The importance of implementation consultants for mobile payment projects

The advantage of having executed on multiple MMT projects is that it provides for perspective. I have now seen our organisation successfully deploy the technology in many different environments (clients and countries). We now have enough confidence to be sure that the technology infrastructure will be implemented and will be ready for production. Yet, this is not all that is needed for a commercial successful venture.

While many other reasons are put forward for what have enabled one deployment to be more successful than another, statistics seem to indicate that good, experience implementation consultants almost always ensure success. This is the one ingredient that if it is omitted almost always lead to delays, tentative deployments and missed commercial targets.

Many of these independent consultants can be found and I would be happy to recommend these to interested parties. It is impossible to single out any specific consultant, but as an example one could reference Mark Guthrie (partner in consulting company Oscillyte ). He was quite instrumental in the very successful deployment of MTN Mobile Money in Uganda and have subsequently advised similar projects in other countries.

I think that these experienced program managers with an ability to grasp the uniqueness of MMT projects are often overlooked in planning projects. Results seem to indicate that this is the biggest mistake than can be made.