Enterprise Mobility Solutions: Enterprise operations on the move

Solutions

Introduction Is your business ready to be mobile?

Mobile devices, applications and services are dramatically reshaping enterprises' revenue models, strategies and way of employees' interactions. Internet and mobile devices have greatly increased the accessibility of application which makes enterprises more mobile. Mostly all the enterprises believe that mobility brings tremendous growth and benefits to an organization, though still some are uncertain of how to leverage the Mobility.

Mobility; a thought process for the enterprises

Mobility offers new possibilities to businesses, but the path to mobility is full of significant challenges. The first challenge is to develop an enterprise mobility strategy. Companies must understand how mobile technologies impact their business models. Businesses should identify a set of strategies to implement which can overall impact the productivity and performance of the business. To bring mobility, the businesses need to craft solutions that cover different domains. It is a whole thought process where the businesses have to start thinking about all the organizational functions from the different view which is followed by a suitable strategy and its implementation.

Strategic Direction Why to deploy mobility applications?

Typically enterprises yield for mobile applications either for sales force automation or for productivity measurements. However, with the advent of smartphones and tablets, there are many more areas which enterprises try to address or planning to address. Though, there are still some organizations skeptical for the worth of the enterprise mobility, many of the businesses have already got the mobility applications deployed. Let us have a look at the result of a survey that shows the variety of apps deployed by a few number of organizations.

Already deployed
E-mail and PIM access Access to corporate database Intranet/employee Web-facing portal Stand-alone corporate instant messaging Stand-alone Web conferencing Dispatch/work order management Enterprise social networking ERP/inventory and financial management Unified communications Sales force automation 89% 36% 34% 27% 22% 22% 18% 17% 13% 14%

Plan to deploy in 24 months

6% 30% 25% 19% 25% 17% 18% 19% 34% 21%

No plans to deploy
5% 34% 41% 54% 53% 61% 65% 64% 53% 65%

Tthough most of the enterprises have accepted the value preposition of mobility, many corporate adoption of mobility remained unsystematic and unplanned.

What do we need to think about before getting started?

With the growth of mobile applications, most of the companies are deploying mobility in different fashions, using various mobile technologies which address a set of requirements of employees and the organizations. But there are also few challenges the businesses have to meet selecting a correct IT partner. The enterprise mobility challenges businesses meet with are; Creating a robust architecture Developing device agnostic applications covering a wide range of mobile operating systems Developing intelligent and interactive applications Data synchronization with enterprise systems Securing corporate information Justifying mobile investments

Principles to lay a firm foundation for Enterprise Mobility:

Think Mobile:
To establish mobility in the enterprise, it is very vital to create a mindset accordingly. Deploying mobile applications needs distinguished thinking of business processes being mobilized.

Select to create device agnostic apps:

Device agnosticism is the main characteristic any organization should concentrate. Building a long-term and sustainable mobile application capability requires applications to be agnostic of the different OSs supported, of the platform on which apps are developed and of the back-end systems they utilize. In the long run OS specific solutions would not work as good as the agnostic solutions can. Also, the apps should have flexibility to be ported on various platforms at the time of needs.

Consider your requirements and create:

On the early phase only, plan how to future-proof your strategy which could give amazing results on any OS. Ensure the users for whom the application is going to be built. Having a preliminary road map for the types of future mobile application requirements and the scale of deployment to match different user profiles will allow you to identify the most potential strategy.

Train the users:

You have to think about training the end users on the functionality part of the application. Only the ability of the application would not work if the users have not understood the workflow, hence this may lead to the loss of productivity. Till the day, the concept of enterprise mobility has not been taken coherently because the mobile technologies have remained primarily limited to a voice only mobile or a personal digital assistant. Also, the applications were limited and the mobiles were used in isolation. But now, the demand of market has created the need where the technology managers have to get apps developed overseeing the scope of enterprise mobility and different arrays of technologies. The enterprises with the implementation of mobility in the business are of course expecting enhanced productivity and higher return on investment. The main concerns which must be addressed while designing mobile strategies are; security issues and productivity hike.

Mobile Application Development

Mobile application development for custom made applications builds a strong development area for added functionality and improved performance of smartphones. In today's mobile world the most popular smartphones are iPhone, Blackberry, Android and Windows, that possesses different strengths that suits individual business and personal needs.

iPhone Mobile App Development

Development of iPhone custom made apps for the most popular and powerful communicative device the iPhone, combines the power of internet with its noticeable multi touch facility and some extra-ordinary features.

Android Mobile App Development

For developing Android mobile applications based on popular Googles Android platform we need to take full advantage of the design, compatibility and flexible features of Android OS. An innovative next generation application can be designed and developed with Android with ease and speedily.

Blackberry Mobile App Development

Blackberry apps development results in powerful new mobile apps and offers a lot of new innovative features. Also, there is a lot of flexibility in Blackberry app development in different platforms that are Java, MDS, and J2ME.

Windows Mobile
Windows Mobile is amongst one of the most famous mobile OS for smartphones and hand-held devices. It is a feature packed OS containing all popular windows apps like Windows Media player, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, and Internet Explorer, which are effectively used across the globe.

Symbian OS
Symbian Mobile OS platform combines the greatest benefits of cost-effectiveness, rapid innovativeness and useful to create reliable fun apps. It utilizes numerous programming languages like Java, C++, .NET, OPL, and Symbian SDK. According to current analysis, business users will eventually see speedier data transfer and increased bandwidth for new and innovative business oriented services. The enhancements made to such networks will lead to more wireless access to corporate systems, interactive databases, and web based apps from a variety of devices. Mobile application development market is booming continuously but at the same time the competition between the mobile development companies is getting tougher.

Enterprise Mobility Trends

In the technology World, mobile devices are getting more advanced and sophisticated due to their multiple functionalities for both corporate and consumer users. Mobile solutions permit enterprises to manage their overall business operations on the move. Moreover, enterprise mobility is such a young concept that many new technologies are approaching to grow and revive it in the industry. It definitely involves extensive progress in the way companies run their day to day business activities. The areas of Enterprise Mobility that seems to be at the front position of users discussions are

Mobile Payments:
People are talking a lot about the Mobile payment technology and its future in the business world. NFC or Near Field Communication technology is the most talked about mobile payment latest technology nowadays amongst people. It allows a person to use his/her mobile device as their wallets. With NFC, users just have to open the application in a mobile phone and show it in front of a scanner built for it; and the payment is done. They now dont have to carry credit cards, or cash, or cheques in their purse. But this technology will still take couple of years to be implemented totally as the infrastructure needed for it is still not fulfilled thoroughly. It will take time for the stores to adopt the scanners required by it to allow payments to go through. One another mobile payment method is introduced by PayPal by which two Android based mobile users can pay each other by simply tapping their NFC supported mobile phones together.

Tablet Evolution:
With the rise of tablets, the enterprise mobility market is also reaching new heights. The sales ratio of tablets whether its iPad or Android tablets or anything else; is increasing continuously in last two years. Moreover, the total sale recorded in the year 2011 has already been crossed the total amount sold in year 2010. Tablets are definitely new most talked about item in Enterprise mobility and many new innovative ways to use it more effectively are yet to come.

Location Based Services:

One of the best ways to personalize mobile device services is the service based on the location information. Location Based Services helps to transform geographical customized information to the mobile device. With an access of location based services on the mobile device by a mobile worker, he/she can find the business center required at a certain point of time. Another traditional trend that major business owners are following is MIM [Mobile Instant Messaging] with a purpose of attracting maximum consumers. Much other advancement has been done which can be beneficial for enterprises in their day to day activities like Mobile E-mail ability, Mobile Video, Mobile Search, etc. Mobile Social Networking is growing widely with increased number of network traffic. Social networking sites are used as portals, transit hubs, and also as cloud storage for large amount of messaging, video files, photos, games and commerce. In the future, richer mobile commerce capabilities are expected with the inventions of new technologies or concepts.

Enterprise Mobility Benefits

The new emerging mobile applications in the industry will change the way people do business with their employees, partners and consumers. It is beneficial for most companies and businesses as it provides infinite number of solutions with an only limitation of your imagination edge. Enterprise Mobility can help the business to progress in its efficiency, to optimize the logistics procedures, better maintenance of clients long term relationships, and supply chain management. Also, with the help of new mobile applications the information is available on the move which in return helps business owners or managers to take speedy and better decisions. This way business can respond to threats quickly and also opportunities can be grasped at the right time. Some Business to Consumer [B2C] owners, nowadays sell their products or services directly through the mobile device. By providing the ability to work from anywhere, helps small businesses to lower down the rate of human resources required. The main reasons that are pushing more and more businesses to make investments in mobility solutions are Mobile solutions help to improve responsiveness to the business customers It helps to improve the worker productivity by giving mobile apps access to the workers It acts as a great support for different purposes of business New Mobile technologies help employees to balance their personal and professional life Reduction in staff maintenance and acquisition costs Some common benefits that can be obtained by implementing Enterprise Mobility solutions includes It helps the business to achieve the targeted ROI Provides assistance to business to make immediate decisions Provides instant customer facts and figures that lead to instant customer service by enabling ERP Efficient customer services help to strengthen the relationship with clients Improvement in the overall performance reflecting productivity and outcome of the business

www.softwebsolutions.com

How enterprise mobility is moving ahead

The path towards enterprise mobility is full of challenges. The workers of the enterprise are bringing mobility into their work place at a very high rate. The concept of mobility is taking a strong hold because it provides workers an edge, enables them to accomplish more, and allows them to deliver better services. All these benefits are acquired because mobility provides quick and better information to workers. In the coming years, there will be even greater demand for extending lines of business applications to the mobile devices as more and more powerful mobile devices and higher speed networks will come to market. Moreover, the cloud and the mobile are going to be the most happening fields. The union of both these fields will result in focusing more on Enterprise Mobility with an objective of leveraging the cloud for Scalability and cost management. Some new functionalities in the mobile applications of which businesses can take advantage in future are

www.softwebsolutions.com

1. Applications with more camera and image facility 2. Real time Video Conference anytime anywhere 3. More powerful integration between back-end information systems and the mobile devices 4. Better and speedy mobile commerce abilities for consumers and the businesses 5. Combined collaboration apps with mobile conferencing and data share By developing and following a strategic approach to mobile services, enterprises will be better on their way towards the discovery of all new efficiencies, new opportunities, new forms of work, and new ways of interacting with client's. Maximum businesses will adopt mobile applications in the near future to better interact with their employees, business partners and consumers. It will also help to react and take actions speedily to market changes. It is expected that mobility arena will continue to grow maximum within healthcare, banking, and retail organizations as it will help to increase their mobile offerings. The Enterprise Mobility Solutions offered by Softweb Solutions covers multiple industries and domains. Our interactive solutions will open up the opportunities across Business-to-Employee, Business-to-Business and Business-to Consumer segments.

Finding the right partner

Softweb Solutions partners with enterprises to deliver a comprehensive solution that approaches mobility from multiple viewpoints. Setting up the mobile application can be a complicated process, and if it is not implemented correctly, it may prove useless. With our mobility and wireless services enterprise mobility for wide domains of organizations enables the staff to stay in continuous communication and get quick access to necessary information, alarms and services requests to deliver improved and effective results. We understand that executives and employees need real time data for making important decisions on the move. We help mobile users to communicate with partners or stakeholders, observe real time data to analyze performance, and then make decisions by our innovative mobile solutions. The key areas focused by our solutions across different industries and domains are as follows

Key Areas
Mobile Strategy Formulation

Activities
Developing a business case, Defining architecture , and Building a proof of total concept Designing wireless network solution using technologies like CDMA 1xRTT, GPRS, CDPD, WiFi 802.11x; Availability and performance criteria; Evaluation of different products and defining security policy Evaluating and implementing mobile device management solutions for multiple device support with different OS for s/w development, asset management, backup, and security Developing and deploying high quality mobile apps, integration with enterprise systems Transaction and data integrity maintenance, optimizing information exchange based on bandwidth and connection reliability Making availability of ERP, CRM, and SCM solutions on a mobile platform

Mobile Infrastructure Design

Mobile Device Management Mobile Application Development Mobile Data Synchronizing Enterprise Intranet on the Move

Softweb Solutions is committed to forming a common architecture to support mobility service products and to drive end-to-end integrated mobility solutions. The success of your mobility solutions depends totally on selecting the right partner, right processes and right technologies. We work with you to develop innovative, effective and interactive mobile solutions using right technologies in a right way.

Contact our representative or e-mail us at info@softwebsolutions.com, to know more about us and how we deliver mobility solutions to the organizations across the world. You can also visit our corporate website www.softwebsolutions.com.