The latest GSMA mWomen Working Group meeting was hosted in September by Mobitel in Colombo, Sri Lanka. With a heavy focus on interactive workshops, the mobile network operators, mobile industry and government partners that came together explored the preliminary findings of the GSMA mWomen Research into the Wants and Needs of BOP Women and analysis of the GSMA mWomen Business Case Framework.

The BOP isn’t purely price driven

Over two days, the group used the findings of the qualitative ethnographic research [insert link when Per’s blog is posted] into the wants and needs of BOP women to kickstart ideas for realistic mobile products and services targeting women in emerging markets.

A huge range of ideas were developed in the brainstorming sessions, which highlighted how research insights can be used to inspire mobile offerings that fulfil women’s needs as well as serving MNO business objectives. The insight that was ranked as most surprising and new was the fact that although BOP consumers are price sensitive, they are not purely price-driven. In addition to this, using the research insights as a springboard, a wide range of well-formed, realistic offerings targeting BOP women were devised by the groups in the short two hour brainstorming session. These included mLearning products for children delivered via mothers’ mobiles; a research and marketing campaign to highlight how much time women can save by using a mobile; a campaign targeting men with a deal offering a new handset with two sims so that the extra sim can be given to their wives to use in their old phones. This showed the value of using consumer research and highlighted the business potential of doing so.

After sharing their ideas, the groups came together to discuss what points were highlighted to them during the process of exploring how the interim research insights could be used to create mobile solutions. These points were that there is:

• Stakeholder buy-in required across the mobile network operator

• A need for a senior level champion

• A gap in mWomen knowledge in the mobile industry

• A need to promote a research driven process for products

• A need to have business focus and business case for any initiative

• Complexity in creating innovative value added services

The process also showed participants:

• How to challenge internal organisational assumptions

• That mobile operators do not always need to create bespoke women’s products to benefit women, existing offerings and marketing can be repositioned

• Donors/government are potential funding partners

As part of ensuring the research findings are as pertinent as possible to the members committed to contributing GSMA mWomen’s goals, we also discussed what questions the group wanted to have the quantitative section of the research ask women in the field.

We must address MNO barriers as well as consumer barriers

During the sessions exploring the mWomen Business Case Framework, we discussed how mWomen projects may be subject to unusually high demands for detailed business cases before implementation compared to other projects the MNO has executed. So far, our analysis shows that each market and operator scenario is distinct; there is no single business case. Therefore:

• The solution has to be as dynamic as the market conditions.

• mWomen internal-capability and operational capacity within MNOs needs to be built out

• We must address MNO barriers as well as consumer barriers.

Throughout these discussions, it became ever more apparent that, within any MNO wishing to implement mWomen initiatives, it is absolutely vital to have multi-level buy-in throughout the organisation. From the senior management to the staff creating and marketing the services to customers, all need to be persuaded of the value of targeting women and be willing to allocate resources to do so. At Mobile World Congress in 2012, we will launch the results of the mWomen Business Framework analysis and the Wants and Needs Research, with the intention of equipping champions in the industry to do just that.

Read about what the focus group of rural women had to say about their lives and what role mobile played in them here.