Compared to a few years ago, today there is a tremendous diversity of players in the market that is considered consumer electronics. Ranging from gaming companies, software companies, service providers, to content providers, along with the players in the typical high-tech value chain (contract manufacturing company, design, branding and marketing, distribution) there is a much broader set of players coming together for consumers.

As a Partner at Infosys Consulting responsible for Next-Generation Commerce, these are all elements that have significantly changed Romit Dey’s focus throughout his career. He is no longer working on consumer electronics projects where the focus is exclusively on supply chain optimization or cost reductions at the regional level.

Dey will be discussing these changes in conjunction with his colleagues at the CE Supply Chain Summit, sponsored by Oracle during the Consumer Electronics Supply Chain Academy 2008. Dey will be wrapping up the series of presentations with his session titled, “Operating Effectively under Rapid Change and Uncertainty: Key Themes for Consumer Electronics.”

Today the conversation is not just confined to internal operating efficiencies like outsourcing manufacturing, refining procurement, streamlining warehousing and distribution operations, and relying on partners like FedEx and UPS to get product to market. Now there are new developments incorporated in a product proposition. The ability to get a product faster to market and addressing needs across multiple markets is more important. “Also, the paradigm is no longer just to develop and launch a product for developed markets,” said Dey. “It’s exciting to be in the midst of a time when innovations are based on products developed for global emerging markets like China and India. These are then introduced back in to the U.S. or Europe to enable accessing a new customer segments.” As a result of the many changes in the industry, Dey said, “I’ve started to have a lot more fun.”

The notion of the four Ps of marketing: product, placement, pricing, positioning is not enough anymore either. “Now two more important dominant concepts are content and community,” said Dey. “These are making a huge difference in terms of evolving the proposition for buyers or consumers.”

In his day-to-day job, Dey interacts with a new set of companies in the social commerce area, including some start-ups. “The pioneer in this has been Apple,” he said. “By virtue of combining iTunes with their iPod product they defined the concept of an online space enabled when you buy the product. With that there’s a lot of interaction.” Introducing the idea that Apple can do more than offer music downloads and have a separate channel of interaction with the consumer was a key development in the consumer electronics space.

Dey also cites pure online communities as an important development within the overall social commerce. “Facebook is a primary example,” he said. “The formation of affinity groups and communities allows people to engage when they have the same tastes, aspirations and goals. That’s becoming a channel for very targeted advertising.”

With the passing fancies of the buying public, Facebook itself may lose favor when another application arrives; Myspace had its 15 minutes of fame. Despite this fact, “the phenomenon of collecting people of different ages and demographics, not just college kids, has established communities as a valid activity online and is influencing how companies think,” said Dey, also citing virtual worlds like Second Life. Consumer electronics and other entities in the high-tech space as well are learning how to leverage this new kind of platform.

Dey also interacts with large high-tech companies like networking equipment providers and others that operate in the typical B-to-B space, enterprise scale operations. “They’re figuring out the best way of addressing the consumer electronics market through their acquisitions. These companies are also taking the consumer electronics best practices and applying those to their current operating models.” The disconnects for these companies that Dey has observed are between what’s needed for the consumer experience and what they’re used to selling from a B-to-B standpoint.

Consumer electronics companies are setting an example for the other companies in terms of how to handle the supply chain, how to deal with channels, how to interact with consumers, and how to leverage the power of community. “That is something unique with respect to the consumer electronics companies,” said Dey.

As a very interesting time for the high tech industry as whole, most of the functional heads and business line heads are aware of aspects emerging now that have not been in the traditional consumer electronics scope. “In today’s scenario there is a need for capabilities around new consumer needs identification and rapid market feasibility assessments,” said Dey. “It’s well known that more cell phones were shipped to China and India in the past year than to the rest of the world. That’s something to keep in mind.”

For Dey’s presentation, he will discuss the evolution of a new operating paradigm. The implication of what companies should be doing from an operational standpoint. “A company in the midst of all this cannot be successful by itself,” said Dey. “It has to collaborate with software developers, community providers, content providers, as well as the traditional set of partners in the supply chain.”

There are associated points in terms of being able to mitigate uncertainty depending on how markets change. Dey describes a greater resilience in a company’s operating model if this sort of ecosystem of partners is leveraged extensively.