Beyond Mobilization: Emerging Perspectives on Managing Your Mobile Brand

The Ubiquity of Mobile

Consider this, by 2020, there will be more than 50 billion connected devices across planet earth enabling our ‘smarter’ existence. The future of BYOD states that 70% of mobile professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices by 2018(Source: Gartner). Obviously, this will result in proliferation of various line-of-business apps and the need to manage and maintain them. Mobile presence in retail would continue to grow stronger with a prediction that 17-20 %( Source: Information Week) of the store sales will be influenced by smart devices.   And we’ll see a similar exponential drift into mobility in several other domains such as travel, entertainment and health.

The Evolution of Mobile Maturity

Mobility is here and now it is inevitable. Mobile Consumerization is rampant and there is immense pressure on enterprises to cross the chasm.  The Aberdeen Report states that most ‘best-in-class’ organizations (vs. Industry Averages and Laggards) have already formalized an MSI or a Mobile Software Initiative.

The Yankee Group classifies the ‘best-in-class’ as enterprises of tomorrow or Mobile Firsts who’ve integrated mobile into most IT processes  and  customer facing activity. Second in line are Strategic Mobility Drivers with a policy approach and sophisticated tools to address a large subset of mobile workers. And, at the foothill would be the Opportunistic Mobility grabbers still thinking point solutions with limited extensibility of architecture.

IDC talks about the Adhoc or Experimental enterprises with work in progress, reactive strategies, limited resources and a point solution approach. On the other end of the spectrum are Optimized Enterprises with agile mobile initiatives, a well-defined strategy from requirements planning to deployment and a continuous focus on innovation.

The Mobilizer’s Dilemma

No matter where enterprises are on this spectrum, most of them might not be fully prepared to drive mobility on full throttle. Reason — they are too many moving parts to the equation and there is no one size fits all.   It starts from lack of mobile standardization, security concerns related to data on mobile devices, shortage of development and testing skills, need for complete support with device and OS upgrades and the list continues. This can be summarized as ‘mobile chaos’ especially for organizations that are just beginning to explore mobilization.

The Need for a Quantum Leap

Enterprises need to handle mobility strategy just like any other service with specific goals, milestones and plans.   There is a need to create an open, modular platform architecture that incorporates a scalable infrastructure as projects grow from small to large. There is a need to establish repeatable pre-built components that can be used across different apps and workflows for development. There is a need for adaptive workflows that will support a wide range of front end developer tools and with any type of mobile application — native, hybrid or mobile web. There is a need to establish standard backend data integrations with major software and backend data systems and a testing strategy that would cover all permutations of types of tests on a select set of devices. There is a need to understand the usage analytics and store stats to optimize conversion rates. There is a need to continually add new features to the app based on reviews and evolving needs to keep it fresh. Understanding the needs of existing customers through regular surveys to plan the product roadmap would be critical.

Making Your Mobile Application Lifecycle – Better

At Apexon, we believe that there is a need for enterprises to manage the mobile application lifecycle very closely.   So as a mobile application lifecycle management organization we would help you through all the important stages of MALM:

1)       Identify your business need and develop the business case

2)       Create a requirements roadmap and make decisions about target mobile platforms

3)       Identify the development environment and synchronization details with backend data

4)       Ensure appropriate levels of security by authenticating users apps and data

5)       Select channels of provisioning and distribution as well as decommissioning

6)       Manage compliance, versioning, monitoring and analytics

We have our own maturity model to figure where you would be on the mobility curve. It could be at the start of the food chain where you’ve just thinking about mobility or could be more evolved where you have cutting-edge innovations in mobile for your enterprise. Each of these stages on the food chain has some very specific characteristics. Our premise is this: no matter where you are on this value chain, we can enable and prepare you to move the next stage with our wherewithal — best practices, services, technology, tools and solutions based approach. This would mean that we cover the entire spectrum of your mobile lifecycle with our services starting from requirements gathering, design and development to rigorous testing, monitoring and maintenance.

This is your mobile brand and it needs to follow a few rules of engagement. It needs to be of high quality, fully secure, providing top-notch user experience. It needs to be able to scale quickly for a faster time to market and help to enable an omni-channel experience. It needs to be able to go global with local language translations and compliance measures It needs to evolve and mature just like any other enterprise brand.

If you’re in London and are interested in doing a deep dive into what Apexon offers as part of Mobile Lifecycle Enablement, then join us on Thursday, October 31^st. Let’s talk about the changing mobile and technology landscape and hear perspectives from leading enterprises like International SOS and Pearson Education. Hear John Delaney, Associate Vice President of European Mobility at IDC talk about the future of enterprise mobility and role of solution providers in enabling mobile. Listen to our partners like Atos and Perfecto by Perforce talk about synergies with Apexon in the EU. See some of our newest innovations and solutions that will drive the future of mobility. Apexon has successfully enabled mobility for several enterprises, now we’re here to address your needs with our Mobile Lifecycle Management Services.

http://apexonlondonlaunch.eventbrite.com/