Mobile Expert Interviews: VMware's Sanjay Poonen, PT 2

In Part 2 (watch Part 1 here) of my interview with VMware's Sanjay Poonen, we discuss VMware's strategies toward the enterprise mobility market, recent announcements and plans going forward.  In addition, Sanjay announces the new AirWatch led Mobile Security Alliance with 10 initial members. This alliance supports customers seeking to mitigate the growing mobile threat landscape by providing advanced security solutions. Charter AirWatch Mobile Security Alliance members include Palo Alto Networks, Check Point, FireEye, Appthority, Lookout, Pradeo, Proofpoint, Skycure, Veracode and Zimperium.

Also, SAP and VMware plan to integrate the ACE (App Configuration for the Enterprise) approach to enable secure, instant deployment and login of SAP's SuccessFactors and Concur mobile applications on iOS and Android devices. Enjoy!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/JPptgrVmGTY

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 Expert Interviews: VMware's Sanjay Poonen, PT 1

I had the honor of sitting down with and interviewing VMware's EVP and GM of End User Computing, Sanjay Poonen last week on VMware's beautiful 500 acre campus in Palo Alto, CA.  In this interview we cover the past, present and future state of enterprise mobility, SAP's recent mobile developments and partnership with AirWatch, mobile security, application management and much more.  You cannot get a more insider view of mobility today!  Enjoy!  Watch Part 2 here.

Video Link: https://youtu.be/bGTH9ZSwzdk

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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.

Africa, Mobile Phones and Refugees

Boise's Congolese/Rwandan
Refugee Community
This week a friend texted to ask advice on an appropriate welcome gift to present newly arriving Syrian refugees in Boise, Idaho. Without hesitation I said a cheap mobile phone with prepaid minutes. Why?  We are active in the refugee community and over the past three years have lost new refugees in the city. We have had kids waiting for moms that we can't find.  We have missed numerous doctor appointments because of language barriers and a lack of communications.  We have learned the value of even the simplest and cheapest of mobile phones.

We have learned, working with the mostly Congolese/Rwandan refugee community, that when people have phones, coordination is far easier and more efficient.  When refugees first arrive, they are scheduled with non-stop appointments with different agencies, healthcare services and schools.  They are in a new culture, with a new language, in a new city/state/country, with many new systems all involving reams of paperwork.  Phones and conference calls with translators help them navigate through each challenge and obstacle.

My wife just returned from Rwanda, Africa.  While there, I was able to be in real-time communications with her in the remotest corners of the country.  She had purchased an international data and phone plan from AT&T, and she could text and send photos and videos all along the way.  She blogged daily (read it here http://words-on-the-way.blogspot.com/), and yes, there is an app for that.  In addition to communicating, she used her iPhone to take hundreds of photos and many videos.  She had an entire global audience of friends, family and social media followers digitally experiencing her travels and experiences.

In days past, reporters would struggle to document news, read what they had written over the phone, mail their unprocessed film to distant offices, or use satellite phones to send them.  Today with ubiquitous wireless connectivity and smartphones, we can experience the world LIVE!

Tate (grandma)
Our friends in the refugee community here in Boise have many friends and family members remaining in Rwanda.  Mobile phones, the internet and mobile applications enable them to stay connected.  In fact, while my wife, Shawna, was traveling to visit Tate (Kinyarwandan for grandma) in a remote part of the country without a street address, they were able to use mobile phones in the USA to inform family members of the visit, and then coordinate with them to have a person meet the car along a road to guide them to the right village, house and grandma.

When refugees arrive in Europe or North America, they connect with and share their experiences with those back home.  They can be the support system for those that arrive later.  Today, refugees meet refugees at the airport.  Friends and family connected by mobile devices have a ready made support system to quickly educate and teach new arrivals on how things work.

Also, in Africa, where large segments of the population are unbanked (without bank accounts), digital banks and payment services like M-Pesa have stepped in.  From Wikipedia, M-Pesa (M for mobile, pesa is Swahili for money) is a mobile-phone based money transfer and microfinancing service, launched in 2007 by Vodafone for Safaricom and Vodacom, the largest mobile network operators in Kenya and Tanzania.  M-Pesa allows users to deposit, withdraw, transfer money and pay for goods and services easily with a mobile device.  M-Pesa brings payment services and infrastructure to the remotest corners of Africa.  These mobile phone services provide security and safety for money transfers and make it harder for theft and bribes to intercept them.

In my professional life I research, write and teach about mobile technologies and their utility and value.  In my personal and professional life, I experience it.  In the refugee community, it is an essential tool for adapting to a new world.  It is a connection with family and friends still in refugee camps and in remote mountain villages.  It is their communication with the past, essential tool, digital wallet and social network of today, and link to a better tomorrow.

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 and Digital Expert Interviews: Ashutosh Didwania

Last week I was honored to speak at the Maritz Innovates event in St. Louis, MO. The topic was my new report titled, Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of Mobile Me.  It will be out in two weeks.  This report is big!  We worked with RIS to survey 5,000 consumers on their mobile shopping habits - stay tuned.  While at this event, I met digital transformation and mobility expert Ashutosh Didwania with Digital Works at Cognizant.  In this interview we discuss the role of mobility in digital transformation.  Enjoy!

Video Link: https://youtu.be/volb9SH9n-U


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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 Insights - Feeling the Force (Force Touch) with iOS 9

My friend and Cognizant's mobile and digital technical guru, Peter Rogers, has been playing again. In this "must read" article he shares how iOS9 handles touch and sensing.   Enjoy!
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Every time there is a new games console release (especially when Nintendo is involved) rumours are always floating abound of a technological support for textures that you can actually feel on your touch screen. Basically the ability to sense different materials through the screen. It is a lovely idea and the closest we have come yet is probably haptics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haptic_technology) and electric shock feedback (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRQAijNKSEs).

Well, we are not there quite yet but Apple certainly came close with the iPhone 6S announcement of 3D Touch (http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/3d-touch/). After revolutionising the touch screen world with multi-touch, it then made perfect sense to add a force element to the touches in order to offer different types of touch depending on the applied pressure. In fact, there was something called Force Touch which was already available on the Apple Watch however it had less capability to measure your touches and doesn’t react as quickly to your input. This is because the new 3D touch can instantly measure microscopic changes and feed them back from the hardware to the software in real-time. 3D Touch is highly sensitive and reacts immediately, it also allowing different types (or level) of press depending on the pressure applied. Apple have included this feature in iOS 9 but the hardware is only released in the 6S devices.

“When you press the display, capacitive sensors instantly measure microscopic changes in the distance between the cover glass and the backlight. iOS uses these measurements to provide fast, accurate, and continuous response to finger pressure, which could only happen with deep integration between software and hardware. iPhone 6s also provides you with responsive feedback in the form of subtle taps, letting you know that it’s sensing the pressure you’re applying.” [Apple]

I have already fallen in love with 3D Touch but we have to remember that it is only available on 3D Touch devices and the feature may also be turned off by the user. Currently the only devices supporting this are the 6S and 6S Plus, which is surprising given that the new iPad Pro would be perfect for pressure sensitive art packages. The Apple Human Interface Guidelines state that “When 3D Touch is available, take advantage of its capabilities. When it is not available, provide alternatives such as by employing touch and hold. To ensure that all your users can access your app’s features, branch your code depending on whether 3D Touch is available.” This gives a glimpse of a future whereby most Apps are using 3D Touch even if it is faked on non-3D Touch devices.

As well as being built into some preinstalled applications.  You can also use it within third party applications. The 3D Touch enables three new types of capability:
  1. Pressure sensitive applications, such as art packages
  2. Peek and pop, to preview content without opening it
  3. Quick actions, to offer a short cut to different services offered by the same App
Mobile & Gaming Expert
Cognizant's Peter Rogers
The first is realised by two new properties in the UITouch class: ‘force’ and ‘maximumPossibleForce’. These properties allow ‘UIEvent’ events to convey touch pressure information to the App. A typical example is an art package whereby you press harder to get a thicker line.

The second is true genius in my opinion. The UIViewController class can respond to three phases of applied pressure to offer ‘Peek and Pop’ functionality. When you first apply a little bit of pressure then a visual indication appears  (the rest of the content blurs) to show if a content preview is available. If it is then a little bit more pressure then you will be shown a preview of the content called a ‘Peek’. If you release your finger at this stage then the content preview is hidden and you return back to the original user interface without having wasted your time loading content that was needlessly time consuming. The email client is a perfect use case as you can imagine. If however you swipe upwards on the Peek then you are shown the ‘Peek Quick Actions’ which allow you to perform quick actions associated with it – this will be explained in the Quick Actions section later on. If you apply the final level of pressure then the you can optionally navigate to the preview content and this is referred to as a ‘Pop’. The analogy here is of a stack of visual elements that allows you to peek at an element before popping it off the stack.

This is where Apple have been really clever in iOS 9 and their rollout of information, as we had previously seen the capability to switch between Apps transparently, but it becomes very clear why this is so useful when we see ‘Peek and Pop’. For example the new Safari View Controller actually uses Safari to do the new rendering without launching it. Likewise the new hot-linking between Web Browser and Apps is seamless without any App loading or closing. This enables the Peak Preview to show you the a preview of a Web URL or Apple Map contained in an email, without having to clumsily swap between applications. This is built into a few of the native applications: email; web links in email; locations in email; and the camera.

The third is probably the most contentious. By clicking on an App icon within a 3D Touch device then you will be presented with a menu of options called Quick Actions. These actions allow you to use the App to quickly perform a given service – for example “Take a Selfie” is supported in the pre-installed Camera App. If you can anticipate between three and five common tasks that your App performs (typically the items within a menu shown in the first screen are good candidates) then you can offer these as Quick Actions either statically (in your app’s Info.plist file) or dynamically (using UIApplicationShortcutItem). A Quick Action can return a small amount of text and an optional icon.

The only downside to all of this wonderfulness is how Xcode 7 supports 3D Touch development. Sadly the Simulator in Xcode 7 does not support 3D Touch and neither does Interface Builder. That pretty much means you need to develop on the device for testing 3D Touch. It also adds a whole layer of entropy for automated testing using systems like Calabash.

As wonderful as iOS 9 is, and I truly believe it is wonderful now, the bottom line is that developers are going to face three issues:
  1. They will need to be doing a lot more on-device testing for 3D Touch and Multi-Tasking
  2. They will be increasingly going in different directions for iOS and Android development
  3. They will be increasingly waiting for cutting edge features to be supported in cross-platform solutions 
iOS 9 may go down in history as the operating system that finally broke cross platform development and actually differentiated between native Apps and HTML 5.

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 Digital Transformation Imperative

Rahul Tyagi
It is my belief that mobile technologies drive the train of digital transformation.  It is the effort of supporting a real-time mobile user that is forcing enterprises to rethink business processes, IT environments, budget priorities and business strategies.

In this article my colleague and digital transformation strategies expert Rahul Tyagi, shares his insights on digital transformation.  He is an alumnus of Harvard Business School and IIT, Roorkee, India.  Enjoy!
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The dictionary meaning of digital is anything that has digits [not helpful]. The software industry has been dealing with digital for the past five decades via mainframe software, PC software, client-server software etc. So why we are talking about digital now? I recently conducted a Google search to find what the world is saying about digital. I looked at the Federal Government Digital Strategy, I skimmed thru Cisco’s Digital Point-of-View, reviewed MIT Sloan's digital perspective and many more. I found no satisfactory insights.

I will share my point of view now.  Let's look at the key drivers of Digital.

DIGITAL DRIVER – INNOVATION AND ITS PROLIFERATION

We looked at innovation happening in organizations, and how it proliferates across industries over last 100+ years. Here are few examples
  1. Ford perfected assembly line concept (circa 1910) that helped produce economical cars for broader demographics. Over next 5 + decades the assembly line concept was gradually adopted by other manufacturing industries e.g. steel mills, food and beverages and cloth manufacturers etc.
  2. Motorola invented concept of Six Sigma (circa 1970) to produce high quality electronic components. Over next 3+ decades Six Sigma is adopted by thousands of organization across many industries e.g. telecom, software, manufacturing etc.
  3. IBM created Eclipse in year 1998 and later open sourced it. Over last 1+ decade Eclipse is adopted by software developers across industries.
  4. Google invented Map Reduce concept (circa 2001) to process large size data sets. Over last decade Map Reduce is widely adopted by IT departments across many industries.
We observed innovation typically follows a path from inside organizations to industry (or industries). Proliferation of innovation takes time e.g. the use of assembly line concepts took a few decades to proliferate, Six Sigma took 1+ decade to proliferate.

Today we observe a huge amount of innovation happening around personalized user engagements in various form factors, the micro measurement of user behaviors, advanced analytics and social aspects, cloud etc. We believe today that user centric innovation is ripe for adoption across industries to provide more meaningful user engagements.

DIGITAL DRIVER – SUNDAY NIGHT AND MONDAY MORNING USER EXPERIENCE

Today we can use many engaging tools which are available for free in the public domain e.g. Facebook, Google search, email and calendar etc. On Sunday nights we use engaging tools available in the public domain for free to get work done, e.g. Google search to get answers, Facebook to catch up with friends, public emails and apps to communicate, mobile apps etc. On Monday mornings, however, we start working with tools provided by our employer to get work done, e.g. information portal with inferior search capability, Timesheet applications that may have poor usability, archaic support systems etc. On Mondays if we reach out to our personal or business service providers, e.g. home utility service provider, cable provider, IRS etc., we are mostly dissatisfied with the quality of the customer engagement. Here are some examples:
  1. The user engagement (e.g. information relevance, information organization, communication etc.) with my service providers seems archaic
  2. Why doesn't the IRS provide easy access to my past tax returns on a portal?  
  3. Why do I have to struggle to get answers to my questions from my employer, when Google has all the answers outside of work?
The tools we use for free in our personal life on Sunday night have raised user expectations higher. There is huge gap between available user engagement experience from service providers and users expectations. The service providers (as well as employers) need to catch up to be relevant and to meet or exceed consumers’ expectations.

DIGITAL DRIVER – CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENTS ARE GETTING MORE AND MORE VIRTUAL

More customers are purchasing online.  In fact online retail sales grew 6 times faster than all other retail sales in US in year 2014. Increasingly, customers are engaging with service providers via e-channels e.g. mobile, social, online portals etc. At physical retail locations, consumers are finding basket assortments themselves and doing self checkouts. This indicates customer engagement is becoming increasingly virtual, where fewer customers are interacting in person with humans. In person engagement, although costly, gives service providers opportunities to identify customer issues and solve them.

In an era of virtual customer engagement, service providers should look for opportunities to identify customer issues digitally and proactively resolve them to minimize churn and attract more customers. Savings should be routed to measure, analyze and act on customer engagement statistics.

DIGITAL DRIVER – THE AGE OF THE CUSTOMER

Jim Blasingame the author of “The AGE of the CUSTOMER” says, ”An epochal marketplace shift is causing the 10,000-year-old Age of the Seller to be replaced by the Age of the Customer.”  In the Age of Seller - competitiveness can take a holiday.  In the Age of the Customer, your brand does not have that luxury. Your brand is under microscope 24/7/365, on Main Street or Cyber Street”.
Today's customers are empowered by information. Your site (eCommerce or physical) is probably the last place a customer goes in a path to purchase journey. Customers are making product purchase decision outside of your visibility and influence.

Per US census demographics, 41%+ of US population is under age 35 (Gen Y). Gen Y is natural adopters for new digital processes, newer tools and technologies. Gen Y uses extensively tools available in public domain. Gen Y has higher expectations for better user engagement. Organizations should adopt to meet and exceed expectations of their key constituents (Gen Y).

WHAT IS DIGITAL?

In our current context, digital means "providing always meaningful engagement to your key constituents," e.g. customers, partners and employees. To provide always meaningful engagement we will need to make changes to People, Processes and Tools.

Always meaningful engagement also encompasses continuously innovating products and services to meet and exceed customer’s current and near future needs. For example customer engagement in personal banking industry has evolved with online bill pay, email/text based payment, check submission over mobile etc.

Here are some quotes about Digital:
  • President Obama wrote following statement to set Digital Government vision “I want us to ask ourselves every day, how are we using technology to make a real difference in people’s lives.”
  • Robert McDonald P&G CEO talks about use of digital to build customer relationship “P&G’s purpose is to touch and improve lives…Digital technologies enable us to build indispensable relationship with our customers.”
  • Stefan Olander Nike’s VP Digital Sports Division talks about use of digital to improve products “[using digital,] How can we understand more about you…your motivation…[to make] better products.”
All of above quotes are about using digital technologies to provide value to customers.

WHY NOW?

If you are reading this section (Thank You!), by now you should have some idea about Why Digital and Why Digital Now.  Businesses will face a number of imminent challenges if they don't implement digital transformation.
  • They will have less relevant customer engagements, which will cause a poor customer experience and most likely reduce Net Promoters Scores.  
  • They will also see a higher customer churn rate, which impacts both top line and bottom line.
  • They will not know their customers' current and near future needs. It will be harder to launch creative products and services for customers. 
The cost of not digitally transforming is huge. Your business will become irrelevant. You will become the Blackberry of your industry. Now is the time to digitally transform.

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 Expert Interviews: Apperian's CEO Brian Day

The enterprise mobility marketplace is changing rapidly as companies consolidate and transform.  While some enterprise mobility vendors disappear and leave the market, Apperian continues to grow and take on additional investment.  This week they announced a C level round of investment for $12 million.  I wanted to learn more about their strategies and why VCs continue to bet on them.  Enjoy!

Video link: https://youtu.be/0CBf-qwnbVc


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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 Strategies and CROME Triggers

In my research on mobile commerce and mobile consumers' behaviors this year, the need to personalize a user's mobile/digital experiences always comes up as a top priority.  Everyone wants an experience that is relevant. However, as I pondered these studies, it occurred to me that personalization is only a part of the solution. If you received an SMS message on your smartphone about a shoe sales (your favorite brand and style), that ended yesterday, at a location hundreds of miles away, the personalization would be without value.  Yes, it is your preferred brand and style, but not in your location or at a relevant time.  So there is something missing.

We, at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work, have identified through our research the need for CROME (contextually relevant, opportunities, moments and environments) triggers.  CROME triggers are bits of data that provide context, which can be used to provide relevant personalization at a specific time and place. For example, you buy concert tickets on a mobile app.  When the event ends, the app automatically shows you (based on CROME triggers) available car services and public transportation close to your location with an option to order a pick-up with one click.  The CROME triggers in this example are:
  • The purchase of concert tickets
  • Known date and time of concert
  • Known location and venue
  • Recognized distance from your home address
  • Your movement which predicts the concert has ended
  • Your physical location
  • Weather conditions
  • Visibility into the locations of available cars
These CROME triggers provided the data that when analyzed, understood and integrated with relevant personalization engines, can optimize the user's experience.

There are at least six challenges when implementing a CROME strategies:
  1. Identify the required CROME triggers
  2. Understand what specific CROME triggers mean
  3. Understand where and how CROME triggers can be placed, collected and transmitted
  4. Monitor and analyze CROME triggers in real-time
  5. Connect specific CROME triggers to specific personalization options
  6. Provide CROME powered personalization in mobile experiences
CROME triggers inform you something different and perhaps significant is happening.  Finding the meaning, and then relating it to a need for personalization is the topic of my next article.

Stay tuned for my new report, Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of "Mobile Me".

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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.

How Do Mobile Experts Use Mobility and What Does it Mean for Retailers?


One hundred percent of mobile experts in our recent survey of 108 mobile experts purchase products online.  Ninety percent have purchased products and services using mobile devices, but only 13% use mobile devices exclusively for purchasing products. Forty-five percent typically use only desktops/laptops, and 40% use both equally.  These are some of the findings from the survey we conducted in May of 2015.

How often do mobile experts purchase products and services using their mobile devices?  Only 1% purchase products using mobile devices daily, 30% weekly, 43% monthly and 20% once every three months.

Wow!  I am a one-percenter!!!  I use my Starbuck's app and Apple Pay often multiple times in a day.

In another recent survey of 5,000 people in North America that I was involved in titled Cognizant's 2015 Shopper's Survey, we found 73% still prefer using desktops/laptops for online purchases. This does not mean mobile devices were not used in the path-to-purchase journey, rather desktops/laptops are often preferred for payments.

Our findings also reveal a typical path-to-purchase journey involves multiple platforms and devices. Often smartphones are used for quick searches and discovery, tablets are used for in-depth immersive product research, and desktops/laptops for purchases.  People even change their device preferences depending on the time of day.  Mobile devices are popular in the morning, at lunch and in the late afternoon.  Desktops and laptops are popular during business hours, while tablets are popular in the early to late evenings.  This points to the popularity of living room and in-bed shopping.  When asked where they are located when making online purchases they answered:
  • 46% in the living room
  • 36% at work
  • 29% in the bedroom
  • 24% in the TV room
  • 20% in coffee shops or restaurants
The use of multiple devices and platforms at different times of the day makes it challenging for online retailers and marketers to track consumer interests.  When asked the time of day when they make most of their online purchases, mobile experts listed the times in the following order by popularity:
  1. Early morning
  2. Mid-morning/Early afternoon
  3. Noon
  4. Late night
Our findings reveal that the retail strategies of yesteryear are insufficient for future success.  Today those involved in mobile commerce have many new challenges.  Mobile users follow different path-to-purchase journeys across multiple devices, times and locations.  These journeys look different for different demographics, categories of products and products with different price points as well. Context is mandatory today to understand how to personalize a digital experience.  Recommending places to eat in San Francisco based on my past preferences, when I am in Boston isn't useful.

Collecting greater quantities of data with users' permission in order to provide a contextually relevant and personalized experience is a hurdle retailers must overcome.  I have some thoughts.  Stay tuned for my new report, "Cutting Through Chaos in the Age of "Mobile Me."

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The 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 Strategies - Contextually Relevant Opportunities, Moments and Environments

In the early 1990s major retailers began investing in data analytics to better manage their stores and warehouses by analyzing individual store sales.  This insight gave them a perspective on the needs of the local market.

Retailers soon advanced in their use of analytics and added external factors for consideration and planning like demographics, weather, geography, local events and competitor's promotions and campaigns.

When customer loyalty programs tied to POS (point of sale) systems were implemented, retailers were able to start understanding individual customers through their transaction histories - at least what individuals bought from their stores.  The limitation, however, was this data was known and analyzed post-sales. There were no mechanisms in place to alert retailers to help customers during their path-to-purchase journeys.

Mobile computing technologies and wireless internet access introduced the age of mobile commerce. Mobile commerce enables retailers unprecedented capabilities to collect and analyze data from a wide array of sensors embedded in mobile devices.  The challenge then shifted from how to collect data, to how to get the user's permission and approval to collect and use data.  This is not always easy.

When asked in surveys, customers voice opposition to retailer's collecting data on them.  This, however, does not align with other survey results that show customers value a personalized digital experience.  You cannot personalize a digital experience based on data without data.  This dichotomy must be recognized by retailers and incorporated into their customer education plans and strategies.

Personalized digital experiences show respect and professionalism to customers.  Treating
individuals as if they belong to one homogeneous market is a recipe for failure.  It reflects an attitude that getting to know you is not worth the time or investment.  As more commerce moves from face-to-face interactions to mobile commerce, service and support can easily be lost in the bits and bytes. Retailers that try to offer mobile commerce without relevant personalization are short sighted and will ultimately fail.

Winners in mobile commerce will implement Code Halos (the data available about every person, object and organization) business strategies to find business meaning in data and to provide beautiful customer experiences.  They will also seek to triangulate three sources of data:
  1. Digital data from online and mobile activities
  2. Physical data from sensors and the IoT (internet of things, wearables, telematics, etc.)
  3. Customer loyalty and rewards programs data
Mobile commerce winners will seek contextually relevant opportunities, moments and environments (CROME) that can trigger personalized content at exactly the right time.  Alerting me to available food options in a city I left yesterday is not useful.  I need food options in the city I am in now. Context is time and location sensitive.

The competitive field in mobile commerce tomorrow will be around personalization, context and real-time operational tempos.  Can your legacy IT environment be upgraded to compete in the world of tomorrow?

Stay tuned for a major report I am writing on this subject to be published soon.

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
The Center for the Future of Work, Cognizant
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***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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