TM Forum and the Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) have announced the launch of a joint initiative to address the estimated $5 billion in annual losses experienced by content suppliers across the mobile content value chain. The losses are said to be attributable to incorrect reporting of revenue, and according to MEF calculations, comprise as much as 25 percent of the $18 billion mobile content services market.
A combined team of TM Forum and MEF member companies will develop and publish work focused on sales reporting metrics. These metrics will enable service providers, content aggregators and providers to build a common understanding of the quality and quantity of services delivered, which in turn will improve the measure of revenue flows for these services across the value chain. This effort will build on existing MEF work designed to improve trust and profits across the value chain, and on TM Forum work related to business process and revenue leakage issues that reflect service provider perspectives.
Keith Willetts, chairman and CEO, TM Forum commented "We believe this partnership will bring major benefits to both TM Forum and MEF members as well as accelerating cooperation between the content and service provider communities. The end goal is a win-win where the market for these sorts of services grows, losses are stemmed and profitability increases. It is critical that all the players in the value chain understand how to work together to tackle these challenges."
According to Suhail Bhat, Policy & Initiative Director, Mobile Entertainment Forum, "MEF's consultation on content sales reporting is designed to a best practice template that can be adopted within the industry. By building this first step on sales reporting metrics together with TM Forum, we hope to address specific issues around timeliness, relevance, accuracy and consistency of reports."
Keith Miller, senior program manager for TM Forum's Value Chains Initiative, added, "The extended reach of MEF to the content, studios and record labels combined with the TM Forum's depth with service providers and suppliers worldwide allows us to build B-to-B interfaces together that will seriously lower the cost of delivering services together across our combined value chain to our mutual customers."
Creating, delivering and monetizing content and digital media services are creating new demands on business models and operations, says the Forums. Together, they says they will address these demands and work with their respective members to address real, bottom-line-affecting issues.
The collaboration of these two organizations will ensure the solutions span the entire value chain. Over the longer term, the TM Forum and MEF will look at the bigger picture of lowering the cost of rolling out content and media services across mobile networks. The aim of this long-term view will be to stimulate the ability of different players to effectively trade together in an automated fashion and grow the overall market by enabling new joint market approaches.