O2 goes into beta

Telcos operate in a very service orientated sector of business. Historically they have under-delivered on the service promise. Customer satisfaction is king, and with 18 million paying customers in the UK its business processes are incredibly robust to ensure the integrity of the network and customer experience is maintained.

This focus on customer satisfaction and customer experience has been the cornerstone of O2’s recent success in the UK market. However this focus on quality can come at a price. Speed to market and consistent innovation is challenging when you operate within a risk adverse, quality first, environment.

Their light bulb moment was observing the behaviour of internet companies who know nothing else but Beta testing with customers and following agile development processes – it’s in their DNA as entrepreneurial young businesses. So they wanted to create a way to allow application developers to interact directly with their high value customers. I feel this collaborative approach is the only model to drive innovation and adoption of mobile data services. In fact, I must declare my interest - I’ve been working with O2 on this project.

Therefore it is a significant step in the world of telco to launch a Beta service with the coming of O2 Litmus. They do this with the intention of another first, effectively turning O2 Litmus over to the community of its users, allowing them to shape future iterations.

What is O2 Litmus? It has been developed to address four key objectives:

1. Develop a way to drive mobile innovation and provide a fast route to market for successful applications
2. Create an ecosystem where all players in the value chain benefit. Developers have to be able to make money via O2 Litmus.
3. Find new ways to provide O2 customers with unique experiences, building on the success of The O2 venue and the iPhone.
4. Empower their leading edge customers – put them in the driving seat to help set the future direction of O2’s mobile data services.

O2 Litmus will provide the framework for collaboration, co-creation and experimentation between developers and O2 customers. I hope a move on this scale can only be good for the digital industry as a whole, by driving awareness and an appetite for the co-creation approach.

If you would like to be part of the journey, please register at at www.o2litmus.co.uk