Tag Archives: Mobility

Sparks explores mobility as a driver of  business growth with three talented business leaders:

• Patrick Meyer – President, Sourcebits Technologies NA
• Mark Wilson – VP of Corporate and Field Marketing, Sybase
• Alexander Ilg – Founder & Managing Director, msc mobile

Highlights

“Mobility speaks to a bigger phenomenon about … being empowered to work and live in a more fulfilling, rewarding or complete way. Remember there’s a difference between a mobile app and a mobile strategy.”

Patrick Meyer

Read the full interview with Patrick Meyer.

“[Mobility] has become an expectation of how we will connect to everything in our world. Mobility doesn’t have to be a monumental corporate-wide shift. Start simple.”

Mark Wilson

Read the full interview with Mark Wilson.

“[Today] it’s exotic to see a business process on a mobile device but in five years, mobility will be a normal part of every enterprise landscape. Mobility is having a big impact…in sales, service and delivery.”

Alexander Ilg

Read the full interview with Alexander Ilg.

Alexander Ilg

Alexander Ilg  founded msc mobile, in 2006 to optimize business processes on mobile devices. The company supports the development of mobile solutions on Blackberry, iPhone, Windows, Windows Mobile, Android and Symbian devices with a strong partner network including Sybase, Createch, T-Systems and British Telecom in North America, Central-Europe and the UK.

Alex has worked in the area of enterprise mobility since 1997 and, via numerous projects, has helped to bring more than 100,000 mobile users live. He was involved in the development of the NetWeaver Mobile and Mobile Asset Management solutions at SAP and received the Innovator Award 2010 for the best mobile solution from Sybase.

What is your definition of mobility?

Mobility is the freedom to access my business systems and data from wherever I am, whenever I need.

What is driving the surge toward mobility now for your company and customers?

Before this year, our company was really in a niche market. People were talking about mobility but many hadn’t started implementing mobility solutions to significant business problems. For us, and for the whole mobility community, SAP’s acquisition of Sybase was a game changer. It made the promise of a mobile platform a reality. And, it put an enterprise focus on mobility which has spurred companies to move in that direction so as not to be at a competitive disadvantage.

How do you see mobility driving growth for your customers?

In general, we’re seeing mobility having a big impact on three main business processes: sales, service and delivery. For sales, we see an increase in orders being driven by better information about the target customer which comes from the CRM system as well as enhanced access to product information and the order process. Order history, current product information and stock levels can now be immediately available. And, the sales person can write the order with the customer, get approval and even get paid in one visit versus spending time with a paper process, manual entry, checking on status and having to follow up with the customer a day or two later.

As an example, we are starting implementation for a toy manufacturer next week which will give the company’s sales people access to their ten thousand item catalog on a tablet. They will now know what products are in stock and when they can be delivered while they are meeting with the customer. They will also get their evenings back since they won’t have to be entering orders into the system each night after a day of sales calls. The implementation is expected to create more productivity, better customer relationships and more orders.

Service is where we are focused at the moment. For many companies, service can be dramatically improved by making data available in the field. With mobility applications and devices, repair personnel can see the history of machinery they are servicing, report errors, access manuals, field logs, technical notes, etc. So the company’s data is more accurate and more accessible. It also flows faster which means problems can be resolved faster.

One of our customers in the Middle East used to have days of downtime every time they moved an oil drilling rig. There is no connectivity while a rig is in transit from one spot to another and that used to mean no work could be done. Now, they have offline access to the system and can use that time to create work orders, error notifications, maintenance notes, etc. that synchronize with the system as soon as a network connection is reestablished. This was a major pain point the company needed to resolve and an investment priority because it impacts revenues.

Direct store delivery is another area, like the sales process, where mobility is having a financial impact. We see companies now able to be more accurate with delivery times, able to determine pricing on the spot, print invoices, and secure payment at the time of delivery. For a large beverage company to be able to invoice a day sooner and be paid a day sooner has a very positive impact on cash flow.

Are companies more focused on hitting a goal or solving a problem with mobility solutions right now?

Our customers are more focused on solving a problem. Their most important people, the people in the field doing the work, are not connected to their business systems in an optimal way. That, more than a specific sales or productivity goal, is what is driving the decision to seek a mobility solution.

What trends are you seeing in mobility?

Two years ago, mobile and mobility were a niche market. People weren’t investing heavily in it. That’s still true today to a degree but it is changing very quickly. Right now it’s still exotic to see a business process on a mobile device but that won’t be the case in five years. Mobility will be a normal part of every enterprise landscape.

In markets such as Asia and Latin America we are seeing companies skip the PC stage and go straight to conducting all aspects of their businesses on mobile phones. We met with a large pharmaceutical company whose sales force in Brazil doesn’t use PCs, only phones. The company needs to provide mobile access to the CRM system and expense reporting. This isn’t just a localized trend either. It’s a trend for many companies operating globally.
We are also seeing that laptop sales are down since the release of the iPad. Tablets won’t replace smartphones but they will fill a need that PCs don’t. Transitioning away from a paper process to using a touch screen on a tablet is easier than using a PC, especially for workers who are less familiar with computers.

Another change is that users will expect better usability. They won’t accept solutions that are built the way we made them even two years ago. People have been spoiled by their Android and iPhones. They expect the same usability for their business solutions and, once they have it, will probably also work more than they do today as they’ll have full time access to work systems.

What advice do you have for companies as they create their mobility strategies?

Unfortunately, we see many companies implementing silo mobility solutions today. We are typically approached by a business leader who is focused on solving a specific problem for his group vs. creating an overall mobility strategy.

But, it’s definitely better for the organization to look holistically at the problems mobility can solve and make platform and other strategic decisions before jumping into solving a particular problem. To fully realize efficiencies and growth from mobility, companies should look at enterprise mobility the same way they look at their core ERP system.

As much as possible, I would recommend focusing on a single platform to leverage the skill sets and administration associated with that platform. Choose a platform that delivers standard solutions you can use out of the box but that also allow you to create mobile solutions if your needs aren’t fully met with the preconfigured solutions. And, look for a platform that links to multiple backend systems, supports multiple devices, and will be there in three to five years, which probably means going with a major player.

I would also recommend identifying or assigning a group inside the company to focus on mobility. It’s not really anyone’s role right now, in IT or in the line functions. So put together a team. Someone from IT, preferably the CIO, should be involved who can represent the implications of implementing and supporting new technologies to move business processes to mobile devices. The leaders of various groups who would benefit most from addressing problems with mobility solutions should also be involved.
Finally, and this is something that is often overlooked, the end users should be involved from the beginning in designing a mobility solution to make sure it fits the need. We like to spend a day with the end users of an application to see how they work so we can incorporate that into the design.

This goes back to usability which is such an important topic for me. In the past, I’ve seen a lot of applications that technically worked perfectly. The data flowed from the device to the system and back so there were no technical issues but the project was a failure in the end with users. In one case, unbreakable devices for field service were being returned to the company as unusable. People had broken them intentionally, even driving a truck over them, so they didn’t have to use them. Obviously, this is something we want to avoid.

Usually, solutions fail because they are too complex. Most solutions don’t suffer from too little functionality but rather from too much. Users are allowed to do things in five different ways and they get confused. Mobility solutions are designed too much like they were for PCs. Look at Microsoft Word. There is additional functionality being added all the time but how many features do you really need or use on that application?

It’s a problem I also see with mobility that people add functionality that is nice to have but in the end it’s not used and it just makes the application too crowded and complex. As soon as an Apple device comes out people make a list of all the things it doesn’t have. I look at the list and say, that’s true, it doesn’t have all of that but I really use my device. I don’t need those features on that device. So it’s critical to understand the information and actions that are important to the end user and then to design for that – to do that really well.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson oversees Sybase’s Corporate and Field Marketing. He previously led strategic planning, product management and marketing for Sybase 365, served as Vice President and General Manager for the iAnywhere’s On-Demand Solutions Group, and as Vice President of Corporate Development for Sybase.

Previously, Mark was a consultant with KPMG’s Information, Communications, and Entertainment practice. He also served as marketing manager at AT&T and managed government affairs initiatives in California for public affairs firm Stoorza, Ziegaus & Metzger.

Mark holds an MBA and an MA in public policy from University of Chicago. He received his BA from University of California at Santa Barbara.

What does mobility mean to you?

Mobility used to mean a device or a mode, that let us be “mobile”, let us un-tether from the desktop. Now, mobility has ceased to define a thing. It has become an expectation of how we will connect to everything in our world – our enterprises, our friends, our email, our data, our colleagues – using a range of very personal devices like tablets, pads, Smartphones, navigation systems, etc.

Are we in still in mobility 1.0?

I think of mobility in the overall context of computing. We are now in the fourth phase of computing – the fourth big platform shift. The first was the shift away from manual processes to automating on mainframes. The second was client-server and the third was the Internet. The fourth phase is what you could call “mobility” and what we at Sybase and SAP call the unwired enterprise.

In each of these phases, we start by automating or replicating what we already know and do. Then, in each phase we get more strategic, developing entirely new ways to work, new applications, processes, work flows, connection mediums, etc. that take advantage of the new platform.

We are well down the path in mobility. We’ve moved beyond porting email to new devices. CIOs and enterprise mobility architects no longer look at mobility as just a way to extend what they’re already doing. They are clearly in the second phase – in mobility 2.0 – where they’re looking at entirely new ways to work.

They’re looking to invest in new areas where they can get ahead of their competitors and capture strategic gains. They are doing that with “transformational applications” which don’t just add to the traditional IT stack, but which drive business in a whole new way through mobility.

How is mobility driving business growth at Sybase?

The essence of the SAP and Sybase unwired enterprise strategy is access to information. Information makes businesses go round and gives people the ability to make decisions. We believe we are at the beginning of a “mobility boom” which will be as significant as the Internet boom. Getting information and applications to people in the manner they need and want will facilitate transformational changes in the way we do business and is going to be our next acceleration point.

Can you share an example of how your customers are seeing gains from better access to information through mobility?

Sure. We worked with a global logistics and delivery company that transformed its sales approach using a mobile device and our mobility solutions. Their drivers already meet with customers in person so they thought about how they could leverage a mobile platform to expand sales and imagined a scenario where drivers could also be sales people.
What if, through a mobile application, they could enable the driver to deliver a package and then give the customer information, like “this is the seventh package of this size and the ninth package of that size that you got in this last month”. And, “if you sign up for this package at $30 a month we could save you $210 a year”. Using the mobility app, a customer could sign up on the spot and be automatically enrolled in and billed for the program.

It took 19 months to develop the application, figure out how to get data from four different systems into the app, and handle security and synchronization. But when it rolled out, the application gave the company 2,800 additional sales people and a significant growth channel overnight.

How is the shift from getting data to a device to working through a device to interact or transact changing our relationship with customers?

I can give you a great example. A large technical supplies and services client of ours had a very manual process for managing inventories at customer sites. A driver would go to the customer site, wander around with a guest badge and manually record the items that need to be replenished on a form. A clerk would enter that information into the system, the items would be pulled and sent out on a truck to refill the customer’s supply. There were huge inefficiencies like time delays and manual data entry in this process.

The iPad application we deployed uses an automated form with SAP at the backend that provides real time visibility into product availability. Now, drivers use the app to indicate the products to reorder and a PO is immediately generated which they review with the customer while on site. The customer signs the P.O., and in many cases, the order ships that same day.

Now the company is able to tell the customer, “You’ll be replenished today” or, “These three items are out of stock. Can I offer you an alternative?” instead of calling two days later and saying, “We didn’t have that. We’re short-shipping.” They can also say, “You wanted Product B, but there’s a sale on Product C which could save you some money.”
Just two months after being deployed, the app has changed the whole dynamic of the company’s relationship with its customers, has creating a transformational opportunity. The customer now sends someone around with the driver to have a real time dialogue that is much more meaningful. Customer service is better, driving customer loyalty and revenues.

Do those customer experiences impact your product development efforts?

Yes. We can’t take an SAP application in all its desktop glory and shrink it down to a mobile device. First, all of that functionality isn’t needed on a mobile device. The interaction model is very different.

Second, the user experience matters more on mobile devices than it ever did on other computers. We’ve moved from throwing all manner of function into an application delivered on a larger screen to porting only the function that’s needed for a particular workflow and delivering it just in time on a small device. All of the functions are still needed, but the way they’re distributed and delivered to the user becomes a function of what the user does and the device they’re using. That fundamental shift has been brought on by mobility.

What should a company consider when building its mobility strategy?

The overriding statement I would make is that mobility is not something that’s going to happen. It’s something that is happening. We are in the second stage o f mobility and it’s a time when leaders will get a disproportionate share of the benefit.

I ask CIOs how much of their innovation budget they spend on mobile. The answer is invariably “very little” or, “we’re looking at the iPad.” They need to be thinking about how to build a business with mobility and who they have in the organization that’s thinking about that. They need to make mobility a formal part of the way they plan for 2011 and 2012. It doesn’t require a platform investment or any investment at this point, but you need to think about it.

Where should companies start?

There are two places. First, get a real inventory of what’s happening in your enterprise from a device perspective. A lot of customers say, “We’re all Blackberry.” When you question that they admit, “Well, Brazil went all iPhone, and these guys are doing Android.” So get a real picture. And, then, believe it.

Second, mobility doesn’t have to be a monumental corporate-wide shift. Start simple by thinking about giving your salespeople a dashboard. Then prototype a couple hundred of those. Or think about a process that you know is broken, and see if you can solve it with a simple mobile application that you develop with the Android or the iPhone SDK. Get your feet wet. But don’t get your feet wet extending email. Get your feet wet doing something really material to your business.

Once you’re committed to embracing mobility, consider these three areas carefully:

• Security: If you’re putting enterprise data in somebody’s pocket, particularly on a device that you don’t own or control, you need to know it’s secure. You need to know that wherever that data resides, you can kill it if the employee leaves, or goes rogue, or loses their device in a coffee shop. You also need to know that the device or the data that’s in transit is encrypted at an encryption level that matters to the enterprise.
• Platforms: Before starting your first project, think about platforms in a broad sense. Companies start simple. They’ve downloaded the iPhone SDK, and created an app. But, the minute the app is out, someone wants it for Android and then Symbian devices. Plan ahead for platform proliferation pressures and how think about how you want to handle it.
• Policies: Corporate policies and regulations usually aren’t in sync with the use and proliferation of devices in most organizations. A company’s chosen platform may be Blackberry but they have people brining in iPhones and getting corporate email on those devices, whether or not it is installed or supported by the company. So, as part of their planning and organizational and governance models, companies need to go from limited device to broader application, behavioral and data policies which cover any device.

 

Patrick Meyer

Patrick Meyer has held line and senior marketing consulting roles with The Coca-Cola Co., Gillette, Nabisco and the Miller Lite, Virgin, Pepsi, VW, Jeep/Dodge/Chrysler, and Unilever brands.  He has been a thought leader with WPP Fusion 5, NOW Inc. and HUB magazine as well as “The Marketing Insider” on weekly talk radio’s The Advertising Show.

Patrick serves on the boards of numerous marketing and technology related companies as well as the Villanova Business School.

How do you define mobility?

I draw a distinction between mobile and mobility. Mobile is very focused on devices, technology and business solutions. Mobility brings insights and a lifestyle shift. It speaks to a bigger phenomenon about people and companies being empowered to work and live in a more fulfilling, more rewarding or more complete way.

How is mobility growing your business?

Sourcebits revenues come from application development across multiple mobile and Web platforms. So we are growing mobility and it is growing us. We help our customers grow by identifying insights and then using those insights to create mobility applications that drive their businesses.

Can you share an example of an app based on a market insight?

Sure. We recently created an app called Knocking Live based on an insight from a study that said something like 92 percent of people yearn to reconnect at a higher, more frequent, and richer level with their friends and their family. Knocking Live enables you to “knock” on someone’s phone and start a mobile-to-mobile broadcasting video of what’s going on in both worlds. I might “knock” to show you my dog or my kids. You would see my world in real time on your phone and I would see yours. There’s no upload, no download, just spontaneous connection and sharing. That’s a richer experience than if I text or email you. It’s a great example of how mobile and new technologies can deliver against an insight.

As the category matures, will apps be based more on needs than novelty?

Right now, you’ve got two types of app development. The first is done by entrepreneurs with a great idea and a business model linked to downloads or advertising. That’s more novelty and spur of the moment.

The second kind is creating branded apps that deliver solutions to customer needs that are connected to a company’s brand and business. For branded apps it’s critical to have a strategy. We recommend creating not just an app but a mobile roadmap. We do it for our clients in about six weeks and it’s all about gearing their app to insights, the dynamics of the mobile category, and the drivers of their business. That’s a critical piece. To drive revenues, your application development needs to be connected to the annual marketing plan, the long range plan, and the business model.

Do you approach consumer and enterprise apps differently?

Yes and no. Being connected to the drivers of the business and to user needs is important in either case. But the context for adoption is different.

How so?

For consumers, developers need to be very aware of what’s out there and define the uniqueness. An app has to have a killer function, compelling news and wow wrapped around it. And you have to launch it with a mobile launch strategy – not a typical marketing launch strategy – or it will sit in the basement with the other 200,000 apps.

Enterprise users are being heavily influenced by their experience with consumer apps. They want intuitive design in their enterprise solutions regardless of the platform they are on. They want information, resources and communication in their work lives in the same way they have them in their personal lives. It’s shifted the power away from the CTO or CIO toward CEOs who love their iPads.

So mobility in business is focused on getting the right data into the right hands at the right moment?

It is and it’s unbelievable how this is transforming companies. It used to be “get me the report on the sales data.” Now people want the data with them in real time. And, once they look past their own needs, executives are seeing an opportunity to leverage mobility in their businesses overall. They’re thinking about how they can better engage with their customers, empower their sales force, and use data in a better way.

What’s an example of that evolution?

We created an iPad app with a series of applets for the executive team at one of our clients to let them easily access their 2011 plan, their insight data, advertising, brand news, merchandising programs, etc. They were so excited about it, they bought 200 iPads, handed them out loaded with the applets at their sales meeting, trained everyone on how to use them, and a week later went to an expo to present to major customers and conduct intercepts on people walking through the expo.

It was a huge success. Although 60 to 70 percent of the success was probably the novelty of the packaging and only 30 percent was the content because the data was a couple of weeks or months old. The client recently asked us to help them access their SAP, IBM, and Siemens information via their mobile devices so that their executives can have all of that data in real time wherever and whenever they need it. The lesson we’re learning is that, going forward, apps may be connected with long tentacles back to legacy systems but they will need to function, look and feel incredibly simple, like consumer apps.

We’re also learning that real time data can be that much more powerful when overlaid with data from other sources. For example, we developed a geo-enabled app where you can push a button standing in front of a commercial real estate building and instantly get a complete property profile – what it sold for, the current valuation, the demographics of the neighborhood, how it compares to other properties in your portfolio, etc. When we show this to clients, they see how real time data can be combined with geo data in enterprise apps and how that enables the sales force, executives, national accounts people – everyone – with an advantage to help grow the company.

We see mobility as a growth driver in multiple parts of the customer lifecycle. Are you seeing companies take a lifecycle approach to mobility?

Absolutely. Mobility unlocks everything. It enables you to take your product or service places you’ve never been before. In just about any category you can think of, mobility is either totally reinventing the category or shifting it significantly.

For example, we’re working on an app that’s based on a whole new business model for sports entertainment. Consumers buy everything – tickets to a game, concessions, jerseys and sports memorabilia – via their phone. The system has CRM, social, and loyalty elements built in. Consumers can buy an item, consult with friends, even use video, texting, email, etc. The more they buy, the more they’re rewarded. Their ranking goes up and they work their way to elite access as they share with friends. That information goes with them to the venue where their ticket and their status is on their device. They have the ease, convenience and security of linking sports venues, retailers, and credit card accounts – things that are important to their lifestyle – through mobility apps.

What should companies consider when developing a mobility strategy?

First and foremost, mobility in an expanded sense needs to be part of your total 2011 planning process. Don’t silo mobility, asking “should we be doing stuff on phones?” Look at mobility in a macro sense thinking about your whole business model in a different way and looking for vulnerabilities and opportunities.

Second, focus on how mobility connects to your growth drivers, how it impacts your business. Don’t run off and do an app just for the sake of having an app. Identify your objectives and strategies and how mobility is going to work with those.

Third, create an episodic pipeline. Plan your roadmap so that three months after you come out with the initial app, you have an evolution launched or in the works. Maybe you started with an iPhone app and you went cross platform to Android. Users will expect you to continually add platforms or expand capability because technology is always changing. And, from a brand standpoint, the roadmap gives people time to become aware of your company and to be loyal to it.

Fourth, we recommend creating a mobility lab – a team of people who are building the pipeline for you over a couple year period. They worked on the first app, they’re working on the second and third app, sometimes concurrently, and they’re evolving with you so it’s efficient.

Fifth, if you’re doing an app for consumers, launch with a mobile model. When we launched Knocking Live, for example, we launched with cyber PR, blog and tweet teams in selected forums, viral videos and key events including tech blogger oriented events like the Consumer Electronics Show, and the South by Southwest conference.

What are the pitfalls to avoid in a mobility strategy?

Remember there’s a difference between a mobile app and a mobility strategy. You’ve got 22 versions of Android, one iPhone, no one’s really sure what’s going to happen with Windows 7, Blackberry, and the 800 pound gorilla is Nokia. A lot of people say it’s too complex to figure out and they default to letting people find them on a mobile optimized website through the browser. The problem with that is, consumers don’t go to a browser first on a mobile device like they do on a computer. They go to an app. If they are looking for directions, for example, they use the Google maps app before they go to the browser and search the Google maps site. The app will be faster and will give them the information optimized for their device. It may also have specialized functionality the user couldn’t access in the mobile version of the browser. That behavior makes having a mobility strategy important.

Lastly, people don’t always think about metrics when they start adding mobility into the mix. We build dashboards into our apps so our clients are aware of key metrics like adoption, use, and customer satisfaction.

How will mobility change how we live and work in the next few years?

Here are my top five:

1. Rocket speed will be normal. Right now there’s Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G. Some apps work great on Wi-Fi but you can’t use them on 3G. Soon, everything will be high speed.
2. All financial transactions will be handled via Smartphone or smart device with dramatically less currency exchange.
3. Access in and out of venues and other places will all be handled via digital signal from your device to other devices reading those signals.
4. Whether you’re using your device for productivity or entertainment, you’ll be connected to others instantly. Live, video and social 3.0 are all big themes.
5. Big and small devices will be seamlessly linked. You’ll be able to go from watching your favorite movie on your phone, to showing it using a projection unit in the phone, to seeing it on a big flat screen, all automatically as you move from room to room.