Information Dominance as a Company's Mobile Strategy

In many industries today the competitive battleground is quickly shifting to the effective use of data to drive marketing, sales, customer support, R&D, and to deliver hyper-personalized user experiences and digital products.  These changes are most readily seen in companies that engage customers on the web and through mobile apps.  As more and more of customer interactions and engagements move to mobile apps and websites these changes will be all the more pronounced.  Just think about mobile banking, mobile commerce, mobile search, mobile media, mobile news/content and mobile travel apps.  These apps and the companies behind them are now offering incredible levels of near instant personalization based upon their knowledge of your preferences, location, shopping history, loyalty status, etc.  The more effective companies are at using their knowledge of you to personalize your experience, the more attractive, convenient, productive and sticky their apps become.  We at Cognizant call the effective use of data, "Code Halos" strategies.  Code Halos are the data that surround you, your activities and preferences.  It is the combination of personal and enterprise data used to provide the optimal experience.

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

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

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

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Editor

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

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos

Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interview: Mobile Labs' Dan McFall

In all my years of researching and writing about enterprise mobility, I have not taken the time to learn about automated testing solutions for mobile apps.  These are important solutions as mobile applications are often your brand and primary point of interaction with customers and even employees.  They had better work!  In this interview, we discuss mobile app testing processes and strategies.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_LB7wff_S8&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw&feature=share

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Editor

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

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos

Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Highlights from the Enterprise Mobility Focused Conference M6 Mobility xChange Last Week

If you were not fortunate enough to attend the M6 Mobility xChange last week in San Diego surrounded by smokey sunsets and wildfires, then you can catch some of the highlights here!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/3mebyK26O5k

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Editor

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

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos

Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

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

I have taught classes and half-day workshops on mobile and digital strategies in 17 different countries around the world in the past three years. Some of the most interesting discussions during these classes and workshops are around the following topics - the strategies behind the mobile strategies.

• Velocity: The speed at which you can bring all required resources to a specific location to complete a task.  Remote and mobile assets and workers require mobile technologies to connect them to the "network."
• Swarming: The ability to contact, communicate and coordinate the gathering of all necessary resources to perform a task.
• 4D Coordinates:  The ability to coordinate resources to arrive at a specific location at a specific time.  
• Projecting Commerce at Distance:  Using mobile applications to open new markets and geographies without adding labor, assets or inventory.
• Time Compression:  Using mobile applications to accomplish more in a given time.  Something that took weeks now takes minutes.  Think real-time visibility, job status updates, inventories and dynamic scheduling.
• Information Dominance: Using real-time information to dominate your competition.  Use real-time information to maximize business agility, precision marketing, situational awareness and optimized logistics.  Use it to anticipate, compete, counter and outmaneuver competitors.  Recognize your ability to collect, analyze and manage information better and faster than your competition often trumps those with more physical assets (brick and mortar).
• Information Logistics: The systems involved in the collection, transmission, analysis, reporting and sharing of information.  The more efficient and real-time your information logistics, the faster you can make good decisions and act.
• Loyalty and culture:  Develop camaraderie, teamwork, accountability and loyalty with real-time collaboration tools and KPI dashboards on mobile devices.  Stay in the know on your performance and the performance of others.  Share ideas and solve problems as a team.
• Full Spectrum Information:  You can't have situational awareness without having real-time data coming in from all your key business areas.  Dominate competition by collecting, transmitting, analyzing and reporting real-time information and its meaning across all operational areas including: SCM, WMS, manufacturing, marketing, sales, customer service.
• Reducing Conjecture and the Fog of War:  Using mobile applications as remote sensors to collect real-time data that enables data-driven decision making.  Think date and time stamp, GPS coordinates, activities monitoring, tasks and project updates.
• Operational Tempos:  Increase the speed at which information and, thus, operations can work.  Don't let the lack of timely information slow down your operations.  Maximize productivity and the quality of decision making by collecting, analyzing and sharing the right information as fast as possible.
• Information Driven Tactics: Tactics, the art and science of positioning resources for optimal use, and maneuvering them to keep them as such.  You can't fully utilize real-time and agile business tactics without real-time information enabled by mobile technologies.
• Information Shelf-Life:  Recognize the value of information diminishes over time.  The faster it can be collected, analyzed, reported and shared the more value it has to decision makers.  Mobile devices support faster data collection, transmission, analysis and reporting.
• Information and Competitive Decision-Making: In battles, the general with better situational awareness is often better able to make strategic decisions and to maneuver his resources to the point of need, thus gaining an advantage.  If you consider competitive decision-making as a game, the winner is the person who can receive more information faster, analyze it, understand the meaning, make a decision, act upon it and review the results and adjust accordingly in a manner faster than his/her opponent.  Mobile technologies are a critical component of this capability.
• Force Multiplier: - Definition - A force multiplier refers to a factor that dramatically increases (hence "multiplies") the effectiveness of an item, person or group.  Mobile technology is a force multiplier.  Today a small team can manage a global workforce using email, messaging, voice, Skype, Google+ Hangouts, Salesforce.com, cloud-based mobile apps, shared spreadsheets, Google Drive or Dropbox etc., all while traveling on an airplane.  Productivity is ridiculously multiplied.
• Speed and Mobility: Capturing a market today is not about having more buildings, people and assets, but first and foremost it is a matter of Code Halos strategies, data analytics, movement and circulation.  Identify your online/digital market, identify your prospects, customize and personalize their experience, and be there at the right time with the right products.  This can be done with a great mobile app supported by a powerful Code Halo enabled systems and digital content management systems.
• Sensor Platforms: Understand the sensors available on your smartphones, via bluetooth accessories, vehicle telematics and the Internet of Things and how these contribute to your situational awareness and information logistics strategies.

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

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

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Editor

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

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos

Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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

Mobile Expert Interview: Carlo Cadet, Perfecto Mobile

On Fire
M6 Mobility Xchange 2014

Last week I spent three days at the M6 Mobility Xchange conference surrounded by wildfires.  The smoke filtered sunsets and glowing skylines at night made for a memorable event.

I like this intimate event.  There were a couple of hundred attendees and excellent content on emerging trends and use cases around enterprise mobility.  There was plenty of time to network and many of my mobility industry analyst peers were there to share insights.

In this interview recorded at the M6 Mobility Xchange, Carlo Cadet, mobile testing automation expert with Perfecto Mobile, shares the details of automated testing strategies for large scale mobile app deployments.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tO2SE3nj1go&feature=share&list=UUGizQCw2Zbs3eTLwp7icoqw

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Kevin Benedict

Writer, Speaker, Editor

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

View my profile on LinkedIn

Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Browse the Mobile Solution Directory

Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility

Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

Recommended Strategy Book Code Halos

Recommended iPad App Code Halos for iPads

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