Enterprise Mobility, Robotic Pharmaceuticals and M2M

I flew home this week from the Midwest, and sat next to a service technician who worked for a manufacturer of robotic pharmaceuticals.  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  Neither had I!  It seems pharmacies install these pharmaceutical vending machines to automate the dispensing of the 200 bestselling pills.  They replace the routine error prone pill counting work in the pharmacy.  Here is where it gets really interesting!

Doctors in their clinics may prescribe medicine for a patient by tapping the screen of their iPad (or any data input device), selecting the appropriate medicine, pharmacy and submitting the order.  The electronic order goes through the practice management software which electronically sends an order to the pharmacy's pharmaceutical robotics vending machine that automatically selects the right medicine, counts the prescribed number of pills, selects the appropriate container, drops the pills into the container, labels the container and spits it out onto the shelf for the customer to pick-up.

The prescribing doctor could be on the other side of the world and is operating a machine that dispenses medicine to you in your local pharmacy.  Wow!  That is a great example of enterprise mobility and M2M (machine to machine) systems working together to deliver an improved and more efficient process.

On another note, I was honored earlier this summer to write the Forward, along with Sanjay Poonen, to SAP Press' new book called Mobilizing Your Enterprise with SAP.  This is now their best selling book!  That of course has nothing to do with me, but it certainly reflects the interest the SAP community has in enterprise mobility.

M2M for ERPs

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Situational Awareness, Enterprise Mobility and Field Services

 I read an interesting article this morning titled, Afghanistan Creates Proving Ground for UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) Capabilities.  Here is an excerpt from the last paragraph of this article, "They (UAS) are providing the kind of situational awareness that wasn’t even imagined a generation ago,” Singer said. “The sea change that’s happened is that they have gone from being unimagined to an expectation.”

I am on a Delta flight as I am writing this article, connected to the Internet, and keeping up with my workload.  I also have situational awareness as I am connected into all of my business and banking systems.  I can communicate and receive updates from my clients and customers.  This capability, was also unimagined a few years ago, but is now an expectation.

After reading the article I referenced above, I pondered how this technology could help the field services industry.  I came to the conclusion that most field services organizations will not be flying drones overhead, but perhaps they will begin to incorporate more use of real-time video feeds between service technicians and the central office.  Perhaps senior managers can ask their junior technicians to activate their headlamps and video feeds so they can see the equipment being serviced and assist remotely.  Most of the popular smartphones today provide these real-time video feeds (face time or similar functionality), but I have yet to see significant enterprise processes built around them.

Yesterday, I visited enterprise mobility vendor DSI in their Kansas City, Missouri office.  They were celebrating their first appearance on Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Mobile Application Development Platforms and wanted to brief me.  They have new headquarters and have set-up all of their audio visual contols on iPhones and iPads.  All of the giant monitors in all the rooms are controlled via Apple TV.  Each of their conference rooms have iPads mounted to the walls and connected to Outook so the rooms can be reserved via their calendar systems. DSI has offices in Australia, the UK, Singapore and other locations all set-up with state of the art video conferencing systems.  All of these functions enable managers to utilize mobile technologies and video conferencing to have situational awareness and M2M (machine to machine) control of their environments.  Very cool!  Their glass doors even slide shut with a shhhhhhhhhh sound just like on Star Trek.

During my tour of DSI's new offices, Scott Lutz,  Global VP of Marketing, showed how a mobile app on his iPhone could control the lights, window shades, monitors and many other things in the room.  It was an awesome example of an M2M system in action.  I can see how mobile video feeds, M2M controls from your tablets and smartphones can become the "expected" in the near future.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Mobile Marketing News Weekly – Week of August 26, 2012

The Mobile Marketing News Weekly is an online newsletter that is made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile marketing that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility and M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

PwC has predicted mobile advertising and m-commerce will be among the fastest-growing segments in media over the next four years. Mobile-ad spends are predicted to achieve compound annual growth of 46 per cent to 2016, compared with 10.3 per cent for the total Internet market. Read Original Content

Advertising spend on mobile messaging will reach a total $7.4 billion by 2017, according to a report from Juniper Research. This growth will be driven by a surge in use of location-based SMS, Juniper says. Read Original Content

A new report from eMarketer indicates spending on mobile advertising will reach $6.43 billion in 2012, driven by 97 percent growth in the United States, which will account for some $2.3 billion of the total. Read Original Content

Sky Technologies has been making SAP mobility easy since 1998. With Sky, you can mobilize your business and empower your team with solutions that are quick to install, easy to use, highly secure, and already proven in hundreds of SAP mobility projects across the globe. For more information, visit www.skytechnologies.com.

Gartner, the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, has predicted consumer spending on mobile apps stores and digital content will increase from $18 billion this year to a significant $61 billion by 2016. Read Original Content

A study by research firm Yankee Group says global mobile ad revenue will soar by three and a half times, to roughly $10 billion to $11 billion, by 2016. The surge will be led by high-growth countries such as Brazil, China and India. Read Original Content

Days after a California jury awarded Apple over $1 billion in damages over patent infringements, experts can’t seem to decide what – if any – effect the decision will have on the smartphone market, let alone mobile marketing. Read Original Content

In 2011 venture capital investments in mobile marketing and advertising were $592 million, almost a five-fold increase from $128 million in 2010. InMobi alone secured $200 million in financing last year. Read Original Content

Mobile Apps for Almost Everything

On Monday, August 27, 2012, The Wall Street Journal published The Technology Journal Report dedicated to mobile apps.  The report included some very interesting numbers that I want to share:

• The average smartphone user will download 37 mobile apps this year
• 36 billion mobile apps will be downloaded in 2012
• 136 billion mobile apps are predicted to be downloaded in 2017
• The average smartphone user in the USA spends 94 minutes per day using mobile apps
• The average smartphone user in the USA spends 72 minutes per day using browsers
• There are 650,000 apps available in the Apple App Store
• There are 600,000 apps available in Google Play

In addition to these numbers the article identified many different categories of mobile apps:

• Find Shopping Deals
• Remember Everything
• Find a Restaurant
• Get Fit and Stay Fit
• Go to the Movies
• Take a Trip
• Parenting
• Educating Your Preschooler
• Find a House
• Manage Your Money
• How a Remote Meeting
• Teach Math and Science to Kids
• Prepare a Meal
• Keep Track of Your Kids
• Meet Up with Friends
• Manage Your Passwords
• Read Books, Magazines and Newspapers
• Watch Movies and TV
• Take, Enhance and Share Photos
• Learn to Play Music
• Gardening
• Find a Date

I'm amazed at how thoroughly mobile apps have become a part of our personal and work lives.  I travel a lot.  I use mobile apps continuously.  Even though I have been working in enterprise mobility since 2000, I never stop being excited at cool new apps and impressed with their utility.

This past summer my family traveled with me on my Eggs with Benedict Mobile Strategies speaking tour in Europe.  We utilized the AirBNB app to arrange apartments to stay in.  We loved it!  We used our mapping functionality any time we were confused as to our exact location.  We downloaded maps to our iPhones and iPads while on WiFi connections so we could avoid international data roaming charges.  We researched all of our travel destinations using tablets and smartphones.  We kept track of each other across many different cities so we could meet up at the right places and times.  We did our banking from mobile apps and the mobile web.  We found great restaurants.  We reviewed the Underground schedule in London and bought train tickets all via our smartphones.  Mobile apps and the mobile web have completely changed our travel experiences over the past decade.

The vast amount of information at our finger tips is mind boggling.  It thrills me to think that the best information I can find on the Internet, is available even in the poorest regions of the world via the mobile Internet.  Whenever, I or a family member feels ill, we can quickly look up great medical advice.  Again, this medical advice is available now worldwide.

I travel, write, speak, teach, report, conduct research and interviews all using mobile devices.  My business travels with me.  I use the mobile app TripIt to organize my travels.  I use the mobile Skype app to see and communicate live with my family while I am on the road.

Mobile apps and the mobile web have revolutionized our personal lives, and it is doing the same with complete business processes and industries.  Every company needs to recognize the impact enterprise mobility, the mobile web and mobile apps will have on their industry and their competitive landscape.  It is not just a passing fad.

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Kevin Benedict, Mobile Industry Analyst and Mobile Strategy Consultant

Visit MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict

Join the SAP Enterprise Mobility Linkedin Group

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

Mobile Commerce News Weekly – Week of August 26, 2012

The Mobile Commerce News Weekly is an online newsletter made up of the most interesting news, articles and links related to mobile payments, mobile money, e-wallets, mobile banking and mobile security that I run across each week.  I am specifically targeting market size and market trend information.

Also read Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly
Also read Field Mobility and M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Marketing News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly

Juniper Research has released a new report on the future of mobile payments. Juniper predicts that mobile payment transactions will reach $1.3 trillion in the next five years, a fourfold increase. Read Original Content

Deutsche Telekom has taken a major step toward its scheduled launch of the Mobile Wallet initiative next year. The company has finalized its technical service provider for its mobile payment initiative, working out plans for card management and technical processing. Read Original Content

A survey from researcher Yankee Group indicates 46 percent of U.S. consumers use smartphones to check prices and product reviews at stores, up 5 percent from 2010. The study up also found 54 percent of consumers have downloaded a mobile shopping application and 24 percent consider these apps essential. Read Original Content

Verivo is a leading provider of enterprise mobility software. Verivo helps companies accelerate their business results. Its unique technology empowers teams to build, deploy, manage and update their mobile apps -- rapidly and securely. Verivo’s mobility platform is used by hundreds of companies in numerous industries, worldwide. This newsletter is sponsored in part by Verivo.  To learn more, visit www.verivo.com

PayPal is teaming with Discover to extend its fledgling mobile wallet service to millions of additional retail locations across the U.S.  Read Original Content

The Romney campaign has announced that it will use Square, a mobile platform that allows users to collect payments on a smartphone, at the GOP convention in Tampa. Read Original Content

InMobi has conducted a survey of 1,000 users in the second quarter of this year and found that 59 percent of them had completed mobile transactions while only 38 percent had made purchases using a mobile device in the previous six months. Read Original Content

The results of the latest study by Juniper Research have been released, showing that near field communication technology will have facilitated approximately $74 billion in mobile transactions by the year 2015. Read Original Content