Mobile Commerce Strategies - Contextually Relevant Opportunities, Moments and Environments

In the early 1990s major retailers began investing in data analytics to better manage their stores and warehouses by analyzing individual store sales.  This insight gave them a perspective on the needs of the local market.

Retailers soon advanced in their use of analytics and added external factors for consideration and planning like demographics, weather, geography, local events and competitor's promotions and campaigns.

When customer loyalty programs tied to POS (point of sale) systems were implemented, retailers were able to start understanding individual customers through their transaction histories - at least what individuals bought from their stores.  The limitation, however, was this data was known and analyzed post-sales. There were no mechanisms in place to alert retailers to help customers during their path-to-purchase journeys.

Mobile computing technologies and wireless internet access introduced the age of mobile commerce. Mobile commerce enables retailers unprecedented capabilities to collect and analyze data from a wide array of sensors embedded in mobile devices.  The challenge then shifted from how to collect data, to how to get the user's permission and approval to collect and use data.  This is not always easy.

When asked in surveys, customers voice opposition to retailer's collecting data on them.  This, however, does not align with other survey results that show customers value a personalized digital experience.  You cannot personalize a digital experience based on data without data.  This dichotomy must be recognized by retailers and incorporated into their customer education plans and strategies.

Personalized digital experiences show respect and professionalism to customers.  Treating

individuals as if they belong to one homogeneous market is a recipe for failure.  It reflects an attitude that getting to know you is not worth the time or investment.  As more commerce moves from face-to-face interactions to mobile commerce, service and support can easily be lost in the bits and bytes. Retailers that try to offer mobile commerce without relevant personalization are short sighted and will ultimately fail.

Winners in mobile commerce will implement Code Halos (the data available about every person, object and organization) business strategies to find business meaning in data and to provide beautiful customer experiences.  They will also seek to triangulate three sources of data:

1. Digital data from online and mobile activities
2. Physical data from sensors and the IoT (internet of things, wearables, telematics, etc.)
3. Customer loyalty and rewards programs data

Mobile commerce winners will seek contextually relevant opportunities, moments and environments (CROME) that can trigger personalized content at exactly the right time.  Alerting me to available food options in a city I left yesterday is not useful.  I need food options in the city I am in now. Context is time and location sensitive.

The competitive field in mobile commerce tomorrow will be around personalization, context and real-time operational tempos.  Can your legacy IT environment be upgraded to compete in the world of tomorrow?

Stay tuned for a major report I am writing on this subject to be published soon.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

The Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

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Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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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.

Retail Evolution and Mobility

Farmers once sold their harvest bounty directly to their customers from beneath the branches of their fruit trees.  Customers had a direct face-to-face relationship with the farmer and could express their preferences and demonstrate their buying patterns to the farmer.  Over time farmers developed means to preserve and package their products, and to sell them through retail stores with large customer bases.  Sales expanded, but the personal relationship between the farmers and their customers, and an intimate understanding of each of their customers’ preferences was lost behind the retail shelves of big box stores.

Over time retail stores seeking market expansion and competitive differentiators developed mobile commerce apps that enabled them to sell products across a much wider geographic area, and to larger markets at any time of the day or night. This expanded sales potential, but in the process disconnected customers from the retailer’s physical store and location.

Mass marketing to mass audiences depersonalized the shopping experience.  It reduced the farmer’s products to mere commodities, and retail stores to logistic, warehouse and delivery centers.  It shifted competitive differentiators from customer service, retail locations, store layouts, local product selections and building designs to the designs of mobile commerce apps and websites, their performance and ease of navigation.  In addition, shipping costs and post-sales return policies moved from afterthoughts in fine print, to major competitive differentiators. Few were satisfied with these developments.  Customer service, brand loyalty and the consumer’s retail experience suffered.

Today, however, technologies and business strategies are converging again to offer hope these relationships can be restored, and the quality of the consumer’s mobile commerce experience improved.  The development of MyX (My Experience) personalization strategies and technologies are promising highly personalized digital experiences for consumers, and competitive advantages for businesses that can support them.

Creating highly personalized MyX mobile commerce apps for thousands and even millions of consumers requires business process re-engineering, new IT strategies, technologies, intelligent process automation and upgraded legacy systems and real-time personalized experiences. The competitive battlefields of retail are moving fast and demand urgent action today.

As consumers shift more of their work and personal time to mobile devices, we see rapid growth in both mobile marketing investments and the numbers of mobile commerce transactions.  Today 34 percent of global e-commerce transactions are mobile, even though 73 percent of survey participants continue to use desktop/laptops for most of their online shopping activities.  Mobile shoppers (those that shop online regularly using a smartphone or tablet) shop online more frequently than computer shoppers (those mostly using computers for online shopping activities), and as shoppers continue to migrate to mobile commerce these transaction numbers will see continuing growth.  The bottom line, mobile commerce is growing fast across all demographics and represents the future of retailing. Developing a strategy for personalizing users' experience is the key component.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

The Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Mobility, Sensors, Robotic Process Automation and the Principle of Acceleration

If you have spent any time working on IT projects you would have heard the comment, "The system is only as good as the data." It's an accurate and necessary statement, as it describes a prerequisite for many technological innovations. Many system designs fail in the face of reality. Reality is often a cloaked term for implementing a digital solution in a physical world without a sufficient understanding of how the physical world operates. This is one problem where sensors can really help.

Sensors fill in the blind spots in our systems and operations by measuring the physical world and providing us with the data. Where previously we operated on conjecture or false assumptions, sensors provide real data on how the real world functions. Operating on real data allows for new and different approaches and IT strategies. Strategies that utilize artificial intelligence or in more complex environments robotic process automation solutions. These automated processes or solutions know exactly what to do in a complex process given specific data. Robotic process automation offers operational speeds and levels of accuracy never before possible with humans alone.

In a world of ubiquitous mobility, businesses must learn to operate in real-time. Marketing, sales and commerce must all evolve to operate in real-time. Think about a LBS (location based service) where retailers want to inform their customers, via SMS, of nearby discounts or special offers. If the SMS is delayed, the customer will likely have moved on and the SMS will be irrelevant. Payments must operate in real-time. Real-time is a speed deemed impossible just a few years ago and remains a future goal for most companies. Today, however, with mobile devices and real-time wireless sensors updating complex systems, it is often the humans in a process that are the sources and causes of bottlenecks. Think about how slow a credit or debit card transaction would be if every transaction ended up in a human's inbox to review and approve before it could be completed. Global and mobile commerce would stop. The credit and debit card processes have long ago been automated. Enterprises are now feeling the pressure to automate more processes to enable an operational tempo than runs at the speed of mobility.

What does it take to automate and run at real-time operational tempos? First, it takes accurate data that has not expired on the shelf. Data that has expired on the shelf means the value it once had, no longer remains.  For example, the weather forecast for last weekend, is not useful for this weekend.  The value of the data has expired. Second, it takes IT infrastructures capable of supporting real-time transactions and processing speeds. Thirdly, it takes defining decision trees, business rules and processes to the level where they can be coded and automated. This will then enable artificial intelligence to be added and utilized. Once enough artificial intelligence is supported it can be connected together into a complete process for RPA (robotic process automation) to be supported. Now you have a chance at real-time speeds.

In summary, accurate and real-time data, especially in a physical environment, will require sensors to fill data blind spots and replace data that has expired on the shelf. This is just one of the many ways enterprises can take advantage of the IoT (Internet of Things).

Mobile apps are driving the demand for real-time interactions and information.  Real-time demand drives a need to change business processes and IT (digital transformations). Digital transformation increases the demand for real-time IT infrastructures and processes, which in turn will increase the demand for IoT and robotic process automations. In economic circles this is known as the principle of acceleration. If demand for a product or solution increases, then the production capabilities for supplying the demand increases at an even greater amount. What does that mean for us?  Mobile is going to drive all kinds of increasing changes in business and IT. Mobile technologies are having an acceleration effect across enterprises and IT today. This effect is driving digital transformation initiatives toward reaching the "real-time" benchmark that will require more enterprise IoT and robotic process automations to achieve real-time speeds.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Mobile Commerce, Speed, Operational Tempos and the Real-Time Enterprise, Part 2

This article is part 2 in a series I wrote and published in an intelligence and defense industry trade journal.  You can read Part 1 and Part 3 here.

Operational Tempos and Mobility

Supporting real-time mobility is more than just a technology issue. It also requires companies to support real-time operational tempos. An operational tempo, in the context of this article, is defined as the speed or pace of business operations. Achieving a satisfactory operational tempo in order to support real-time mobility is a significant challenge and extends far beyond the IT environment and deep into decision-making and business processes.

Changing an enterprise’s operational tempo requires strong leadership that can transform the entire organization. It often requires significant IT updates and upgrades, organizational changes, and reengineering business processes and decision-making matrixes to align with real-time demands.
The military strategist and U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd taught that in order to win or gain superiority over an opponent, one should operate at a faster tempo than the opponent. Today competition is increasingly around the quality of mobile users’ experiences, data management, integrated IT systems, and the speed with which data can be collected, analyzed, and utilized. Robert Leonhard in the book The Art of Maneuver writes on the role of tempo and speed, “If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan is unimportant.” The words “faster than you can execute” in Leonhard’s context refer to the tempo of operations.

In a fast changing world, mobile applications are competing for users and acceptance against the
status quo (traditional paper or desktop processes) and competitors’ apps. In order for organizations to be successful, they must deliver mobile applications that will meet the expectations of mobile users. A key component of a good mobile user experience, as we previously identified, is the speed with which it can load and respond to clicks, swipes, taps, commands, and queries. When asked in a survey how significant speed is to a user’s overall mobile application experience, 80 percent answered “very important."

Contextually Relevant Mobile Apps

It is well known that the more personalized and contextually relevant a mobile application or website is to the user, the more successful it will be at delivering a good user experience. Mobile apps and websites by their very nature are used on the move. That means the context in which a mobile device is being used changes rapidly. This data can be about locations, time, activities, history, and behaviors. This important data must quickly be collected, analyzed, and consumed by the mobile application fast enough to personalize the user’s experience before the context changes. Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work calls this Code Halos.  This refers to all the data about a person, object, or organization that can be used to personalize and contextualize a mobile and digital experience.

The data required to personalize and contextualize an experience takes time to process and utilize. It often requires many different integrated IT systems. It needs to be captured, transmitted, analyzed, and shared in real time with the mobile application and used to personalize the user experience. The speed with which all of these steps can be executed is important. No matter how great a mobile application’s design, delays in retrieving or interacting with back-office business or IT systems equate to negative user experiences. This is true for business-to-business, business-to-employee, or business-to-consumer mobile applications. In order to be successful, IT systems must operate at speeds quick enough to satisfy all of these different categories of mobile users. This requires a serious review of every IT, operational, and business process component that ultimately impacts the speed of mobile applications.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

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Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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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.

Mobile Commerce, Speed, Operational Tempos and the Real-Time Enterprise, Part 1

In a recent survey of eighty IT and business professionals, 73 percent responded that having optimized mobile applications and user experiences was “very important to critical” to their company’s future success.  In the same survey however, 78 percent reported their mobile strategies and plans were inhibited or limited by their existing IT environment. These results reveal a critical gap between the requirements for success and the reality of the obstacles enterprises are facing. Overcoming these challenges is the strategic imperative facing large enterprises today.

Enterprises understand that digital transformations being driven by mobile technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) are changing their industries and markets. Consumer behaviors are changing at speeds never before seen, which impacts how businesses operate and bring products to market. These rapid changes are forcing enterprises to change their strategies in R&D, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and sales. They are being forced to reconsider budget priorities and plans. They feel uneasiness. They are concerned with their ability to remain competitive, to understand real-time market trends, and to be agile and flexible enough to respond in time. They do know, however, that mobile technologies, sensors, and information management are at the forefront of these changes and are key components of any plans and strategies.

As organizations begin developing mobile strategies and implementing mobile apps, they quickly realize that simply developing and deploying basic mobile apps, infrastructure, and frameworks are not enough. They must push further and implement a real-time enterprise to remain competitive. This real-time requirement is at the root of many additional challenges. Eighty-four percent of survey participants reported they have IT systems too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobility, which negatively impacts mobile app performance and user experiences.

Jonathan Gabbai, Head of International Mobile Product at eBay, recently reported almost half of eBay’s transactions globally are now touched by mobile.  Users conduct product research, create wish lists, and complete transactions using mobile applications. With so much business now depending on mobile device, application, and website performance, the user experience must be outstanding in order to be competitive. An October 2014 Harris Poll survey found that 37 percent of U.S. smartphone and tablet owners now favor mobile shopping over in-store shopping, and Google reports that 79 percent of consumers now say they use a smartphone to help with shopping.  These numbers alone should move mobile technologies up the priority list of any business.

Although an increasing number of shoppers prefer the convenience of mobile shopping, they still remain hard to please. Forty-six percent of mobile shoppers say they will leave a mobile app or mobile site if it fails to load in three seconds or less, while 80 percent will leave if the mobile app or site is buggy or slow.  Consumers’ expectations on what defines a good user experience are changing fast, but seem always to begin and end with speed.

Continue to Part 2 and Part 3 in this series.

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst

Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Read more at Future of Work

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Intelligent Mobile Commerce Apps, Digital Transformation, Robots and Speed

Brains behind Mobile Applications

In 2002, I was developing mobile applications for blue collar workers. These apps were not intelligent.  They were basically forms on handheld computers or PDAs.  Yes, they could be made to understand, based on data inputs, which form(s) should be presented next, but that was about as smart as they got.  In those days, mobile apps were mostly used to query a simple database and for field data collection and sync.

Today, mobile apps on smartphones and tablets are the UXs (user interfaces) for very complex and intelligent systems, many of which today depend on software robots for automation and speed.  On a side note, yesterday, while I was attending a M6 Mobility Xchange conference, Intel said us humans are becoming part of the computer!

Mobile users are impatient.  They will wait less than 4 seconds on average for a mobile app to load, before closing it and moving on. You would hate to have developed the world's best designed mobile application, but then have mobile consumers abandon it, because some transaction engine, integrated product catalog or mobile security system made the process too slow.

Let me provide a scenario - a person uses a retailer's mobile application that is associated with a loyalty program.  The millisecond they load the application, software robots on the backend identify the device, look at all the accumulated data about the user's transaction histories, demographics, preferences, styles, etc., analyzes it, and then create a personalized experience which is uploaded to the mobile application.  No human is involved, but the experience is fast, beautiful and personal.  The products and discounts are optimized to appeal to my preferences.  It is an automated process that uses software robots to analyze and act in milliseconds.  This process is far more sophisticated and complex than the processes I used in 2002.

In 2002, to speed up a process we looked at just a few areas: the selected mobile device, wireless networks, device memory and the size of the database queries.  Today, entire business processes are being impacted and companies are being forced to rethink operations.  Legacy IT systems are being asked to perform at speeds beyond their capabilities.  Mobile solutions today, are more about the backend servers, processes, robots and strategies, than the actual mobile app.

The pressure to digitally transform and automate IT environments is growing.  Mobile applications, at first just clever add-ons to line of business applications, are now driving the train of digital transformation and pointing the way to the future for the entire enterprise.  The cost of a mobile application, may ultimately involve rethinking your entire IT environment.

As consumers increasingly shop online and mobile, competition will force businesses to redesign not only their IT environments, but their entire approach to marketing, sales, customer service and R&D as well.

Finally a big favor to ask - Will you take my 3-minute survey on mobile behaviors?  It is part of an in-depth mobile consumer behaviors and the retail experience report I am working on.

Survey - http://survey.constantcontact.com/survey/a07eb005ar4i9lm8rvk/start
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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

The Latest Trends in Mobile Commerce that You Can't Miss

In a recent survey, conducted by Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work and Cognizant's retail practice, we found that of 5,000 people who make online purchases at least a few times each year, 68.1% (3,918) make online purchases at least once a month.  Out of this group, here are the age breakdowns:

• 71.6% of 18-24 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 77.3% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
• 79.8% of 25-34 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 82.2% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
• 74.1% of 35-44 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 79.9% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
• 69.7% of 45-54 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 75.7% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
• 61.6% of 55-64 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 68.2% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
• 55.2% of 65+ year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 61.8% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.

These are interesting numbers, but not necessarily unexpected.  The biggest discoveries in the data are found in the behavioral differences of mobile consumers.  E-Commerce or website based online commerce has been around for over 15 years, and most retail companies have been interacting with their markets via websites long enough to have a solid understanding of online behaviors, but mobile commerce is still new and dynamic enough that uncertainties remain.

Here are a few interesting findings I discovered while researching for my latest report on Mobile Consumer Behaviors and the Retail Experience.

• 24% of 5,000 survey participants, report they research and/or compare prices using a mobile device while shopping in-store most of the time to every time - 44% rarely to never do.
• Survey participants that use mobile devices at least equal to desktops/laptops, shop online once or more a week at a rate 82% higher than desktop/laptop users.
• Mobile shoppers conduct research late at night at a rate 46.1% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers.  That makes sense, desktops are kind of heavy to take with you to bed.

After my first couple of passes through this new data, it is obvious there are significant behavioral differences between mobile shoppers, desktop/laptop shoppers and offline shoppers.  These behavioral differences, given the rapid growth of mobile commerce, must be understood and integrated into sales and marketing systems and strategies in order to maximize success.

If your company is involved in retail and mobile commerce and would like to meet and review all of my latest findings, please contact me here.

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Mobile Apps - Personalizing While Respecting Personal Privacy

All the data I have been reading this week suggest mobile users want and value a personalized experience on their mobile apps or mobile website, but on the other hand they don't like giving up their personal data.  That means it is imperative to find the right balance so a mutually satisfying relationship can be fostered.  As we all know, the more data you have on an individual, the easier it is to configure a personalized experience.

In a fresh Cognizant survey this week involving 5,000 participants, 68% reported they are willing to provide information on their gender, 55% their age, and 65% their brand and product preferences, but the majority are not in favor of volunteering much else.  That is an interesting answer since 80% of the same survey participants belong to one or more loyalty and rewards programs, and the biggest reasons according to 74% are the points or rewards for each dollar spent.  The second biggest motivation was automatic discounts for loyalty program members.  That tells us there is a willingness to give up some level of data privacy if the rewards and discounts are valuable enough.

Mobile retailers need to find out how much personal data is worth to their customer base.  They need to give up enough in points, rewards and discounts to motivate the sharing of more in depth personal data.  Collecting data on social media is not the answer.  In my research, consumers don't like the idea of any kind of data collection for marketing purposes from their social media activities.  It makes them mad.  Mad is not a feeling a consumer products company wants to elicit from their customers.

It seems to me that a bold, transparent process would be best.  The online and mobile retailer should place a value on data.  For example:

• Answer 10 specific questions about yourself and your preferences, and I will give you an automatic 10% off your purchases.
• Answer 20 specific questions about yourself and your preferences, and I will give you an automatic 20% off your purchases.
• Answer 30 specific questions about yourself and your preferences, and I will give you an automatic 30% off your purchases.

Whatever the real value, we all agree that there is a value to data.  Finding the real value, and transparently using that information to provide a personalized user experience, benefits all parties.

I think IoT (Internet of Things) sensors may also play a role in data collection and personalization. Rather than make people uncomfortable by tracking more personal data, sensors can track product data and that can be used to provide a personalized experience for the owner of the product.  Here is an example - a man buys a bass fishing boat and a service agreement.  Sensors (as defined in the service agreement) collects data on the boat engine.  Information such as:

• Locations
• Activities
• Usage profiles
• Hours of operations
• Data and time
• etc.

The boat engine information is added to the customer's profile to provide a "boater's profile" that can be used to personalize online and mobile experiences.

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict.

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Speed, Personalization, Analytics and Enterprise Information Systems

Ninety percent of 18-34 years old strongly value a personalized mobile and web experience, and eighty-two percent of of those over 45 years old value personalization.  What kind of personalization?  Forty-seven percent of shoppers prefer location or time-based personalization in mobile applications or websites.  In other words, don't show me things that are not available for me to purchase in Boise at this time, or that I don't like!  Given this survey data we all know what needs to be done and are taking the necessary steps to be able to offer personalization, right?  Wrong it seems.  Many companies are not using available data to understand their customers better so they can provide them with contextually relevant and personalized mobile application experiences.

My colleague, Benjamin Pring, at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work recently published a research paper titled Putting the Experience in Digital Customer Experience.  In his research he found fewer than 20% of respondents use analytics generated by application programming interface (API) traffic to understand their customers’ online and offline purchase journeys.  Just 41% of respondents in the retail industry say they will be effective at analyzing customer metadata by 2017.  A mere 42% of respondents say they have adequate tools and skills to analyze digitally generated data.  Only one-third of respondents have made adjustments to their business model to pursue strategies driven by digital information about their customers.

An additional challenge, is that personalizing mobile user experiences takes speed, speed many do not have available in their current IT environments.  As organizations begin developing mobile strategies and implementing mobile apps, they quickly realize simply developing and deploying basic mobile apps, infrastructure and frameworks is not enough.  They must push further and implement a real-time enterprise to remain competitive.  This real-time requirement is at the root of many problems.  Eighty-four percent of survey participants reported they have IT systems too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobility, which negatively impacts mobile app performance and the user’s experience.

We have some more work to do.

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Top 11 Articles on IoT, Mobility, Code Halos and Digital Transformation Strategies

Most of the stuff I write is rubbish, but these 11 articles beat the odds and are actually worth reading. You can find my complete Top 40 list here. Enjoy!

1. Mobile Apps, Blind Spots, Tomatoes and IoT Sensors
2. IoT Sensors, Nerves for Robots and the Industrial Internet
3. Sensors - Sensing and Sharing the Physical World
4. IoT Sensors, Tactile Feedback, iPhones and Digital Transformation
5. IoT, Software Robots, Mobile Apps and Network Centric Operations
6. Networked Field Services and Real-Time Decision Making
7. Thinking About Enterprise Mobility, Digital Transformation and Doctrine
8. GEOINT, GIS, Google Field Trip and Digital Transformation
9. Connecting the Dots Between Enterprise Mobility and IoT
10. Merging the Physical with the Digital for Optimized Productivity
11. IoT Sensors Extend Our Physical Senses Beyond Our Physical Reach

You can find my Top 75 articles on Mobile Strategies here.

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

IoT Sensors, Nerves for Robots and the Industrial Internet

Sensors are Nerves for Robots

Yesterday I interviewed two robotics experts on the growing demand for IPAs (intelligent process automation) robots.  These robots are made of software code.  They are assigned pre-defined actions based on steps in a process, the analysis of data, and the decision trees they are provided.  For example, an IPA can review a car loan application and approve or disprove it instantly – based on the data.  In fact, they can analyze the data from tens of thousands of car loans in seconds based on the parameters and decision trees they have been given.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of different use cases for IPA robots.  IPA robots can also interact with IoT sensors and take actions based on sensor data.  Not just by completing a digital business processes, but even by controlling physical equipment and machines as well.  Sensors serve robots in much the same way as nerves serve us humans.

Earlier this week I was briefed by a company AMS AG,  a developer of IoT sensors.  They just released a new sensor that smells odors in homes and offices.  Yes, indeed!  The sensor is embedded in a home monitoring system from Withings.  In Withings’ Home product, the AS-MLV-P2 (sensor) is combined with a 5Mpixel video camera, dual microphones, temperature and humidity sensors and Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® Smart radios. This means that users of the Home monitoring system can see, hear, feel and smell the inside of their home or office remotely via a smartphone or tablet app supplied by Withings.

AMS’s sensor detects VOCs (volatile organic compounds), including both human-made and naturally occurring chemical compounds. These include ambient concentrations of a broad range of reducing gases associated with bad air quality such as alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, organic acids, amines, and aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, all which can be harmful to human and animal health at high levels. These are most of the scents humans smell.  In the Home app, the sensor’s measurements of these chemicals are converted to an air-quality rating as well as to a measurement of VOC concentrations.

If you combine IPA robots, AMS’s sensors and Withings Home monitoring system with your HVAC system, the IPA robot can ensure you have healthy air quality in your home or office continuously. In fact, an IPA robot could manage the air quality and security of tens of thousands of homes and offices at the same time.  The results of these findings and actions can be displayed and controlled on smartphones and tablets as well.

Not only do you have robots sensing the physical world, but also automatically reacting to it on your behalf.  In my opinion, how sensors detect and communicate the physical and natural world to humans and robots is one of the most interesting areas of innovation today.

An additional value of using IPA robots is the massive clouds of data they spin-off as a result of their decisions and actions.  This data can be further analyzed to find new areas for optimization and potential business opportunities.  Herein lies an emerging area where big data analysis can give us even deeper insights.

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Kevin Benedict

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

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Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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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.

Networked Field Services and Real-Time Decision Making

Investment in space travel has provided many direct and indirect benefits to society.  For example, weather forecasting technology, solar energy, scratch resistant lenses, water purification systems, enriched baby food and air quality monitoring have all made advancements because of investments in space travel research.  Likewise, the military has made huge investments related to the implementation of Network-Centric Warfare technologies and mobile data collection strategies that are now providing benefit and revolutionizing the way commercial field services organizations operate.

One of the most important capabilities that mobile solutions offer organizations today is the ability to provide better visibility, in near real time, into the activities and events taking place in the field – let’s call it situational awareness.  Historically, it has been difficult to ensure that quality and service standards and processes are followed on remote jobsites and in mobile environments.  The lack of real time visibility often means critical operational decisions and optimized scheduling choices are delayed which results in the inefficient utilization of resources and assets.

Better communication and visibility about the work completed or not completed on remote jobsites can ensure that proper policies and operational and safety processes are followed and assistance is provided when needed.  Receiving, processing and sharing sensor (M2M) data from equipment, digital images, streaming video and real time mobile app updates with management and other process experts can often resolve challenging issues quickly and efficiently.

Today mobile applications support mobile data collection, real time database queries, alerts, mobile business processes, work order dispatch, location tracking, optimized scheduling, customer updates and alerts in most areas of the world.  Situational awareness is a new capability for most organizations.  It virtually enables managers and experts from anywhere in the world to be “digitally present” on remote jobsites.  Being “digitally present” is accomplished today using a variety of tools available on most smartphones. These tools include:

• Phone
• Photos
• Video
• Voice/Audio
• SMS
• Email
• Augmented reality
• Bluetooth add-on equipment
• GPS/Maps/Tracking
• Custom mobile apps

Most organizations have yet to understand and exploit these capabilities to maximize efficiency and optimize returns. Each of these tools can and do play an important role in a networked field services operation.

The New Networked Organization

The most advanced militaries are developing and implementing strategies based on the concept of Network-Centric Warfare.  These strategies, methodologies and concepts have direct relevance to commercial enterprises and field services organizations today under the name Network-Centric Operations or Networked Field Services.

The military uses rugged handhelds, radios, laptop computers, satellites, radio scanners, drones (UAVs), human resources, video surveillance, aerial surveillance, infrared cameras, remote sensors of all kinds and many other embedded mobile devices to create a web or grid of data collection points that are all wirelessly networked together.

Collected data is securely and wirelessly sent to a central server where it forms a real time and unified view of operations that can be used for analysis, forecasting, resource allocation, planning and real time decision making.  This networked approach enables users to see where their assets are located, where they are needed and how best to manage them at all times to successfully and efficiently accomplish the mission.

Network-Centric Warfare, goes by the name Network-Centric Operations in commercial environments and is a relatively new military doctrine.  It seeks to translate an information advantage (real-time data collected in the field) into a competitive advantage by using it for real-time decision-making.   This networking, combined with real-time data, analytics, AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning, enable organizations to behave and respond in ways never before possible.  This strategy is based on the following four beliefs:

1. A robustly networked workforce improves data sharing.
2. Data sharing enhances the quality of information and supports situational awareness.
3. Shared situational awareness enables collaboration, and management and resource agility.
4. Points 1-3 support an optimized and efficient workforce

In order to optimize the performance of a military operation or a field services organization, it is critical to know, in real time, the location of all resources, the status of each job, the assets and equipment needed, and the time each job will require. When effectively coordinated and managed, human resources, equipment, assets and mobile inventories can be shared between multiple projects, and the right experts with the right levels of experience can be used on the right projects at the right time.  The bottom line is that a leaner, more efficient organization can be put in the field that can accomplish more work with fewer resources and generate a higher return on investment.

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure and Digital Transformation Discussion with Expert Ved Sen

In this Google+ Hangout OnAir, I have the privilege of discussing the findings of my recent report, Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure, with UK based mobile and digital transformation expert Ved Sen. We discuss the challenges identified and possible solutions.  Enjoy!

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Introduction
Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 1
Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 2
Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 3

Video Link: https://youtu.be/IMYHORGxMYY?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw


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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 2

In my new report titled Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure, I ask 80 IT and business professionals involved in enterprise and consumer mobility to answer a series of questions.  The results will be shared here in the following article series.  This is Part 2 in the series.

• Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, An Introduction
• Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 1

Question: Are your (or your clients’) mobile strategies and plans inhibited or limited because of the current IT environment, infrastructure and/or design?

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Current IT environments, legacy systems and IT architectures are inhibiting mobile strategies and plans according to 78% of survey participants.  This represents a major competitive obstacle as data points to increasing use of mobile devices and applications.  Both the business and the IT organizations must quickly reach a consensus on how to invest and upgrade mobile infrastructures and supporting IT environments in order to remain competitive.

Question: Will the demand for mobile applications force enterprises to make major investments in their IT environment to better support real-time interactions with mobile apps?

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The strong consensus (83%) is that major IT investment is needed to optimize IT environments in order to support real-time mobile applications.  In our analysis, many businesses have yet to understand and accept the size and scope of the investments required.

Consumers are increasingly adopting mobile applications, and using apps as their primary interaction point with their preferred vendors. This transfer to mobile applications increases the importance of optimizing the user experience and the dependent IT systems, integration points and associated business processes.

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Question: What percentage of your (or your clients’) back-office systems are NOT optimized to support mobile applications?

Over half of respondents believe that 60% or more of their IT systems are not optimized to support real-time mobility.   If that is not a problem today for an enterprise, it soon will be.  As the use of mobile applications and their importance in commerce increases, so also will the negative impact of not optimizing an IT environment.

Read Part 3 in the article series here.

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report - Introduction

Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure

Fortune 500 firms recognize the ubiquitous use of mobile devices, integrated sensors and broadband access to the Internet are profoundly impacting user expectations and the demand for real-time wireless information exchanges.  This can be witnessed in the fast changing expectations and shopping behaviors of mobile device empowered consumers all around us today.

Demands for real-time wireless information exchanges, business analytics, media and transactional data are challenging traditional IT infrastructures, business processes and business strategies that were never designed to support a mobile and real-time world.  It is our belief that these demands and the challenges with supporting them will change the competitive landscape in most industries.

Data has a shelf life.  It has a greater economic and competitive value the quicker it can be consumed and utilized. If mobile shoppers can open a mobile app and instantly be presented with a hyper-personalized shopping experience that considers their real-time location, buying history, preferences and other relevant physical and “Code Halos” data (all data available for analysis about a person, object or organization), then there is a greater competitive value represented by increased mobile app use, loyalty, positive brand experience, customer service and sales (see Starbuck's Code Halos and Mobile App Strategies).  If on the other hand, companies have IT architectures, systems and infrastructures unable to support the speed requirements of real-time mobile interactions, then they will find themselves to be at a significant competitive disadvantage.

I surveyed 80 high tech industry and IT professionals involved in enterprise mobility, analyzed numerous industry reports, interviewed many mobile experts and reviewed current and forecasted technology trends to identify challenges and opportunities related to supporting real-time mobile infrastructure.  The following article series titled Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure will detail the survey results and my analysis of the findings.

Business and IT decision makers will be interested in this article series due to the increasingly strategic impact mobile applications are having on businesses.  Customers, prospects, partners and employees’ all are using mobile applications to interact, collaborate, research, shop, transact and engage in innovative new ways with companies, their products and services.  It is our analysis this trend will continue to accelerate and be the key driver for on-going digital transformation in many industries and markets.

As a result of our analysis we believe the quality and performance of mobile applications and the associated user experiences directly impact and influence brand perception, social sentiment, loyalty and sales volumes.

In the new book titled Code Halos the authors, Malcolm Frank, Paul Roehrig and Benjamin Pring, propose that data is the new competitive arena for businesses.  Winners in this competition are those that can collect, analyze and react in real-time to data in a manner that drives improved customer interactions and engagements.  Today these engagements are often via mobile applications.

In another recent book titled, Digital Disruption: Unleashing the Next Wave of Innovation, author James McQuivey's writes that competition in business is rapidly moving to a “focus on knowledge of and engagement with customers.” Data is being used to shape and personalize real-time interactions and engagements on mobile devices.  Companies are beginning to understand this.  They understand that "Code Halos" (people’s digital footprint, the online data about preferences, history, activities, etc.) has great value.  This data is the key to personalizing user experiences across all formats.

Businesses are interacting with and engaging their markets in a wide range of different formats today including traditional media, websites, mobile apps, call centers and in brick and mortar establishments.  The concept of omni-channel is widely used to mean the ability to interact and engage in real-time with customers and prospects across all of these formats.  The ability to effectively support omni-channel requires a lot of thinking, planning and purposeful design.  An effective design is not always present in today’s enterprise IT environments.  How much of a problem this is will be revealed in the following report.

Businesses today are responding by developing comprehensive data-driven strategies connected to e-commerce portals and mobile applications.  These strategies acknowledge the requirement to better understand the needs, preferences and histories of their prospects and customers, so they can provide personalized and optimized user experiences that lead to more sales and happier and more loyal customers.

In a recent report by CIO Strategic Marketing Services (a survey of 414 executives at midsize and large enterprise organizations from around the world) they reveal enterprise IT and back-office systems typically have on average between 3.6 and 4.8 mobile applications integrated with each of them.  The systems surveyed were: CRM, E-Commerce, ERP, SMS, DMS, Financial and HR.

These findings highlight how critically important back-end business and IT systems are to mobile applications.  Mobile applications, in most cases, are required to query and interact with back-end systems as a core component of their functionality.  The speed at which back-end systems can respond to queries and interact with mobile applications is a critical component in determining how successful the user experience will be.

If further evidence to the importance of real-time mobile infrastructure is required, let’s consider that Forrester Research predicts that US online sales will top $400 billion by 2018, and nearly $1 trillion worldwide.  No company wants to miss out on this size of market (Mulpuru, Sucharita “The New Paradigm of Retail? Forrester – July 24, 2014).

Today the trend is quickly moving beyond traditional online e-commerce to mobile commerce.  That makes mobile application performance even more important.  In a recent study of 1,000 mobile shoppers (Contact Solutions, - Mobile Shopping Cliffhanger), 1 of 6 consumers report they struggle with mobile shopping apps more than half of the time.   More than half (55%) of shoppers struggle with mobile shopping apps at least 20% of the time.  When consumers struggle, 71% will abandon their cart or leave the app entirely.  These numbers clearly demonstrate the necessity for an optimized mobile application and user experience.

Our analysis has determined that IT infrastructures for supporting real-time mobile applications are lacking in many companies, and correcting this must be a priority.  Without mobile optimized back-end system, designs, processes and IT infrastructures in place that can support a "real-time" environment, an enterprise’s ability to remain competitive is in jeopardy.

Read Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 1
Read Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 2
Read Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure Report, Part 3

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Circumnavigating the Globe and Learning about Mobility, IoT and Digital Transformation

I just circumnavigated the globe over a two week period.  I have never done that before.  I learned about mobile solutions, digital transformation, IoT, big data, Indian culture, the British Empire, English East Indies Company, Barcelona history and many other interesting subjects on this trip.  In this short video I summarized what I have learned about technologies and the latest trends over the past few weeks.  Enjoy!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/-pISDSvz9aY?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.

Managing and Cultivating Mobile and Digital Transformation

I have been attending and learning at Cognizant's "Go Digital" Innovation Days in Chennai, India this week.   I have seen some very interesting technologies, learned from experienced strategists and interviewed a number of very talented technologist this week.  In this short video I summarize some of my learnings for those not able to attend.  Enjoy!

Video Link:  http://youtu.be/vsHJbABbuJY?list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw


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Kevin Benedict

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

Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel

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.