The OSS / Singapore analogy

Singapore has made some really innovative decisions over the years. Recent ones include tokenisation of the Singapore Dollar on cyber-currencies, investing heavily in international startups based in Singapore and the streamlining of identity management (which will undoubtedly help to get around one of the biggest blockers to self-on-boarding new customers onto comms networks, particularly mobile).

Singapore perhaps lacks the natural commercial advantages (eg mining, manufacturing, agriculture, etc) that some other countries have. Despite that, it has made itself into a significant global player by being an economic and trading hub. It’s a focus on the abovementioned types of innovative thinking that has helped simplify the ability for people to do business in / through Singapore and has been instrumental in it developing a presence that outsizes its natural assets.

OSS falls into a similar category with regards to natural commercial advantages. Most people see OSS as cost centres, which implies having no ability to generate revenues directly (I don’t agree with this perspective, but that’s another story or two).

OSS can take a leaf out of Singapore’s book to out-size its presence – by acting as a highly efficient facilitator of business (and social) activities – but also by diligently identifying innovative ways to improve efficiency even further.

One way is for OSS to take more of a lead in the omni-channel experience as elegantly stated here:
The customer travels across all their channels — online, mobile, IVR, live and more – as they interact with you. You need to travel with them. If your channels aren’t fully integrated, they become just one more source of customer frustration. When you aren’t fully aware of how your customers have engaged with you across all your channels, costs of sales and service rise, and customer satisfaction shrinks.”

Another is through acting as a conduit to trade by doing more to bring its subscribers, all of which are buyers and sellers at some level, together with platform / marketplace / API / service thinking.

Another is through using data to provide marketing / sales / product-dev insights. Taking this further, to provide insightful information as mobile moments.

I’m sure you can think of more angles that take OSS beyond an inward-only facing operations toolset (ie cost centre). Do you have any great Singapore-thinking ideas for OSS to embrace?

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