Mobile Strategy » Lifeflow

Mobile Customer Advocates

Jose HC — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:37:10 +0000

Time and time again I see one thing being overlooked in mobile.

Can you venture a guess?

Would you believe that organizations actually forget about the mobile user and the mobile experience somewhere between concept and implementation? This is not done on purpose or through some evil plot from the tethered zombies. It just happens.

Ideally a mobile project stems from a carefully thought out mobile strategy which began (hopefully) by asking relevant questions that revolved around the mobile user. Your mobile strategy is an extension of you, your brand, your products, your image, your reputation and even your people. It reflects you. It represents you. It is you.

But a lot can happen from mobile strategy… to mobile project… to mobile implementation (or mobile strategy execution).

Many times the mobile user is forgotten during those deep dive architecture sessions. As we talk about business requirements and time to market we forget to stop and ask the question: how is this decision going to impact the person we are doing this for? Does this impact the mobile experience? If the answer no… then great! Move on. If the answer is yes… then let’s at least talk about it.

It is almost as if someone should be present at every meeting representing your customer. Your mobile customer. You are doing this for him or her… why not have them integrated into your process? Of course I am not talking about just anyone off the street, but someone who will stubbornly represent the customer for whom you are doing this. Someone with a mobile angle and deep mobile user experience who will ask those sometimes forgotten questions. Let’s call these people (for lack of a better term) – mobile customer advocates.

If you are a small and nimble mobile development shop you don’t have this problem. You don’t have to read this (in fact go away). But if you are a large enterprise executing a mobile strategy make sure you don’t drop the mobile user from the project plan at any point.

But the business represents the customer you say? Yes … and no. Remember that your business units already have a full time role and are busy with their day to day tasks… plus they may be looking at that mobile application as a potential increase in revenue and are focused on that one point. Or maybe you just told them they needed mobile and they are simply complying with your wishes.

It may in fact be an easier process than you think… it may just be about asking the questions…

how do these decisions impact our customers when mobile?
how do these decisions impact the mobile user experience?

Next time you go into a meeting simply put on your Mobile Customer Advocate hat… and ask those questions. You may be surprised at the direction your project takes.

Is Microsoft’s Mobile Strategy better than what we give it credit for?

Jose HC — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 20:18:03 +0000

…buried in yesterday’s Pew Internet report, “Understanding the Participatory News Consumer” it appears that Ballmer has cleared a way to score a future goal. The survey indicated that more than half of US consumers already get news and other real-time information wirelessly via laptops. This is a field which Steve still has a lot of control.When Ballmer’s boys release Windows 7 for the Mobile it is likely to improve the links between the desktop and the the PC. Not only making the OS more attractive for business but also for those who want news on the move. It is starting to look like Windows 7 will be able to mimic a lot more PC behaviour on a mobile and thus Steve can use established behaviour on the desktop and put it onto mobile by offering similar capabilities.

Consumers should be able to sync capabilities and their behaviour from mobile Windows desktop to Windows Phone. “On-the-go-news consumers” are a better demographic for Redmond than say the iPhone user. According to Pew Internet: “The typical on-the-go news consumer is a white male, age 34, who has graduated from college and is employed full-time.” It is the same demographic which is likely to buy a bleeding edge phone.

Apple’s demographic is much younger and less interested in news or anything other than shiny objects and listening to Coldplay.

via fudzilla.com

The original title on this post at Fudzilla is somewhat of a misnomer. Or perhaps it was done like this as as an attempt to draw traffic (we all do it don’t we?).

However, it does bring up one good point.

Microsoft has had success in mobile longer than what most give them credit for. Where am I clipping this from? What am I using?

I am at a Starbucks three hours from home… and I am on my Windows Laptop.

More than we would like to admit… Microsoft already has many of our hearts and minds while mobile. Some (at least more than 50% of you) are also reading this from a Windows desktop or laptop.

How many of you are reading this on a laptop? Away from your desk? Away from home?

We should never underestimate the sleeping giant… no matter how many missteps it takes it is still there and close enough to get back into the game.

Or am I wrong?

Posted via web from Mobile Strategy

How you view your employees and their knowledge will determine the success of your implementation…

Jose HC — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:42:49 +0000

‘Economists, said John Maynard Keynes, should think of themselves as humble specialists, on a par with dentists. But his advice has gone unheeded. Over the past 50 years, economics and its jargon have penetrated every corner of human life. Decisions to marry and inject heroin alike are explained in terms of utility maximisation. Doctors, priests and scientists are lumped together as service providers or rent seekers. Schoolteachers are urged to “add value” to their pupils. The pig philosophy, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has become all-embracing.

Of the many harms inflicted by economics on the English language, “human capital” is the most grievous. Coined by Chicago economists Jacob Mincer and Gary Becker in the 1960s, it refers to the stock of personal skills and qualities that constitutes a worker’s economic value. Such skills and qualities are often costly to acquire and yield returns only over a long period of time, so are readily thought of as a kind of capital. Mincer and Becker’s work has provided the intellectual rationale for the huge expansion of higher education in recent decades. In an economy dominated by the knowledge and service industries, with personality and expertise at a premium, “investment in human capital” is the name of the game.

The phrase “human capital” is now so thoroughly naturalised that we seldom pause to ponder its implications. What is capital anyway? Capital is not a particular kind of good, but any good viewed in relation to certain interests. A donkey is capital to the wood-carrier. A derelict church is capital to the restaurant entrepreneur. Capital, in short, is wealth viewed not as an end in itself but as a means to more wealth. The phrase “human capital” insinuates that human beings too are to be viewed in this light—as instruments of the productive process. We have all of us attained the status which Aristotle reserved for slaves, that of living tools. What a triumph for the dismal science! Keynes naively supposed that economic growth was for the sake of personal cultivation. His modern successors have put him right: personal cultivation is for the sake of economic growth.’

Brilliant. ‘Human capital’ shall not pass my lips again.

via oxfamblogs.org

Neither will it cross my lips (I hope).

So are your employees assets? Capital? Furniture?
Are they only a means to an end? That end being making a profit for your shareholders… for you?

How you view your employees will determine how well they perform for you and how difficult a new implementation will be. If they feel valued and taken into account they will take ownership of the work and the new tools you are providing for them. If it is mobile technology… how will it help them? Will it improve their workflow? Their work-life balance?

If we see them as assets they will only perform to their stated specifications. If we see them as collaborators in our success they will give more… much more.

Posted via web from Mobile Strategy

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13 Things To Remember When Integrating Mobility (Or How To Avoid Process Peddlers)

Jose HC — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:31:20 +0000

Regardless of whether it is the first time your mobile workers receive a device, or if you are deploying a new application, your people and your processes will never be the same. Mobility changes the way we work; it is transformational and because of this you need to pay very close attention to your processes. If you are not looking (and I mean really looking) at how to best integrate your new technology or application into your existing workflows you will be faced with anything from poor adoption to outright failure.

So what do I mean by process peddlers?

Process peddlers may be vendors, mobile application developers or even the junior resource in that other department on the fourth floor. These process peddlers talk about the importance of process mapping but at the end of the implementation, all they have done is connected a few boxes with some arrows (current and future state workflows) without adding value to the ultimate success of your project. Sadly enough, I have seen them far too many times. In fact I have even worked with them or had to come in and fix their mistakes to try and revive a failing implementation.

In case you don’t get through the long post here are the two main takeaways:

Process peddlers are a waste of resources.
Real process integration experts are invaluable to the success of a mobile implementation.

To help you avoid process peddlers, below is a list of key concepts you should look for when you are being pitched to. I also understand that you yourself may be one of those people that talks about process without any idea of what or how to analyze one. This list is also for your benefit. At the very least look for the following:

Experience – Real experience with relevant examples of situations where new technologies or new methods were succesfully integrated into existing workflows.
Measurement – As they relate their experiences they will mention results. And these results will be explained to you through measurable improvements. You can’t talk about real improvements without knowing the numbers – the indicators (whatever these are for their given examples).
Upstream and Downstream – Your process expert will talk and ask questions about what happens upstream and downstream of the specific area being worked on. Your process expert will want to understand how current changes impact and are impacted by what happens before and after.
Inputs – This refers to process inputs. What feeds into the process? Actual product? Labor hours? Information/knowledge? Parts? Purchase Orders? It is different from a process trigger and it refers to all inputs into the process.
Outputs – What are the process outcomes, outputs and deliverables? Your process expert will make sure that these are not negatively impacted with the new process. Quality and service levels should not suffer but either stay the same or improve.
Cycle Times – Is the total time from the beginning to the end of the process. Your process expert will want to understand the cycle time for your given process and will be able to explain to you if it will be shortened by the implementation or not.
Capacity – Your process expert will be able to tell you how they measure the capacity of a process and why that is important… and what it could mean to you.
Workload – How much work will each individual employee have after the changes. Will it be more or less? If less then you will want to fill it with more value added work. If more, will it be too much? Your process expert will measure the workload and how it is affected by the new technology.
Compliance – You do not want to overburden you mobile workers by measuring, controlling and following up on every single action. But compliance is probably important to you. Your process expert will be good at being able to find a few key points in the process and advising on how best to measure these to ensure compliance or simply to follow up on your mobile workers.
Documentation – The new processes should be documented in detail in the form of procedures/manuals. It is a given … but just make sure you do ask for this.
Expectations – When you optimize a process the expectations need to change, otherwise you will not reap the benefits of the improved process. If you previously expected your field technicians to do an average of 5 calls per day… the new technology should change that. What is it? 6 per day? 8 per day? Your process expert will help you with this.
Change Management – No this is not about IT change requests. This is about your people and how to help them change from doing things the old way to the new way. Change management is about people and what they need to get on board.
Support – When you implement mobile technology or a mobile application there are going to be impacts on your support organization. Somebody needs to look after it, right? You would be surprised how often this gets overlooked. Everything from use cases, to scripts, to escalation trees and all documentation needs to be in place. Make sure you understand these impacts early on. Your process expert will be able to do this… easily!

There are some things missing here. But if you are able to get a process expert to answer and prove their worth on the points you are well on your way to integrating your new mobile technology or mobile application into your existing workflow.Similar Posts:

Mobile Strategy for Small Business: It’s About Local Convenience

Jose HC — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:02:11 +0000

Small businesses are an under served market in mobility. We constantly hear about the importance of small businesses to our economies, yet today few would argue that this sector is properly served and serviced from a mobility standpoint. Of course, carriers have plans but many times they simply rebrand a family plan as a small business plan and push it out. The effort to sell to the smallest of small businesses is often not worth the return to some of the larger players. This is all improving and will continue to do so as the cloud and open source makes business models that cater to the smallest firms much more attractive and manageable. As a small business owner you may already be seeing some improvement and your mobile strategy is starting to take shape.

Or maybe as a small business owner you still feel ignored and you don’t know what to do with this mobility thing. My humble guess would be that the vast majority of small business owners are not thinking or even remotely contemplating a mobile strategy. There are many different angles to take on the topic of small business and mobility, but for today and for now let’s just focus on one part of it: as a small business would you benefit from a mobile application?

Small Business and Mobile Applications

The simple answer, and I am sure many would agree with this, is no. The time and effort required to design, build, distribute, market and maintain a mobile application is not what you are in business for. A few may try to sell the idea of a mobile application to you but you will be hard pressed to make a case for it.

Without a mobile app you are seemingly left without mobile options. The thought of not being present when the need arises in your customers (when mobile) may worry you. In fact it may even terrify you. This is where search in general and local search in particular become your best option.

A Case for Local Search

Human geographers will tell you that everything happens in space; a particular point in space. All human interactions happen somewhere. For you as a small business owner your work, your clients and customers are mostly local. This is why local search is your friend, why competition in this space will heat up and why existing players with key advantages stand to benefit the most.

It is about convenience … local convenience!
It is the middle of January and you and your family are returning from Costa Rica where you just had a wonderful eco-tourism vacation. You are happy to hear that you just missed some of the coldest weather in years… unfortunately you walk into a freezing cold house due to a broken down furnace.

What do you do?

Blame the kids?
Boot up your computer in the basement?
Go back to Costa Rica?
Take out your smartphone?

If you answered ‘take out your smartphone‘ you answered the way I did. The other option of digging through night tables and recycling boxes to find a telephone directory doesn’t even enter my mind for this scenario. Your phone is right there with you.

Now what would you do?

Browse to your favourite search engine?
Then search for ‘emergency furnace services Toronto‘
Click on the first few options?
Click on an ad?

Or would you instead…

Open up a local search application
Search for ‘emergency furnace services Toronto?‘
Click on ‘closest to your home‘ option
Look at the first few (perhaps check a video)
Pick one and call them immediately!

We spend our money and buy a majority of our services locally. Our context is local! We may research products on the web from around the world… but when it comes to actually purchasing them we do a lot of that locally.

As a small business owner seeking presence in the minds and wallets of mobile consumers you want to be there when the moment of need arises. Lots to think about. We will try and come back to this topic over the next few weeks.

Here are some other things to consider…
How social can a local search app be?
What about product availability and inventory?
Menu and prices?
So what other things could be leveraged on top of a local search application?
In your opinion is local search the best option for small business?Similar Posts:

Of Context and Content

Jose HC — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:04:51 +0000

Here is an obvious statement for you to think about:

In mobile, context and content are inseperable.

Or at least they should be considered inseparable.

Context will affect the way you relate to the content available to you. At times content may affect the way you relate to your context and even force you to change your context. However, if I were to choose the stronger one of the two I would have to say that context will win most of the time.

This is where the lifeflows and workflows idea may come in handy.

Do you have any examples where this is true? How has this affected the design of you mobile applications?Similar Posts:

Mobile Application Development And Consumers – Going From Workflows to Lifeflows

Jose HC — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:34:43 +0000

Much has been written on how innovative ideas are born, evolved and tested first on consumers before they make their way into the enterprise. We have seen it with Web 2.0 and social media and social networking. This is absolutely true and the consumer market proves to be a wonderful and invaluable living lab for the enterprise. In most cases the enterprise doesn’t have a choice since after the consumer market tests and likes something they take it to work!

Becoming A Better Mobile Application Developer for Consumers

Today I am going to propose something that will go the other way instead. It goes backwards (so to speak) from the enterprise to the common folk out there. If you learn this small and valuable lesson you will become a better developer of mobile consumer applications. You may not become a rock star in the App Store overnight but your hard work will pay off in the end way after the rock star’s have faded. Your applications will be more relevant, meaningful and useful to the end user.

I made the following point a few days ago:

…if we want to talk specifically about mobile workers the conversation cannot revolve around any one of the above points. Instead it needs to focus on one thing:

the mobile worker as part of a process that adds value to your organization

I was trying to drive the point that you you need to focus on the user and their process if you are going to build a mobile application that will add value to an organization. Don’t mobilize for the sake of mobilizing! Do so because it adds value.

From Workflow to Lifeflow

If you are developing in the enterprise you do (or you should) a careful process analysis of those roles you are going to mobilize. You study the workflow – the steps involved to produce that product or deliver that service…

Crude and Simple Workflow

I have seen a lack of rigour and structure among far too many mobile application developers. The App Store has not helped matters since now everyone wants to develop for that shiny object in the room. A shiny, distracting object!

If we look at the consumer the same way we look at a field worker, a sales person or any other type of mobile worker I believe we would have better, more user-friendly and truly relevant mobile consumer applications. You can’t really study someone’s life to the extent that you study a process … but you can certainly take the context and given situations, study and analyze those. I could almost bet that the best consumer applications out there were either done by studying lifeflows or by folks with a deep understanding and first hand experience of how those flows go (because they lived them).

Crude ... but definitely not simple Lifeflow!

Even though I can write for hours about this subject I am not going to… Today I will drop this on you and if there is some interest out there in helping me explore some use cases then maybe we will continue this topic. If not I will just take my little flow and go home.

(What I would really like to do is start a repository of Lifeflows so others can use these for development purposes… I know it is a stretch… anyone?)