MOBILITY IS CHANGING THE FUNDAMENTALS OF HOW WE DO BUSINESS

If you ask people to name a single technology that has changed lives in the last 20 years, it wouldn’t be surprising if a high percentage of them said Mobile phones. From its humble beginnings with big handsets with antennas, the ubiquitous mobile phone has transformed into the 3G-4G supporting smartphone of today. And through this evolution of higher performance and higher data rates enabled by innovative apps and access to the internet, it has truly disrupted the field of communications.

A big transformation is underway in the enterprise today that is brought about by Mobility. For most of the last decade, mobility for businesses meant giving Blackberry’s to their executives and letting them access their emails and contacts on the go. But this decade promises to be different and the businesses that have started adopting the full power of enterprise mobility are already starting to reap its benefits. According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), enterprises that have embraced technology early easily outpace the laggards on both revenue growth and job creation. (See: BCG Study)

So how is mobility changing the fundamentals of how we do business?

Mobility is changing business by impacting how enterprises manage their:

1. Employees
2. Customers
3. Business Processes

1. EMPLOYEES:

• Mobile workforce management reduces field costs and provides employees with information on their fingertips compared to getting into the office just to log on to post and retrieve information.
• With trends like BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) picking up, you can bring your entire workforce into a connected workforce paradigm without having to invest in a separate set of devices for the enterprise. The productivity gains are immense.
• Location data and analytics help manage and deploy the workforce in a much more dynamic manner, responding to the needs of the customer and market faster.

2. CUSTOMERS:

• With a large number of customers themselves being mobile and using smartphones and apps, the number of ways to reach out to them has grown exponentially. Mobile commerce promises to grow six-fold by 2017 according to a study by WorldPay (See: WorldPay Study)
• Customer location information is the future of customer management and advertising. The ability to contextualise a customer interaction or messaging by location increases its effectiveness many fold. Soon, other sensor integration may help bring in customer mood too into the mix.
• Mobility also changes customer expectations about the product and service. Websites today have to be mobile ready to cater to customers accessing portals through mobile devices. Data and media have to be handled taking into account network speeds across your customer base. Having to wait is no longer tolerated.

3. BUSINESS PROCESSES:

• Mobility is a great opportunity for businesses to re-define their business processes. With mobile apps on employee and customer devices and access to information and computing on the cloud, timelines are shrinking and decisions are being made quicker. Access to real time data and constant updates also improves the quality of such decision making.
• Mobility is also bringing in simplicity to many business processes. What used to be multiple steps in a custom made software application running on an office server now become a set of simple workflows over a mobile app connected to an enterprise network. Only required information is presented and processed with immediate feedback.
• Application integration on mobile platforms also brings together multiple data streams that were earlier difficult to integrate. A simple example being adding a photo from a camera to an audit application or insurance claim. The difference it makes to the process and the time saved is enormous.

After being around in the sidelines for over a decade, mobility is now making its true power and presence felt in businesses. From being connected to becoming a collaboration technology has taken few years but the results are amazing. As many studies have shown, like the BCG one I shared earlier in the post, businesses that embrace mobility and transform their workforce, business processes and customer relationships using its power will far outrun their competitors who do not take technology onboard.

And in closing, how many of you are reading this today on your smartphone or tablet?

About the Author:

Sidharth is the Founder & Principal Consultant @ Stratshire Consulting. An experienced technology industry professional who specializes in Management Consulting for Business Strategy, New Business Development, Go to market strategies etc.