Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of March 7, 2011

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Monthly

Berg Insight estimates that the total value of the global mobile marketing and advertising market was €1.72 billion in 2009.  Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 41 percent, the mobile ad market is forecasted to be worth €13.5 billion in 2015.

http://www.pr.com/press-release/302541

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The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and c|net amongst others, have reported that the number of searches coming from mobile devices and apps now accounts for nearly 20 percent of the total number of shopping searches.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/238262

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Amazon sold $1 billion worth of goods last year via mobile devices, while eBay did $2 billion on mobile devices, seeing a sale every second during the fourth quarter of last year.

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2275026/google-mobile-search-ecommerce

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comScore researchers found that 36 percent of U.S. consumers browsed the mobile web in 2010 while 34 percent accessed the mobile web through an application.

Expert Advice on Implementing Enterprise Mobility



I have had the good fortune to interview nearly 30 enterprise mobility experts over the past few months. During these interviews I asked the experts for advice related to implementing enterprise mobility solutions. This 10 minute video reviews the advice given.



***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Field Mobility News Weekly - Week of March 7, 2011

Kevin’s Field Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to field mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Monthly

A few NFL teams are considering the benefits of tablet devices such as the iPad over plain old paper.  The Dallas Cowboys, in particular, have determined that going digital "could save them as much as 5,000 pages of paper printouts per game."

http://techland.time.com/2011/02/08/nfl-coaches-to-swap-printouts-and-playbooks-for-ipads/

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Bigger is not always better when it comes to the military's ruggedized computers.  The latest trend is toward small, lightweight computing devices that can work for vehicular and dismounted applications.

http://defensesystems.com/articles/2011/02/28/defense-it-1-smaller-rugged-computers.aspx

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The Department of Homeland Security is creating a prototype handheld device that will scan bodies and determine DNA components.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/03/04/homeland-security-considering-portable-instant-dna-scanners/

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New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently announced that Quick Response codes, which are similar to barcodes, are being added to all work permits issued by the Department of Buildings.

1,000th Article on Enterprise Mobility Today


Remember when?
I have been writing articles on enterprise mobility since 2006, and today I reached my 1,000th article.  They are certainly not all good, but occasionally you can find a gem.  If you ever want to laugh at how much enterprise mobility has changed in the past 5 years, take a look at some of the older article archives here:

2006
2007
2008
2009
2010

Thanks for reading!

Whitepapers of Note:

The Business Benefits of Mobile Adoption with SAP Systems
ClickSoftware Mobility Suite and Sybase Mobility Solution
Networked Field Services
Mobile, The Next Big Thing for Business


***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

SAP CIO Oliver Bussman on Tablets

TechEd Interview with Oliver Bussman
I read an interesting interview with SAP CIO Oliver Bussman this morning.  He is a qualified expert on tablets, as he has authorized the purchase of 3,500 tablets at SAP in less than a year now.  I was particularly interested in how he, a very busy executive, uses the iPad.  Here is what he uses it for:
  • Respond to email
  • Media consumption
  • Media sharing and sharing device.  He likes the iPad apps by Pulse, Twitterific, Flipboard and InstaPaper.
I like reading about the personal work habits of individuals.  I guess it is a way to measure and compare how we ourselves work and use technology.  In my case, I use all of the same applications on my iPad, and for the same reasons, except InstaPaper.  I will need to investigate that app.

Does the iPad replace Bussman's laptop?  Not when he needs to tweak presentations or perform more complex tasks.  Again, I share his use criteria, except, since I spend most of my time writing and developing presentations, I find myself tied to my laptop for the forseeable future.

Whitepapers of note:


***************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Design Strategies for Mobile Applications

One Client Many Apps
I had the opportunity to be briefed on Webalo's mobility solution a couple of weeks ago.  It is much different than most enterprise mobility solutions.  Using their web-based Agenda environment it takes only a few hours to develop a mobile application, and you need download only one mobile client to support and mobilize hundreds of different business processes.

It is an interesting concept.  You can access the Agenda environment in the cloud, configure your integration with backend databases, layout your mobile application screens, download the mobile client to your device, and then login and upload any and all mobile applications you have configured.  Each additional business process that you want to mobilize is simply a configuration exercise, that gets uploaded to the same mobile client on the next login.  You can open your mobile client and see a menu with all of your unique mobile applications, all in the same mobile client. 

You give up some native graphical user interface flexibility when you use the same mobile client for all applications, but what you gain is:
  • Lower development costs
  • Less development time
  • Less deployment effort
  • Less support issues
  • Lower TCO (total cost of ownership)
In talking to the CEO/Founder of Webalo, Peter Price, he said in many enterprise mobility projects the 80/20 rule comes into play.  You can deploy 80% of the functionality you need for 20% of the cost.  You need to ask yourself if gaining an additional 20% of features is really worth 80% more.

It is an interesting approach to enterprise mobility.  It is very utilitarian.  Mobilize as many business processes as you want for one low price.   I like the idea that one mobile client, can be configured to run hundreds of different workflow kinds of applications, rather than buy separate mobile applications for every different business process.

Webalo's product approach and strategy invites a debate on the value of spending a lot of time on the user interface.  Some vendors spend most of their time talking about their beautiful user experience.  Others take the approach that a simple menu driven approach that quickly and cost effectivly provides mobile capabilities is worth a lot more and commands a better ROI.

What do you think?

***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

How to Prepare for An Enterprise Mobility Implementation

Design, Develop, Test, Deploy, Revise
Next week I am going to be participating in a webinar called Rapid SAP Mobilization for the Enterprise.  This is a Smartsoft Mobile Solutions webinar and they are an SAP services partner.  I will be sharing advice from mobility experts on how to prepare for enterprise mobility implementations.

The webinar topics to be covered include:


  1. Best Practice: Mobile Engagement Methodology
  2. Rapid Mobile Solution Deployment
  3. Five Ways to Optimize your ROI
I invite you to join me on this webinar. Register here!

 
***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: SAP's Matthew Schwartz

I am excited to be able to introduce Matthew Schwartz, SAP’s VP of Enterprise Mobility for North America to all of you who may not have met him yet.  He kindly agreed to be interviewed by me and to share his thoughts and advice on SAP enterprise mobility.

Kevin:  What are your current roles and responsibilities?
Matthew:  I am the VP of Enterprise Mobility for North America at SAP.  I orchestrate SAP’s efforts to be the leading Enterprise Mobility Software and Services company.  Specifically, I am focused on creating a portfolio of software and services that will allow SAP’s Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) to be the enterprise standard for Mobile Enterprise Application Plaforms (MEAP) and Afaria to be the enterprise standard for Mobile Device Management (MDM).  At the end of the day, my team and I help SAP customers to get up and live on mobile solutions.  I am excited to announce that we have been able to put together an exceptional team of experts including Dr. Ahmed El Adl.

Kevin:  Where are you located?
Matthew:  I live in San Diego, California where I have been for the last three years.

Kevin:  What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Matthew:  I carry a BlackBerry Curve, iPhone 4, iPad, and a MacBook Pro (that I rarely use anymore, as I mostly use the iPad).  I love the Zagg case for my iPad.  It is an aluminum case with a built in keyboard and stand for my iPad.  With this case I have cut back on my laptop use by about 75 percent.

Kevin:  What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Matthew:  The Kindle app for both my iPad and iPhone.  I am a big e-book reader.  Also, Dragon Dictation – I dictate notes to myself while driving, Hertz, Delta and American Travel apps.

Kevin:  Do you ever use your mobile device to buy things?
Matthew:  Yes, every day.  Airline tickets, hotel, car reservations, books, Amazon, iTunes.

Kevin:  How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Matthew:  Fourteen.

Kevin:  How long have you been involved in enterprise mobility?
Matthew:  Three years in enterprise mobility after years of doing lean mobility projects in the supply chain space.  Recently, I was involved in some very cool new mobile applications in the media and entertainment space.

Kevin:  How did you get involved in enterprise mobility?

Mobility News Weekly - Week of February 28, 2011

Kevin's Mobility News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting information that reflects market data and trends.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read M2M News Monthly

For the first time ever, smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone are outselling personal computers, according to a report by research group IDC.

http://www.pddnet.com/news-smart-phones-outsell-pcs-for-first-time-020911/?et_cid=1099912&et_rid=45618679&linkid=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pddnet.com%2Fnews-smart-phones-outsell-pcs-for-first-time-020911%2F

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RBC projects that between three and four million Verizon iPhone 4 units will be sold during the first quarter of 2011.  RBC also notes that its previous estimates of between nine and ten million Verizon iPhones being sold during the 2011 calendar year may be conservative.

http://www.bgr.com/2011/02/09/rbc-verizon-to-sell-over-1-million-iphones-in-first-week-3-4-million-in-q1/

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Worldwide mobile device sales to end users totaled 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009, according to Gartner, Inc.  Smartphone sales to end users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1543014

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Total web email usage was down eight percent in the past year, with a whopping 59 percent decline in use among people between the ages of 12-17.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy, Part 4

ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy
This is Part 4 of my interview with ClickSoftware's VP of Product Strategy, Israel Beniaminy.  Also read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Kevin:  Where do you see mobility going in 2011?
Israel:  Judging by the evolution of mobility in 2010, mobility is going to continue surprising us in 2011.  It's going to be an exciting year!  Still, a few predictions are as safe as predictions can be:  Mobility will affect more people, in more roles, than ever before.  Many people will leave aside desktops and laptops, bypass netbooks and switch to using smartphones and tablets for the majority of their digital communications.  Social media will start to become a key part of enterprise mobility solutions (as it has done already in consumer mobility).  Mobile applications will be increasingly sensitive to context, starting with location and extending to other context cues; and location will receive a boost from existing and upcoming indoor-location technologies.  Lastly, while predicting surprises is impossible by definition, I would expect some of the most rewarding and significant surprises to be in discovering new ways of doing business, which will become possible due to mobile technology, just like the Internet enabled new ways of doing business (eBay is just one example).

Kevin:  What role do you see for mobile BI in Field Services?
Israel:  Executives, managers, business analysts and budget managers all need full access to business intelligence systems.  When drilling through the numbers, an iPad works very well. You don’t want to be doing much work on a small iPhone screen.  However, for field services engineers, they need access to BI data but not all the data.  It is best if the data is integrated with their existing field services solution.  Field services engineers don’t need to know about Business Objects on the back end, but they could benefit from their performance data.  The number of work orders completed relative to other service engineers.  The number of sales, the amount of inventory or services sold, etc.

For field services managers, it may be useful for them to see product sales numbers so they can anticipate demand on their services and plan for it.

I want to thank Israel for taking the time to share his thoughts, experiences and advice with all of us.

Whitepapers of Note:
***************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy, Part 3

ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy
This is Part 3 in this interview with ClickSoftware's VP of Product Strategy, Israel Beniaminy.   Read Part 1Part 2 and Part 4.

Kevin:  How are enterprise mobility implementations different from other typical IT projects?
Israel:  The good news is that unlike some other IT projects, ROI for mobility projects is usually easy to calculate and achieve.  More tasks per day, per field worker, shorter time-to-invoice, reduced work force required for paperwork, call center and dispatching are just a few examples.  The bad news - The users work in a highly dynamic environment, and it can be quite difficult to imagine all the situations in which the mobile application may be used.  This calls for careful planning and execution of testing, which must include testing in the field, not just within the office.

Kevin:  What do companies fail to plan for when implementing mobility?
Israel:  Allow me to defer to my colleague Gil Bouhnick who wrote a great article on this: "10 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Deploying a Mobile Management Solution", http://www.enterprisemobiletoday.com/features/management/article.php/3895436/10-Common-Mistakes-to-Avoid-When-Deploying-a-Mobile-Management-Solution.htm.

Kevin:  What advice do you have for companies just starting down an enterprise mobility path?
Israel: "Think big, start small."  Think carefully about the ultimate target, but build a road map of deployment phases, making sure that each phase delivers enough new value to each stakeholder. "Business first, technology second" – Your business requirements should dictate technology choice (sounds trivial, but it's too easy to lose sight of this).  Future-proof - Your business will change, and mobile technology will change, in ways that are difficult or impossible to predict.  Choose your strategy, architecture and processes to maximize your ability to easily adapt to these changes.

Kevin: How important is mobile device management and security?
Israel: The obvious answer is the right one.  They are very, very important.  Still, the specific circumstances determine exactly how this importance should influence your decisions.  If you choose to install native applications on the mobile device, device management can be highly challenging.  If you choose a zero-footprint solution, you can still achieve robustness (including operation even when out of coverage) and high functionality, and in that case the device management requirements are simpler (though they may still exist).  Same goes for security.  While nobody wants to lose lists of customers to a competitor, companies will differ about their threat magnitude and probability assessment, and will therefore differ on choice of an appropriate security solution.  While considering these, make sure to also consider a different but related subject, worker safety.  Can you find a mobile worker who has stopped moving and answering the phone?  Can you do that while respecting employee privacy?  Will the mobile application include a "panic button" to let workers get help?  What other things can you do to protect your mobile workers?

Kevin:  What should people know about your company and products?
Israel:  ClickSoftware is widely recognized as the leader in field service management solutions – ask analysts such as Gartner and partners such as SAP (who market our solutions under their own brand). We believe we have the potential to achieve a similar status in overall enterprise mobility.  We base this belief on our technology, partnerships and architecture, and above all on the extremely rapid growth in the number of our mobility customers.

Kevin:  What makes your company different from your competitors?
Israel:  In enterprise mobility, we work top down from business processes to technology.  It is not about synchronizing device data with back end server data, and it is not about enabling the user to bring up a form and edit its contents (though both of these are important parts of our solutions' functionality).  It is about making the whole interaction work as a business process, coordinating not just a mobile device with the back office, but also coordinating applications on multiple mobile devices (which may all belong to the same mobile worker or to different workers) with multiple applications at the back end, all done in real time.  It is about making the mobile application easily adapt itself, without any programmers necessary, to the ever changing needs of the organization.  To that end, we see ourselves as providers of both enterprise mobility applications and of a business mobility application framework.  Unlike some of our competitors who strive to also provide the mobility infrastructure, we rely on interchangeable mobility infrastructure on top of which we can deliver the business benefits.  This enabled us to be the first (as far as I know) company to deliver a complete business mobility platform on top of Sybase's technology mobility platform, and will enable us to continue our rapid innovation process in the future.

Stay tuned for Part 4 of this interview.

Whitepapers of Note:

***************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly
Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy, Part 2

ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy

This is Part 2 in this interview with ClickSoftware's VP of Product Strategy, Israel Beniaminy.  Also read Part 1, Part 3, and Part 4.

Kevin: What is different today, than when you started with enterprise mobility?
Israel: Just about everything.  I'll mention two major differences:  First, most or all barriers have disappeared.  When I started, mobile technology was expensive, complex and unreliable, and even when you could hide the complexity, justify the costs and work around the reliability issues, it was just too new and too rarely deployed to be considered by anybody except for the brave early adopters.  None of these barriers exist today.  Second, enterprise mobility used to rely on mobile technology that was developed specifically for business uses – consumers were unlikely to see any benefits worth the high costs.  Today, enterprise mobility is carried on a tsunami of consumer mobile technology.  This not only made the deployment much cheaper, it also made many professional workers ready to accept – and eagerly anticipate – mobile deployment, as long as software vendors such as my employer were ready to deliver the level of usability, friendliness and the "I can’t define it but I know it when I see it" sense of fun we expect from consumer mobility.

Kevin: What industries do you see adopting mobility today?
Israel: What industries don’t?  Field workers may seem like the immediate suspects, since they are indeed mobile in the strict meaning of that word.  Yet, even workers who spend their whole workday within the same four walls have a lot to benefit from mobility.  The health care and hospitality industries are just two examples of such industries which have discovered tremendous value in mobilizing their business processes.

Kevin: What business processes do you see companies mobilizing?
Israel: Some processes are mobilized in just about any industry:  Work management (tasks and shifts); time reporting; expense accounts; and various approval processes (e.g. vacation approval).  Other processes are industry specific, such as field service management in industries such as IT, telecommunications, consumer equipment, etc.; claims adjustment in insurance; quotes and billing in sales; inventory tracking; inspection and many more.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising trends you saw in mobility in 2010?
Israel: The iPad surprised me twice:  Once when it became an instant success in consumer mobile devices, and again when it was so quickly adopted by enterprise workers.  A related trend that I found surprising is the growing number of organizations that allow workers to use their personal mobile devices in the enterprise work processes.  This trend overcame both the reluctance of some IT departments to control the device choice in order to deliver adequate support, security and functionality; and the technological challenge of developing process specific applications that work well on many different devices.  By the way, that technological challenge has too often been "solved" by developing weak and limited applications.  I believe that with standards such as HTML5, we can really meet the challenge without compromising on functionality, robustness and user experience.

Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges you see in mobility today?
Israel: I'll refer to business mobility – the use of mobile technology in improving existing business processes and enabling totally new business processes.  In business mobility, I believe one major challenge is in understanding that mobilizing an application or a business process almost always requires a complete rethinking.  If you just take the same screens and actions and make them available on a mobile device, you're probably doing it wrong.  There are several reasons for that.  I'll mention three: focus, context, and specialization.

Focus:  Because a mobile worker is usually focusing on the task at hand and not on the mobile device, unlike the office worker who focuses on the screen to get the job done.

Context:  Because a mobile application needs to be sensitive to many cues – Is the user driving right now?  Is the user alone or with a customer? Is the user near enough to the location (of service or inspection, for example) in order to collect information? What communication bandwidth is currently available, if any? Each of these should make the application behave differently.

Specialization:  Often, an office user specializes in one kind of role and can deep-dive into one application for most of the work day.  A mobile worker will need to interact with many applications during the work day.  For example, while service engineers are on site, customers may ask them about billing, contracts, new products and so on.  If they have the right mobile applications, they can answer immediately instead of referring the customer to make multiple phone calls.  This both raises customer satisfaction and reduces call center load, but it can be challenging to design the mobile applications so that users can use them intuitively even if they don’t use some of these services often; and it is also challenging to make it all work together.  When switching from the field service screens to the billing functionality, we must preserve the context.  Otherwise, the service engineer will need to type in information again, such as the same customer name, which makes the system just about unusable.

Read Part 3 of this interview.

Whitepapers of Note:
***************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy, Part 1

ClickSoftware's Israel Beniaminy
I was able to catch up with ClickSoftware's VP of Product Strategy, Israel Beniaminy, today in unseasonably warm Petach Tikva, Israel this morning for an interview.

Note:  Israel responded in writing to my questions and then we followed up with a phone interview.

Kevin: What are your current roles and responsibilities? How long have you been in these roles?
Israel: I am Senior VP of Product Strategy at ClickSoftware. Informally, I describe this role as managing the process in which innovation ideas are created, gathered, researched, refined, selected and converted into concrete business plans. I have served in this and prior roles bridging between business and technology at ClickSoftware for the past eight years. Before that I served in more technical roles, and under pressure I will admit to still being a technologist at heart.


Kevin:  Where are you located?  How long have you been in that area?
Israel:  During most of my professional career I have been based in Israel, including my current location at ClickSoftware's Israeli office, in Petach Tikva (near Tel Aviv).


Kevin: What mobile device(s) do you carry?
Israel: This tends to change quite often.  Current snapshot:  Main workhorse is Lenovo X200 laptop – e-mail, research, development, writing, etc.  Blackberry Bold for voice and short e-mails; iPod Touch for music and reading e-books (the small size still makes for surprisingly convenient reading, and you can't beat its size and weight for portability).  iPad for Internet browsing, some more e-mail (is that a recurring theme?), reading e-books and some games.


Kevin: What are some of your favorite mobile applications that you have on your mobile device?
Israel: As a voracious reader, I love the e-book readers, switching between Kindle App, Stanza and iBooks according to the e-book type and source.  Apart from these, I have LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter apps on all my mobile devices.  My favorite navigation app is Waze – it works well, has good traffic reports, and it is so impressive that they got all that via crowd sourcing.  Games come and go – one game I liked recently is Tower Madness.


Kevin: Do you ever use your mobile device to buy things?
Israel: Yes. Mostly e-books and applications.


Kevin: How many computing devices do you have in your home?
Israel: Depends on how you count.  My wife, son and daughter each have a desktop.  We also have a netbook but have been using it less since a lot of the things it can do are better on an iPad or iPod, or on my son's Motorola Milestone (Android mobile device).  We also have several iPod Touch devices, gaming machines – Wii, PSP, and soon to add a living-room media computer.


Kevin: How long have you been involved in enterprise mobility?
Israel: For at least a decade now.


Kevin: How did you get involved in enterprise mobility?
Israel: Working on field service solutions, it was very natural to think of how to communicate with the field service engineers.  I remember one customer of ours, a service organization, whose service engineers worked out of remote locations and didn’t start each day at the office.  I think it was around 1995, when mobile data was very expensive and not too reliable, so the solution they came up with was to send each technician a fax with the next day's scheduled tasks.  The technicians would report the task execution by filling in paper forms and faxing them back to the main office.  Combine this with the complete inability to know where your workers are during the day, and you must find yourself thinking: "there must be a better way!"  So we started out by integrating our scheduling and routing solutions with mobile solutions developed by partners, even when only a minority of field workforces were mobilized. Later, we saw that connecting to the field service management and scheduling system was a prime driver for mobilizing, and that mobility had to be tightly interwoven into the service task life cycle, so we developed our own mobility solutions.


Read Part 2 of this interview.
Read Part 3 of this interview.
Read Part 4 of this interview.

Whitepapers of Note:
***************************************************

Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Money News Weekly - Week of February 28, 2011


Kevin’s Mobile Money News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Monthly

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The Girl Scouts of Northeast Ohio are using GoPayment, a mobile payment app, to process credit card transactions for this year's cookie season.

http://www.marketingvox.com/girl-scouts-turn-to-mobile-payments-for-cookie-season-apple-wins-patent-for-e-wallet-048781/

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Mobile banking growth in the United States continues to be fueled by aggressive adoption of smartphones and regular mobile Web use, according to Forrester Research.

http://www.mobile-financial.com/node/13674/Steady-mobile-banking-growth-to-drive-demand-for-better-functionality:-Forrester

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Bank of America, the leading U.S. retail bank, has reportedly started inviting select customers to trial its new NFC-based Mobile Wallet using BlackBerry smartphones.

http://www.mobilebusinessbriefing.com/article/rim-teams-with-us-bank-on-nfc-payments

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An app surge and smartphone growth has set the stage for a mobile banking uptick. Mobile banking today is where online banking was 10 years ago.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: IDC's Nick McQuire, Part 2

IDC's Nick McQuire
This is Part 2 in this Mobile Expert Interview Series with IDC's Nick McQuire.  Read Part 1 here.

Kevin: What do companies often forget or fail to plan for when implementing enterprise mobility solutions?
Nick: There are a few areas but one area in particular is failing to plan for the future.  Often, the mobile solution does not fit the long term business or IT goals and the focus of the solution is often too narrow.  This is because in the past mobility has been tactically geared around a specific task, problem or process and essentially deployed in a silo within the company.  Over time we are now seeing other, perhaps more strategic areas, open up around mobile, but what is in place is not scalable.  This can become an unmanageable and costly pain point for many companies.  The good news here is that in Europe at least, service providers, telco and IT, are starting to help businesses handle this complexity from devices and contracts through to more complex mobilization projects in terms of managed services which require lower upfront investments.

Kevin: What are the biggest challenges in enterprise mobility today?
Nick: There are, of course, a few but we see that many European organizations are struggling with best practice in terms of mobile policy in the new world brought on by consumerization.  CIOs are aware that devices are entering their organization at a rapid rate.  They are increasingly considering "bring your own" liability schemes but are asking each other for help and guidance in terms of management and developing policies and governance frameworks for these.  They are asking questions like, "What do I need to be thinking about?  What are the risks?"  We will see vendors and service providers step up their guidance to CIOs on consumerization this year I believe, born out of their own internal practitioning at the moment on these issues.

Kevin: What were some of most surprising trends for you last year, 2010?
Nick: The biggest one of course was the success of the iPad in the enterprise.  We have all heard about this I know, but I think many didn’t predict how fast this would occur.  For example, we at IDC in Europe did a large CIO survey last year on mobility which was fielded in July with the results coming back in August.  Interest in tablets was quite small from CIOs in July-August because it was "pre-iPad era".  It's like BC-AD switch over in many respects.  The pace of change is so phenomenal now.  I think the iPhone kick-started a slight change in conventional IT philosophy around standardization and control in 2009-10, but the iPad's arrival virtually cemented this change almost overnight in 2010, and few I believe could have predicted that pace of change.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: IDC's Nick McQuire, Part 1

IDC's Nick McQuire
Nick and I will both be attending the upcoming conference in Brussels entitled, The Enterprise Mobility Exchange.  I saw him on the agenda and arranged an interview with him.

Note: These are not Nick McQuire's exact words, but rather my notes from the interview.  However, Nick did review this article and provided edits in advance of publication.

Kevin: Tell us about your roles and responsibilities and what areas you cover?
Nick: I have been at IDC for just over a year, and I was at BT Global Services in the strategy arm working across the mobility and UCC portfolios before that.  Before BT, I headed up Enterprise Mobility research in Europe for Yankee Group so have been directly and indirectly in the enterprise mobility segment in Europe for close to ten years now.

Kevin: What are your focus areas today?
Nick: Enterprise mobility and M2M (machine-to-machine communications) in EMEA.  I focus my research on the mobile and M2M value chains in terms of vendors and service providers.  In terms of end users, at IDC we do a fair bit with CIOs, especially in terms of our events platform, but also we run numerous CIO dinners across Europe throughout the year working with them on their challenges in terms of mobility.

Kevin: What do you think is the value of attending an event like the Enterprise Mobility Exchange in Brussels on May 9 - 11?
Nick: I was particularly interested in attending this event based on its success in previous years, especially in terms of field services.  I am especially keen to hear how recent enterprise-wise mobile trends are impacting the field services community, especially in terms of consumerization of the enterprise.  Are enterprises still looking in silos in terms of their approach to mobility?  I am interested in hearing best practices around mobile strategies and deployment in general and given the breadth of attendees and the scope of industry topics covered, I am sure there will be lots to learn in Brussels!

Kevin: What do companies need to think about before starting an enterprise mobility project?
Nick:  Of course many companies will have different approaches but we tend to advise CIOs that the starting point should be to conduct a general audit and rationalization of the estate to determine what enterprises have and what the priorities should be.  This should range across mobile infrastructure, devices and contracts and liability schemes to determine the costs, inventory, policy and any projects that are in place already flying under the radar.  This process in itself is often a revelation for many companies and going through this rationalization exercise up front is a critical step because it often lays bare a few key, previously hidden, priorities early on.

The next step, once organizations have determined what they have, should be to engage the business units to understand their requirements and what mobility means to them to do their job effectively. Having cross functional user buy in early on helps with sponsorship internally but also with prioritization as well.  We also argue that IT should functionally profile their users during this process to best determine user requirements and solutions for specific user groups, work styles and work spaces within the organization.  Not all workers are mobile workers and equally some worker roles have higher risk profiles than others. Gone are the days when blanket policies and standardized technology apply to all workers in organizations, so functional profiling is an important exercise.

Next, after the fact finding, it is then critical to put in place a mobile strategy that aligns with wider business goals of the organization and takes this input from the business teams.  What are the priorities for the company over the next two to three years, and what is needed to achieve them?  Is it to cut costs or to drive growth and greater customer interaction?  Is it to foster better collaboration and innovation or more effective business continuity?  Is it about talent recruitment and retention?  A mobility strategy should directly align to and enable these strategic priorities.

Finally, we argue that success for wide mobility implementations within enterprises needs central governance especially in its infancy.  Perhaps it’s a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Mobility within the company or a VP of Mobility internally.  But some form of central governance, which considers cross functional interests across the mobile workforce for sure, but also senior management and functions from HR, Legal and Operations.  This 360 degree view will ensure considerations across the business are met from employees, partners, legal, including unions, etc., and of course customers.  It will also ensure governance across the business in terms of avoiding duplication and unnecessary costs as well as to ensure priorities and standards are in place.

Read Part 2 of this interview.


Click Image to Learn More - Smartsoft Mobile Solutions
***********************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Group on Linkedin
Read The Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Retailing News Weekly
Read The Field Mobility News Weekly
Read The Mobile Money News Weekly
Read The M2M News Monthly


Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Mike Oliver, Part 2

Mike Oliver
This is Part 2 in this Mobile Expert Interview Series with Sybase's Mike Oliver.  Read Part 1.

Kevin: What are some of the most surprising trends you saw in mobility in 2010?
Mike: It has to be the iPad. Tablets have been around forever! All of a sudden Apple makes one with the great interface and everyone wants it? I have one but am personally frustrated with some of the limitations of the current iPad, but you can’t deny that it has been a big success and I’ll definitely buy the next version. I also love the new Samsung Galaxy, it fits into my jacket pocket. Overall though, I would rather use my NetBook. It has a keyboard, long battery life, prints and boots up fast without the tablet limitations.

Kevin: What are some of the biggest challenges you see in mobility today?
Mike: Simple connectivity is still a big challenge in the UK. We couldn’t get connectivity in our own office today. Every day when I drive home from the office I lose connectivity in three different locations. This is the middle of the UK! There are so many places where signals are just not good enough to support a mobile worker using an always connected mobile application. We have developed all kinds of features into Afaria just to help mobile workers in areas where there is intermittent connectivity.

Kevin: How are enterprise mobility implementations different from other typical IT projects?
Mike: IT folks have a difficult time truly understanding mobility. Many don’t even understand the differences between the mobile operating systems and mobile devices. It is a whole new world for them.

Mobile Expert Interview Series: Sybase's Mike Oliver, Part 1

Mike Oliver
I first learned about Mike Oliver, European Mobility Marketing Manager for Sybase, because we are both on the agenda for the upcoming conference in Brussels entitled The Enterprise Mobility Exchange.  Mike was kind enough to schedule some time to share with us.

Note: These are not Mike Oliver's exact words, rather my notes from our interview.  However, Mike did review these notes for accuracy prior to publishing.

Kevin: Why are you going to the Enterprise Mobility Exchange in May? What is the value?

Mike: I spoke at this event last year and found that the quality of the delegates is unmatched. People must pay to attend. The focus has been on utilities and field services and this is a great market for Sybase and our partners. We have found great opportunities from this event every time we have attended. We always get more meetings than we have on our schedule.

Kevin: What are your current roles and responsibilities?

Mike: I am the European Mobility Marketing Manager for Sybase. Before SAP acquired us, I was responsible for marketing our mobility solutions across all of Europe. Now I cover a subset of our products including Afaria and SQL Anywhere.

Mobile Retailing News Weekly - Week of February 28, 2011

Kevin's Mobile Retailing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile retailing applications and mobile marketing applications that I run across each week. I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Mobile Money News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read M2M News Monthly

Forrester forecasts that marketing spending on mobile display ads and search will surpass $1 billion in 2011.  That means marketers are set to find quantifiable ROI (return on investment) on mobile for generating real leads, driving foot traffic, and selling products and services.

http://memeburn.com/2011/02/mobile-marketing-and-m-commerce-is-where-the-money-is-moving/

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More and more brands are directing resources to mobile advertising, according to a new survey from DM2 Media and Jumptap.  According to the study, nearly 85 percent of marketers are doing some form of mobile marketing or advertising.

http://www.mediapost.com/blogs/raw/?p=5770

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More and more companies are using mobile marketing to reach consumers, but the latest research suggests they may need to change their tactics.  According to a study by Frost and Sullivan, tablets are a threat to both smartphones and netbooks.

http://www.dma.org.uk/news/nws-dmitem.asp?id=6438&t=Mobile+marketing%3A+Tablets+are+threat+to+smartphones

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VeriFone Systems, Inc. the leading payment solutions provider in the U.S., has urged aspiring mobile payment service companies to engage with retailers in determining market requirements to enable mobile phone-initiated payments and services at the retail point of sale.

The Enterprise Mobility Trends of 2011 - Webinar

Looking into the Future
I would invite you to consider attending the following webinar on enterprise mobility Thursday, March 10, 2011.  It is a panel discussion on how apps and tablets are transforming businesses.

Here is the description of the webinar from Sybase:

Join us for a lively discussion on the latest trends in enterprise mobility with the expert authors of the just-released Enterprise Mobility Guide 2011 published by Sybase.

We'll cover the latest trends in mobile device management and app development - platforms such as iOS, RIM and Android and hardware such as smartphones and tablets - all from the business perspective that matters to you.

Guest experts include:

  • Kevin Benedict, a leading independent mobility analyst and consultant in the SAP ecosystem
  • Phillipe Winthrop, former Strategy Analytics analyst and creator of the Enterprise Mobility Forum
  • Lynette Luna, Editor of FierceMobileIT and Contributing Executive Editor to FierceWireless
  • Host: Eric Lai, UberMobile blogger at ZDNet and editor-in-chief of the Enterprise Mobility Guide 2011

BONUS! All webcast attendees will be among the first to get a free copy of the new Enterprise Mobility Guide 2011 mailed to them. Contributors to this 130 page book include: industry experts from Accenture, Google, Motorola, Orange, RIM, Samsung, Verizon, and others; analysts from the Yankee Group and Enterprise Mobility Forum; and leading executives from Sybase and SAP.

Date: Thursday, March 10, 2011
Time: 2-3 PM ET/11-12 noon PT


***************************************************
Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile and M2M Industry Analyst, SAP Mentor Volunteer
Phone +1 208-991-4410
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility group on Linkedin:
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=2823585&trk=anet_ug_grppro

Full Disclosure: I am an independent mobility analyst, consultant and blogger. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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