This blog is written by Adam Wills, an Analyst for Mobile for Development Intelligence.
We see the lack of breadth and depth of data and design at the heart of many M4D service delivery barriers, compelling us to explore the topic further. Simply put, if you fail to design a mobile service that genuinely meets your end users’ requirements or patterns of behaviour, how can you expect the service to achieve the desired impact? We are especially prone to designing great services for ourselves, making the process of user-centric design more important for users we are likely to misunderstand (such as small-holder farmers, or female entrepreneurs in rural geographies). In the same way, if you rely on intuition without reference to the data coming from a wide base of end-users when making implementation decisions, what expectation can you have to see the service grow and improve?
Within the M4D space, a range of start-ups, mobile operators, investors, and international donors recognize the value of data-driven service improvement, design, and innovation.
For example, Orange’s recent Data for Development (D4D) challenge encouraged independent researchers to arrive at new ideas to address socio-economic development. By opening up Call Detail Records (CDR) and SMS exchanges between five million of Orange’s customers in Ivory Coast, researchers were able to come up with responses covering topics such as emergency response, city and transportation planning, and health improvement. This has given new insight into the behaviour of Orange’s customers, and new leads for development initiatives. The approach to open data also raises further questions.
- How will this inform the operator’s own explorations in the M4D space going forward?
- Will other operators see the value in this approach to open data?
- And what are the risks to making this data accessible?
In other areas, some of the more prominent M4D start-ups see the importance of capturing and analysing data from their services. Helping them form KPIs and making key decisions as they scale their business. For example, M-KOPA’s use of the management information system, M-KOPAnet, enables the team to combine accounting, customer relationship management, and inventory tracking. While managing this rapidly growing data set can be tough, there are clear advantages gained from understanding usage behaviour of customers, customer credit quality, and the productivity of M-KOPA’s network of dealers. This work also raises further questions.
- What lessons can other practitioners in the M4D space take from M-KOPA’s data-driven approach to business development?
- And what similarities or differences in data and analytics processes do these efforts represent in comparison with the ‘big data’ initiatives we increasingly hear about in the M4D space?
Join us in GSMA’s Mobile for Development Summit in Cape Town on 11 & 12 November 2013, to discuss the topic of data, design and innovation in Mobile for Development with a leading set of panellists:
- Denis Guibard (Vice President – Sustainable Development, Products & Services, Orange),
- Jesse Moore (Managing Director, M-KOPA)
- Tim Murdoch (Industrial Research Fellow, Engineering Design Centre at University of Cambridge)
- Yaya Ndjore (Project Manager Tigo Kilimo, Tigo Tanzania)
We will be exploring the questions above and more on the panel. For those still wishing to attend, don’t miss the chance to register.
Photo: Orange’s cell phone towers in Ivory Coast.