Vodafone Romania has launched plan add-ons that allow the use of proprietary business apps without drawing on existing data allowances. The new offer includes three categories of business apps, which can be activated together or individually and cover the country’s most commonly used applications for email, file storage and transfer and online maps. All three categories are available free of charge for subscriptions starting from €46.00 (US $56.80) per month or €0.80 (US $1.00) per month with three months free of charge for subscriptions from €12.00 (US $14.83) per month.
The offer is available for all types of voice and mobile subscriptions and for all Romanian companies, regardless of the number of employees or the industry.
Tarifica’s Take
This offer is innovative and has several attractive features. In today’s market, with ever-increasing use of BYOD and employees’ needs becoming more and more similar to those of consumers, it is a good idea for operators to get creative in designing plans and packages aimed at enterprises and SMBs.
Vodafone Romania has created this suite of offerings for all categories of business customers, casting a wide net while at the same time delivering a targeted niche product. Getting the business-app data free, so that it does not impinge on employees’ individual data allowances, is possible under the more expensive plans, while for the less expensive ones the line is charged a small amount per month. And while that amount is very small, for companies with a large enough number of employees it can make a difference, incentivizing the companies to move up to the richer plans.
As for the apps themselves, they appear to address major needs of most if not all businesses. And the fact that they have been created by or for Vodafone and are unique gives them selling power to existing and prospective subscribers of the operator. Such offerings are in line with the trend among operators to offer more and more exclusive content as a way of strengthening their brands and increasing their relevance in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
However, the success of this offering must depend on whether or not the apps themselves truly deliver the functionalities that are promised, and beyond that, on whether or not they are superior to or at least as good as existing software products and apps by third parties.