Mobile Expert Video Series: SAP's Brent Cohler on SAP Precision Marketing and Mobility

In this short video recorded in Orlando, Florida last week at SAP's SAPPHIRE NOW 2013, I interview SAP's Brent Cohler on SAP's mobile marketing solution called SAP Precision Marketing and learn about customer use cases and value propositions.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/HI4CHh7yxdI

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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.

Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly – Week of May 19, 2013

Welcome to Enterprise Mobility Asia News Weekly, an online newsletter that consists of the most interesting news and articles related to enterprise mobility in Asia.  Asia is predicted to be the fastest area of growth for enterprise mobility between now and 2016.

Also read Field Mobility News Weekly
Also read Kevin Benedict’s What’s New in HTML5
Also read M2M News Weekly
Also read Mobile Commerce News Weekly
Also read Mobile Health News Weekly
Also read Mobility News Weekly
Also read SMAC News Weekly

Indian mobile point-of-sale device maker Ezetap Mobile Solutions has obtained global certification for the latest version of its point-of-sale device from Europay, Mastercard and Visa.  This development is expected to encourage an increasing number of Indian consumers to pay for purchases at home using cards.  Read Original Content

A survey commissioned by mobile phone company Amaysim reveals one fourth of Australian adults now spend more than eight hours a day connected to technology.  Read Original Content

Mobile payment services are on the rise in Hong Kong.  Hang Seng Bank, a division of HSBC, will launch its NFC service in the third quarter of 2013, and the Bank of China – Hong Kong will also offer the service this year.  Read Original Content

Antenna Software provides a complete cloud-based enterprise mobility suite that enables both IT pros and business executives alike to create and manage mobile apps, websites and content across the entire business.  This newsletter is sponsored in part by Antenna Software.

China Mobile has been aggressively building up its 4G trial network, which could give it an edge of up to half a year over both Unicom and China Telecom in the 4G space.  Read Original Content

With promising mobile commerce opportunities in China, Amazon announced it has opened its Appstore in the country.  Read Original Content
A recent report by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers emphasized the important role of mobile devices in China’s e-commerce, finding one third of Chinese online shoppers used devices such as smartphones and tablets to make purchases.  Read Original Content

MobileTECH Summit 2013 is a new event designed to showcase current and upcoming mobile innovations best suited to New Zealand’s principal food and fibre sectors.  The objective of the summit is to provide new tools, ideas, case studies and contacts for mobile communications to grow future productivity and profits.  Read Original Content

Mobile Expert Video Series: Mark Crofton

In this short interview recorded this week in Orlando, FL at SAPPHIRE NOW 2013, SAP's Mark Crofton talks about mobile solutions, mobile banking and trends in Latin America.  Enjoy!

Video Link: http://youtu.be/C_Hejd5622U


*************************************************************
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.

SAP M2M Expert Suhas Uliyar Shares Strategies for the Internet of Things

This is one of the most informative interviews I have recorded on the subject of the IoT (Internet of Things).  IoT is a big subject here at SAPPHIRE NOW 2013.  In this interview Suhas Uliyar shares what an end-to-end M2M (machine to machine) solution looks like in an SAP world.

Learn how the SAP Mobile Platform, Hana, Syclo, Right Hemisphere/ SAP Visual Enterprise, Afaria, Augmented Reality, Mapping, cloud computing and SAP NetWeaver all work together in an M2M solution.

Video Link: http://youtu.be/vJMCzQS-9wA



*************************************************************
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.

Images from SAPPHIRE 2013

SAP's Sanjay Poonen sharing SAP's mobile strategies
Clockwise from top - Kevin Benedict, SAPPHIRENOW 2013,
Internet of Things Session, SAP-Founder Dr. Hasso Plattner
and SAP Executive Board Member Dr. Vishal Sikka
Clockwise from Top - Suhas Uliyar (SAP VP M2M/IoT),
SAPPHIRE 2013, Orlando FL
Kevin Benedict speaking SMAC strategies
Senthil Krishnapillai (SAP VP Mobile Security)

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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 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.
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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.

Renegade Business Execs, SMAC and Things are Out of Control!

Cloud based Google Enterprise Apps
This morning Cognizant, the company where I work as an analyst, reported their earnings.  In the earnings call Cognizant CEO Francisco D'Souza stated, "This year we expect to deliver about $500 million in SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, cloud) related services."  That is a significant number in Boise, Idaho where I live.

I study SMAC related topics daily and teach SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) workshops globally.  No one is arguing against these mega-trends in 2013.  The questions I get are related to how to embrace and exploit these trends for the good of the company given their unique position, market, industry and region.

On another topic - I read an article today titled, "Renegade Business Execs Drive IT Strategy" that I found intriguing.  Here is an excerpt, "Business executives are increasingly bypassing the IT department and spending their own budgets on technology as "it's too important for their business to leave to IT", says analyst house Forrester."

I believe we are witnessing the beginnings of the "consumerization of enterprise apps.  When powerful and useful enterprise apps are available in the cloud for the choosing, business executives can often select and implement them with minimal IT department involvement.  If the business believes it will help their bottom line, they pull the trigger and use their own budgets.  This of course has implications on how the IT department is viewed and their future missions.

Here is another excerpt from the article, "CIOs now have to pivot and act more as a consultant to the business. The days of a centralized controlled IT world are over. Vendor management can no longer be the central management point for IT departments."  Things are out of control!

The cat is out of the bag!  The horse is out of the barn!  Who let the dogs out?  All odd sayings, but they seem strangely relevant to what is happening in IT.  The business is more and more about technology, and thus business execs are becoming experts themselves in the use of technology to hit their business objectives.  They are no longer depending upon the IT department to recommend and select innovative solutions.  If you are selling technology to companies, you should be paying attention to this trend!

The IT department today is often viewed as the maintenance arm of the company.  The keepers of the systems of record, the ERPs, databases, security systems and IT policies and licenses.  More and more of the innovation seems to be happening in the cloud and on mobile devices.

One last excerpt, "IT will become much less of a blue-collar run and built organization and much more of a white-collar shop focused on design, orchestration and integration, with more of the integration focused on external business partners and public cloud services."

This is the future.  This is why Cognizant is studying and sharing our research on SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) with the world.  This is why we have a SMAC practice.  This is why we are working closely with Google Enterprise to demonstrate what a fully enabled SMAC platform looks like.

If you live in the UK, you may be interested in an upcoming exclusive breakfast discussion on ‘Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud’ the morning of 12th June in Thistle Hotel in Marble Arch. Moderating the session will be Paul Simmonds, ex-CISO of AstraZeneca and of ICI and a panel of experts from Microsoft, Savvis and Interxion.  There are limited seats, but email me if you are interested in attending and I will see what I can do.



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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.

Are You Acting Strategically Enough with Your Enterprise Mobility?

Are you acting strategically
enough to matter?
I read the following question recently, "Are we acting strategically enough to matter?"  I remember the question, because I believe it is so important for us all to answer.  It is a question all IT and business people should be asking themselves!

In this picture of charging elephants, would it really make a difference if you took a baby step to the left, right, forward or backwards?  Probably not!  The only way to save yourself would be to do something strategic and fast!

I see enterprise mobility in a similar way.  How long are large enterprises going to engage in tiny proof of concepts before they do something big!  The mega-trends of SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) are not going away.  The faster companies recognize these are absolutely market and industry altering trends and begin to do something smart about it, the better.

I read a very interesting interview with Silicon Valley veteran and investor/celebrity Marc Andreessen the other day.  Here are some of his candid technology and trend predictions:

  • Nothing is going to stop the consumerization of the enterprise. 
  • Nothing is going to stop the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend. 
  • Nothing is going to stop Software-as-a-Service. 
  • Nothing is going to stop the cloud. 
  • Any installed software, where there is a web or a cloud equivalent, is in real trouble.  Old software vendors are charging these huge upgrade and maintenance prices. Companies can switch to SaaS for less than the cost of the maintenance on the old software.
Do you agree with him?  I mostly do!  I think BYOD is really BWITUICS (bring what I tell you I can support).

I was teaching a SMAC strategies workshop the other day in Edinburgh, Scotland.  The large global financial services company I was meeting with had an "Innovation Team" consisting of members of the business and IT members.  This team was tasked with recognizing market and industry impacting trends on the horizon and having a plan in place to address them.  They invited me to come in and share the results of my research on enterprise mobility and SMAC.  

I believe all companies need to have some team in place watching the horizon and developing responses to emerging opportunities and threats.  These days demand foresight and courage.  Does your company have them?
*************************************************************
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.

Enterprise and Consumer Mobility and Travel Strategies

I teach a lot of SMAC strategies workshops (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) around the world.  Conducting these involves a lot of travel.  I have been pondering these last few days just how much my travel experience has changed over the past decade.  Today, mobile smartphones can provide the following:
  • Push to buy the Heathrow Express train ticket from an app on my iPhone
  • Translate foreign languages live on screen
  • Get real-time transportation advice
  • Locate myself anywhere in the world on a map
  • Use my iPhone compass app to know where North is located
  • Use my smartphone screen as a boarding pass
  • Find a Thai restaurant and read the social reviews 
  • Book my dinner reservation
  • Help find a last-minute hotel room or book a Marriott property
  • Book, change or review my airline reservation (change my seats to be as comfortable as possible)
  • Help me understand how long it will take to travel from point A in London, to point B
  • Read about any location, building, historical event, city or neighborhood instantly
  • Download an eBook I saw in a bookstore and read on my iPad mini
  • Download an audio book to listen to when my eyes grow heavy
  • Mask the sounds of revelry in the streets with the sounds of waterfalls cascading from my iPhone
  • Look up available short-term apartment rentals within a specific distance of a given point on AirBnB mobile, see photos and read reviews
  • Help me stay in real-time contact with my family and friends while traveling
  • Create a private, invitation only, Photo Stream to share my trip photos with my family
  • Check my email
  • Listen to voicemail
  • Skype
  • Jump on Google+, open a Hangout and instantly set-up video conferencing with my team, share any Google apps including presentations live (the death of distance)
  • Write and publish newsletters and articles while traveling around the world
  • Record video interviews with my iPhone, edit and publish from any corner of the world
I could continue.  I research and write about technologies that cause digital disruptions.  All of the above mobile app capabilities are in some manner disrupting the way the travel and hospitality industry operate.

There are digital disruptions happening in every industry today - some are small, but others are massive.    I make decisions on the hotels I book based upon their quality and comfort, and their high speed internet connections.  I don't care how nice a hotel is, if it can't get me on the Internet at a decent speed I will not stay there.  That kind of behavior is a digital disruptor for hotels.

Digital disruptions are not to be feared, but rather recognized, understood, embraced and exploited.  Digital disruptions are most often ridiculed by an industry when they first appear.  However, they eventually may grow to be a tsunami of change that overturns those unprepared.  It is my opinion that all companies should have a team that meets regularly to identify digital disruptors on the horizon to debate and ponder their potential impact without ridicule or denial.

The marketplace is littered with the remnants of companies unwilling and unable to change in the face of digital disruptions.  Will your company deny or embrace digital disruption?

*************************************************************
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.

Big Data and Mobility Change the Way We Live

This week I read an interesting article titled, Mobile Phone Data Redraws Bus Routes in Africa.  Seems the MNO (mobile network operator) Orange released 2.5 billion phone records (anonymised data) from 5 million phones for an exercise on how Big Data could be used to improve lives.

The data was used by IBM's research laboratory in Dublin to determine how people could reduce travel times in the city of Abidjan, Ivory Coast.  They compared the locations of actual mobile phone usage with current bus routes, and then developed a plan to change the bus routes to more efficiently serve the actual locations of where people lived.  They reported there could be a 10% reduction in travel times by following their plan.

This is very interesting to me.  Instead of guessing how people live, travel and use their mobile phones - big data reports the facts.  If you combine telco data with actual public transportation data and other sources you can learn an immense amount about the world we live in, and thus how we can improve it.

I recently read about a research project that compared actual email flows to organizational chart structures.  The results showed that the people with the most influence (measured by numbers of emails sent and received) did not correlate with organizational charts.  In a social business, the most influential people are those with good information and the willingness to share it, not simply those with company bestowed titles.

I am reading a book now called Big Data by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger and Kenneth Cukier.  In this book the authors write, "There is a treasure hunt under way, driven by the insights to be extracted from data and the dormant value that can be unleashed..."  So much information and data in the past has been on paper.  It has not been in a format that was digitized, searchable and able to quickly be analyzed.  The authors call the process of transforming information from paper to digits datafication.  Once information goes through datafication, immense amounts of interesting results can be found via big data analytics that can be used to find efficiencies, make our world a better place, or at least push the problems to someone else's neighborhood.

Many analysts are projecting that future increases in productivity are likely to come from big data analytics that can discover inefficiencies never before recognized.  It is going to be an interesting future!
*************************************************************
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.

Interviews with Kevin Benedict