Mobile Strategy » Mobile Worker

The Year of the Mobile Enterprise – 2012

Jose HC — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 16:52:58 +0000

I have always been excited by massive change. As a high school and undergraduate student I loved to read about historical turning points, revolutions, political upheavals … where things were turned upside down and the system/structure/government that was left in its place was completely different from what had been there before.

It would appear that we can no longer hope for such monumental changes in the mobile space. No longer is mobility something we hope for. No longer is it something we dream about. It is so much a part of our every day lives that we are even taking it for granted.

But is it really that much a part of our lives? I would argue that true mobility (read mobile enablement) has not yet penetrated the enterprise. In many ways mobility has been kept outside of the enterprise fortress. It is the last bastion to be conquered in 2012. The extension of email and calendaring is not true mobile enablement.

In 2012 we will see the enterprise mobility space reshaped. Long dominated by the BlackBerry Enterprise Solution by the end of 2012 the mobile enterprise will look very different than what it does today. Do not think that this monumental change will start on January 1st … it started a few years ago. Palm, Good Technology and Research In Motion all paved the way for what will happen in 2012. As old devices come up for a refresh and the pent-up demand for functionality increases IT departments everywhere will be forced to seriously consider opening the doors to true mobility.

Enterprise mobility is about extending the enterprise to mobile employees where ever they are on a wide variety of devices. This can be done securely and efficiently through the many mobile device management solutions out there (i.e Afaria and the future BES/Ubitexx combo among others). If the enterprise stops only at the device management aspect of it they will completely miss the boat and it can not in good conscience be called ‘enterprise mobility.’ On top of managing the devices you will need to provide access to critical enterprise applications as well as some consumer apps available through the app stores (or all – depending on your security concerns). Speaking of app stores you will also need to decide how will control and to whom you will distribute each mobile app – you can also do this with an internal enterprise mobile application store.

In 2012 the enterprise will truly become mobile. The key term mobile strategy (or mobility strategy) will begin to be identified more and more with your enterprise mobile strategy (roadmap) as much as it has been over the last few years with your approach to your market through the mobile channel.

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Thinking About RIM, its people and its future

Are Mobile Apps Disposable?

Jose HC — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:54:19 +0000

Another way of posing this question is ‘should mobile apps be considered disposable?’

The answer is no. If your mobile strategy is such that you are considering putting something (ie. an app) together as a quick fix to coming into the game late … then you really don’t have a mobile strategy.

Please don’t build something thinking that the devices will change in 18 months or less and that it really doesn’t matter how well thought out your plan is since you will dispose of the most recent mobile app and just build a new one. These days you can’t throw a stone down the street without hitting a mobile developer or two…so it should be easy enough to just build something to get us out of the bind… Right?

Wrong!
Since enterprise mobility is not about the apps but about extending the enterprise wherever it needs to be, a strategy that revolves around a disposable mobile apps is not a strategy at all. At the end of the day the app and the device are mostly consumption vehicles (some creation too of course). The magic needs to happen back at the enterprise. This is why you need a platform and not merely a mobile application.

How Smart is your Smartphone?

Jose HC — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 21:30:02 +0000

A few months ago my friends at Soluteo asked me to work with them on a short presentation on “How Smart is your Smartphone?” It was one of those fun projects and the output which was presented about a month ago is up on Slideshare and embedded below.

Although part of the presentation is a bit tongue-in cheek we are strong believers in the final answer. Your Smartphone is only as smart as …

The end user?
The apps?
The application developers?
The device manufacturers?
The network?

Or is there something else? Let’s narrow it to an enterprise environment. What makes a smartphone smart for an enterprise? Feel free to comment after the slides.

How Smart is your Smartphone (March 2011)

View more presentations from Jose Colucci

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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 Becomes A Social Media Lifeline

Jose HC — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:10:42 +0000

Beautiful Sunday morning here in Toronto (Mississauga to be precise).
As I catch up on reading and wait for the family to wake up before we head to church I thought I would share this post from Harvard Business. David Armano writes a Conversation Starter on the Six Social Media Trends for 2010… and these are:

Social media begins to look less social
Corporations look to scale
Social business becomes serious play
Your company will have a social media policy (and it might actually be enforced)
Mobile becomes a social media lifeline
Sharing no longer means e-mail

Of special interest to some of you will be #5:

With approximately 70 percent of organizations banning social networks and, simultaneously, sales of smartphones on the rise, it’s likely that employees will seek to feed their social media addictions on their mobile devices. What used to be cigarette breaks could turn into “social media breaks” as long as there is a clear signal and IT isn’t looking.

I certainly hope that most of you reading this realize that the value of mobility goes way beyond social media. In fact it is my opinion that social media as a business tool is not for every role/position. It can certainly be a waste of time. Believe me … been there and done that. Unless you see an ROI you truly need to have social media policies in place.

Head over there for the full post by clicking here.Similar Posts:

Google Analytics Mobile Reporting

Jose HC — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:27:42 +0000

Last week Google announced a slew of new features for Google Analytics. As we posted on Friday of special interest to us is the expanded mobile reporting capabilities. Please note that if you are looking for an Enterprise solution or for something that will help you understand overall mobile behavior you will not find it in the expanded mobile reporting from Google Analytics. Even those writing about are still very much focused on the mobile marketing and mobile advertising spaces. I am sure that comes to no surprise to you, however, more attention should be given to actual mobile end user behaviors in an effort to understand users not as advertising consumers but as overall consumers and of course of interest to many of you – as enterprise users.

This from the Google Analytics Blog:

Expanded Mobile Reporting: Google Analytics now tracks mobile websites and mobile apps so you can better measure your mobile marketing efforts. If you’re optimizing content for mobile users and have created a mobile website, Google Analytics can track traffic to your mobile website from all web-enabled devices, whether or not the device runs JavaScript. This is made possible by adding a server side code snippet to your mobile website which will become available to all accounts in the coming weeks (download snippet instructions). We will be supporting PHP, Perl, JSP and ASPX sites in this release. Of course, you can still track visits to your regular website coming from high-end, Javascript enabled phones.

iPhone and Android mobile application developers can now also track how users engage with apps, just as with tracking engagement on a website. What’s more, for apps on Android devices, usage can be tied back to ad campaigns: from ad to marketplace to download to engagement. Check out the SDKs and technical documentation on mobile apps tracking to get started. And coming soon, you’ll be able to see breakout data on mobile devices and carriers in the new Mobile reports in the Visitors section!

I am sure some of you will test this in the coming weeks and we will have a better idea of what its true value and differentiators are.

In the meantime here are some other places writing about it:

Adweek – Google Wades Into Mobile Analytics
Searchcowboys – Google Analytics finally lets you track mobile apps
Mobile Marketing Watch – Google Expands Mobile Reporting In Analytics

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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?)

Making Sense of Mobile Application Development

Jose HC — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:29:12 +0000

My plan was to compile all the excellent feedback received here and in other places on the debate whether it is best to develop mobile applications for the browser or native to the device (platform). I gave you a glimpse into my preference a few weeks ago with the teaser called - Mobile Application Development: Native or Browser. We will come back to this topic next week with a summary post but in the meantime I wanted to take the conversation in a slightly different direction… yet still related to the decisions around the development of mobile applications.

Ultimately the decision on what and how to develop your mobile application is a strategic one; one that should be based not on the currents of opinion (analysts and vendors) or on the noise around us (blogosphere and marketing). Instead, this decision should begin and finish with the mobile user. I realize this is nothing new … but hang in there.

When considering decisions around mobile application development I have noticed an unfortunate pattern. There is one thing that is being overlooked too often.

When trying to understand mobile workers, most people will mention the importance of location, presence, coverage, whether or not they are power users… and yes they will mention context. So far so good right? Well let’s dig deeper.

Location refers to a users place in space. As in geographic space.

Presence refers to availability and whether or not others can see if the user is available.

Coverage refers to network coverage and whether the user’s device is in or out of coverage.

Regular vs Power Usage typically refers to how much and how often a user uses his device.

Context typically refers to a user’s surroundings and their interactions with those surroundings.

These and other criteria that popped into your head are all good and valuable things to cover.

However, 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

It may sound harsh to some. If it does you are not getting what is being said here. We are not forgetting that the worker is also an individual, but instead we are focusing on the main reason why that individual works in an organization (profit or not-for-profit) and gets paid. They get paid to add value. Your mobile application strategy needs to revolve around that one fact…

A worker exists in an organization to add value… even if mobile.

A mobile application needs to add value to the mobile worker.

The analysis therefore needs to focus on the work that the worker performs.

We will develop this topic further in the coming weeks (after I get some more mobile banking posts under my belt).

In the meantime please take a look at IT Business Edge writer Carl Weinschenk’s article with a similar title as this post and which makes reference to one of our articles.Similar Posts: