Interview with Graham Rivers CEO WIN Plc

I started off my conversation with the CEO of WIN Graham Rivers with a reflection on the past year. I said, WIN seemed to have been extremely quiet and the last I had heard was from a financial update, which was positive. But prior to that very little news came from WIN.

Graham mentioned that the past year the company had been controlled and quiet because of some interest in purchasing the company. But that was now all over and he could announce an extremely successful year and some very exciting deals.

But first – what does WIN do?

WIN is an enabler for mobile services for vendors, operators and brands. It has five main areas:

• Content Management systems – content management, storefronts, billing and payment

• Interactive Media services – Video Services, chat and IVR solutions

• Digital Marketing – MMS, email, promotion, marketing, portals

• Mobile Payment – Premium SMS and PayforIT

• CRM Solutions

I asked Graham about its digital marketing company and said that I didn’t know that WIN had marketing solutions and I thought that video was the main seller.

On the contrary – Graham lead me through a number of case studies from Vodafone in Greece (premium SMS) and Western Union or Top Gear to Nintendo (see images for more).

My mind started spinning with the types of marketing but Graham pointed out that this was not a display type marketing. This was a managed solution marketing so in short, brand came to WIN with an idea and WIN provides a simple platform with database so that any campaign can be managed.

Graham was eager to point out that WIN’s multi-media platform had been serving and enabling campaigns for operators for several years. WIN has legs in the market as its business model has developed and changed with demand. Marketing, advertising, publicity and running campaigns were not thought of as simply services but became needs from clients and developed to serve voids in the market.

I wondered out loud if that was still the case and if there were any very recent examples as SMS and MMS promotions have been around for a while. I didn’t want to sound rude but SMS and MMS were very common. Graham immediately talked about the potential of IPTV. He said, IPTV was an example of how WIN was in a solutions “making it easy” category.

IPTV was a convergent strategy that WIN could enable because it provided streaming, data, video, short codes, video codes, video dating and everything else its platform serves. On top of this the marketing engine can push and pull adverts or deliver highly visible instant campaigns. From the push in to IPTV, the user interface became more vital and now widgets and applications for shows such as Question Time have become part and parcel of the platform.

Bena: Great that is a super over view of what you have been doing and lots of name dropping of hot new services such as IPTV. But which clients or achievement stick out the most for you in the past year or 18 months.

Graham: I am extremely proud of our music services. Together with Sony Ericsson Play Nowis live in 20 countries with a bigger more ambitious roadplan in the next 12 months.

Bena: I didn’t know you were behind that!

Graham: What has been achieved with Play Now is remarkable. I think that even in the UK only profit from the growth of the services and sales increased by 5% instantly. With some people wondering what happened to the music market – this is amazing news.

Bena: I agree. So, so far it seems as though operators really are your main target market.

Graham: Yes and no. We have done and are doing some great things with operators. For example we manage the video streaming platform in T-Mobile Germany. But more recently we also serve the enterprise.

Bena: Really. So many people claim to serve the enterprise in mobile –but I am not sure that there really is a market there.

Graham: Let me give you an example. We provide a platform to one of the UK’s largest energy utility companies.

Bena: OK

Graham: There was a time when there was some issues about “real” and “fake” gas meter readers. Our service sends users and SMS with the time the meter reader is coming and what his number plate is.

Bena: How nifty. I bet that is a great customer care service. In fact its like a data, CRM and it could even be an advertising service as well.

Graham: The enterprise or the vendor can decide and we can enable and support it.

Bena: Can I ask a silly question! How do you bill? The services sound huge.

Graham: We are flexible and it depends on every solution. There are many business models.

Bena:OK, so its a la carte you buy what you need and you are not made to buy everything

Graham: Sure.

Bena:Well OK Graham. Thanks for continuing to sponsor GoMo News and I will write a part two shortly. I am going to give the T-Mobile Germany streaming section a once over and write a review and let’s do another interview shortly.

But I don’t see a barcode solution yet and you should meet our other sponsor on GoMo News Neomedia, I will introduce you!

Graham: You do that and thank-you!