Vodafone: Breaking down the communication barrier

Mobile communications has made it possible for people to travel just about anywhere in the world and still be contactable with access to both voice telephony and the web. But when a business is growing and expanding overseas it is not necessarily that simple.

Companies can quickly find themselves having to maintain several communications accounts with multiple local providers for new offices and employees.

This can lead to a near nightmarish situation for small- and medium-sized companies who find themselves having to deal with different accounts in different currencies across several countries with consequent cost management difficulties.

“When you’re dealing with a number of different operators it is very difficult to gain visibility over costs and to manage them efficiently,” says Leo O’Leary, head of large business with Vodafone Ireland.

“It’s time consuming, costly and difficult to get a complete overall picture of how your network is operating. That’s why we have introduced Vodafone International Enterprise which is aimed at meeting the needs of mid-market and high-end SMEs with ambitions to expand internationally.”

The new service offers companies in Ireland one account for all their international communications needs – both fixed line and mobile.

“Vodafone International Enterprise is about making international communications simple,” says O’Leary. “The service has been designed to give customers a single, simple solution for all their global communications needs, offering a local service with the world’s widest reach. Vodafone operates in 26 countries and we partner with networks in 55 more. So it’s likely that wherever a customer is, we are too.”

Expenditure

“Customers get a local point of contact for all their communications needs and issues worldwide, a clear view of expenditure in each country, and consistency of contracts across the countries they operate in,” he continues.

“It also offers savings on time and money as well as access to Vodafone’s expanding portfolio of services. Combined with our established Vodafone Global Enterprise offering this means that we now offer an international service to almost all sizes of firm from SMEs right up to the very largest multinationals.”

Vodafone’s international reach also has particular applications when it comes to the rapidly expanding internet of things (IoT) space.

“Vodafone has an IoT global network and that means that the smallest home-based SME that wants to scale up its service offering can leverage our Global Data Service Platform (GDSP) from anywhere in the world. Activity in this area is increasing quite dramatically at the moment and much of that growth is coming from small, innovative indigenous companies. This is fantastic and it’s a very exciting time for business in Ireland.

“The potential benefits of this technology are very far-reaching”, O’Leary adds. “It can deliver improved energy efficiency, make remote equipment failure a thing of the past, enhance safety and security, supporting faster and better decision-making, and even enabling whole new products, services and business models.”

Cow monitor

One new product which it has enabled is Moocall, a device which monitors the movements of a pregnant cow and predicts within an accuracy of one hour when it is going to calf.

Launched in late 2014, the product has proved an instant hit with farmers and more than 10,000 units have been sold across 27 countries in less than 18 months.

Moocall co-founder Niall Austin came up with the idea for the product in 2010 when he lost a heifer and her calf because he wasn’t aware the cow had gone into labour. Having realised this was a common problem, he researched to see if a solution could be found and Moocall was born.

At the heart of the device, which weighs just 290g and fits unobtrusively on the cow’s tail, is a sophisticated algorithm, an accelerometer – similar to that found in a Wii handset – to detect the tail’s movement, and an M2M global SIM from Vodafone which sends an SMS alert to two mobile phones to ensure that the farmer can be present when calving occurs.

The fact that the unit alerts the farmer regardless of their location is one of its main selling points. The farmer doesn’t have to sit up all night watching a CCTV feed, for example.

“We had one customer who was on holiday in Portugal when he got an alert from his Moocall unit one night,” says Austin. “He was able to call a neighbour and ask him to go out and attend to the cow.”

Vodafone has also worked with Fleetmatics on that company’s cost-efficient web solution which provides businesses with visibility into vehicle location, fuel usage, speed and mileage and other insights into their mobile workforces.

The solution is used by more than 37,000 customers around the world to track some 737,000 vehicles.

Vodafone doesn’t only provide the underlying communications technology for IoT solutions, however.

“We are constantly talking to companies about their IoT strategies,” says O’Leary. “A lot of them aren’t at that point yet but we help them understand how they can use the technology to expand internationally. We also work with customers as a strategic partner enabling them to be more agile and innovative.”

Airline

One customer solution which spans both the international and IoT service offerings is that provided to Ryanair.

Vodafone accounts for 95 per cent of the airline’s communications and technology spend.

“Together with Ryanair we have created new methodologies and systems which allow new locations to go live in weeks rather than months”, O’Leary adds. “These solutions have facilitated paperless cockpits and wireless handheld point-of-sale devices for on-board staff. Most importantly, they have created a robust and resilient network infrastructure that’s capable of withstanding the most challenging of real world situations.”