Mobile Commerce, Speed, Operational Tempos and the Real-Time Enterprise, Part 3

This is part 3 in the article series.  Read part 1 and part 2 here.

The Shelf Life of Data and the Need for Speed

Today enterprises are facing a massive challenge that will require new strategies and investment. In fact, 80 percent of survey participants reported that increasing demand for mobile apps is forcing IT departments to rethink and change how they have designed IT environments.  Rethinking and changing IT environments requires investment and budget, and 83 percent believe the demand for mobile applications will force enterprises to make major investments in their IT environments to better support real-time interactions with mobile apps and to remain competitive.

Our survey reveals that real-time mobile data is critical for personalizing and optimizing the mobile user’s experience and promoting the adoption and utilization of mobile applications and websites. We have also found that organizations, IT environments, and business processes will require changes in order to support a faster operational tempo. One of the key reasons these changes are necessary is the shelf life of data. Data has greater economic value the faster it can be collected, transmitted, analyzed, consumed, and utilized. This brings us back to the speed requirement. If the mobile user can instantly be presented with a personalized and contextually relevant experience based on real-time and previously collected and analyzed data, then the user will realize the greatest value and utility.

Situational Awareness and Information Dominance

Military strategists today believe the size of opponents and their weapons platforms are less representative of military power than the quality of their sensors systems, mobile communication links, and their ability to utilize information to their advantage. We believe these same conclusions are also relevant in the commercial sector.

An enterprise’s ability to use information as a competitive advantage is central to a successful business strategy today. If a manager has the responsibility of optimizing the schedules of 5,000 service technicians during an ice storm, or routing 10,000 delivery trucks, then the faster they receive accurate data from the field - the better they can perform their jobs.

Information advantages often involve improving situational awareness — the ability to understand events and actions around you. This takes visibility and data. Visibility happens when people, mobile, and sensor data collection technologies are integrated with IT systems and processes that enable the measurement, collection, transmission, analysis, and reporting of remote activities and events. The faster this can be accomplished, the faster data-driven decisions can be made and tactics deployed.

Historically, it has been difficult to manage remote workforces due to a lack of visibility. There are too many unknowns and a lack of accountability, which forces managers to make decisions based upon conjecture, rather than on real-time data analysis. Robert L. Bateman writes in his book Digital War, “The three questions that have befuddled soldiers since the beginning of human history are:
  1. Where am I?
  2. Where are my buddies?
  3. Where is the enemy?" 
Bateman speaks to the difficulty of managing from afar. The lack of real-time visibility often means critical operational decisions and optimized scheduling choices are delayed, which results in the inefficient utilization of resources and assets. Today technologies exist to eliminate many of those operational blind spots.

Network-Centric Operations and Data Collection
The problem: Technology [used between WWI and WWII] was viewed in discrete packets as it applied to narrowly defined areas. As a result the US military did not fully develop the possible combinations of technology with tactics.” –Robert L. Bateman, Digital War
Many commercial organizations today retain the narrow view and strategy that Bateman wrote about. They continue to think about and deploy mobile and sensor technologies in line-of-business (LOB) silos. They believe in the utility of these technologies, but have no enterprise-wide strategy for combining mobile and sensor technologies with tactics to achieve an overall information advantage across the enterprise.

Modern military organizations use the term Network Centric Warfare strategies to describe an information-based strategy for winning wars. These strategies have been taught in military organizations for decades, but are less understood in the commercial sector, where these strategies can be found with names such as Network Centric Operations or Networked Field Services. Military organizations that have implemented Network Centric strategies are accustomed to using a wide range of mobile devices and sensors to create a web or grid of data collection capabilities that are all wirelessly networked together for the purpose of enhancing real-time situational awareness, organizational agility, collaboration, and decision-making. Commercial enterprises share many of the same requirements, but as our survey data shows, they have yet to adopt the necessary enterprise-wide strategies or IT systems with enough speed to support real-time interactions.

Given the importance of an information advantage, what should commercial organizations focus on in 2015 and beyond? Broadly the answers are:
  • Recognizing that information can be used as a competitive advantage
  • Recognizing the importance of achieving real-time operational tempos
  • Developing and implementing enterprise-wide network centric operational strategies
  • Utilizing mobile applications and sensors to reduce operational blind spots and improve situational awareness
  • Personalizing and contextualizing the mobile user experience using real-time data and Code Halos strategies
  • Employing artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the speed of decision-making and the execution of tactics
An organization’s ability to be competitive now and in the future largely depends on its ability to successfully navigate the process of digital and organizational transformation to achieve an information advantage.  If you would like to brainstorm these issues and discuss your specific business environment please contact us.

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Read more at Future of Work
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
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.

Mobile Commerce, Speed, Operational Tempos and the Real-Time Enterprise, Part 2

This article is part 2 in a series I wrote and published in an intelligence and defense industry trade journal.  You can read Part 1 and Part 3 here.

Operational Tempos and Mobility

Supporting real-time mobility is more than just a technology issue. It also requires companies to support real-time operational tempos. An operational tempo, in the context of this article, is defined as the speed or pace of business operations. Achieving a satisfactory operational tempo in order to support real-time mobility is a significant challenge and extends far beyond the IT environment and deep into decision-making and business processes.

Changing an enterprise’s operational tempo requires strong leadership that can transform the entire organization. It often requires significant IT updates and upgrades, organizational changes, and reengineering business processes and decision-making matrixes to align with real-time demands.
The military strategist and U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd taught that in order to win or gain superiority over an opponent, one should operate at a faster tempo than the opponent. Today competition is increasingly around the quality of mobile users’ experiences, data management, integrated IT systems, and the speed with which data can be collected, analyzed, and utilized. Robert Leonhard in the book The Art of Maneuver writes on the role of tempo and speed, “If I can develop and pursue my plan to defeat you faster than you can execute your plan to defeat me, then your plan is unimportant.” The words “faster than you can execute” in Leonhard’s context refer to the tempo of operations.

In a fast changing world, mobile applications are competing for users and acceptance against the
status quo (traditional paper or desktop processes) and competitors’ apps. In order for organizations to be successful, they must deliver mobile applications that will meet the expectations of mobile users. A key component of a good mobile user experience, as we previously identified, is the speed with which it can load and respond to clicks, swipes, taps, commands, and queries. When asked in a survey how significant speed is to a user’s overall mobile application experience, 80 percent answered “very important."

Contextually Relevant Mobile Apps

It is well known that the more personalized and contextually relevant a mobile application or website is to the user, the more successful it will be at delivering a good user experience. Mobile apps and websites by their very nature are used on the move. That means the context in which a mobile device is being used changes rapidly. This data can be about locations, time, activities, history, and behaviors. This important data must quickly be collected, analyzed, and consumed by the mobile application fast enough to personalize the user’s experience before the context changes. Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work calls this Code Halos.  This refers to all the data about a person, object, or organization that can be used to personalize and contextualize a mobile and digital experience.

The data required to personalize and contextualize an experience takes time to process and utilize. It often requires many different integrated IT systems. It needs to be captured, transmitted, analyzed, and shared in real time with the mobile application and used to personalize the user experience. The speed with which all of these steps can be executed is important. No matter how great a mobile application’s design, delays in retrieving or interacting with back-office business or IT systems equate to negative user experiences. This is true for business-to-business, business-to-employee, or business-to-consumer mobile applications. In order to be successful, IT systems must operate at speeds quick enough to satisfy all of these different categories of mobile users. This requires a serious review of every IT, operational, and business process component that ultimately impacts the speed of mobile applications.

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Read more at Future of Work
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
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.

Mobile Commerce, Speed, Operational Tempos and the Real-Time Enterprise, Part 1

In a recent survey of eighty IT and business professionals, 73 percent responded that having optimized mobile applications and user experiences was “very important to critical” to their company’s future success.  In the same survey however, 78 percent reported their mobile strategies and plans were inhibited or limited by their existing IT environment. These results reveal a critical gap between the requirements for success and the reality of the obstacles enterprises are facing. Overcoming these challenges is the strategic imperative facing large enterprises today.

Enterprises understand that digital transformations being driven by mobile technologies and the Internet of Things (IoT) are changing their industries and markets. Consumer behaviors are changing at speeds never before seen, which impacts how businesses operate and bring products to market. These rapid changes are forcing enterprises to change their strategies in R&D, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, and sales. They are being forced to reconsider budget priorities and plans. They feel uneasiness. They are concerned with their ability to remain competitive, to understand real-time market trends, and to be agile and flexible enough to respond in time. They do know, however, that mobile technologies, sensors, and information management are at the forefront of these changes and are key components of any plans and strategies.

As organizations begin developing mobile strategies and implementing mobile apps, they quickly realize that simply developing and deploying basic mobile apps, infrastructure, and frameworks are not enough. They must push further and implement a real-time enterprise to remain competitive. This real-time requirement is at the root of many additional challenges. Eighty-four percent of survey participants reported they have IT systems too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobility, which negatively impacts mobile app performance and user experiences.

Jonathan Gabbai, Head of International Mobile Product at eBay, recently reported almost half of eBay’s transactions globally are now touched by mobile.  Users conduct product research, create wish lists, and complete transactions using mobile applications. With so much business now depending on mobile device, application, and website performance, the user experience must be outstanding in order to be competitive. An October 2014 Harris Poll survey found that 37 percent of U.S. smartphone and tablet owners now favor mobile shopping over in-store shopping, and Google reports that 79 percent of consumers now say they use a smartphone to help with shopping.  These numbers alone should move mobile technologies up the priority list of any business.

Although an increasing number of shoppers prefer the convenience of mobile shopping, they still remain hard to please. Forty-six percent of mobile shoppers say they will leave a mobile app or mobile site if it fails to load in three seconds or less, while 80 percent will leave if the mobile app or site is buggy or slow.  Consumers’ expectations on what defines a good user experience are changing fast, but seem always to begin and end with speed.

Continue to Part 2 and Part 3 in this series.

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Read more at Future of Work
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
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.

The New Mobile Shopper - Latest Research

I am deep into researching mobile consumer behaviors at this time, and am amazed at the impact that mobile technologies are having on us - especially millennials.

Here are some examples from my research:

  • People that use mobile devices to purchase products and services online, shop online far more frequently than those using only desktop/laptops.  In fact, mobile shoppers purchase online once or more a week at a rate 82% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers.
  • People that use mobile devices to purchase products and services online, conduct research late at night, at a rate 46.1% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers.
  • People that use mobile devices to purchase products and services online, check store inventories late at night at a rate 66.7% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers. 
  • People that use mobile devices to purchase products and services online selected "ease of navigating the website or mobile app" as a top factor that influenced their decision to purchase online from a particular retailer/website at a rate 42.2% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers. 
  • People that use mobile devices to purchase products and services online selected "the ability to buy/reserve online and pick-up in store" as a top factor that influenced their decision to purchase online from a particular retailer/website at a rate 53.4% greater than desktop/laptop online shoppers.
  • People that use mobile devices to purchase products and services online, report they have shopped for an item in a store, but purchased it online from a different retailer, at a rate 22% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers.

  • This data came from Cognizant's 2015 Shoppers survey of 5,000 people.  It shows that people accustomed to using mobile devices to shop online for products and services represent a category of shopper that behaves very differently than traditional desktop/laptop online shoppers.  Retailers and etailers that don't account for these differences with customized/personalized digital experiences will lose to competitors that do.
    I will be finishing this research and publishing a major study on this data in the next few months.

    ************************************************************************
    Kevin Benedict
    Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
    Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
    View my profile on LinkedIn
    Read more at Future of Work
    Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
    Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
    Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
    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.

    Mobile Consumer Behaviors - The Seven Essential Questions

    Digital Transformation is the process of updating your business and IT infrastructure to align with today's and tomorrow's consumers.  Today that is important, but hard to do.  Mobile consumer behaviors are changing far faster than most IT budgets and initiatives and that can cause problems.  If your customers are adopting technologies and changing their path-to-purchase journeys at a pace that is faster than you can deliver, then you are opening up an opportunity gap for a more nimble competitor.

    Do your internal sales and executive strategy sessions begin with these questions:
    1. Where are our customers to be found?  
    2. What technologies are our customers using?  
    3. How are our customers' path-to-purchase journeys' changing?  
    4. Are we meeting our customers along their path-to-purchase journeys and supporting them?
    5. Are we digitally transforming at a pace that will keep us aligned with our customers' pace of change?  
    6. Is our IT budget aligned with the required pace of change?  
    7. Are we re-engineering business processes to align with required digital transformations and mobile consumer behaviors?
    According to comScore's quarterly State Of Retail report, in the first quarter of 2014, 78 percent of the U.S. population age 15 and above bought something online.  That percentage is expected to continue to grow.  In addition, BusinessInsider.com reports the key age group of 18-34 year olds spend nearly $2,000 per year online now. In addition, in a recent Experian survey 55 percent of e-commerce shoppers in the U.S. live in households with incomes above $75,000 (40 percent were in households earning $100,000 and above). We are into serious numbers worthy of our attention.

    The point has been made.  We all recognize there is a lot of money to be made catering to online shoppers.  The problem is - just when many companies thought they had their e-commerce capabilities and strategies under control, consumer behaviors change.  How?  They jumped to mobile devices in the form of smartphones and tablets for much of the path-to-purchase journey.  In fact, in our analysis over three-quarters of path-to-purchase journeys are already completed before vendors are contacted, and much of it was completed using mobile devices.   If a retailer waits to be contacted before attempting to influence, they have missed the boat.  If marketing campaigns are desktop/laptop centric, they have missed key opportunities and demographics to influence.  If customers don't contact vendors until late in the path-to-purchase journey, then how can retailers effectively influence buying decisions?  They need to understand consumer behaviors in general, and mobile consumer behaviors in particular.

    In a recent survey I conducted of 108 business and IT professionals, all purchased products and services online.  Of those, eighty-nine percent purchase products and services online using mobile devices (smartphones and/or tablets).  However, when asked what means they typically use for online purchases, thirty-nine percent answered desktops/tablets, twelve percent mobile devices, and forty-eight percent answered both desktop/laptop and mobile devices regularly.  This data highlights the fact that many mobile consumers still wait to purchase products online using desktops/laptops even if they researched the products on smartphones and tablets.  The use of multiple devices and computers in the path-to-purchase process highlights the need to support customers across all channels to ensure they have a beautiful and consistent customer experience.   This is not easy as there are a lot of moving parts and technologies involved.

    To add to the complexity retailers face, different parts of the path-to-purchase journey are favored on different devices.  Yikes!  On-the-go searches and quick information discoveries are favored for smartphones.  Just search for a product or service and save the link.  In-depth research and rich product comparisons are often done on tablets with bigger screens.  For online purchases, consumers still overwhelmingly use desktops/laptops as they are assumed to be more secure.  Understood?  Don't, however, forget that many consumers still only use desktop/laptops and their behavior is different.  In fact, Cognizant just completed its 2015 Shoppers Survey of 5,000 people and forty-three percent typically only use computers for online shopping activities.

    How often do people use mobile devices to make online purchases?  From my recent survey (108 business and IT professionals):
    • Daily 1.8%
    • Weekly 28.7%
    • Monthly 43.5%
    • Quarterly 19.4%
    • Yearly 5.5%
    What time of day do consumers shop using mobile devices?  Here are the top three times from my recent survey ranked in order:
    1. Early morning
    2. Mid morning
    3. Early afternoon
    Seems simple. Focus from 6 AM to 2 PM in each time zone, right?  Wrong!  When you look at different mobile consumer behaviors by age, there are considerable differences.  That means if you are selling to an older age group, they have very different online and mobile consumer behaviors than 18-24 year olds. The younger age groups spike upward in online shopping late at night, after all of us old people are asleep in bed.  Besides, desktop users find shopping in bed quite painful after a few minutes.

    What location are mobile consumers at when they shop online?  That depends on what stage in the path-to-purchase they are in.  Here are the most popular locations for mobile consumer shopping from my recent survey ranked in order of popularity:
    1. Home - living room
    2. Work - desk
    3. Home - bedroom
    4. Home - TV room
    5. Coffee Shop/Restaurant
    6. Commuting - automobile/taxi/train/airplane/subway
    If this mix is not rich enough, let's add gender differences!  In a November 2014 study conducted by Burst Media and Rhythm NewMedia titled Online Insights - Mobile Shopping Behaviors, it was found that among respondents who use mobile device(s) inside a physical retail location to help with the shopping experience, 58.3 percent were women and 47.7 percent were men.  That difference is meaningful.

    I will stop here for today.  I am writing a lengthy report now on all the details of these studies.  If you would like to review these findings in detail and arrange a briefing, please contact me.  The bottom line is that consumers' path-to-purchase has been significantly impacted by mobile devices and if retailers and etailers are not in step with these changes, they will lose to competitors that are.

    ************************************************************************
    Kevin Benedict
    Writer, Speaker, 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
    Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
    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.

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