Lincoln Murphy emailed me to ask for some pointers for his research project. Whilst I’m always up for waxing lyrical about what I reckon is going on, I thought it might be a bit more useful to cast the net wider for him. Lincoln is wondering if aggregators and large ASPs take an active role in the success of their lower-tier clients. Some do, I know. However I’m not so sure if everyone does. In fact I can recall coversations with some aggregators who don’t want to do business with smaller clients (offering obviously less traffic and of course, less revenue.)
I’m going to plug him into SMS Text News sponsor, Clickatell too. However if you’ve got time, perhaps you could knock over your perspective to Lincoln. Here’s what he’s looking for:
I’m working on a research project based around the relationship between upper-tier mobile service providers in the United States (network aggregators and top-tier ASPs) and their clients (smaller ASPs, pureplay mobile companies, SaaS integrated, etc.) The goal of my research is to find out if aggregators and large ASPs take an active role in the success of their lower-tier clients. Do the upper-tier providers consider this a distribution channel relationship or do they look at it as purely a ‘customer/vendor†relationship?
Additionally, I am interested in what challenges clients of ASPs and network aggregators are facing, what type of post-sales support their service provider offers, how much assistance and/or guidance the service providers gives them, etc. I am aware of the network/technical monitoring that aggregators and ASPs will do, and that there might be notifications made by account reps if there is a drop in SMS traffic. However, that is not the type of post-sales support that I’m researching.
I am intrigued to see what the readers of SMS Text News have to say about their experiences in working with upper-tier service providers. Of course, I would also love to hear from aggregators and top-tier ASPs about what they do to help their lower-tier clients develop their businesses.
Thanks,
Lincoln Murphy
http://www.lincolnmurphy.com
lincoln[at]lincolnmurphy[dot]com