Covid-19, Demographics, Risk Analysis and Mobile Apps

Finally, it seems we have accumulated enough data from Covid-19 cases to focus in on how we can properly and strictly protect our vulnerable populations and reopen our economies.  We know that if a person has underlying health problems* they have a far higher risk so need additional protections.  We know that people over 65 years old and people living in long-term care facilities are more at risk.  In fact, the most recent update from Idaho's Covid-19 statistics show 58 of the 60 reported deaths occurring in individuals 60 or older.  If a person does not fit any of these three high risk categories, then their risk of getting seriously ill from Covid-19 is small.  This data seems to suggest that giving different guidance to different segments of our population may have merit.

The 18 Laws for Winning with Data, Speed and Mobility

I have given nine presentations in the past 10 days on mobile and data strategies.  I have met with companies in the energy, media, insurance and banking industries.  I have brainstormed and discussed these laws for winning with data, speed and mobility, and they have held up.  In the age of mobile me, where information is the prize, a new set of laws and strategies are required to win.  In my new report, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me," I discuss many of these laws and how they are applied in mobile apps and mobile commerce.

1. Data is the modern commercial battlefield.
2. Information dominance is the strategic goal.
3. Real-time operations and tempos are the targets.
4. Advantages in speed, analytics, business operational tempos determine the winners.
5. Real-time business speed is enabled by advances in mobile information, sensors and wireless communications.
6. Competition is now focused on optimizing information logistics systems (the systems involved in maximizing information advantages).
7. Businesses that can “understand and act with speed” dominate those which are slower. 
8. In order to win or gain superiority over competitors in the age of information, you must operate  information logistics systems at a faster tempo, and get inside your competitor's decision curves. (Adapted from John Boyd)
9. Situational awareness enables insights, innovations and operations to be conducted faster and at lower cost .
10. Principle of Acceleration & Mobility – As demand for mobile apps increases, an even greater demand for changes will occur across business processes, operations and IT.
11. The more data that is collected and analyzed, the greater the economic value and innovation opportunity it has in aggregate.
12. Data has a shelf-life, and the economic value of data diminishes quickly over time.
13. The economic value of information multiplies when combined with context and right time delivery.
14. Mobile apps provide only as much value as the systems behind them.
15. Full Spectrum Information: Winners will dominate by collecting, transmitting, analyzing, reporting and automating decision making faster and better.
16. The size of opponents and their systems and platforms are less representative of power today, than the quality of their sensor systems, mobile communication links and their ability to use information to their advantage.
17. Information is a new asset class, in that it has measurable economic value.  There are significant strategic, operational and financial reasons for investing in it, and optimizing it. (Douglas Laney, Gartner)
18. If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan in unimportant. ~ Robert Leonard

These laws need to be known, and their relevance intimately understood and applied to every aspect of business and IT today.

Download the new report "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me" - http://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/Cutting-Through-Chaos-in-the-Age-of-Mobile-Me-codex1579.pdf

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Analyst and World Traveler

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***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.

Connecting the Strategic to the Tactical - Enterprise Mobility

There is a term, revolution in military affairs, that when searched brings up many interesting articles that directly relate to enterprise mobility and business transformation.  One article in particular found at http://www.defencejournal.com/2000/sept/military.htm and written by Sharjeel Rizwan offers deep insights.

Here is one of the article concepts as interpreted by me - mobile technologies permit a direct connection and data exchange between the strategic and the tactical levels of an organization.  Many layers of  management hierarchy, IT infrastructure and paper based reporting processes can be eliminated and huge savings and speed of data delivery can occur with mobile technologies.  These capabilities permit changes in processes, organizations and strategies, which enables agility, speed, productivity increases and efficiency gains.

Let me share a quote from Matt Green, VP of Product Management with Software AG, "Imagine a single activity stream that carries an alert every time a customer calls in with a product issue.  For the first time the customer sales rep, the R&D organization, the consulting organization, and the customer support rep can all opt to receive the same notification.  The sales rep knows that his customer is having an issue at the same time that R&D reads about it and at the same time that the on-site consultant gets it.  The visibility and transparency that this gives allows each participant to work together as a team and to work as a unified team with the customer."  That is a great example of shared situational awareness!

How many good ideas from the tactical part of a business never reach the strategic level because of politics, laziness, ego, lack of time, ignorance or they simply get lost in the noise?  How many strategic messages get missed or diluted trying to filter through all the layers of management before they reach the tactical teams?  With both mobile technologies and the effective use of enterprise social collaboration solutions many of these problems can be resolved.

Here is more from Matt Green, "People used to say that email was collaboration.  Then chat became collaboration.  Then wiki’s came to the scene as an attempt to work together more efficiently.  New social platforms will break the mode entirely in 2013 and dramatically increase how people work together with computers and mobile devices.”

I think of the Pony Express implemented in the United States during the 19th century for mail delivery.  The Pony Express had more than 100 stations, 80 riders, and between 400 and 500 horses.  It lasted only 18 months but during that time riders covered 650,000 miles and carried 34,753 pieces of mail.   This legendary system lasted only 18 months.  Why?  The telegraph replaced them.  If you could instantly send a message across the country, why use expensive horse-based middleware?

How many of our companies are still using horse-based middleware and managing as if we were using horse-based middleware?  Real-time communications, real-time visibility, real-time collaboration completely changes the game.  Are you playing?

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

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Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and SMAC analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Competitive Decision Making and Enterprise Mobility

The late US Air Force Colonel, and great military strategist John Boyd talked a lot in his workshops about "competitive decision-making."  He taught that individuals that could think better and faster than their opponents had a great advantage.  I agree with Boyd, and believe that implementing mobile solutions in the enterprise can facilitate this advantage.

Last year's report by the Aberdeen Group titled Mobility in ERP 2011 also touched on this point with three specific statements:

1. Getting the right information, to the right people, so they can make the right decisions is the driving force behind mobilizing the workforce. 
2. Why is there a need for mobility?  Much of it is related to volatility.  The need to be able to react as quickly as possible to issues without being tethered to a desktop.
3. Mobile solutions should provide workers with information to make good and timely decisions.

Aberdeen Group describes the value of mobile solutions as - it helps you make "right, good and timely decisions, and to react as quickly as possible to issues."  That sounds like competitive decision-making to me.

How do you put these kinds of values into an ROI for enterprise mobility?  Boyd said, "How one thinks is critical to your success in competition.  Well trained and well-educated people, who think well and quickly are the most important assets."  I suggest that mobile solutions and up-to-date information shared on mobile devices can help well-trained people react quickly to issues.

Boyd further taught that competitive decision-making enables the benefit of compressing time and using it as an ally.  What he meant was the ability to get more done in the same amount of time.  "Advantages in observation and orientation (OODA) enable a tempo in decision-making and execution that outpaces the ability of your competition to react effectively."  Advantages in observation and orientation can be providing by having real-time data exchanges, real-time business analytics, and connect mobile apps.

I ask the difficult question again, "How does one show an ROI on enterprise mobility solutions by providing quicker, faster, better thinking?"

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Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC (Social, MOBILE, Analytics and Cloud), Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Kevin Benedict's What's New in HTML5 - Week of August 5, 2012

It is interesting reviewing the news around HTML5 each week and analyzing everyone's opinions.  I can say that over the past few weeks the majority of articles, quotes and comments describe HTML5 as needing to be used in a hybrid approach.  HTML5 seems to have too many limitations for many complex enterprise mobility applications on its own, but with a good HTML5 container you can overcome these.

Now for the news...

Edith Yeung, head of marketing at Dolphin Browser, states there is no shortage of great apps out there based on HTML5; however, some hurdles do remain.  She provides five reasons HTML5 apps are hard to monetize in this article in Mashable Tech.  The comments following the article provide differing opinions.  Read OriginalContent

According to a recent report from Strategy Analytics, HTML5-based Web apps do not pose a threat to the massive ecosystems that revolve around native apps.  Analyst Josh Martin states “HTML5 is not the future of apps. While developers dream of ‘write once run everywhere’ the fragmented support for and limited APIs within HTML5 make this impossible.”  Read Original Content

One of the major benefits of HTML5 web apps is that HTML5 enables developers to build an application once and then run it on multiple platforms.  One of the limitations is that HTML5 web apps don't utilize the features that make smartphones and tablets so popular, such as multi-touch capabilities, cameras and push notifications.  Read Original Content

People magazine has developed a new mobile site, utilizing HTML5 “to ease design and delivery across devices”.  The new mobile site offers the complete desktop content.  Read Original Content

While not endorsing HTML5 mobile as being the best approach in every situation, SAP’s Gabriel Alvarez provides a demonstration of how easy it is to develop an alternative to native apps using jQuery Mobile and BSP in his article “HTML5 Mobile with SAP - A Lot Easier Than You Think, Part II” posted on SAP’s Community Network.  Read Original Content

The W3C has named four new editors for the HTML5 specification following the split with the WHATWG group.  The new editors will be in charge of maintaining the W3C’s formal HTML5 specification.  Read Original Content

Mavenlink has launched a new HTML5-based mobile application to enable users to access their workforce collaboration platform on any mobile device.  Read Original Content

Paul Krill discusses nine development tools for obtaining the best that HTML5 has to offer in this article in InfoWorld “9 programming tools for maximizing HTML5”.  Read Original Content

ABI Research recently released a report analyzing trends in mobile app downloads. In the short term, native app downloads are expected to increase; however, the report finds the long term trend is negative, indicating HTML5-based web apps are playing a role in the slow-down in demand for native apps.  Read Original Content

Many speakers at the recent Black Hat security conference held in Las Vegas expressed concerns that as developers are turning their attention to HTML5, not enough attention has been paid to the possible risks.  Shreeraj Shah of Indian security company Blueinfy stated “There's a lot of opportunity for hijacking the browsers with HTML5.  You can compare HTML5 with a small operating system running in your browser."  Read Original Content

MoSync and InMobi have formed a partnership to enable HTML5 and JavaScript developers to use in-app ads in cross-platform native mobile apps.  Read Original Content

appMobi has launched openBuild, a free cloud service that allows any developer to compile HTML5 code into a distributable "hybrid" app.  The new service supports all HTML5 and JavaScript frameworks, giving developers who use jQuery, jqMobi, Enyo, Meteor, Sencha Touch or any other mobile-ready framework a free tool for compiling and packaging their HTML5 code into store-ready hybrid apps.  Read Original Content

GIS developer Atlas Cartographic Technologies has developed a new product, Evernav, an HTML5 navigation tool that will allow advertisers to place their ads on the map, thus “monetizing the app traffic and meeting one of the most pressing needs of the developer community”.  Read Original Content

SAP and Sencha have teamed up to make it easier for developers to create HTML5 apps using Sencha Touch 2 and the new OData Connector for SAP.  Read Original Content

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst, Mobile Strategy Consultant and SAP Mentor Alumnus

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

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Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

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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 Strategies, PIOs, Optimized Intersections and Patterns of Life, Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, we discussed PIOs (performance impact objects) and "optimized intersections" as they relate to mobile technologies and the mobile workforces  Here in Part 2 we are going to discuss "patterns of life" capabilities and how they relate to business analytics and decision making.

In the intelligence community, patterns of life refers to the study or analysis of the patterns observed in a person's or object's life. For example, a building may be observed over time through the camera of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and people can be seen entering and leaving the building at particular times.  The people leaving the building drive specific vehicles and come and go from specific locations.  Over the course of a month or longer, patterns and participants can become clear and this offers valuable information to the analyst.

A company does not require a UAV to be able to observe "patterns of life."  GPS and workforce tracking solutions, customer behaviors, data capture technologies and smartphones enable you, over a period of time to observe the patterns of life of your workforce, vehicles, equipment and customers.  Here is a list of pattern of life examples:

• Hours equipment is in operation, moving and sitting idle.
• Workforce driving habits.
• Time of day that customers want deliveries.
• Route speeds between delivery points at different times of the day
• Locations where company vehicles refuel.
• Places where service technicians purchase parts, materials and supplies.
• Driving time vs. billable work time.
• Ideal locations for company warehouses, suppliers and sales offices based upon proximity to work and customers. 

Once this data is collected and analyzed, patters of life can emerge that were never before recognized.  The next step is to represent these patterns on a map.  Barry Barlow, a Director at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) says, "If you go into any operations center today you will see people using a Google Earth representation of what’s going on in the world."  Just seeing the patterns and activities visually represented is powerful.

Patterns of Life only emerge if you have visibility into operations in the field.  This data is most often collected through GPS vehicle and equipment tracking, and mobile device data collection.

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KevinThis ThisThiddddd Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility 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 Apps and the Marriage of My Virtual and Physical Worlds

Greetings Great Mobility Minds!  In January 2010, I asked the world for a mobile application that would help me reduce my personal risks and improve my life experiences.  Nearly 2 years later, I still do not know if this mobile solution exists.  So again, I am asking the great minds of mobility to point me in the right direction if this solution does exists.  If it doesn't exist, I encourage the great minds that are also great entrepreneurs to develop this product.  Here again, is my original blog article, with minor edits, from 2010.

I love traveling, hiking and reading good books. I enjoy growing tomatoes and pondering religious and philosophical themes. I love my iPad and iPhone. I crave Thai food. I love drinking coffee in a comfortable chair and reading the New York Times. I want a mobile application that will connect my lifestyle preferences to a map, predict my safety, and suggest locations conducive to my lifestyle choices and interests.

I would like to arrive in a new city and open my mobile application and have it suggest great walking tours and hiking trails that were close to highly rated coffee shops, Thai restaurants, bookstores and public gardens. I would want to see these locations on a map with route options that predict relative safety for those using the various routes.  I would love to be shown several options all based on my preferences.

The application could also show me user comments and ratings of those locations, and overlay crime and safety statistics of those geographic areas so I can weigh the risk of going there. Is the Thai food worth getting mugged, hit by a car or a falling tree limb?
While we are at it, let's predict the clothes I should wear based upon the weather forecast and time of year!

I can see it now - you should be able to set different safety ratings. You can configure the mobile application to show just the safest locations based upon accident, crime and health inspection data, or you can live on the wild side.This kind of mobile application is taking the next step.  It is converging the virtual world with my physical world and adding my preferences and interests.  It is being predictive.  It is using real time analytics based on "big data."

Does this mobile app exist?  I look forward to hearing from you!!!

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Kevin Benedict, Independent Mobile Industry Analyst, Consultant and SAP Mentor Volunteer

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility 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 Applications that Blend Data and Services from Multiple Sources

Research In Motion's co-CEOs Mike Lasaridis and Jim Balsillie recently stated that software depth, breadth and integration will drive future device sales, noting the potential that lies in applications blending data and services from multiple sources.

This is important. I have been writing for some time about convergent devices, however, it is most often in the context of mobile devices and hardware accessories like GPS, bar code readers, digital cameras, voice memos, WiFi and other Bluetooth devices. The blending of data and services from multiple sources combined with convergent hardware is even much bigger.

Let's think about a simple scenario -

1. Field service technician (X) orders a part for a furnace online from his smartphone. He will complete the job when it arrives.
2. The part is shipped and an alert email notifies field service technician X which day it will arrive.
3. Field service technician X notifies the customer via email about the status and notes this information in the mobile CRM application.
4. When the part arrives, the dispatcher gives it to a field service technician Y as Y is is going to work at a location close to where field service technician X is working.
5. Field service technician X is wirelessly sent a service ticket to finish the job, and notified that the part is with field service technician Y at the following GPS coordinates.
6. Field service technician X and Y meet up and the job is completed.

In this example, the field service technicians have smartphones with mobile Internet, wireless work order dispatch, GPS integration, mobile email, online parts tracking and mobile CRM. They have blended data from multiple sources and services.

The more business processes that are mobilized, the more mobile data services will be used by the mobile workforce. This will require faster and more powerful smartphones. Mobile enterprise application platforms will need to be able to manage and integrate data from multiple sources and integrate them into one mobile application. This requires some interesting software development.

I believe that the integration of multiple sources of data and services begs for mobile analytics. Business analytics will interpret the data and recommend action steps based upon this analysis. I invite software developers who have expertise in these areas to comment.

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Author Kevin Benedict
Independent Mobile Strategist, Sales, Marketing and Business Consultant
www.linkedin.com/in/kevinbenedict
http://kevinbenedict.ulitzer.com/
http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/
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