Development and Deployment of VoiceXML-Based Banking Applications

In recent times, the financial sector has become one of the most vibrant sectors of the Nigerian economy with about twenty five banks after the bank consolidation / merger exercise. This sector presents huge business investments in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). It is also plausible to say that the sector today is the largest body of ICT services and products users. It is no gainsaying the fact that so many Nigerians now carry mobile phones across the different parts of the country. However, applications that provide voice access to real-time banking transactions from anywhere, anytime via telephone are still at their very low stage of adoption across the Nigerian banking and financial sector. A versatile speech-enabled mobile banking application has been developed using VXML, PHP, Apache and MySQL. The developed application provides real-time access to banking services, thus improving corporate bottom-line and Quality of Service (QoS) for customer satisfaction

Future challenges and recommendations

Rapid advances in information technology and telecommunications, and in particular mobile and wireless communications, converge towards the emergence of a new type of “infostructure” that has the potential of supporting a large spectrum of advanced services for healthcare and health. Currently the ICT community produces a great effort to drill down from the vision and the promises of wireless and mobile technologies and provide practical application solutions. Research and development include data gathering and omni-directional transfer of vital information, integration of human machine interface technology into handheld devices and personal applications, security and interoperability of date and integration with hospital legacy systems and electronic patient record. The ongoing evolution of wireless technology and mobile device capabilities is changing the way healthcare providers interact with information technologies. The growth and acceptance of mobile information technology at the point of care, coupled with the promise and convenience of data on demand, creates opportunities for enhanced patient care and safety. The developments presented in this section demonstrate clearly the innovation aspects and trends towards user oriented applications

TechNews digests: Autumn 2004

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Mobile Value Added Services: A Business Growth Opportunity for Women Entrepreneurs

Examines the potential for mobile value-added services adoption by women entrepreneurs in Egypt, Nigeria, and Indonesia in expanding their micro businesses; challenges, such as access to digital channels; and the need for services tailored to women

The Web 2.0 as Marketing Tool: Opportunities for SMEs

The new generation of Internet applications widely known as Social Media or Web 2.0 offers corporations a whole range of opportunities for improving their marketing efficiency and internal operations. Web 2.0 applications have already become part of the daily life of an increasing number of consumers who regard them as prime channels of communication, information exchange, sharing of expertise, dissemination of individual creativity and entertainment. Web logs, podcasts, online forums and social networks are rapidly becoming major sources of customer information and influence while the effectiveness of traditional mass media is rapidly decreasing. Using the social media as a marketing tool is an issue attracting increasing attention. The hitherto experience is that large public corporations are more likely to make use of such instruments as part of their marketing and internal operations (McKinsey, 2007).The paper defines the Web 2.0 phenomenon and based on the experience of large corporations examines how SMEs could engage the various Web 2.0 instruments in order to efficiently market their products, improve customer relations, increase customer retention and enhance internal operations

Business model requirements and challenges in the mobile telecommunication sector

The telecommunications business is undergoing a critical revolution, driven by innovative technologies, globalization, and deregulation. Cellular networks and telecommunications bring radical changes to the way telecom businesses are conducted. Globalization, on the other hand, is tearing down legacy barriers and forcing monopolistic national carriers to compete internationally. Moreover, the noticeable progress of many countries towards deregulation coupled with liberalization is significantly increasing telecom market power and allowing severe competition. The implications of this transition have changed the business rules of the telecom industry. In addition, entrants into the cellular industry have had severe difficulties due to inexistent or weak Business Models (BMs). Designing a BM for a mobile network operator is complex and requires multiple actors to balance different and often conflicting design requirements. Hence, there is a need to enhance operators’ ability in determining what constitutes the most viable business model to meet their strategic objectives within this turbulent environment. In this paper, the authors identify the main mobile BM dimensions along with their interdependencies and further analysis provides mobile network operators with insights to improve their business models in this new ‘boundary-less’ landscape