Wake Up! Your Business Has Changed!

We have all been there. Sitting in a stuffy conference room white-boarding and sharing innovative ideas only to be shut-down by the words, "Our IT environment won't support that."  I remember during my time as an IT manager hearing those words over and over.  We were encouraged to be innovative and to beat our competition by being faster, quicker, cheaper, but every idea met with an insurmountable IT obstacle.  It was, at least, insurmountable from our perspective and pay grade.

I see the following weekly:

• Outdated technology stalls company's growth
• Outdated technology kills future potential
• Outdated technology limits and prevents adjustments to business models
• Past IT investments never achieved predicted ROIs so future investments denied

How does the CEO make the case for a do-over with his/her IT environment to prevent an extinction event?  It's a hard case to make, but a necessary one.  I believe that is the appeal of cloud services and companies like Salesforce.com.  You can use their services, and remain flexible to change if the market demands it.  You are not locked into massive upfront financial commitments and decades worth of business models and processes cemented by outdated ERPs.

Today more than ever a company's ability to compete and be successful is dependent on technology. Technology evolves so rapidly every company should have a dedicated team studying emerging technologies and their potential impact on their industry, market and company.  IDC and Cognizant are now identifying a third platform of computing emerging.  It follows the platforms of mainframes and client/servers.

The third platform of computing is made up of four evolving technologies that have combined:

• Social
• Mobile
• Cloud
• Big data

This third platform is transforming IT much faster than previous platforms ever did. This has tremendous implications for the IT industry's budgets and priorities.

CIO magazine's managing editor Kim S. Nash writes in the March 28, 2014 edition, "Some of the most effective competitive moves happening today in social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies weren't on anyone's threat horizon until recently."  Nash is emphasizing the incredible speed in which these changes are happening and impacting the IT environment.  And as we know whatever impacts the market impacts the IT environment and the business.

In my last meeting with Forrester VP John McCarthy in London he stated, "Enterprise Mobility will be as transformative as the introduction of ERPs."  That is a bold prediction and one that many CEOs/CIOs are not yet tuned into.

I work with strategy groups in large enterprises around the world, and I must say most do not realize the speed at which digital transformations are happening around them.  They feel they can delay budgeting significant IT transformation projects another few years.  They think they can maintain a slow iterative pace.  My response,  "If a company does not keep up with technology at the same pace at which their customers are adopting the technology, they are losing the race and opening up opportunities for competitors."

Salesforce.com's President Keith Block predicted this week that they will be bigger than SAP.  He might be right.  The market is evolving and adopting cloud services that fast.

Download Cognizant's free Code Halo app for iPads here - https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/code-halos/id752380930?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 and learn how Code Halo strategies are changing the rules of business.

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

Kevin Benedict

Senior Analyst, Digital Transformation Cognizant

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

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

Mobility and Real-Time Capability Projection

This weekend I was clever.  That is newsworthy because it doesn't happen very often.  Our son is stationed at a military base that did not receive TV coverage of the Boise State football game on Saturday night.  It must have been the government shut-down.  I can't think of any other reason they wouldn't have shown it.  The solution was a three hour Google+ Hangout whereby mom and dad got to talk to our officer son while the laptop camera "inadvertently" captured and streamed the Broncos game showing on our big screen TV.  It was a nice Hangout - they won!  We tried Skype first, but the picture was blurry.  Google+ Hangout, however, was picture perfect.

Our son is stationed a great distance away, however, using real-time communication and video we can communicate and share what is going on in our lives.  This same kind of technology can be used in the context of "capability projection" for companies.  Here is my definition of capability projection, "The ability of a business to apply all or some of its capabilities such as marketing, sales, distribution, etc, over great distances to respond to and take advantage of new market opportunities."

What does it take to project your capabilities over great distances?  The ability to in real-time collect data, analyze data, and distribute the results in order to make good decisions.  It takes the ability to view information and operations at a distance and have the ability to act instantaneously from afar.  Without this capability, you cannot implement good business tactics.  Tactics are the art and science of positioning resources for optimal use and maneuvering them to keep them as such.

The bottom line, you can't expand your operations and business over great distances and/or remote markets unless you are implementing a good real-time SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) strategy.  A good SMAC strategy provides the technical platforms that enable distributed organizations to effectively collaborate, design and execute plans.

The Internet, mobile devices and collaboration platforms have greatly empowered organizations to be able to expand beyond historic geographic barriers.  This capability opens the door to expanding your influence and business efficiently and cost effectively across the globe.
*************************************************************

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

View Linkedin Profile

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Digitizing Beds - Is Your Enterprise in Jeopardy of Digital Transformations?

Coin operated vibrating beds!!!!

In a recent report I read titled Q3 2013 iPass Mobile Workforce Report, mobile workers (1,375 of them) reported hotel WiFi was as important as a comfortable bed.  Seventy-four percent say a bad WiFi experience in a hotel would prevent a return visit.  BAM!

Competition among hotels over who has the most comfortable beds just got digitized!  In a flash, the competitive arena changed from beds to WiFi and beds. It is happening all around us today.  The problem is many three-year strategic plans don't anticipate this rate and pace of change and digital transformation.

I see digital transformations in retail banks today.  Banks have been investing in interior designers, foot-traffic experts, retail and customer service gurus and neighborhood banks blessed with good feng shui (a Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing the human existence with the surrounding environment), but no one is going to banks any more.  The competitive arena moved to the mobile retail banking apps and mobile banking services.  BAM!

How would you like to be in the paper map making business, or even a dedicated GPS device company like Garmin or TomTom?  BAM!  The maps are digitized and the GPS is in your smartphone.

The insurance industry is also experiencing major digital transformations globally.  Traditional brokers and agents, and even claims adjusters, are being displaced by mobile apps, call centers and websites. BAM! Insurance companies are hesitant to embrace the digital transformation for fear of alienating their traditional sales channels, but the digital and mobile public are migrating there rapidly.

The retail industry is struggling to understand the best strategy for responding to shoppers who use their smartphones in stores to comparison shop.  How do you prevent people from taking a picture of a book and then ordering it from Amazon?  If I see a good book on the shelf, I want to know if it comes recommended, if it is available in paperback and are there good used copies to be found for less?  I can't get that today by looking at the shelf.  BAM!

Last week I was in Copenhagen, Denmark with a hankering for Indian food.  I used my iPhone to search for Indian food and found a number of restaurants listed.  As I was walking to a location listed on the map I passed several Indian restaurants.  These restaurants were in digital blind spots.  They did not appear on Google's search engine, and they lost my business.  BAM!

I just recently discovered my DirecTV is available on my iPad.  Who knew?  I can watch my recorded shows from anywhere in the house on my iPad while pretending to watch re-runs of West Wing or Pitch Perfect for the 18th time with my family.  BAM!  My big screen TV just got less cool since it is fixed to my wall and must be shared with others.

I can image a scenario where restaurants must change the way they operate because of digital transformation.  Perhaps you are in a food court environment and you can pull up the individual menus of all restaurants in the building and aggregate them automatically into one giant menu.  You can now pick a hamburger from one place, fries from another and a Milkshake from still another.  You purchase through your mobile app, and the food is delivered to your table.  You can unlock food choices and options from paper menus and customize your own meal.  You could then create your own food favorites list.  BAM!  Just like in the music business where you can purchase one song at a time and create your own play lists.

In the lobby of my medical doctor's office, they are promoting their new electronic patient records system and the benefits it offers patients.  This is huge! BAM! If any of you have had to deal with multiple doctors, multiple tests, multiple locations, multiple prescriptions and multiple treatments, then you already know how obviously valuable electronic patient records and how much potential there is for positive benefits.  I would change doctors to get the listed benefits!  The competitive environment suddenly is shifting from bedside manners to digital capabilities.

I would encourage everyone in every industry to take a long hard look at what SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) trends and digital transformations are doing and will do to the traditional way your business operates and how this will impact the competitive landscape of your industry.

For more information on digital transformation and how these changes are impacting industries, markets and businesses, I would invite you to visit, www.unevenlydistributed.com.

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Digital Transformation, Retailing and Mobile Technologies

Today I read the results of a report from Google titled, How In-store Shoppers are Using Mobile Devices that states the following, "One in three shoppers uses their smartphones to find information instead of asking for help from a store employee.  In some categories 55 percent say they do this when shopping for appliances, 48 percent for electronics, 40 percent for baby care and 39 percent for household care."  Those numbers point to a significant change in retailing.  They point to a self-help transformation enabled by mobile devices.  Companies that want to thrive in retail must embrace these behaviors by acknowledging them and adapting their strategies.

Here are some more interesting results from the report:

• 79 percent of smartphone owners are smartphone shoppers
• 62 percent utilize a smartphone to assist with shopping at least once a month and 17 percent utilize mobile to assist in shopping at least once a week
• 84 percent of smartphone users, utilize smartphones to help shop while in a store
• 53 percent of smartphone users, utilize their device in-store to make price comparisons
• 39 percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to find promotional offers while in store
• 36 percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to find location/directions to stores
• 35 percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to find store hours.

Retail is not the only place experiencing significant changes due to mobile technologies and other innovations.  Books are becoming ebooks, DVDs are giving way to streaming video, album sales have morphed into single song sales online, classified ads have moved from the local newspaper to Craig’s List, bank branches are losing their relevance as mobile banking apps gain in popularity, product research is done on mobile devices, college degrees are being earned online and consumers are self-diagnosing their illnesses via mobile and online research.  All of these market and behavioral changes are due to what is termed digital transformation.

All industries will be impacted to some degree by the digital transformation that is happening in 2013. However, industries driven primarily by information, such as healthcare, education, financial and public services, will experience some of the most profound changes.

Specific functions in companies such as marketing, online sales, customer support, etc., will experience significant changes because of the digitization.

Digital transformation is happening as a result of technology innovations, cultural and population shifts, evolving societal behaviors, and changing market expectations.  Even traditional industries not generally associated with leading edge technologies are experiencing the effects of this digital transformation on their interactions with employee, partners and customers.

Leading these digital transformations are developments around SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) technologies.  These developments change our interactions, communications and expectations on how people, organizations and businesses should engage with each other.

Mobile technologies, including smartphones and tablets in particular, are transforming entire industries.  Today when people want answers they search the Internet or a connected data source.  When they want to remember an upcoming event, they add it to a calendar supported by their mobile device.  When they want to save information, they write a note, record an audio memo or take a digital photo/video and save it to their mobile devices and connected personal cloud storage services.  When they want to communicate with friends, family members or healthcare providers they use their mobile devices, apps and social media technologies.  When they want to research products, read reviews and find locations and prices they first reach for their smartphones.

Are you following me on Twitter?  If not I invite you to @krbenedict.

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Social Analytics for Your Enterprise with Google+ and Ripples - Guest Expert Post

I have Google's Blogger app on my iPhone and iPad mini.  I can write articles for publication from anywhere with an Internet connection, but are they read, are they shared?  That is our subject for today.

One of the biggest growth areas involving mobility is mobile marketing.  If your company's target customers are researching products, comparing products and buying products on mobile devices then the following information about Google+ and Ripples may be of interest to you as it is to me.  I have invited social media expert Allison Rice to share her expertise in this area with us.

Question: How do you know the number of people paying attention to your company's messages or articles on social media?

If you use Facebook, as more than 700 million active users do (most on mobile devices), then you click on your business page's Insights tab and read through about four pages of fairly detailed graphs and statistics. If you're on Pinterest, you've probably already checked out their new analytics page that launched in March, while Twitter users likely get their stats from Twitter Web Analytics.

Most social media sites have some form of analytics page that goes into varying degrees of detail about your social reach. Facebook has one of the more detailed, with information down to what region most of your followers are from and how many of your first time visitors come back for a second, third or even twentieth look at your page.

But sometimes all you want to know is your overall impact. How many people did you reach with a particular post? Did those people care enough about your post to share it with others? Are you really reaching new people or are you just wasting time on a particular social media campaign?

It was just this kind of thinking that led the developers of Google+ to create a unique analytics feature called Ripples. In one glance, business owners can see what, if any, impact an individual post has had in their social community and how it reached.

Making Ripples

Click to Enlarge

One of the neat things about Ripples is that you can view the Ripples of any public post, not just your own. Take, for example, a link that Geekless Tech writer Steven Hughes posted about social media lessons for small businesses on April 19, 2013.  Within four hours it received 133 "+1" or likes and 60 shares. Since it's a public post, we can view the post's Ripples by clicking in the upper right hand corner and selecting "view Ripple."  The Ripple graph that appears shows that, within those four hours, the following things occurred:

• The article was reposted 44 times
• The article was seen and posted independently by 26 Google+ users, represented by the small, external circles
• Harold Gardener and Rex Dow are important influencers as their shares were re-shared by one and two more users, respectively.

Below the larger Ripple graph is a chart that allows you to view the spread of the post as it occurred in real-time. This allows you to see when the most people reposted it, thereby giving you a good estimate on the best time to post in the future for the most reach.

Below that are three short columns. One lists, by name, your highest influencers -- in this case Harold Gardener and Rex Dow. The second shows the frequency of shares per hour, as well as the average chain length, and the third shows the primary language of those sharing the post.

Finally, by hovering over each sharer's name, you can see what they posted along with the re-post, any hash tags they might have included in their post, and their profile image. A running stream of real-time comments and shares on the post also appears to the right of the Ripple with the commenter's image and time of action.

So with essentially one chart, you learn not only how much your post has spread over a given period of time, you also find out:
• The best times to post to reach the most people
• Which influencers you should appeal to in order to reach more people
• How fast your post spread and who it appeals to
• What people are saying about it
• The virality of your post
• What region of the world your post appealed to most

With so much detail in just one glance, enterprises are quickly realizing the value of a Google+ page for their business. Apart from the Ripples aspect, Google+ pages are optimized for higher ranking in search results and the "personal" results aspect of Google searches means that your business is more likely to show up in searches conducted by people in your area, as well as in recommendations within Google+.

Even though some have marked Google+ as a "ghost town," recent surveys show it as having the second highest active user level of social media sites, ranking just under Facebook. And if the ease of use and the ability to see the results of your social media campaigns in quick, easy-to-understand analytics, the simple fact that your business is instantly more visible should encourage you enough to give Google+ a shot.

What aspects of social media analytics have you found to be the most helpful? Which have been the most confusing? What do you like/dislike about Google+ and Google+ Ripples?

Allison Rice is the Marketing Director for Amsterdam Printing, a leading provider of custom promotional products to grow your business and thank customers. Allison regularly contributes to the Promo & Marketing Wall blog.

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Swarming, Mobility, Speed and Digital Disruptions

Digital disruptors like social media, mobile communications, analytics and cloud services are introducing crazy new dynamics into our world.  These dynamics are impacting our industries, markets, businesses, management disciplines, politics and even our culture today.  I believe we have only just begun to recognize some of the impacts of these disruptions.   

We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate and YouTube to tell the world. ~ Egyptian Activist

One of the impacts of digital disruptors is the increasing emergence of swarming or swarm intelligence. Here is a definition, “Swarming involves the use of decentralized forces against an object or opponent, in a manner that emphasizes mobility, communication, autonomy and coordination or synchronization.” ~ Wikipedia

Swarming, although perhaps unrecognized, is precisely what the Egyptian Activist was referring to in the above quote.  The ability for autonomous or semi-autonomous groups to work closely together because of mobile communications, social media and the ability to coordinate or synchronize one’s actions, locations, status and intentions to accomplish a joint goal.

Swarming can be a powerful force multiplier as well, where fewer resources, with mobile communications, social media, good intelligence and coordination can accomplish more than by working alone and uncoordinated.

Nearly every day we witness demonstrations of how spontaneous social media based campaigns are changing our world.  We see companies changing policies and practices due to near-real-time feedback from the market swarm.

In the new book from Forrester Executive, James McQuivey, titled Digital Disruption, he describes how to embrace digital disruptions using what I view as a swarm strategies, "Abandon traditional 'return on investment' metrics and instead, for digitally disruptive initiatives, adopt ROD—'return on disruption.' Where the goal in ROI is to generate a known return from a known investment, the goal in ROD is to invest as little as possible, placing quick, cheap bets on the initiatives with the largest possible breakout success."  Once you see a success, swarm it! Communicate it!  Synchronize around it!  Invest in it.  Run with it.

I see the same approach emerging today in marketing.  Let’s try a variety of approaches to marketing and once the successful ones emerge, invest in them.  

There is so much we don’t know.  There is so much happening at such a fast pace in social media that we cannot effectively plan for or anticipate.  New management strategies, such as swarming, must emerge to address this rapid pace of change.

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Digital Disruption and Enterprise Mobility

This week in the March 18, 2013, edition of The Wall Street Journal was an article titled Built Not to Last by Alan Murray.  This article reviewed the book Digital Disruption by Forrester executive James McQuivey.  I loved the article and have now downloaded the book to read in its entirety.  I guess it is true that people like to hear what they already believe.  McQuivey identifies many of the trends I am also seeing in the market today.

In his book McQuivey argues that technology has made it possible to launch companies without large amounts of capital, proprietary labor pools or vast swaths of intellectual property. Increasingly, anyone with a powerful idea can assemble the tools to make his idea a reality.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts from Murray's article:

"The only defense to this massive attack [from digital disruption competitors], Mr. McQuivey says, is to mimic the enemy.   The consequences for existing companies, if you believe Mr. McQuivey, are extreme. "Digital tools allow digital disruptors to come at you from all directions— and from all ages, backgrounds and nationalities.  Equipped with a better mindset and better tools, thousands of these disruptors are ready to do better whatever it is that your company does. This isn't just competitive innovation, it's a fundamentally new type and scale and speed of competitive innovation."

I think of the hugely successful digital camera company GoPro.  I bet half of the films shown at the Banff Film Festival are filmed on a GoPro camera.  They enable every daredevil adventurer to film and produce their own next viral video for under $500.  A one person operation can now produce and publish film that would have taken a traditional studio millions of dollars.  That is digital disruption.

Here is another excerpt, "Managers must "adopt a digital disruptor's mindset" and "behave like a digital disruptor." "Gone are the days,” he writes, "when you can assign this task to the digital team or the mobile guys.  Everyone in every level of the organization must accept that they have the responsibility to become digital disruptors within their domain and as well as across traditional silos.”

I have been teaching SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) strategies sessions all over the globe the past few months.  I can verify that SMAC topics or digital disruptions cannot be limited to just the enterprise mobility team or the digital team.  Digital disruptions are impacting entire industries.  They must be taken seriously by all parties.

How do you face digital disruptions?  How do you know, what you don't know you need to know?  Here is McQuivey's recommendation, "Abandon traditional 'return on investment' metrics and instead, for digitally disruptive initiatives, adopt ROD—'return on disruption.' Where the goal in ROI is to generate a known return from a known investment, the goal in ROD is to invest as little as possible, placing quick, cheap bets on the initiatives with the largest possible breakout success."

Digital disruption means a mobile banking app can replace a physical branch.  It means a GoPro digital camera and YouTube can replace a studio.  It means Craig's List can replace billions in classified ad revenue for newspapers.  It means I can download McQuivey's e-book seconds after reading the review and by-pass the book store.

My advice is to face these digital disruptors early, before you get SMACked.  For a very good whitepaper by our Cognizant team on this subject download, Don't Get SMACked.

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Notes and Videos from the Mobile World Congress 2013, Part 1

Yesterday was the first day of the Mobile World Congress 2013 in Barcelona.  It is reported there are 70,000 people here.  I counted 69,901.  I explored miles of aisles filled with mobile and wireless software vendors, equipment, accessories and devices manufacturers over 8 massive halls.

I have been tracking down mobility experts to interview.  I tried to upload some of the interviews yesterday, but my hotel wireless appeared just enough to tease me before disappearing again.

Today I will be speaking at the Power of Enterprise Mobility session in Hall 8.  There are seats for 250, but over 2,000 registered for it.  Yikes!

Here is the first of many interviews I recorded with experts in mobility and M2M.  This interview is with M2M / Internet of Things guru and Fred Yentz, CEO of ILS Technology.

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Read the insightful whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

17 Questions to Ask When Developing Mobile Apps

In this short video I review the 17 questions to ask when preparing to develop a mobile app.  These are basic questions, and I cover them fast!  Enjoy!

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

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

View Linkedin Profile

Read the whitepaper on mobile, social, analytics and cloud strategies Don't Get SMACked

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Mobility and Collaboration Platforms, Part 2

OK, I am almost ready to get off of my soap box about how enterprise mobility and collaboration platforms, working together as part of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud), are creating a huge sea change in how businesses are run.  In this short video I share some additional areas that will be impacted by these changes.  Enjoy!

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

Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Mobility, Location, Speed and Refugees

In today's world of fast paced project management, simply knowing a location on a map where something is supposed to happen is not good enough - we need to know a location-in-time, what is happening there (status), and who or what (resources) are present there and how this information is going to impact future plans.  This information is particularly important when you are managing projects, with time constraints, and organizing events and meetings across a wide geographical area.

The key planning concept here is - location at a point-in-time.  If I ask, where was the bus located on the route? You would likely respond, "At what time?"  The same response could be used for the question, "Where will the bus be?"  Time and location are necessary for planning current and future events and activities.

This week my family is experiencing and struggling with location and time.  Several families from our church have adopted a refugee family from the Congo and are helping them to survive, integrate, adapt and ultimately thrive in their new country.  The family consists of a mother and three children.  We are learning so much!

The mother doesn't speak English, doesn't have work, doesn't have a home, doesn't have money, doesn't have an income, doesn't have winter clothes, doesn't own a watch, doesn't have a working mobile phone, doesn't have a car (Boise, Idaho has limited public transportation) and has kids in school. The family has a busy schedule of appointments with social services, English classes, buses, school schedules and medical appointments.  Wow!  It can at times seem overwhelming.  There are many dozens of appointments all at different times and locations.

Yesterday, one of our support team went to pick up the refugee mother for an appointment and she could not be located.  Yikes!  There were appointments to keep, language classes to attend, school buses to catch and kids to track.  We ultimately found her and got the day back on track, but I was again reminded of how important it is to have mobile communications and location knowledge.  It is very difficult to keep things organized and on schedule without these.

Mobile technologies, location information and social collaboration platforms can provide enormous productivity gains and an increased speed of work or operational tempo.  Time, status and location data, and the ability to share this knowledge, enables one to accomplish a great deal more in a given time.

To appreciate the full value of these solutions, just try to track and monitor a refugee family with three children, on different school schedules, no permanent home, and dozens of weekly meetings all across the city, while not leaving them stranded and freezing to death in zero degree (F) Boise, Idaho weather.

Our team has learned and experienced much over the past few weeks and we are better for it.  With the constant use of mobile communications, DropBox and collaboration websites, plus a lot of love and commitment, our team has managed to keep them alive, so far.

Yesterday I thought to myself, I should buy the refugee mother a mobile phone (iPhone or Android) with Google Latitude.  That way she could download Swahili translation software, keep a calendar, have a clock with an alarm, voice or text us, email, see a map, view the bus schedule, FaceTime, conduct conference calls with a translator, Skype with her friends overseas, plus we could know her location.

Then I woke up from my fantasy.  That would probably be too much in the beginning.  Many companies just getting involved in mobile technologies would also be over their heads if they tried to implement too much all at once.  It is a learning process.

We decided to start with a basic mobile phone with text messaging, but I still dream and look forward to introducing more mobile technologies into this effort.  It has reminded me of how valuable mobile devices and mobile apps, and the information received as a result of them, are to all of us.

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

Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

ReadThe Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

Mobile and Social Businesses are Changing Management

In the picture to the right, would it really matter if you took one small step to the left or right, or even one step back?  Probably not.  You are squashed either way.  I found this quote in the book Social Business by Design, "The real challenge is acting strategically enough to matter." ~ Dion Hinchcliffe and Peter Kim.

That quote resonates with me.  I don't think many companies have yet to understand the enormity of change happening in our society right now.  Aberdeen Group calls it SoMoCo (social, mobile, cloud), Gartner calls it the "Nexus of Forces" (social, mobile, information and cloud), Cognizant calls it SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud).  The combination of these forces, all on your smartphone and tablet, are transforming entire industries and markets.

I speak with companies on a regularly basis that have mobility strategies that look like this:

• Pilot mobile CRM apps
• Pilot mobile HR apps
• Pilot mobile BI reports for managers

The question I would ask again is: "Are these apps strategic enough to matter, and are you deploying at a fast enough pace to matter?"  

The pace of change is happening many times faster than most budget cycles and three-year plans support.  Businesses must recognize the pace of change, so they can know the pace they must respond.  The following quote I found in an article titled, Can Social Media Sell Soap? by Stephen Baker, "The impact of new technologies is invariably misjudeged because we measure the future with yardsticks from the past."

What does this quote mean to you?  To me it means we are measuring mobile ROIs with yardsticks, when we should be measuring in miles.  SMAC must be recognized for the importance and revolution it is.

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

Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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

The Role of a Mobile Strategist

Tomorrow, Wednesday January 16 at 2 PM EST, I will be discussing "9 Reasons Every Business Needs a Mobile Strategist" on a live webinar with Jim Somers, Chief Marketing and Strategy Officer, with Antenna Software.  This is an interesting topic to me as nearly every executive team I meet is struggling with the development of a mobile strategy.

I think the reason developing a mobile strategy is so difficult may be related to this excerpt I came across recently in the book Social Business By Design, "The real challenge is to act strategically enough to matter."  Mobility matters, it really, really matters and this means uncomfortable change.  Let's think about this excerpt together, "The real challenge is to act strategically enough to matter."  What does that mean to you?  I think about companies just slowly dipping their toe in the water of mobility and supporting simple HR apps on smartphones.  Is that strategic enough to matter?

In the NFL (national football league) and in college football there is an evolving trend to use a different offensive strategy that involves playing the game at a much quicker pace than is generally played.  This strategy also involves using players with different body types, new formations and plays, and using players with more endurance than is typical.  It is a different way of playing the game and it has proven quite successful.

The football teams that succeed with this new strategy have not just changed one player, or one play, or one formation.  They have developed a whole new philosophy that impacts every part of the organization and strategy from recruiting, to teaching, to workouts, practices, and the way the game is managed and played.  Companies that act "strategically enough to matter" will embrace change in much the same way.  They will recognize how strategically important mobility is and will review all aspects of their business to understand what needs to change to truly matter.

Join us on the webinar - register here.

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

Kevin Benedict, Head Analyst for SMAC, Cognizant

Read The Future of Work

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

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