India's market dynamics impacting digital business implementation: Gartner

By 2020, more than 40% of the Indian urban households will use home automation/ energy management solutions, Gartner says

Widespread failures in realising return on investment (ROI) in digital technologies for customer experience could create a sense of distrust among buyers and decision makers in India about the potential for digital business, according to Gartner Inc.

Gartner predicts that by 2017, 80 per cent of consumer-facing companies will fail to realise ROI on investments in digital technologies focusing on customer experience because of the country's market dynamics and economic environment.

"India's consumer market, and economic dynamics, are completely different from the consumer dynamics observed in western markets," said Arup Roy, research director at Gartner. "While consumer-facing companies in mature western markets are driven by value drivers, such as superior customer experience and product/service design, consumer-facing companies in India and other emerging markets, are driven by value drivers such as lower cost of product/service, being able to handle the problem of volumes, and being able to effectively reach the masses."

Companies that intend to implement complex customer experience technologies in India, such as beacons, in-building navigation, facial recognition-driven marketing and promotions will not yield the expected ROI because customers' basic needs, such as affordability, availability and ease of access, need to be fulfilled before they are able to appreciate the value of these technology-led experiences.

"Unfortunately, a significant proportion of consumer-facing companies are swayed by the shiny and successful examples of 'customer experience' initiatives of their western counterparts," said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. "They are making investments in front-end, customer-facing activities that leverage digital technologies and failing to invest in the back end necessities, such as enabling easier and faster process workflows, easier shopping and service experience and after sales."

Gartner advises companies to leverage digital business to reinvent their business model so that it addresses the key issues affecting the Indian consumer industry - problems of plenty (volumes), cost sensitivity and the diversity and reach of consumers.

Gartner also made the following predictions for the Indian market:

* By 2018, the Indian telecom industry will reach nearly 50 per cent of its revenue through data, demanding a change in network management approach.

* Even though over-the-top (OTT) services have a negative impact on communication service providers' (CSPs) ROI, increasing data consumption and revenue are a good sign for CSPs in India. It is important for CSPs to leverage these trends in a holistic manner across consumers, small or midsize businesses and enterprises.

* "Positive leverage of these trends requires simplification of operations (network management, IT management and operations management), as well as utilisation of analytics across the operational data, in real time gradually," said Amresh Nandan, research director at Gartner.

* By 2020, more than 40 per cent of the Indian urban households will use home automation/energy management solutions.

* Adoption of home automation in India is gaining momentum, but is still held back by industry challenges such as unstructured and fragmented ecosystems, price and perceived value, lack of any high-speed network coverage on a pan-India basis and the multiplicity of evolving network technologies. Increasingly, home automation services will be delivered through gateways and use the cloud to enable users to manage their homes remotely through mobile apps.

"Indian CSPs have an opportunity to monetize services related to home automation in a managed environment via home gateways that will manage the home-area network (HAN) and associated devices. Utilities and security companies also have a chance to offer monitored home security and energy management services," said Neha Gupta, senior research analyst at Gartner. "Internationally, CSPs such as Comcast and AT&T have started offering complete home automation and security systems. Also, devices are now appearing with branded device connections and managed services, which shows how quickly HAN products are maturing, and the opportunity is expanding."