile messaging services spans a wide arena of verticals such as banking and financial service institutions, stock broking, automotive, IT, marketing services, manufacturing and retail.

KEY FINDINGS – CURRENT SCENARIO AND FUTURE TRENDS

1. Lack of awareness - 41% of the respondents admit that their knowledge about the mobile messaging market is either “average” or “poor”, implying a general lack of knowledge about the industry;

1. RoI calculations not done - 89% of the enterprises are yet to implement any performance measures to assess the value proposition of the mobile messaging services. This means that the enterprise mobile messaging is yet to reach significant spend for the enterprises to keenly monitor the return on investment.

1. Customer services uses the most - 56% of the enterprises are using mobile messaging solutions to provide better service to their customers;

1. Competitive advantage - 84% of the enterprises feel that using mobile messaging services provides them with a competitive advantage over enterprises not using these services;

1. Positive outlook - 87% of the enterprises say that their use of mobile messaging services will increase significantly over the next one year.