What are C level management looking for in mobile apps?

A recent survey conducted in the USA by Pyxis Mobile sought to ascertain what C level management are looking for in mobile apps and their development.

Survey respondents included CIOs, CTOs, IT directors/managers, systems and network administrators, programmers and technology support, as well as Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC) members and attendees at the Oracle Application User Group Forum – Collaborate 11.

The results of the survey showed that 91% of respondents believe that their department or company could benefit from the use of mobile applications. Of those:

60% view business intelligence apps as providing the greatest value for their business

29% ranked internal operations and resource management apps as the second most valuable

26% ranked Sales/CRM and field service apps of equal importance in third place and

17% of respondents believe consumer facing apps used for marketing and/or mobile commerce purposes would also be beneficial to their company

The survey also revealed that tablets are gaining an increasing level of acceptance in the enterprise. 33% of respondents confirmed that their company currently supports or plans to support the iPad, while 14% say that Android tablets will soon be entering the hands of their workforce.

Finally, 77% of the respondents surveyed agreed that security is an important factor in choosing a mobile application development tool.

Of that, 71% confirmed that a tool’s ability to allow their business to make ongoing changes to applications in real-time was critical when evaluating the different mobile technologies that are available.

Other factors that play a significant role in the IT decision-making process were a tool’s ability to provide rapid app development and deployment, unlimited data integration capabilities enabling apps to connect to any back-end enterprise system, and extensive design features allowing users to build visually appealing apps with a rich UI/UX.

The survey results were similar to a conference I attended last week where Apple was presenting on the iOS platform for business.

They stated that mobility is the sum of many parts: Device, operating system, mobile device management, security and productivity.

Even though this was pitched at the iOS platform, it is true when planning your strategy for rolling out mobile apps in your business.

Let’s break these parts up:

Device: Who are the target markets, are they all using the same type of device? How many devices do I need to support for my app?

Operating System (OS): How many OS platforms do I need to support? How many versions of the OS do I need to support? Will the app I built for a specific version work on the updated version and visa versa (will the app I built for a specific version work on previous versions?)

Mobile Device Management (MDM): If I am rolling out business apps to my staff, how do I support my users? How do I update their apps with new versions? If I’m running a fleet of iPhones and iPads do I really need to install iTunes on every single persons PC? How do I lock down the app stores or create my own private app store to access only the mobile apps that I approve?

Security: If these apps are accessing corporate data and writing data back into my systems live, how do I manage and secure this?

Productivity: How do I measure the success of the mobile app? How do I determine what functionality of the apps is being used and what I need to improve or remove?

These questions and challenges facing businesses with delivering mobile apps are raised time and time again, regardless of the industry, market or country they come from.

To better understand these challenges: click on my previous articles. I hope you find some value in the content.

Device and Productivity: How to deliver a successful mobile app in your business

OS: 2011 is a MEAP year for Mobile apps development

MDM and Security: Minimise the pain of smartphone/tablet management

If you are not engaging with your customers via smartphones, then you are IGNORING a growing new channel to market

Trying to build a business case for your company to invest in delivering your products or services to your customers via an interactive and engaging medium (mobile smartphones) can be a challenge.

Any good business case requires you to understand your market. The challenge in Australia has always been trying to obtain this information for our local market.

Last week Telstra and Sensis released a report commissioned by Nielsen (an independent research company who deliver a comprehensive understanding of consumers through combined insights, experiences, knowledge, market intelligence and advanced technologies)

Below are the highlights from the comprehensive PowerPoint report.

The Australian Smart Phone market 2011:

·         The Australian mobile population is becoming increasingly sophisticated. 46% now own a Smartphone, up from 36% in 2010. It is expected to reach 60% in the next 12 months

·         Smartphones are not just for Generations Ys. One in five (22%) smartphone owners are over 50 and 41 per cent are over 40

·         Those with a personal income in excess of $95k+ have the highest penetration (65%) following by those earning $50-95k (55%) … those earning under $50K personal income report the lowest ownership (35%)

·         Smartphone ownership amongst females increased significantly – from 31% to 42%. For males the penetration has grown from 43% to 51%

·         89 per cent of Australian Smartphone owners have accessed the internet on their mobile Smartphones vs 56 per cent of the total mobile population

·         More than half of Smartphone owners are accessing the internet daily (61%)

·         86% of Smartphone internet Users access the internet from home

·         59% access the mobile internet while commuting

·         56% of Smartphone internet Users access the mobile internet whilst in bed

·         Whilst most respondents usually access the internet via URLs and bookmarks… almost one in five have accessed the internet by clicking on an ad (20%) and 17% have ever used a QR code

·         Email and Social Networking continue to be the two sites visited most frequently. Daily use of almost all categories has increased on 2010. Daily use of social networking sites increased to 41% (up from 31% in 2010)

·         For some, internet access to certain sites on a mobile phone is more frequent than via a desktop or laptop computer

·         37% of Smartphone internet Users have ever purchased something using the internet on their mobile phones

·         The most common product categories for purchase are mobile-centric such as applications and mobile games….however 25% have made other non-mobile items (from clothing, fashion accessories, books, tickets - to food and consumer electronics)

·         The average value of mobile related products purchased via the mobile internet was $179

·         The average value of non -mobile related products purchased via the mobile internet was $259

·         47% of Smartphone internet users have used mobile internet to find out more about a product or service to support a purchase decision

·         Whereas mobile internet purchases are dominated by small, spontaneous, phone-centric purchase decisions, mobile internet browsing is dominated by high-involvement, non-phone purchase decisions such as electronic equipment (e.g. TV, BluRay, Home Theatre) and computer hardware (e.g. laptop)

·         41% of Smartphone internet users have used their mobile phone to respond to other forms of advertising (billboard, TV, magazine, radio, internet etc)

The report clearly demonstrates the success of mobile smartphone penetration in Australia and the demographic of users. Consumers have become increasing comfortable with surfing, researching and buying products from the internet, which has organically extended to being conducted from their smart phones.

Delivering an easy, intuitive and interactive marketing strategy to smartphone users can assist in delivering higher returns compared to traditional marketing channels such as radio, TV and print.

A business strategy that engages your clients through smartphone and social media marketing campaigns is an inevitable reality to keep competitive and be successful in today’s aggressively changing market.

I hope that this information assists you in building your business case with tangible facts to obtain the stake holder buy-in that you need to deliver to these exciting new markets.

Disclaimer: I am an employee of Telstra. The information provided in the above opinion piece is from an independent report commissioned for the Australian smartphone consumer market by Telstra, however is not specific to any Telecommunications carrier in Australia.

How to deliver a successful mobile app in your business

The rampant growth of smartphones, tablets and mobile apps is being driven by many factors. One of the main factors is that people consider themselves to be time poor, so they love the ability to access information anywhere, anytime to make their life easier and more fun.
And because mobile apps are so quick and easy to access and start using, there is an expectation that all apps should be simple and intuitive, easy to access, deliver the information a person wants in no more than 3 taps of the screen and add value in their everyday lives.

If it doesn’t deliver on these simple principals, there is very little chance of success.

This week’s blog will provide some basic building blocks on how to deliver a successful mobile app to your business.

First, it’s important to define the difference between a consumer app and a business app.

With a consumer app, the experience is “all about me”

With a business app, the experience is “all about my work”

There are over 450,000 apps in the Apple App Store alone, yet only a handful of these have proven to be successful and continue to grow despite aggressive competition.

When building a business app for your company, here are some fundamentally basic requirements to ensure your success.

1.       Define your target market: Which channel is your app being built for, employees, customers or partners. If it is more than one channel, then choose which one you believe will deliver the greatest return on your investment, resolve the biggest problem in your business or align best with your company’s business strategy. By concentrating on the initial app, you have a greater chance of success as well as support for your next mobile app projects.

2.       Define your purpose: Understand who the ultimate user of your app will be and ensure that it will meet your company’s needs. It is essential to clearly define your objectives for what you want to deliver and create realistic expected outcomes and timelines for these to be achieved within.

3.       Build a business case: This should include, who your target market is, the value proposition of the app, the competitive landscape, how the app will differentiate your business, business objectives, risk assessment, ROI etc. If the target market is for your customers then you may want to also include, market size, market window (why build the app now, what are the compelling reasons), go to market strategy etc.

4.       Get key stake holders buy in: The simple fact is that building an app will cost your company money. This includes the tangible costs of scoping developing, delivering and supporting the app as well as the hidden costs of allocating internal resources to the project. Key stake holder’s approval is pivotal to obtaining a budget and resources to commence the first physical steps to delivering a mobile app.

5.       Map out your app: The functionality of the app should support your existing workflow processes. This means that you need to spend the time mapping out the workflow of the app, how you want it to behave, what you want it to deliver, what problems it will solve or what processes will it streamline. It is also essential to engage a cross section of the end users during this process as they are the ones that will be using it. They have a much better understanding of what will work and won’t be practical. For example you may think that providing 10 screens from your CRM for your mobile warriors to access will deliver what they want, while they tell you that of those 10 screens, only 3 are essential, whilst 4 others that you didn’t even think of, would deliver additional efficiencies in their mobile business transactions. How many databases does the app have to access to deliver the content that you want? Do you want to only view information or do you also want to input data live into your business systems. By knowing EXCACTLY what you want to deliver, you will assist whoever is developing the app with building an intuitive, easy to use app. You may be surprised how much this preparation work saves you in development costs because your instructions are so clearly defined.

6.       Invest in design and graphics: Once you have a clear map of the workflow, spend a little time wire framing the screen shots of how you want the app to look and behave. There are a number of free mobile and tablet wire framing tools that you can use. The benefits of this are that it will again reduce the amount of work and costs of you outsource your development. It will speed up the conversation with the developers as they will have a better visual understanding of want you want to develop. The developers will also be able to tell you quickly if what you want to achieve can be delivered via a mobile app or potential work around options. Investing in a great graphic designer to create the icons and images for the app will make it look professional and sexy. This in turn will keep your users coming back for more.

7.       Choose your developer: Regardless of whether you are developing the app in-house or externally, ensure that the developer has experience in building mobile apps. Ask for examples of the apps they have already built, talk to their customers to determine how they are to work with, did they deliver on time and to budget, do they have local support, are they just as efficient with their follow up support (changes, upgrades, modifications) as they were with the initial build. There are 4 ways to deliver a mobile app, many of which I have talked about in previous blogs, therefore I will only provide a quick summary:

a.       Off the Shelf Apps: These are pre-built apps that allow you to access information from your back end and deliver mobile functionality to your end users. They may come from the apps store or a vertical market solution provider. While these are usually much cheaper than developing an app yourself, they are normally not very customisable. This means that your business processes must change to align with the workflow they have built into their app. Remember while companies in vertical markets may sell the same types of products, their business processes and objective can be worlds apart.

b.      Web App: These apps that will work on any mobile smartphone or tablet. These can be great for consumer markets where you can’t control the type of handset that they use and you want to reach a larger target market quicker. It is important to note that as a web app, they do not integrate very well with device functionality such as camera or GPS.  So if integrating into the smartphone/tablet is an essential part of your app, then a native app is better for you. They normally require an always on connection to the internet, so if you don’t have mobile coverage, you may not be able to use the entire app.

c.       Native Apps: These are the most common and popular way to deliver a mobile app. They are built specifically for a type of operating system and work very well because of this. If you require your app to work on different operating systems such as Apple, Google, Blackberry etc; then this can be a slow and costly way to deliver apps as they must be built from scratch for every different operating system. Challenges can also occur between different versions of the same operating system. (For example an app build for Android 2.4 OS may not work as well on an Android device that is running 2.1 of the operating software)

d.      Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP): MEAPs allow you to configure a native app once, that work across multiple smartphone and tablet platforms. They are great if you want to deliver multiple apps to multiple markets, connect into multiple data sources simultaneously, speed up the delivery time of building and deploying mobile apps and making constant updates or changes to those apps without having to resubmit them to a app store every time.

8.       Conduct a pilot before launch: To ensure that your app meets your objectives, test the app via a pilot with a defined user group. This will allow you to confirm that the app delivers what you want and expect it to. If not, it allows you to refine and iron out any bugs to ensure that the user experience will be successful.

These 8 simple points are a guide only and there are always exceptions to the rules. They will, however, provide a solid foundation in delivering mobile apps that are easy and intuitive to use and that deliver to your business objectives, thus increasing your chances of ensuring every success of your mobile app.

In closing, markets change, which results in changes to business processes, business strategies and marketing strategies. This means that for your app to remain successful, it must also change to meet end users demands. It is for this reason that you must ensure on-going budgets to support you mobile apps, listen to end user feedback and partner with with right resources to assist in delivering those changes.

Apple has won the smartphone and tablet battle, but who will win the war?

This week IDC released their research on smartphone market share in Australia. I guess there is no real surprise that Apples iPhone is the highest selling smartphone. What did come as a surprise was that the iPhone is also the highest selling mobile phone in Australia (Nokia has finally been knocked off that perch after almost 20 years). iPhones currently represent 40% of the Australian mobile phone market. What was also a surprise was that 79% of all new mobile phones sold in Australia are smartphones.

This victory could be short lived as Google released figures last week that show that 500,000 Android devices are being activated every day around the world.

Or could it?

Nielsen released their figures this week for the USA which falls in line with Australia. Smartphones have now overtaken standard mobile phones in sales for the first time ever, (55% of all new phones purchased in the USA are smartphones) and Apple’s iPhone sales are still increasing, whilst Google’s Android smartphones sales have flattened.

And while these two titans battle it out, here’s what is happening with the rest of the market:

Microsoft are getting ready to launch their (new 7.5) Windows Mobile 7 OS code name Mango

Google are getting ready to launch Ice Cream, their new OS that will combine both smartphone and tablets systems into a single OS that will work on any sized device

RIM will be releasing Blackberry OS7 that they hope will revive their shrinking market share

HP has just released their TouchPad tablet to mixed reviews. It runs the Palm WebOS software that HP purchased over a year ago.

And let’s not forget the once mighty Nokia who have abandoned their Symbian and MeeGo OS platforms and are betting the farm on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7 platform

Then comes news that HTC have built the world’s first dedicated Facebook smartphone, which will be launching via AT&T in the USA and is rumoured to sell for $99.99. With over 500 million Facebook users globally (half of those access Facebook via a mobile phone), we could see a huge take up of this handset for a couple of reasons.

Asymco’s Horace Dediu who used data published by Deutsche Bank and the ITU, show that roughly 1.5 billion users around the world are post-paid mobile subscribers (this means they will normally obtain a mobile handset for $0 or heavily subsidised over a contract term of 24 months). There are roughly 3.7 billion pre-paid users (people who buy the handset outright with NO contract).

This means that almost 70% of the world’s population are pre-paid and the majority of these users live in 3^rd world countries where the greatest growth potential is.

Google’s android platform is in the best position to capitalise on this and this is what the new HTC Facebook smartphone runs on.

With so many other manufactures releasing smartphones on Google’s platform, especially the Asia Pacific companies like HTC, ZTE and Huawei, who know their market best, Google are in the best position to take a chunk of this market (which represents a 250% growth)

The other 30% pre-paid market is fast becoming a saturated market, meaning growth will start to slow down. Google, Nokia and even Rim to a certain extent have released low end phones to capture the low end market and would benefit here with the right strategy.

The biggest winners however will be those companies that allow this 3^rd world market to access apps and social media without having to own a PC or home internet connection. Many people in market don’t own these services; therefore platforms must support a pure mobile strategy. In other words, the ability to set up, connect, download and access services directly from the smartphone in a simple, easy and intuitive manner.

This is where facebook and Apple have the advantage, especially Apple with their soon to be released i-Cloud services. If the rumours are true, Apple are looking at releasing a cut down cheaper version of their iPhone and looking at what is happening in the market, it’s no wonder why.

All this is great for consumers as the fierce competition for world domination will continue to deliver improved features and functionality whilst driving down the price.

The challenge for businesses though means more handsets, operating systems and applications to support.

This, my friends, is why I am such a huge advocate for platform approaches to mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application development (MEAP)