Changing gear

Do your Swot analysis, your PEST analysis, your Porter's Five Forces. Study your value chain and your product lifecycle. Slot in some Six Sigma thinking. Everything looking good? Then you should be well set for quite some time, right?

But what if something comes along that completely sideswipes all of this, something that instantly flattens all of the tried and trusted thinking? In almost every area of business, powerful bullet trains of innovation are rattling their industries to the core.

This Brainstorm series will explore some of the business sectors that are being fundamentally changed by new entrants, sometimes little more than dorm-room or garage startups, that apply new technologies so innovatively that an entire industry is turned on its head.

The first of these industries, the private taxi cab business, has experienced a radical reinvention in the past couple of years. Uber, a true-blue Silicon Valley startup, has connected geo-location, apps, crowdsourcing and social networking to transform the utilitarian process of going from A to B, into 'an experience'.

"The taxi industry hasn't fundamentally changed in 50 years," notes World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck, adding that while traditional radios may have largely been replaced by cellphones, the actual process - of a voice-modulated system - remains the same.

"Uber has really looked at what people want and need from a taxi service and also considered what technology people are using," he says. Services like Uber play directly into our obsession with apps, geo-location and social connections, and highlight the extent to which voice is being replaced by text, Goldstuck adds.

Jambu Palaniappan, head of EMEA/India Expansion for Uber Technologies, says Uber has received a warm welcome in South Africa as users enjoy the convenience of having the same Uber app for taxis in Johannesburg, Cape Town or Durban.

"When we speak to our South African clients, what we repeatedly hear is that they're looking for reliability, safety and consistency in their experience. They want a product they can trust, and that will be available for them day or night," he says.

From a technology perspective, Palaniappan says the focus is simplicity: "A seamless product that can get you a car in two taps of a phone." This is supported by integrated payment gateways to ensure immediate and secure transactions, and the ability for customers to provide constant feedback that is used by Uber to identify opportunities and plan its strategy.

Goldstuck believes that Uber - and the various other similar services that have sprung up in its wake - will forever alter the private taxi sector. He points to the violent protests by traditional Parisian minicab drivers earlier this year. Old-school taxi drivers unleashed their wrath by vandalising cars and intimidating Uber drivers.

Even more incredulously, France has passed legislation forbidding Uber drivers to pick up customers until at least 15 minutes after the initial request.

"This is a very clear sign of desperation from the traditional taxi industry," he quips.

Goldstuck adds that the service still has certain shortcomings - most notably that there is often quite a gap between the customer and the driver in terms of tech-savvy and knowledge - so that often the two still need to revert to voice to pinpoint the customer's exact location. An in-app history of recent journeys would also be a useful addition, he notes.

He envisions a future of greater 'interoperability' between private taxi providers, integrated services where users can choose between shared and private transport options. Whether or not these local closed loops of transport providers do eventually start interlacing with each other to some degree, it's clear that innovative mobile technology is fundamentally shifting the way private taxis are doing business.

First published in the June 2014 issue of ITWeb Brainstorm magazine.