Kevin Benedict Ponders the Future

How many different solutions do you need in order to implement an enterprise quality mobile solution?  I think this is a worthy question.  In years past MEAP (mobile enterprise application platform) and MADP (mobile application development platform) vendors tried to cover all of your needs, but the market has determined this is not an acceptable model going forward.  Companies are just not comfortable putting all their eggs in one basket and betting the mobile farm on an unprofitable VC backed mobility vendor.  Enterprise mobility is just too strategic.  Even when companies have standardized most of their internal business solutions on a major ERP vendor, they want to keep their options open.  SAP understands this and has worked to make their SAP Mobile Platform environment play nice with other vendors and toolkits. Given that market manifesto, companies must now pick and choose their own variety of mobile solutions, platforms and toolkits.  The first question, again, is how many s

In many industries today the competitive battleground is quickly shifting to the effective use of data to drive marketing, sales, customer support, R&D, and to deliver hyper-personalized user experiences and digital products.  These changes are most readily seen in companies that engage customers on the web and through mobile apps.  As more and more of customer interactions and engagements move to mobile apps and websites these changes will be all the more pronounced.  Just think about mobile banking, mobile commerce, mobile search, mobile media, mobile news/content and mobile travel apps.  These apps and the companies behind them are now offering incredible levels of near instant personalization based upon their knowledge of your preferences, location, shopping history, loyalty status, etc.  The more effective companies are at using their knowledge of you to personalize your experience, the more attractive, convenient, productive and sticky their apps become.  We at Cognizant ca

In all my years of researching and writing about enterprise mobility, I have not taken the time to learn about automated testing solutions for mobile apps.  These are important solutions as mobile applications are often your brand and primary point of interaction with customers and even employees.  They had better work!  In this interview, we discuss mobile app testing processes and strategies.  Enjoy! Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_LB7wff_S8&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Editor Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant View my profile on LinkedIn Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Browse the Mobile Solution Directory Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterpri

If you were not fortunate enough to attend the M6 Mobility xChange last week in San Diego surrounded by smokey sunsets and wildfires, then you can catch some of the highlights here! Video Link: http://youtu.be/3mebyK26O5k ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Editor Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant View my profile on LinkedIn Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Browse the Mobile Solution Directory Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have wor

I have taught classes and half-day workshops on mobile and digital strategies in 17 different countries around the world in the past three years. Some of the most interesting discussions during these classes and workshops are around the following topics - the strategies behind the mobile strategies. Velocity: The speed at which you can bring all required resources to a specific location to complete a task.  Remote and mobile assets and workers require mobile technologies to connect them to the "network." Swarming: The ability to contact, communicate and coordinate the gathering of all necessary resources to perform a task. 4D Coordinates:  The ability to coordinate resources to arrive at a specific location at a specific time .   Projecting Commerce at Distance :  Using mobile applications to open new markets and geographies without adding labor, assets or inventory. Time Compression:  Using mobile applications to accomplish more in a given time.  Something that

On Fire M6 Mobility Xchange 2014 Last week I spent three days at the M6 Mobility Xchange conference surrounded by wildfires.  The smoke filtered sunsets and glowing skylines at night made for a memorable event. I like this intimate event.  There were a couple of hundred attendees and excellent content on emerging trends and use cases around enterprise mobility.  There was plenty of time to network and many of my mobility industry analyst peers were there to share insights. In this interview recorded at the M6 Mobility Xchange , Carlo Cadet, mobile testing automation expert with Perfecto Mobile , shares the details of automated testing strategies for large scale mobile app deployments.  Enjoy! Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO2SE3nj1go&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Editor Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center fo

I had the privilege this week at the M6 Mobility Xchange of getting to know mobility guru and expert Jack Gold.  In this interview we talk about his views on wearables, the Internet of Things, enterprise mobility and mobile strategies.  Enjoy! Video Link: http://m6mobilityxchange.com/ ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Editor Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant View my profile on LinkedIn Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict Browse the Mobile Solution Directory Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads ***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital tr

I have been attending the M6 MobilityXchange  this week in smoky San Diego.  It has been an adventure!  The hills were glowing with the reflection of wildfires last night at the reception.  Everyone seemed to be hydrating as fast as they could in case the fire came too near. I had the privilege of moderating a panel discussion this morning with mobile experts Sam Lukkundi, Bill Padula, Adam Stein and Darren McGrath.  It got out of control.  My apologies.  My comedic career started and ended in about 3 minutes. In a break between sessions I was able to sit down with former IDC enterprise mobility analyst Steve Drake (now with Feedhenry ) and record his views of enterprise mobility now and in the future.  Enjoy! Video Link: http://youtu.be/6U4Uz7v_Udw ************************************************************************ Kevin Benedict Writer, Speaker, Editor Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant View my profile on Link

Benjamin Robbins, Jack Gold, Rodney Johnson, Kevin Benedict, Philippe Winthrop, Bob Eagan I am learning a great deal from some of the most experienced mobility gurus in the business this week at the M6 MobilityXchange in San Diego.  Yesterday we discussed all kinds of new developments taking place in enterprise mobility.  Here are some of my notes from day #1. We are entering the age of wisdom - the result of many mistakes in enterprise mobility Maribel Lopez identified three phases of enterprise mobility, 1) Extend capabilities, 2) Enhance capabilities and 3) Transform your business Question to ask, "What is now possible with mobile devices that was not possible without?" Continued discussions around mobile devices with dual persona.  Select work persona, and all your apps and screens are configured for work.   Select personal persona and all your apps and screens are configured for personal use.  These could have different security settings, etc. Mobility is ab

The banks of today will not be the banks of tomorrow unless you're caught in the script of Ground Hog's Day  ~ Kevin Benedict Mobile apps are rapidly replacing branches as the customer preferred point of interaction with banks. Today, customers are choosing their banks based upon the quality of their mobile apps and the services that are enabled.   In recent customer satisfaction surveys, mobile apps were shown to play a significant role in keeping customers satisfied. In addition, users today are seeking ways to consolidate their personal financial management tools and banking tools all in one application.  They would like a complete view of their personal finances.  The challenge today is these services are often providing by different providers with different apps. In the following news excerpts from 2014, we can clearly see the impact mobile and online banking is having on banks. RBS recently announced there has been a 30% fall in the number of transactions carrie

Code Halos - The Book On my run yesterday I listened to a Freakonomics Radio  podcast as I do regularly.  In the latest podcast titled How to Think Like a Freak — and Other FREAK-quently Asked, authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner discussed the fact that university professors get to keep all the rights to books they write and the profits they generate as a result, but not for inventions.  I have been pondering that topic since. Why would universities treat the creation of a book, and the profits from a book, differently than that of an invention?  Perhaps written ideas were perceived as having less value, than using those ideas to produce a physical object with productive value.  Although, it could be argued that patents are written words and drawings.  If a university professor wrote a book of patentable ideas, they could sell it and keep all the profits, but if they used the words to make a product they would lose the rights and the profits.   Hummmm... How does this stra

Suhas Uliyar My friend Suhas Uliyar is now the VP of Mobile Strategy Product Management at Oracle , and he is eager to get the word out that Oracle mobility is real and here today. While SAP jumped big time into enterprise mobility in 2010 with the $5.8 billion acquisition of Sybase, Oracle has been quietly watching the market and practicing patience. They seemed for a long time to be content with standing on the side lines and treating mobility as just another channel or interface for their backend servers, solutions and databases. Today, however, they have a multitude of rapidly growing enterprise mobility solutions and an aggressive plan and strategy for enterprise mobility.  Among their mobility products are the following: Oracle Mobility Suite - MADP Oracle Mobile Security Suite - Mobile Application Management/Security Oracle ADF Mobile, soon to be named Mobile Application Framework - mobile app SDK Oracle Mobile Cloud - MBaaS category of products In recent years, Ora

The mating dance of a forest bird attracts the seductive sounds of an invisible mate. Is there no end to what mobile apps can do?  Last week, several of us sat quietly on a weathered dock extended out and over a forested pond in the foothills of SW Washington.  We watched the birds and other wildlife enjoying the spring sunshine.  Suddenly we spotted an unidentified bird dancing about the branches of a distant tree. Google Glass for Bird Watchers Our good friend, Candy, came equipped with a professional grade camera with a 20 pound telephoto lens, but even with that, the bird was too distant to properly identify and photograph.  My wife, however, came up with a brilliant idea and reached for her iPhone. On her iPhone was a bird watching app called ibird .   Don't stop reading yet!  It gets better and I will bring it around to enterprise mobility before we are through. This app comes with the following SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) features: Popular field gu

The banks of the future, will not look like the banks of today.  I have met with the business and IT strategy teams of many banks around the world over the past 12 months.  These discussions have been some of the most interesting as there is a sense of urgency.  The banking and financial services industries are feeling tremendous pressures from both internal and external sources to respond quickly to emerging mobile and online technologies, and the changing behaviors of consumers.     Here are 12 talking points from my latest workshops: Mobile and online technologies are transforming the way banks serve clients Mobile banking adoption rates will reach 33 percent this year, up from 20 percent in 2011. Source: Swacha Mobile payments will reach $90 billion by 2017, up from $13 billion in 2012.  Source: Forrester’s 2013 US Mobile Payments Forecast report 60% of smartphone or tablet users who switched banks in the fourth quarter said mobile banking was an important factor in the de