May 13, 2014
There is no doubt that the demand for mobile business applications is rapidly hitting the enterprise. Your customers expect it, while your employees and partners require it. By 2017, 90% of applications will be both desktop and mobile1.
Mobile is more than an emerging channel for marketing. While adoption in the enterprise has yet to catch up to that in the consumer space, mobile is presenting new opportunities for organizations to engage their customers and to innovate business processes.
A recent survey from IBM indicated that 84% of CIOs rank mobile solutions as their top strategy for competitive differentiation2. Business and IT leaders across the enterprise space are beginning to reimagine their businesses with mobile engagement at the center, thereby making the necessary shift from “desktop-first” to “mobile-first” enterprises.
Here are the three emerging qualities of a mobile enterprise:
1. Mobile enterprises are customer-obsessed.
In the era of the always-connected, mobile-empowered customer, profitable growth is dependent upon customer engagement in the mobile sphere. When a customer is engaged, your company becomes the default choice for their purchasing decisions. They become advocates for your brand. And they’ll buy higher value goods and services from you over time.
Mobile enterprises are constantly on the look-out for new ways to meet and service their customers — in the contexts and on the devices of their customers’ choice. A recent report from Cisco stated that by the end of 2014, there will be more mobile-connected devices than there are people on earth3.
Extending beyond enabling their customers, mobile enterprises arm their employees with mobile apps. When employees have the tools to better act on customer needs through real-time insight, they can move business forward anytime, anywhere. In doing so, your employees are not only increasing their own engagement on-the-go, but they are better engaging your customers with real-time insight. (Tweet this)
2. Mobile enterprises distill “moments of value” out of everyday interactions.
As consumers, we’ve all experienced the convenience that mobile technology and apps bring to our everyday activites. Routine tasks such as taking a bank deposit, finding a restaurant, hailing a cab, or even reporting an accident with your car insurance provider, have all been dramatically enhanced by mobile functionalities.
The success of these mobile solutions lies in their common goal: transforming an inefficient, time-consuming, or “broken,” customer moment into an extraordinary one.
Mobile enterprises are business process experts first; they have an intimate understanding of the entire spectrum of interactions that make up their customers’ experiences. From there, they know how to pinpoint specific “moments of value,” or points in time wherein better results or experiences can be delivered.
Mobile enterprises see technology as an enabler, not an ultimate solution. It's easy to get caught up in the continuous stream of hot new device release, or mobile capability updates, yet mobile enterprises focus on leveraging technology to maximize business impact and to drive customer engagement. All mobile initiatives are designed to improve core tasks and business workflows in order to produce measurable outcomes and better experiences for the end user.
When we help sales teams adopt mobile, it is not about expanding technology functions or providing order taking notes on a tablet. It is about increasing the number of customer moments in a sales professional’s day and improving visibility for managers.
— Glen Stoffell // Vice President, Agile Business Transformation. (Tweet This)
3. Mobile enterprises are built in the cloud.
In the mobile landscape of ever-changing screen sizes, built-in hardware, and operating system updates, keeping up-to-date is a challenge. Only the cloud allows companies to innovate at the speed of changing customer and employee demands. In the coming year, 73% of organizations will re-deploy on-premise budgets towards cloud initiatives. Instead of allocating time and resources toward rigid on-premise systems that quickly become outdated, cloud offerings provide companies the flexibility to address their their users’ needs as they arise.
Cloud based platforms offer a few key pillars upon which successful mobile systems can be built:
1. A cloud-based storage facility for your data.
2. Automatic RESTful API generation providing read/write access to data.
3. Over-the-wire-optimized ways to access data (generally JSON today).
4. User management facilities for authenticating access to your data.
5. A set of analytics that allow you to determine how users are using mobile apps.
By making cloud-based systems the foundation for their mobile experiences, mobile enterprises are able to rapidly respond to changes — thereby delivering value to their users faster. (Tweet This)
For years, businesses have talked about real-time engagement and responsiveness. Now, finally, it has arrived. After all, what’s more real-time than engaging with someone on their mobile 24/7?
This represents a critical challenge for any organization's processes as well as IT infrastructure. Companies are under pressure to quickly mobile-enable their applications. However, a robust mobile strategy is essential if you want to drive maximum business value from these applications. Download the Guide to Mobile Engagement to learn the six essential features of an effective mobile business strategy.
Looking to drive mobile innovation at your organization? Contact us to discover how Bluewolf has helped companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Stanley Black and Decker develop cutting-edge solutions that drive employee and customer engagement.
SOURCES:
- “Gartner Predicts: Four Forces Combine to Transform the IT Landscape.” Gartner. 2012
- “Moving from the back office to the front lines.” IBM Institute of business value. October 2013
- “Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update” Cisco. 2013–2018
