Mobile App Design Is Irrelevant - Latest Research

Your mobile app design is irrelevant if your back-end systems can't support the real-time requirements of the user. 

A recent report* by CIO Strategic Marketing Services states that most customer and employee mobility applications are integrated with back-end systems.  Although that is not necessarily a surprise, it is useful to see the average number of apps that are connected to different back-end systems.  Here are the numbers from the survey.

Question: How many of your company's mobile apps for both customers and employees integrate with the following back-end systems? (average number of apps)

• 4.8 apps per survey participant connect to a CRM systems (including sales, customer service and marketing)
• 4.8 apps per survey participant connect to an Ecommerce system
• 4.6 apps per survey participant connect to an ERP (including project management system)
• 4.4 apps per survey participant connect to a supply chain, logistics or operations system
• 4.0 apps per survey participant connect to a document management system
• 3.7 apps per survey participant connect to an accounting and/or financial system
• 3.6 apps per survey participant connect to an HR (human resource) system

In my recent survey, Real-Time Mobile Infrastructure, eighty participants identified that back-end systems were causing real headaches for mobile app developers.  Here are a few of the questions and their results from the survey:

Question 1: Do you (or your clients') have IT systems that are too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobile app requirements?  83.9% answered YES.

Question 2: Will your (or your clients') IT environment and back-end systems prevent you from delivering an optimized mobile application experience?  43.2% answered YES.

Question 3: Are your (or your clients') mobile strategies and plans inhibited or limited because of the current IT environment, infrastructure and/or design?  77.7% answered YES.

Question 4: Which components of an end-to-end mobile solution cause the most performance problems (involving mobile apps)?  Here are the top three answers in order of how problematic they are:

1. Back-end systems 
2. Internet connectivity
3. APIs and integration design and performance

Question 5: How important will having optimized mobile applications and user experiences be to the future success of your business? 72% answered "very important" to "critical."

What is the bottom line?  Although it is often more fun and interesting to talk about innovative user experiences and app designs, the foundation for supporting real-time mobile applications must be in place first.  Without back-end system and IT infrastructures that can support a "real-time" environment, you are just putting lipstick on a pig, as we say in Boise, Idaho.

These are the kind of challenges and topics I cover during my Analyst Briefings and Mobile and Digital Strategy workshops.  If your company would benefit from a workshop contact me here to discuss.

*Survey of 414 executives at midsize and large enterprise organizations worldwide
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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.

Oracle Buys Toa Technologies Enhancing Mobile Solutions for Field Services

So that is why the Toa Technology team canceled my Google+ Hangout interview with them last week.  They were getting purchased!  

Toa Technologies is a very successful cloud based provider of field service management solutions that is heavily involved in mobile technologies.  They had been accumulating a stellar team and was regularly announcing sales deals with companies that had thousands of service technicians working in the field.  That is precisely why I wanted to interview them!

I am impressed with Oracle's aggressive launch into mobility in 2014.  They were late to the game, but are really stepping up.  A few months back I wrote an article (http://mobileenterprisestrategies.blogspot.com/2014/05/oracle-mobility-emerges-prepared-for.html) about Oracles latest moves into enterprise mobility.

Here is the press release on the acquisition: http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/2254950

Oracle today announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire TOA Technologies (TOA), a leading provider of cloud-based field service solutions that manage and optimize the last mile of customer service for enterprises by coordinating activities between dispatchers, mobile employees and their customers.

TOA’s Field Service SaaS enables modern enterprises to continuously monitor real-time field service requests coming in from contact centers, to schedule the right field service representative to dispatch, and to use sophisticated business analytics to monitor and view current inventories, accurately predict service windows, and optimize field service operations. TOA’s customers have more efficient field service operations, lower costs of delivering field service, and deliver a superior customer experience.

TOA’s solutions manage over 120 million service events annually in more than 20 countries and include global brands across many industries including DISH Network, E.ON, Home Depot, Ricoh, Telefonica, Virgin Media and Vodafone.

Oracle Service Cloud, part of Oracle Customer Experience Cloud, is an industry-leading platform for online customer service, cross-channel contact center, knowledge management, and policy automation. Oracle ERP cloud solutions help accelerate productivity, allocate resources, and provide on-demand information access.

Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle ERP cloud solutions combined with TOA will empower innovative customer service organizations to drive operational efficiencies while bolstering customer satisfaction and exceeding service expectations through personalized service.

More information on this announcement can be found athttp://www.oracle.com/toatechnologies.

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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.

Military Revolutions, Code Halos and Enterprise Mobility

Revolution in Commercial Affairs

In the US Army they have a term called "Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)."  It is often associated with the use of modern data collecting technologies, communications technologies, information analysis and the use of these technologies to improve strategies, doctrines and organizational structures.  The Army believes that in future warfare, the size of the opponent and their platforms [weapons], will be less reflective of military power than the quality of sensors [data collection] systems and mobile communication links and their ability to utilize information to their advantage.

I see a "Revolution in Commercial Affairs" happening today.  The same concepts and strategies learned  in the military have relevance for the enterprise.  Companies that can more effectively use "Code Halos" - the information that surrounds people, organizations, processes and products will be the winners.

What does this mean for your company strategy in 2014?  It means your enterprise must digitally transform and focus on improving its capabilities to:

• Collect information faster
• Communicate information faster
• Analyze and filter information faster
• Report the analysis faster to decision makers
• Strive for the goals of being a "real-time" and "data-driven" enterprise

Mobile technologies play a critical role in this transformation.  However, it is very important we understand mobility is but an enabler of an overall "Code Halos" strategy.  The success of our enterprises over the next few years will largely be the result of how smart we are with the use of information.

There are at least three components required for digital transformation:

1. Technological innovation
2. Operation concepts and Strategies
3. Organizational adaption

It doesn't help much if one person at the top has a good strategy and buys innovative technologies, but the rest of the organization does not understand the concepts behind it, or the role it plays in being more competitive.  Technological innovation needs to be a part of a strategy.  A strategy that changes the way the business operates in a manner that makes it more competitive in the market place.

Every organization needs to understand the seriousness of the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest. Every employee should be seeking ways to innovate and contribute to making their company as competitive as possible.

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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.

The Real Challenge of Mobile Apps is Real-Time

Can you imagine a scenario where you ask Apple’s Siri a question, and she says, “Can I get back to you in 5 minutes?”  Wouldn't that be irritating?  Information and requests for information have a shelf life. The information is requested at a specific time for a reason.  If you send me the information in 5 minutes I have probably moved on to something else.

In a recent survey I conducted with 79 participants involved in mobile technologies and projects, 83.7% said they or their clients' have IT systems that are too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobile application requirements. That is a problem.

Many organizations are facing a challenging time supporting the real-time data requirements of mobile applications.  They are recognizing that significant work needs to be done inside their complex IT environment to ensure that data queries and reports can be produced instantly for use on mobile applications.  In many organizations upgrading and enhancing their IT ecosystem for mobile applications represents a major investment.  This is driving increased interest in cloud based solutions that often use newer and faster processes, designs and architectures.

Speed of response is important to the mobile user experience.  The speed in which your IT environment can support mobile applications is a competitive differentiator.  As more applications incorporate location, predictive and context aware elements, the speed of supporting IT systems will become even more important to the end user.  No one wants a turn-by-turn navigation system giving driving instructions that are delayed by 30 seconds, “You should have turned back there,” is not an acceptable response for most of us.

Retailers are also increasingly interested in interacting with onsite shoppers via mobile devices.  They want to recognize you, your shopping habits, past purchases and preferences and today’s shopping needs all while you are browsing their aisles.  This requires the ability to collect appropriate data, query databases and share relevant information with both the shoppers and the staff in the store so the customer’s experience is enhanced and the sales optimized.

None of this happens by accident.

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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.

Managing Mobility in the Workplace: Best Practices with 451 Research, HP and Kevin Benedict

Join me at 9 AM PDST, Thursday, July 24th for a lively discussion with 451 Research and HP on the topics of enterprise mobility, mobile printing, mobile strategies and trends.

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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.