The Theory of Everything (Sort of) and Mobile Technologies

Sometime back I read an article in the New York Times titled, The Theory of Everything (Sort of) by Thomas L. Friedman.  Here is an excerpt, "Thanks to cloud computing, robotics, 3G (4G now) wireless connectivity, Skype, Facebook, Google, Linkedin, Twitter, the iPad and cheap Internet enabled smartphones the world has gone from connected to hyper-connected...  This is the single most important trend in the world today.  And it is a critical reason why, to get into the middle class now, you have to study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker than ever before.  All this globalization is eliminating more and more "routine" work- the sort of work that once sustained a lot of middle-class lifestyles."

I suggest the same is true for the enterprise.  The enterprise must study harder, work smarter and adapt quicker that ever before.  The world is changing and mobile technologies are going to revolutionize the way companies work.

In the last several enterprise mobility survey polls that I have reviewed, more and more companies plan to use mobile technologies as a driver for change.  Here are the results from my latest report, Mid-Year Enterprise Mobility 2012 report:

Question: Is your company planning to change or re-engineer business processes to take advantage of mobile technologies?

No Changes - 5%
Few Changes - 27%
Many Changes - 48%
Revolutionize the business - 20%

Companies cannot simply watch from the sidelines as others improve their competitive positions by implementing mobile solutions.  Enterprise mobility is not a passing fancy, but a technology revolution that will be here for the rest of your career.

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

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.

The Changing ROI of Enterprise Mobility

I remember just a few years ago companies would buy a ruggedized mobile handheld computer and then load just one software application on it.  The entire justification and projected ROI for purchasing the $3,000 ruggedized device was derived from just one app.

Times have changed!  Now you can purchase a $299 smartphone and load dozens of apps on it.  Let's think about this for a minute.  What if you had the following mobile apps on your smartphone:

• CRM
• Mobile BI
• Work Order Management
• Scheduling
• Enterprise Asset Management
• Enterprise Content Management
• Time Sheets
• HR
• Turn-by-Turn Navigation
• Knowledge Management
• Collaboration (Yammer, Jive, Chatter, etc)
• Product Catalogs, and Marketing Information
• Sales Orders and Credit Card Processing
• Etc

How would you write an ROI justification?  It is not an efficiency and productivity story alone, rather it is a whole new way of conducting business isn't it?  The ROI is on the business model, not just individual apps and devices.

The debate in boardrooms today should be on the merits of the new "mobile" business model, not only on the ROI of each individual app alone.  The ROI must also consider the opportunity costs of not doing it.  What if your competitors are embracing the new "mobile" business models and you are not.  There is an economic cost to that decision, or lack of a decision as well.

Where does your company stand?  Less than half of enterprises surveyed in the past few months have an enterprise-wide mobility strategy.  If a company is going to embrace mobility, and it has the potential of revolutionizing their business model, then I believe companies should be placing a higher priority on this effort.

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

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.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Latecia Mills

I must confessed to rarely having a female mobility expert included in my Mobile Expert Video Series, so today I am particularly happy to publish a video interview that I conducted a couple of weeks ago with a 20-year veteran of enterprise mobility Latecia Mills, VP of Global Services and Support with DSI.

DSI has been in business for over 30 years, and they have been implementing mobile solutions for over 20 years.  It is not every day that I get to interview someone with that much real-world experience.  DSI grew out of the heavy duty warehouse management and manufacturing industries, and this year they made it onto Gartner's Magic Quadrant for MADPs (mobile application development platforms).

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

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.

Mobile Expert Video Series: Gary Delancy

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of sitting down and talking with a 20-year enterprise mobility veteran, Gary Delancy, VP of Product Development at DSI.  Twenty years ago mobility was mostly relegated to warehouse management.  Since then DSI has become a power house enterprise mobility company in many different industries, including a strong presence in manufacturing environments.  This year, for the first time, Gartner has included them in their Magic Quadrant for MADP (mobile application development platforms).  They also have a long history of integrating enterprise mobility with M2M (machine to-machine) environments.

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

Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Mobile Workforce, Enterprise Mobility and Mobile Workflows

Figure1 - MADP

I work with and teach mobile strategies to a lot of large utility companies around the world.  Over the past few years I have been hearing a similar concern from these companies.  They have an aging workforce, and many of their most experienced experts are nearing retirement age.  They are very concerned with losing the institutional knowledge these workers have gained through their many years on the job.  This wisdom is in their heads but rarely documented.

It seems to me one solution would be to start developing "mobile workflows" junior technicians could access and use.  These "mobile workflows" could be developed by experienced experts for the use of more junior service technicians.  These "mobile workflows" could be integrated into mobile applications by way of dispatched service tickets/work orders.

Figure 2 - Mobile Workflow
Configurator

What I am proposing is a layer in mobile applications that includes "mobile workflows."  These mobile workflows will clearly instruct the service technician as to the necessary "steps" involved in successfully and efficiently completing a job.

The MADP (mobile application development platform) would have a "mobile workflow" configurator in the RAD (rapid application development) component (see figure 1).  You would be able to associate specific tasks in your mobile workflow (see figure 2) with fields in your mobile client application.

What is the value?  The junior technician receives his/her next assigned work order and it comes attached with a configured mobile workflow.  They review it to understand exactly what needs to be done.  Let me provide an example.  A service technician receives a work order to maintain an escalator in a busy store during the Christmas shopping season.  The mobile workflow identifies the necessary tasks associated with this job.

1. Schedule the escalator maintenance with the store.
2. Make sure the store security is notified and aware of the time and date of the work.
3. Make sure you have job site access instructions.
4. Make sure you know where you should park your vehicle.
5. Set-up the mandated type of safety barrier.
6. Set-up the mandated type of warning signs.
7. Turn-off the escalator and lock it.
8. Bring the right tools -  identify the right tools.
9. Bring the right specialized equipment.
10. Bring the right equipment manuals.
11. Photograph the job site and safety measures.
12. etc.

These steps are made up from the accumulated knowledge of your most experienced company experts.  These mobile workflows can be integrated into a mobile workflow layer in your mobile application client.  Again, each step in the mobile workflow could be associated with a field in the mobile client application.

We all know these kinds of workflows exist in our ERPs.  I have found myself filling in numerous web based forms lately and can see there are obvious workflows built into the process.  So I asked myself, "Why haven't we done the same thing for mobile applications?"  

When I was the CEO of a mobile application company, we showed our clients how we could customize workflows in a mobile application.  In field A, if your answer is "YES", it jumps to form 17, if your answer is "NO", then it jumps to form 4.  This was a workflow configured into a mobile application.  I suggest a step beyond that.  I propose the "mobile workflow" be assigned to the work order/job, rather than the mobile application.  I propose that if a service technician receives six different work orders per day, each unique work order includes a unique mobile workflow specific to the particular tasks required.

I wrote an article earlier this year, and then discussed it with Israel Beniaminy (see this mobile expert video) on the topic of "mobility will ultimately go away."  What did we mean?  We suggested that mobility will soon become a commodity.  It will no longer be something novel.  All applications will be mobile.  So how would a mobile software vendor differentiate themselves?  I propose by developing additional layers of functionality in the mobile applications, including mobile workflows.

What do you think?  Is this a good idea?

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

Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Strategic Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Changing Times for Enterprise Mobility

As I was running this morning in the Boise foothills, OK walking at a brisk pace, I was pondering how fast enterprise mobility is evolving.  Today, HTML5 and Android security are critical check box items for any company considering standardizing on a mobile application development platform and a mobile application management platforms.

The MAM (mobile application management) and MDM (mobile device management) vendors have all been working hard to bring order out of chaos in the Android space as demonstrated by this recent announcement, "SOTI Inc., an Enterprise Mobility Device Management (MDM) vendor, has unveiled new technology that enables corporations to consistently manage security policies across Android devices from all manufacturers."  It has been a challenge for most vendors to provide enterprise quality security for Android devices due to the many different versions of the Android OS that manufactures use.  Most vendors would only support or secure a limited subset early on.  It seems vendors are becoming more confident in their abilities these days, as measured by the number of recent announcements around securing Android devices that I read about.

On the topic of HTML5, most vendors now have an HTML5 hybrid solution and strategies that enables them to add proprietary features to a container that supports HTML5.  This container enables them to solve problems and address challenges that may not yet have been addressed in the HTML5 standard.

I would advise that you regularly get briefing from your mobile vendors of choice about developments in these two areas as they are fast moving.  I would also recommend against purchasing from a mobile vendor that does not have HTML5 or HTML5 hybrid solution or strategy, and have answers to how you can secure Android devices.

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

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

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility and Sybase Unwired Platform Groups

Read The Mobility News Weekly

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.