Code Halos - Tracking the Mobile Workforce, Equipment and Other Variables for Optimal Performance

I write and speak often on the need to have a thoughtful Code Halo strategy in addition to your mobile and digital strategies.  Code Halos is the term for the information that surrounds people, organizations, and devices.  Many companies consider Code Halo strategies only for marketing, sales and customer service, but a well thought out Code Halo strategy for work done in the field like maintenance, repairs, asset management, construction and engineering is also important.  Let me try to make the case here.

There are many different objects and variables that can impact the performance of a mobile workforce, especially in the services industry.  In my enterprise mobility workshops I call these things PIOs (performance impact objects), and PIVs (performance impact variables).

Examples of PIOs:

• People
• Parts/Supplies/Materials
• Tools
• Job locations
• Equipment (and availability)
• Transportation (and availability)
• Vendor (and availability)
• Subcontractor (and availability)
• Jobsite access
• Permits/Approvals

Examples of PIVs:

• Schedules (dependencies)
• Qualifications
• Skills
• Experience
• Weather
• Traffic
• Condition of equipment repair/maintenance
• Sickness/Health
• Funding

Each of these items must come together at the right time and right place to optimize the performance of a field service technician.  I think of PIOs and PIVs in the context of building the first transcontinental railroad in 1869.  In order to be completed and functioning, all the PIOs/PIVs had to come together at the right physical place and time.  If pieces were missing, or misaligned the entire system was delayed or fails.

In an ideal world, we would have full situational awareness.  All of the data from each PIO and PIV would be instantly available to our management system so predictive analytics and artificial intelligence could align all the variables for optimized service delivery.  Full situational awareness does not happen by accident.  It requires a great deal of strategy, planning and execution.

All of the PIOs and PIVs need to be tracked and monitored.  Sensors (IoT), GPS vehicle tracking and smartphones all play an important role here.  The data that is needed to make right decisions, either by a human decision maker or an artificial intelligence system needs to be collected, and as data has a shelf-life, it needs to be timely.  Those on the Titanic knew they were in trouble, but only when it was too late to prevent the trouble.  They would have appreciated good information a few minutes earlier.

Let me provide a scenario for consideration.  A customer calls in and requires repairs to a specialized, expensive piece of equipment.  The repair requires specialized training and skills, certifications, special parts, special tools and experience.  Knowing just the schedules and locations of your field service technicians is not good enough.  You need to know information concerning each PIO and PIV.  In order to optimally provide service to your customer, you need to know and monitor all relevant information, and since most field services teams are mobile, that means mobile technology and wireless sensors must be integrated with as many PIOs and PIVs systems as possible in order to provide the necessary data and visibility to maximize productivity.

When PIOs and PIVs are all connected via a shared network that provides visibility to network members it is called a Network Centric Operation.  A full network centric operational environment may not be economically feasible for 25 service technicians, but for 2,5000 service technicians yes.

If you have an available field service technician without the right experience or qualifications, then that doesn't help.  If you have a qualified, experienced and available field services technician, but without the right tools, equipment, parts or their location is too distant to be of service, then that also doesn't help.

PIOs/PIVs are most often not in one location for easy management.  They are located in many different locations and accessed via many different systems.  Enterprise mobility, sensors, connectivity, integration, dashboards, dynamic scheduling, HCM (human capital management), GPS tracking and event/project management, predictive analytics and artificial intelligence are all required to bring all of these pieces, data and variables together to provide optimal productivity.  Ideally these would be brought together under a considered Code Halo strategy for collecting, analyzing and using data to optimize productivity.

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

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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict Interviews SAP's Consumer Insight 365 Guru Jim Brooks

MNOs (mobile network operators) collect massive amounts of data on mobile phone usage, activities, web use and location.  SAP has 500 MNO clients around the world.  Combine the two and you have a service that can provide an incredible amount of business insight.  Jim Brooks shares the details of this new SAP service in this interview recorded with me at SAP's SAPPHIRE conference.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyoqHUEGUJ4&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 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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Information Dominance as a Company's Mobile Strategy

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 call the effective use of data, "Code Halos" strategies.  Code Halos are the data that surround you, your activities and preferences.  It is the combination of personal and enterprise data used to provide the optimal experience.

Companies that will win in this competitive battlefield will understand that data collection, processing speed, analysis, situational awareness and the hyper-personalization of the users' experiences are the keys. They will recognize it is about speed.  It is a race to collect, analyze, and personalize.  The late US Air Force Colonel and great military strategist John Boyd coined the acronym OODA for observe, orient, decide and act.  He identified the fact that decision-making could be a competitive advantage.  If you can make good decisions faster than an opponent you have a powerful advantage.  Think about this in terms of a boxer in the ring, or a fighter pilot in the sky.  If you can understand the situation, make good decisions and act faster than your opponent you will likely win.  The same is true when the effective use of data is involved in user experiences and commerce.

Code Halo strategies is a way to think about and structure your information logistics in a manner that will give you information dominance.  Information dominance means you have an information logistics infrastructure in place for collecting data, analyzing and personalizing experiences better and faster than your competition.  This information, with the right IT infrastructure and architecture, can be used to instantly provide hyper-personalized experiences on the web and on mobile apps for customers, prospects, partners and employees.

Your information logistics systems must be fast enough to keep pace.  If your information logistics systems lag due to legacy systems that cannot support a "real-time" environment that is required for mobile apps and websites, then you have some hard choices to make that will impact your company's ability to succeed in this new world dominated by information.

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

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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Strategies They Don't Teach in Business Schools or Computer Science Labs

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 took weeks now takes minutes.  Think real-time visibility, job status updates, inventories and dynamic scheduling.
• Information Dominance: Using real-time information to dominate your competition.  Use real-time information to maximize business agility, precision marketing, situational awareness and optimized logistics.  Use it to anticipate, compete, counter and outmaneuver competitors.  Recognize your ability to collect, analyze and manage information better and faster than your competition often trumps those with more physical assets (brick and mortar).
• Information Logistics: The systems involved in the collection, transmission, analysis, reporting and sharing of information.  The more efficient and real-time your information logistics, the faster you can make good decisions and act.
• Loyalty and culture:  Develop camaraderie, teamwork, accountability and loyalty with real-time collaboration tools and KPI dashboards on mobile devices.  Stay in the know on your performance and the performance of others.  Share ideas and solve problems as a team.
• Full Spectrum Information:  You can't have situational awareness without having real-time data coming in from all your key business areas.  Dominate competition by collecting, transmitting, analyzing and reporting real-time information and its meaning across all operational areas including: SCM, WMS, manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer service.
• Reducing Conjecture and the Fog of War:  Using mobile applications as remote sensors to collect real-time data that enables data-driven decision making.  Think date and time stamp, GPS coordinates, activities monitoring, tasks and project updates.
• Operational Tempos:  Increase the speed at which information and, thus, operations can work.  Don't let the lack of timely information slow down your operations.  Maximize productivity and the quality of decision making by collecting, analyzing and sharing the right information as fast as possible.
• Information Driven Tactics: Tactics, the art and science of positioning resources for optimal use, and maneuvering them to keep them as such.  You can't fully utilize real-time and agile business tactics without real-time information enabled by mobile technologies.
• Information Shelf-Life:  Recognize the value of information diminishes over time.  The faster it can be collected, analyzed, reported and shared the more value it has to decision makers.  Mobile devices support faster data collection, transmission, analysis and reporting.
• Information and Competitive Decision-Making: In battles, the general with better situational awareness is often better able to make strategic decisions and to maneuver his resources to the point of need, thus gaining an advantage.  If you consider competitive decision-making as a game, the winner is the person who can receive more information faster, analyze it, understand the meaning, make a decision, act upon it and review the results and adjust accordingly in a manner faster than his/her opponent.  Mobile technologies are a critical component of this capability.
• Force Multiplier: - Definition - A force multiplier refers to a factor that dramatically increases (hence "multiplies") the effectiveness of an item, person or group.  Mobile technology is a force multiplier.  Today a small team can manage a global workforce using email, messaging, voice, Skype, Google+ Hangouts, Salesforce.com, cloud-based mobile apps, shared spreadsheets, Google Drive or Dropbox etc., all while traveling on an airplane.  Productivity is ridiculously multiplied.
• Speed and Mobility: Capturing a market today is not about having more buildings, people and assets, but first and foremost it is a matter of Code Halos strategies, data analytics, movement and circulation.  Identify your online/digital market, identify your prospects, customize and personalize their experience, and be there at the right time with the right products.  This can be done with a great mobile app supported by a powerful Code Halo enabled systems and digital content management systems.
• Sensor Platforms: Understand the sensors available on your smartphones, via bluetooth accessories, vehicle telematics and the Internet of Things and how these contribute to your situational awareness and information logistics strategies.

Some may read this list and think these are all obvious, but they would be wrong.  Not many companies are actually documenting and thinking these through as part of their strategy and transforming their business models as a result?  The future belongs to those with faster and more accurate business insight that supports hyper-personalized shopping experiences for customers, work experiences for employees and data-driven decision support for managers.   These capabilities enable the agility to respond to changing consumer behaviors and business and market opportunities based upon the more effective data collection, analysis, reporting, personalization  and decision-making that is enabled by an optimized mobile data and information logistic system.

I accept invitations to teach workshops and to speak at conferences or events whenever I can. I will do my best to accommodate.  I am organizing workshops now in ANZ, UK, Nordics and India.  Contact me at Kevin.Benedict@Cognizant.com if you are interested.

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

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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview: Feedhenry's Steve Drake

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 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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Professors and the Unanticipated Consequences of Digital Transformation

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 strange agreement work in an age of digital transformation when many of the most profitable businesses produce no products, but are simply based upon the clever arrangement of digits. Netflix, Amazon, eBay, Google etc., come to mind.  They base their businesses off of the use of "Code Halos."  Websites, product catalogs, digital ads, e-commerce engines, shopping carts and online shipment tracking systems are digital (letters and numbers representing 0s and 1s).

I don't think universities have yet thought this through.

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

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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Transformation and Code Halos - 12 Trends that are Impacting Banks Today

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:

1. Mobile and online technologies are transforming the way banks serve clients
2. Mobile banking adoption rates will reach 33 percent this year, up from 20 percent in 2011. Source: Swacha
3. Mobile payments will reach $90 billion by 2017, up from $13 billion in 2012.  Source: Forrester’s 2013 US Mobile Payments Forecast report
4. 60% of smartphone or tablet users who switched banks in the fourth quarter said mobile banking was an important factor in the decision. Source: AlixPartners
5. Consumer preferences are changing and a generational shift in behavior is driving to new digital channels
6. There is a rapid adoption of digital consumer banking in both developed markets and in markets where consumers are predisposed to using mobile technology rather than bricks-and-mortar (emerging markets)
7. Banks are being presented with new competition from non-financial firms providing financial services
8. The ability to innovate will be a key competitive differentiator, and innovation a critical driver of growth in the future for banks
9. Uniform experience (omni-channel) will be required across all channels, and is a prime factor in customer satisfaction
10. There is a growing convergence of personal financial management tools and mobile banking
11. After providing basic consumer banking services on mobile apps, the next steps are to understand individual consumer’s transactions, and the nuances of their unique investment behavior using Code Halo strategies
12. Banks are seeking efficiencies and cost reductions.  The average cost of a mobile transaction is 10 cents, about half that of a desktop-computer transaction and far less than the $1.25 average cost of an ATM transaction. (Source: Javelin Strategy & Research).

Mobile apps are rapidly replacing branches as the preferred form of customer interactions with banks. Customers are evaluating the quality of a bank based upon their mobile banking capabilities today.  In customer service surveys, providing great mobile apps represents an important component of customer satisfaction.  As a result, you would think that budget priorities and investments in mobile technologies would be jumping up in response, but as of today, budgets for mobile apps and mobile banking services represent less than 5% of IT budgets.  

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

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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Insurance Industry Disrupted, The Quantified-Self - Wearables, Telematics, Code Halos and Digital Transformation

By Peter Abatan, Studio Thirteen, Cognizant

The New Finance Meet-up group is currently running a 6 part series over a period of 6 months to determine what could disrupt the Insurance industry. In the most recent meet-up the focus was on how the quantified-self could disrupt the insurance industry. I came away from the meet-up with the conclusion that smart insurers will begin to develop products that are more customizable to the individual needs rather than offering products desiged on demographics, i.e. where you live, your age group, family size etc.

So what is the quantified-self? The quantified-self is the data that has been accumulated on the individual’s behavior, health status, medical conditions and overall well-being by the individual themselves (We call this data Code Halos at Cognizant). In the future many experts believe that it will be the basis on which insurance products are sold to customers.

There is still a lot of controversy around ownership of data and whether once that data has been released to an insurer whether it can be withdrawn, and whether an adverse event could impact or prevent an individual from being able to buy an insurance product. However, many experts have come to the conclusion, that smart insurers would use this adverse data to help customers to manage that event better rather than use it as an opportunity to charge very high premiums.

For example if you drive more in the night you are three times more likely to have an accident than someone who drives during the day (Forbes). In this scenario, your insurance company can help with providing tools that minimize the probability of that happening instead of charging very high premiums for someone who has driven in the night for the last 20 years and never had an accident. There are no guarantees that the person would never have an accident in the future, but the tools provided can help reduce that risk to a minimum.

There were about 40 to 50 delegates that attended and attendees came from new start-ups, the technology and insurance sectors. The session started with a product feature from Francis White from AliveCor. AliveCor is a heart monitor that provides individuals with the ability to track heart health anywhere, anytime at an affordable cost, you can see more about the device at www.alivecor.com. What is great about this company is that it has a cloud strategy in which you can grant access to your ECG data. It also has alerts that will warn you of any impending dangers and therefore recommend that you contact your physician. The device is portable enough to fit onto the back of a smartphone and takes the ECG reading from both thumbs allowing you to take readings anytime and anywhere.

The second product feature was by Matt Lewis, the founder of Quantid (www.quantid.co), a start-up that is aiming to revolutionize the health industry. Quantid already does what MapMyWalk and Training Peaks already does and more. Quantid describes itself as the Facebook of quantified human data. It is a social networking platform, enabling users of personal tracking devices and apps to make profound improvements to their health, fitness and overall well-being by delivering insights and analysis of their quantified personal data. Although at the time of writing this report their website was down, I can say that the founder has some well meaning ambitions.

Quantid supports a rich set of features; the application integrates with most popular tracking products on the market, making it easy for users to access all their personal data aggregated within a single platform; it allows users to share specific datasets with friends, doctors and other practitioners; and it offers the ability to set reminders, goals and challenges. Quantid plans to amass an enormous database of quantified human data. "By leveraging the power of big data analytics we plan to develop sophisticated algorithms to identify trends and correlations, enabling our customers to generate powerful insights into their behavior, health status, medical conditions and overall well-being." The key challenge to Quantid is the matter of trust, and the guarantee that the customer’s data would never under any circumstances be sold or given to third parties.

The host for the meet-up, Eddie George, took 10 minutes describing what the quantified-self is and how wearables are key to this concept. He described it as all the vital health and other data that could affect how you are offered insurance premiums. Your health and activity data or the lack of it will, in the future, affect the premiums that you pay for health and life insurance.  It will also impact your vehicle insurance. This also led to the question as to how much of your quantified-self do you let your insurance company know about you in order to offer a fair premium.

George identified 3 challenges that face the quantified-self namely, aggregation, analysis and access. Aggregation in the sense that currently individuals are in possession of different types of data related to their health and physical training/activity, therefore it might make analysis a lot more challenging, also access to this data is highly siloed and spread across different providers.

After George’s description of quantified-self we were all split up into break out sessions where we discussed whether there is a benefit for insurance companies and the individual when it comes to this subject matter? One key outcome from my break out group was that, if insurance companies could use the quantified-self to help the individual to make better decisions, rather than punish through hefty premiums it will guarantee the survival of that organization in what is considered a very competitive landscape. Another lesson shared was that insurance companies should start to use technology and the quantified-self to bring individuals on the fringe who normally find it difficult to get insurance into the fold and make the insurance products more accessible to these group of people.

From the number of representatives from the insurance industry at the meet-up, one thing was clear, the insurance industry knows digital transformation is imminent, and they do not want to be caught unawares when this happens.  They want to approach it from a position of strength, rather than from a position of weakness by developing a closer and stronger relationship with their customers by offering better products and services that are value for money.

Peter Abatan is a project manager and a team member of Studio13, a design studio which provides product and service design to a wide variety of Cognizant’s customers in various market sectors.

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

Kevin Benedict

Digital Curator, Writer, Speaker

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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Evolution of Mobility - B2B B2C B2I

I have spent the last 14 years working on enterprise mobility projects, researching and writing about them.  In the year 2000, mobility was used mostly in warehouses, grocery stores, utilities and in field service roles.  We sold mobile development projects to businesses so they could take advantage of mobile apps customized for internal use.  That was the age of B2B (business-to-business) mobility.

With the introduction of Palms and iPaqs, mobile app developers started pondering personal productivity apps for handhelds.  Calendars, notes, planners and mobile forms were developed as part of what was to become "PIMs" (personal information managers).  That evolved with wireless connectivity and broadband Internet access to the mobile consumer apps we all know today.  That is the age of B2C (business-to-consumer) mobility.

Today, with the introduction of "Code Halo" strategies and "mass personalization" the era of B2I (business-to-individuals) mobility is introduced.  This is the era when companies collect "Code Halo" data and maintain massive amounts of information about each consumer that they can use to provide an instant and personalized mobile user experience for each person.

You land at an airport and must connect to another flight.  You open your Delta airline app and it knows you.  It knows your location and itinerary.  It tells you the connecting gate, estimated time to get from your gate to the connecting gate and shares the flight status with you.  All of these conveniences are due to the fact it knows you, and the data in the app is personalized.  The days of generic websites and generic mobile apps will soon be gone.

We have grown to expect more from our website and mobile app experiences.  I would be so annoyed if when I opened my Delta app it asked who I was, what flight number I wanted to look up, and what airport map did I want to review.

Download the free Code Halo app for iPads here - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/code-halos/id752380930?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Transformation Expert Interview: Author Paul Roehrig

I love Google+ Hangouts.  They enable me to catch up with busy, world traveling digital and mobile experts anywhere in the world and record interviews with them.  Today, I have the privilege of sharing an interview that I recorded last week with author Paul Roehrig who is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Future of Work here at Cognizant.  Paul's new and important book that will be published by Wiley in April is titled "Code Halos - How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business."  There is also an accompanying iPad app "Code Halos" available now for free here.

Viewers may have caught the interview I published with Paul's co-author on the book Ben Pring last week.  In this interview we cover a different set of strategy discussions.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10RYDcvbJng&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Digital Transformation Expert Interview: Author Ben Pring on Code Halos

I had the privilege of interviewing Ben Pring the co-author of the book Code Halos - How the Digital Lives of People, Things and Organizations are Changing the Rules of Business this week!  In addition to the book, there is also a free companion Code Halos iPad app available for download.  As well as writing books, Ben Pring is also the Co-Director of the Center for the Future of Work at Cognizant.  Wiley will be publishing the book nationwide in 2 weeks.  It is available now for pre-order. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2uhEPxOMEg&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Must Read Code Halos - The Book

Amazon beating Borders, Netflix beating Blockbuster, Apple beating Kodak, and the rise of companies like Google, LinkedIn, and Pandora are not isolated or random events. Today's outliers in revenue growth and value creation are winning with a new set of rules. They are dominating by managing the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes, and products.  They are employing a "Code Halo" strategy.

Code Halo is the name for all the relevant data that surrounds customers, prospects, employees, products, organizations, etc.  The data that if collected, analyzed for meaning, and used to customize an experience adds tremendous value.

We are seeing "Code Halo" strategies being deployed everywhere.  In fact, Google's new semantic search capabilities are using it as demonstrated by this excerpt from the book Google Semantic Search by David Amerland, "Search programming [now] looks at what we have typed in search, looks at our personal search history, and tries to guess our intent behind what we are looking for."

The underlying principle of a Code Halo strategy is this - there is value in personalizing or customizing an experience, rather than providing generic experiences.  When you visit a website that has no knowledge of you and simply shows you the generic company website - it is a generic experience.  There is no value added.  When you go to a website like Amazon, and the site greets you by name and shows your history and recommends different products based on your past preferences and what others with similar tastes to you have bought - that is a Code Halo enabled site with exceptional value added.

What does an IT environment look like that is Code Halo enabled?  What does the IT architecture look like?  What does a marketing strategy look like that is Code Halo enabled?  How do companies treat employees when the company is employing a Code Halo strategy?  These are all great questions that need answered.

My colleagues at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work, Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig and Ben Pring have just completed a new book on Code Halo strategies that will be released by Wiley in April. I have read it and recommend it. You can read more about it here http://www.unevenlydistributed.com/codehalos/book.

Every company in every industry and market needs to ponder the impact of Code Halo strategies on their business.  Code Halos are an integral part of a digital transformation and are changing the face of business.  Companies that don't "get it" won't survive long.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Internet of Things Platforms and IoT Strategies

My friend and colleague, the always opinionated Peter Rogers, shares his latest research on The Internet of Things and the technology and platforms that are used to support it.

There seems to be two main groups of thought as to when wearable technology will become mainstream. The first group are those that believe that wearable technology is here today and are engaging both hobbyists and future entrepreneurs in building all parts of the ecosystem now. These people are creating their own hardware and working with systems to communicate with third party hardware right as we speak. The second group of people are more commercially minded and are looking at creating a full platform for the future. They are looking at big data style real-time analytics, next generation IP, and constrained REST architectures with cast iron security.

Personally I am impatient.  I want to start playing with this IoT stuff today and allow the dedicated platforms to mature over time so they are ready when the market really picks ups.  With that said I believe there are currently two tiers of vendors:

1. Those that have something that works today and that we could build products and services on top of now.
2. Those that have an actual platform that is slowly maturing and we can use in the future 

My advice is to look at combining a selection of low-end propositions to start testing custom products for their effectiveness today.  In my view the best people to start talking with for effective low risk deployments, would be those offering end-to-end solutions based around plugging in any device to a simple Cloud PaaS and with their technology readily available to hobbyists.

I will list a few vendors that I think offer technology ready to go today and then in my next article I will look at those that I consider offer platforms for the future.  The main problem is one of being locked into a proprietary Cloud system that cannot be privately hosted and that only works with embedded client software that is explicitly supported by that vendor. If there is anything the ‘MBaaS v MEAP debate in enterprise mobility taught us is that open standards with flexible Cloud hosting solutions will win out. I don't see a perfect solution at the moment, but I do see a whole lot of very exciting propositions that will get acquired and combined effectively over time.

SkyNet

This open source project aims to let disparate devices communicate via a variety of protocols including MQTT, WS/S, CoAP, HTTPS/REST and WebSockets. It supports UUID authentication and TLS certificates. Eventually non-programmers could use Skynet to create a platform that lets us program the real and online worlds in a way that’s far more powerful than If This Then That (IFTTT) or Zapier. The end result is a flexible piece of open source software that can connect to everything from servers to sensors. SkyNet can be run on a public or private Node.js instance (such as Heroku) and they are even working on an open source home gateway.

IOBridge

ioBridge makes it easy for professionals and enthusiasts to monitor and control nearly anything via their smartphone or web app using a general purpose web gateway. This is a simple gateway that lets you monitor or send commands to anything compatible with the ioBridge through a web interface. It does sound like you can only access ioBridge-manufactured or third-party sensors, that are compatible with the ioBridge web gateway.  It also doesn't sounds like you can set up your own version on a private network just yet. When you purchase one of the ioBridge gateways then you get a free limited subscriptions. For example, if you want to log data faster than every few minutes then you need another subscription.

BergCloud

Berg is a Cloud platform but they also provide hardware with built-in connectivity for faster prototyping. Devshields bring the Device API to Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ARM MBED. The Device API is provided as a client library that runs on your microcontroller, speaking via your wireless connection to the web. If you are prototyping and don't yet have connectivity, then the Devshield developer boards have that bundled too. You can manage and message all your devices using the RESTful Cloud API, built around secure HTTPS. You control the user experience with your own website, and treat your devices like just another web service.

Sense Observation Systems

CommonSense is a platform that helps you to keep track of all your sensor data, store it in a central location, and play with it. CommonSense also processes your raw sensor data into meaningful things like sleep, exercise, or your top locations. With the free CommonSense Dashboard  you gain insights into your behavior. With the free CommonSense Tracker you turn your phone into an advanced tracking device. You can combine them, add in your Fitbit or Twitter data, and you get a powerful self-tracking system. Connections are available now for iOS, Android, Fitbit, and Twitter. They are working on connecting more devices and services.

The data is stored in their Cloud, which happens to be in The Netherlands and has been certified with according to medical device regulations (NEN-7510). It does seem to have a good focus on Health Care and the Environment. CommonSense is currently in Private Beta and it sounds more like a real-time analytics platform at the moment.

Electric Imp

Electric Imp offers a complete end-to-end solution that makes it simple to connect almost any product to the Internet through an innovative and powerful cloud service tied closely to leading-edge hardware. The Electric Imp connectivity platform, featuring fully integrated hardware, software, OS, APIs, cloud servers, makes it possible to effectively empower your devices with intelligence, scalability and flexibility. If you’re a developer, hobbyist, or maker, then you can get started with one of their development kits and bring connectivity to your project, idea or concept.

Electric Imp offers a comprehensive solution designed to connect your product or project to the Internet quickly, easily and effectively. The platform includes:

• Imp Hardware: The Electric Imp platform starts with the imp, a powerful module containing WiFi and a processor that acts as the gateway to connect your device or service to the Internet
• Imp OS: The software foundation for the imp’s features and services that allows your code to concentrate on bringing your product’s functions to life.
• Imp Cloud: Their cloud allows you to run agents - server side code that runs in a secure environment - that are used to provide HTTP I/O and cloud-side processing, and easily connect your products to anything with Internet access. Agents can act as a central hub to your products, apps, third-party services, and even your own servers.
• Imp Open API: Enrich your customer experience and build your business by developing enhancements like messaging, monitoring, and much more.
• Imp BlinkUpTM: The proprietary Electric Imp setup solution (BlinkUp) integrates seamlessly into your apps, letting you and your customers connect products in seconds using just a smartphone or tablet.
• Imp Services - IDE and Ops Console: Maintain your software, push new code and features easily to devices anytime, ensuring that your users always have the latest features. The Ops Console enables you to gain more insight into your factory production lines and scale to millions of devices.

1248.io

1248.io offers Geras, which is a scalable time-series database for your sensor data with quick storage for your Analytics. They also offer HyperCat, which is an open, lightweight JSON-based hypermedia catalogue format for exposing collections of URIs. HyperCat is simple to work with and allows developers to publish linked-data descriptions of resources. HyperCat is designed for exposing information about IoT assets over the web. It allows a server to provide a set of resources to a client, each with a set of semantic annotations.

Geras offers the following:

• HTTPS support for strong security and per-user API keys
• Standard HTTP/HTTPS support allowing sensors to traverse firewalls and proxies
• Sensors can supply data over HTTP POST or very lightweight MQTT publish
• Supports modern standards for posting, getting and discovering data: HTTPS; JSON; RESTful; SenML; MQTT; and HyperCat
• Built on a fault-tolerant, distributed database
• Data can be stored in the country of your choice with an option to buy Geras as software and host the data yourself

If you have an IoT platform or technologies that you want Peter Rogers to be aware of please email him at Peter-2.Rogers-2@cognizant.com.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview: Ved Sen on Enterprise Mobility in Europe

This week I am working and teaching in London.  While here I had the opportunity to interview my colleague at Cognizant, Ved Sen on the state of enterprise mobility in Europe.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJwYxJAMYQ8&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Enterprise Mobility, Digital Transformation and Work Spaces

I had the opportunity to spend some time recently with Asure Software's VP/GM of EMEA and APAC, Nigel Clarke, and to discuss how digital transformation is impacting work spaces and the mobile workforce.   In years past I attended facility management conferences and developed mobile apps to help manage facilities, assets, rooms, inspections, materials and supplies.  We were counting and inspecting physical objects.  Today, however, there are digital transformations taking place in this industry.

Today, companies less often require employees to work in the physical office (sorry folks at Yahoo!). Often equipment is not associated with a location, but moves to where it is needed at any given time. When people do come into the office there is a need to find a desk, conference room, video or projection equipment and to use additional services to ensure their use of the office is optimized and efficiently managed.

Every day the office layout and who is using the office and rooms may differ.  This requires several different strategies:

1. Real-time communications with on site teams
2. Agile building, parking and network access
3. Digitization of a physical building into digital spaces
4. Digitization of time that can be carved into increments that can be manipulated and reserved
5. Associating digital times with digital spaces
6. Agile room layouts
7. Collaborating with third parties to provide services for particular spaces and times
8. Mobile apps for the mobile workforce

All of these changes must be supported on mobile apps.  Time, space, temperatures, resources, equipment, access, parking, networks and services can now be reserved and managed from thousands of miles away in a cloud computing environment.  This requires a real-time system and an office layout conducive to agile use that can quickly be transformed to meet different needs on different days.

These can all be coordinated digitally via mobile apps.  But that is just the beginning.  You could also arrange caterings services and reserve special equipment and car services associated with time and space from thousands of miles away.

Can you imagine trying to support this kind of environment without online and mobile apps?  What a nightmare.  Some companies may think their industry is not being impacted significantly today by digital transformation, but they're probably wrong.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Internet of Things - Under the Covers

My colleague, the always opinionated Peter Rogers, provides us with an "under-the-covers" look at how Android plans to power the Internet of Things.  Pull down your geek hat and hold on!!!
***
In previous articles I predicted that wearable technology would be powered by light-weight operating systems, citing Samsung’s decision to go with Tizen instead of Android. This decision was apparently based on battery life and user interface considerations. However, just after the article hit the Internet, Google executive Sundar Pichai announced the Android SDK for Wearables.  Android is used in many different ways as demonstrated by Kindle and Nokia X (Nokia X seems to have deployed a Windows 8 look and feel on top of Android). Indeed, for this very reason Android 4.4 has moved a lot of key APIs into the Cloud.

Wearable device developers are interested in the APIs available to them. If we turn the clock back to the J2ME days there was a dedicated API for user interfaces (UI) called javax.microedition.lcdui. This was a small UI library compared to today's Android libraries. Indeed you wouldn’t run Java Swing on Android, and likewise a wearable device needs a more constrained API for the UI. Even though a wearable device may be supporting a full operating system, it will most probably have a constrained UI and that means a slightly different programming style.

Recently there was an interesting post in the Washington Post supporting my claims that Wearable Devices and the Internet of Things requires different skill sets. The article listed the new skills required as data analytics and enterprise data analysis. Basically you need to know how to capture the data, read the data and then apply the data to your specific business domain. Surely real-time analytics and visualisation tools will become critical in the wearable space and this is where a new term called Fog Computing has been introduced by Cisco.

“Fog Computing is a paradigm that extends Cloud computing and services to the edge of the network. Similar to Cloud, Fog provides data, compute, storage, and application services to end-users. The distinguishing Fog characteristics are its proximity to end-users, its dense geographical distribution, and its support for mobility. Services are hosted at the network edge or even end devices such as set-top-boxes or access points. By doing so, Fog reduces service latency, and improves QoS, resulting in superior user-experience. Fog Computing supports emerging Internet of Everything (IoE) applications that demand real-time/predictable latency (industrial automation, transportation, networks of sensors and actuators). Thanks to its wide geographical distribution the Fog paradigm is well positioned for real time big data and real time analytics. Fog supports densely distributed data collection points, hence adding a fourth axis to the often mentioned Big Data dimensions (volume, variety, and velocity).”

In trying to predict what will be in the Android Wearable Software Developer Kit (SDK) then it is very interesting to note that Google acquired Android Smartwatch vendor WIMM Labs last year. WIMM Labs released its first Smartwatch back in 2011, the WIMM One, which ran Android and included an SDK for developers. Interestingly the WIMM website has removed all of the documentation for the SDK but a lot of WIMM One developers downloaded it before it got taken offline and so were able to get a potential glimpse of what Google is planning. WIMM had a Micro App Store which featured the following categories: entertainment; productivity; health;  shopping; travel; utilities; watch faces; and games.  As well as a Software Developer Kit there was also a Hardware Developer Kit which allows you to make accessories that wrap around the WIMM module.

The Wearable SDK itself will obviously have changed from its origins of the WIMM One SDK but it is certainly interesting rooting around through the API. The comm.wimm API extends the Android 2.X API and it is assumed that only the WIMM API itself can be used. There are some very interesting features offered for sure: notifications; custom watch faces; widgets; network services; sync services; calendars; broadcast events; weather; world clocks; location fixes; audio beeps; and various simple UI element.

One of the most interesting features is location information being retrieved from one or more sources, including built-in GPS, network based IP-location lookup, or a paired Android or Blackberry smartphone. This demonstrates that the Wimm One was able to perform even when not paired to a device and it was equally able to pair with a Blackberry.

If we look at the Android Wearable SDK then it is heavily rumoured to support Google Now, the voice control feature. It will also have to support Bluetooth Low Energy integration for communication with mobile devices for pairing and indeed detecting other sensors. It is also worth looking at the Google Glass Developer Kit (GDK) for a few hints at what may be revealed. The GDK was the alternative to the Mirror API which only really supported REST calls to a Google Cloud Service. The GDK is an add-on that builds on top of the Android SDK and offers the following: voice; gesture detector; and cards. It is safe to assume that voice control, local networking, touch control and potentially gesture control are all on cards. Google will show their hand at Google I/O and Samsung have already shown their Gear 2 devices at MWC. Next it is time for Apple to finally show their hand and we have to wonder if it will be a decisive one, quite possibly if history has taught us anything.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

The Impact of Digital Transformation and Mobility on Learning and Publishing

Have you ever considered how the traditional author, teacher, textbook and student relationship will change when digitally transformed and mobile device enabled?  What if writing a textbook is no longer enough for an author?  What if all textbooks, in order to be widely sold and used, also required a mobile app, audio and video editions and an integrated social platform?  In other words SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) enabled.

What if the content in textbooks were digitally enabled and viewable on a tablet computer that was GPS enabled?  Could you tap into data from Google Field Trips, http://www.fieldtripper.com/, to make the textbook location-aware.  Could the study of a period in history automatically identify nearby historical points of interest, photos or videos related to the content?  Could your surroundings, now digitized, augment your reality?

What if before reading the book, you took a short assessment to determine which learning styles are most suited to you?  What if that learning style followed you across all online textbooks?  What if all content and presentations changed based upon your assessed and recorded learning styles or the recorded preferences of the reader?  Code Halos, the data about each teacher, tutor and student could be saved and used to help students learn better and faster, and for teachers and tutors to be more efficient and effective. Could there be six different versions of each textbook based upon the different learning styles?

Could gamification be introduced into textbooks to motivate assignment completion and compliance? Could better scores unlock levels in an associated learning game?

What if an online AILA (Artificial Intelligent Learning Agent) followed you across all textbooks and online content and helped present the content in a manner most suitable to your learning style?

What if every online textbook was automatically socialized, and students could discuss each page and subject and link out to additional information?  What if there were all kinds of complementary content and tutorials available that were both free and for a fee?  Everything from videos, podcasts and additional help notes.

For teachers, what if suggested assignments, quizzes and tests (and optional online automatic grading) were available for use by registered teachers.  This would make the textbook more appealing if the teachers could be more efficient with their time when they used it.

What if AI (artificial intelligent) learning agents helped the teacher remember the student’s details, and the student’s most suitable learning style and history each time an assignment was reviewed?  Could this intelligence help the teacher better adapt his/her teaching style to the individual student?

What if the textbook was really just a platform for learning.  One that included text, images, audio, video, games and assorted other learning tool?

Could students with the same learning styles be aligned with online teachers and tutors that specialize in those styles?

I hope these questions will help you ponder the incredible impact that the transformation from physical to digital will have in the learning and publishing industries and in others.

It is important for every company to be thinking through digital transformation and how it will impact their specific company, market and industry in the very near future.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interviews: Microsoft's Rob Tiffany

I met up with and interviewed Microsoft's Rob Tiffany in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago at the Mobile World Congress 2014.  The problem, however, is I ran out of hard drive space on my iPhone and only captured half of the interview so today we are back for the rest via a recorded Google+ Hangout OnAir. In this interview we discuss Microsoft's current enterprise mobility solution offerings and what the future is likely to bring.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLRJWJeJ7JY&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share

) 

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interview: Catavolt's CEO George Mashini

I had the privilege today of interviewing Catavolt's CEO George Mashini.  In this interview he shares his insights and opinions on enterprise mobility, cloud based services, trends and strategies. Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG_G6WO9H24&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share


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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Expert Interviews: Mi-Co CEO/Co-Founder Dr. Greg Clary

I spend most of my time these days researching, writing and teaching about digital transformations in businesses that include topics on Code Halos, social, mobile, analytics and cloud.  I can't think of a clearer case of digital transformation than converting paper forms, used for mobile data capture, to mobile apps.  In this interview the Co-Founder of Mi-Co, www.mi-corporation.com, Dr. Greg Clary explains the complexities and challenges, and ROIs that come from digital transforming these processes.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmFeSQAfW1I&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

)

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation 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

***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 worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.