November 27, 2014 Industry news
The distribution and acceptance of offers, coupons and loyalty has become an important part of many mobile operator, retailer and brand mobile propositions.
However this is a very fragmented landscape, with a multitude of proprietary point of sale solutions, coupon and loyalty platforms and distribution methods. Whilst it has been possible to roll-out propositions, it is extremely difficult to create an experience for consumers where
a single offer or coupon can easily be accepted in multiple retailers or geographies.
The GSMA and GS1 are addressing this problem by consulting all parts of the ecosystem in a series of workshops, with the objective of publishing a white paper setting a best practice framework for wide adoption.
What problem are we solving?
Currently there is no standard or best practice for interoperability between retailers, coupon clearing, point of sale suppliers, brands, app developers and mobile operators. The ability to accept coupons at the point of sale is vital for brands and retailers to enable them to understand consumers, offer a tailored experience and be able to fully measure the effectiveness of campaigns. It is not possible to do this today on a wide scale, cost effectively. This is ultimately holding back the mobile engagement market from expanding.
Objectives and outputs
The objective of this process is to engage representative parties from all areas of the couponing ecosystem, in order to understand the scope of the problem and provide guidance to the market.
Specifically a white paper will be published by the GSMA and GS1 addressing the following:
- >Analysis of the current ecosystem
- Use cases for mass acceptance and distribution
- Suggested solution suitable for market wide adoption
- Framework for common interoperability
- Technology architecture best practice
- Actions for future pilots and adoption
The objective is to make available to participants a high level summary document in early September, and a draft of the white paper in early October.
Who and when
The GSMA and GS1 are inviting representatives from the ecosystem to participate, including:
- Mobile operators
- Retailers
- Brands
- Service providers
- Associations
Why get involved?
If you are a retailer, brand, mobile operator, service provider or association, the lack of best practice is holding you back from enabling more consumers to interact. Whether this is because of the time it takes to integrate at the point of sale, the cost of proprietary solutions, the challenge of fragmented processes, too many commercial relationships, too many organisations trying to do the same thing in a proprietary way or just the sheer size of the task, being involved in this process can speed up a solution.
Being involved now ensures your requirements and views are part of the solution. It also gives you the opportunity to work with your peers and leading ecosystem organisations to be a first mover in the market.
About GSMA and GS1 UK
GSMA
The GSMA represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide. Spanning more than 220 countries, the GSMA unites nearly 800 of the world’s mobile operators with 250 companies in the broader mobile ecosystem, including handset and device makers, software companies, equipment providers and Internet companies, as well as organisations in industry sectors such as financial services, healthcare, media, transport and utilities. The GSMA also produces industry-leading events such as Mobile World Congress and Mobile Asia Expo.
GS1
GS1 UK is the UK member organisation of GS1 - a neutral, member-governed, global organisation that develops and maintains the most widely-used supply chain standards system in the world.
GS1 UK is operating a transformational programme in support of omnichannel retailing. This initiative introduces a range of standards and solutions that are fundamental to enabling the seamless experiences required by omnichannel retailing, ensuring globally unique identification of any item, person or location is possible across all channels, systems and devices.