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Does your business have a mobile strategy? This is a question posed to many executives these days. Given the dynamic and changing landscape in enterprise mobility, many companies are scrambling to define a mobile strategy that enhances their business, and fills the needs of their customers. There are several common mistakes being made in industry on a regular basis,

First, businesses are thinking short-term and rushing to keep up with an industry (mobile) that they do not fully understand. This is not based on ignorance, just the simple fact that mobility is not a part of their core business. This short-term thinking of filling the enterprises mobility needs, such as work order management, business intelligence, inventory management, just to name a few, causes firms to work with products that are inflexible and do not fully meet the needs of their business. The end result of this quick action, a company having to either replace mobile enterprise software, or even worse being locked into a solution that is not achieving the intended business goal. This problem can be solved before it starts by partnering with mobile application development firms that bring through leadership and a strategic partnership at the beginning of a enterprise mobility project. This allows for the following benefits:

• Platform and Device Knowledge


• Business Requirements Gathering


• Back-end ERP Blueprinting


• Knowledge share of where technology is going (short-term and long-term)


• Custom Solution Proposals (get you what you need, not what a firm has to sell you)

The benefits of taking the proper first steps when developing a mobile enterprise strategy are staggering. Lets take inventory management for example. Each business has different inventory management needs, just in time production creates the need to monitor and move inventory and parts rapidly through a warehouse. Workers on the floor, can keep track of movement of goods, via RFID technologies and track that movement throughout the production process all on a rugedized mobile device currently used. Inventory stock-outs can be eliminated by alerts sent to workers mobile devices. Once received the worker can locate the needed stock in the warehouse, request the stock, get the right product in the right place at the right time. Reducing not only stockouts, but inventory caring costs, and meeting production goals. The impact is a major return on your mobile investment in the short-term.

Looking out to the long-term, you can port a mobile application to multiple devices all consumer grade, and use bolt on technologies to reduce the high costs of rugedized mobile devices. The addition of enhancements such as speech recognition, scanning and signature capabilities the technology becomes viable for your business through software updates is a via a road-mapped software development life cycle.

A partner in mobile strategy not only saves you money in both the short and long-term, but tailors solutions to provide your firm with a real and quantifiable competitive advantage. Some say this is only for large corporations, but many small and medium size businesses can implement a mobile entrise strategy, getting the same benefits as larger companies. This can be done reasonably by simply using the consumer grade mobile devices their employees already have such as Blackberry, iPhone, Droid, on Windows Mobile phones. While many mobile application developers for the enterprise offer an out of the box solution, the failure to take into account the current situation of an individual business makes this out of the box solution a mess. Working with a strong mobile development partner, will pay for itself over and over. Bottom line is by implementing this approach from the begining your mobile enterprise solution can not only reflect your business needs, but grow and change as your business does.

With many business scrambling to get a piece of the mobile pie (web 3.0), multiple mobile projects are thrown at managers. How can a manager properly prioritize these projects, forecast the ROI, and build a strategic mobility road-map? Given my experiences in industry I can truly say there is no one-size-fits-all approach, but by adopting the following framework mobile projects can be prioritized to optimize the finite resources of a business.

First think of Risk vs. Reward. The more risky a projects success, obviously the more reward (revenue, reach, profit, savings) a project must have. While it is difficult to measure this apples to apples, think of creating a weighted average in the form of a rubric.

Now you need to think about your cost of capital: ie. How much does it cost you to fund the mobile projects. As the risk/reward can vary greatly from one mobilization project to the next. The use of a blended Beta is recommended. This can be calculated by regression or blending similar firms or competitor's betas.

Now you can look at a project through a cost-benefit methodology. Build a model, allowing for a risk-reward-cost metric, allowing for all mobility projects to be compared the same, the project with the highest risk/reward - cost value can then be placed in the production cue all things being equal.

While this is a high-level method, and many other factors should be considered. This approach will provide you or your firm with a simple and effective solution to Enterprise Mobilityproject valuation/prioritization. Other items to consider are if you have a large investment is a back-end system such as SAP or another ERP, time-line issues, and implentation planning done through solid project buleprint methodology.

Besides doing the stuff on a smart-phone that keeps us human such as Facebook, Twitter, and Urban Spoon; enterprise mobility application developers are making applications that enhance business management. Picture this a regional sales manager is traveling to multiple sales offices to perform performance appraisals on the six offices she is in charge of. Just before arriving in her cramped rental car she stops for gas. The manager then decides to view sales performance of the sales executives of the Cleveland, Ohio office she is about to visit in real time. The manager pulls out her Droid Incredible, launches a BI app, which links to the data stored in IBM's Cognos, located on-site at Corporate headquarters. Instantly the manager has a real-time view of sales by employee, the ability to compare actual sales to the sales forcast, all in interactive dynamic charting format. After viewing this information, as will as key performance indicators for all of the staff she relized one sales executive just landed the largest account in the Cleveland offices history yesterday....

As the manager is rewarded for this, along with the sales executive, she immediately changes her lunch plans to take this rising sales executive. The manager then searches for a proper restaurant using the Urban Spoon application, also on the Droid Incredible, sends a lunch invite to the sales executive and is off to the Cleveland office. Truly this information she received at the point of performance changed her day, the career of her direct report, and the profitability. As we all know what gets measured gets rewarded, and whats rewarded gets done.

Business can be bland, but the combination of innovative mobile applications allowing for real-time data to be pushed to a mobile device, interactive/creative displays of that information, and the tools we use everyday in life and in business can really make it exciting. Few people like staring at a spreadsheet, but if you can flip graphical representations of data with a finger, drill down to the account level, and have a fine steak.... Life gets a little sweeter.

To say the current landscape of mobility is rapidly evolving is an understatement. However, forward thinking mobile application developers can use this changing ecosystem to achieve a competitive advantage. First, the platforms: Apple ,Microsoft, Google, and RIM all when when they diverge. This divergence differentiates the companies product offering, increasing customer stickiness, and further monetizing applications for their specific platforms. Software OS are also diverging; thus forcing developers expand their skill-sets to develop to specific OS. A good example of this is WinMo vs. Windows Phone 7. To a skilled mobile application developer, these are essentially two separate platforms. If you now throw all the hardware manufacturers such as HTC, Motorola, Apple and their respective competitive interests you get a dynamically changing landscape for sure.

Due to the rapid adoption of mobility by consumers, this mobile revolution as well as the monetization of the new mobile universe has corporations and developers drooling. Mobility itself allows for convergence, giving information at the point of performance (right in the consumers palm). Mobility allows for the sharing of information in a safe and secure manner. The key is to build rich native applications whether you are building a business to business applicationwith SAP integration, or a business to consumer app. Focusing on the user experience, and as a result adoption of the application into the daily lives of the user. The challenge is not to build to the lowest common denominator (web browsers), but to leverage the hardware/OS interaction and set the creative spirit of developers free! This will facilitate the growth of mobility, innovation in application design, and the experience to the end user regardless of the applications purpose...

At Smartsoft Mobile, this forward thinking approach to mobile application development is used daily. www.smartsoftmobile.com

With the huge desire for enterprises to mobilize the back-office, many firms are making a mad dash to implement mobile integration. While speed and urgency are key to business success, many companies fail to take into account the “consumerization of the enterprise”. SAP is not known to have a great UI for the desktop, so porting that user experience to the mobile device is the first and major reason for failure of enterprise mobilization. Workers who use these tools have become accustom to a seamless interaction with a device, both desktop and mobile. User Experience thought leaders, such as HTC, Apple, and Ebay have further spread this thought. The need for a worker to have an experience that he is accustomed to on a device he already has is paramount and the back-office mobile experience is no exception. Device specific nuances and usability must be thought out at the beginning of a mobilization project. Experts in the field of mobile application development need to be brought in at the start. A road-mapped partnership is necessary to make a mobilization project successful. Thought leadership, and mobile industry knowledge are key to a successful project. One major flaw is not looking at your workers as customers, after all they are the ones using the tool. If the worker has a good experience with the mobile device, usage and adoption increases; resulting in increased productivity and a strong ROI.

There has been much chatter of the "proposal" presented yesterday. The big picture is search giant Google and wireless provider Verizon want to keep the desktop Internet neutrality, but consider the rapidly growing mobile web another story. The two giants want to monetize the mobile web, and are leaders both jockeying for position. Revenue potential is staggering, but here are some benefits that this scary proposition brings to mobile developers:
• Monetization= Greater Technological Innovation
• More Device Power = Ability for Mobile Application Developers to Use the Advancements
• Enhanced User Experience
• More Rich Native Applications
• Real-time Integration of Partner or SAP Data
While only time will tell if the government gives this a second look, this is a pretty eye opening proposal! We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Smartsoft Mobile will now be offering an aggregation of platform information and rumors in a special four part blog series. For the Second Installment Google is highlighted… Enjoy!

Google
• Adoption growth in Q1 2010 is 20% greater for Android devices than iPhone
• User demographic is has a 73% male adoption rate
• Google-HTC-T-Mobile Nexus One “project” terminated
• Motorola Droid X has no front facing camera (no video conferencing)
• HTC will be launching four new Android phones in Sep 2010 with multiple carriers
• HTC Droid Incredible is the fastest selling Android OS phone in the world
• Sprint added 112,000 subscribers mainly due to new 4G network, first subscriber gains in years, exceeded analysts’ expectations
• Verizon also a Droid seller will have a 4G network before year end
• Google Android is now the fastest growing consumer grade device OS in both the US and UK
• Dell is now a Smartphone manufacturer with Dell Streak running Android exclusively and a $199.00 price point running Android OS
• Droid has gained an extra 10.2% of total UK market share just in Q1 2010
• Droid Incredible (HTC) and Droid X (Motorola) have been in backorder since late Jun 2010 due to high demand, both devices will have supply replenishment Aug 8, 2010 for HTC and Aug 16, 2010 for Motorola
• Augen a 7.1 inch Android tablet to sell at Kmart for $149.00 in Oct 2010
• Google has announced that it will be rolling out a copy protection mechanism for Android Market
Google sets up a special licensing server, which keeps record of application purchases. Developers can use libraries provided by Google that query this server each time the application is started.
o The server then tells the application if the user has a valid license to use the application.
• HTC Glacier will release in fall 2010 running a dual core Snapdragon processor and will be 3x faster than the EVO 4G

The Samsung Galaxy Q will have:
3-inch Super AMOLED screen (720x480)
1 GHz Hummingbird processor
8MP camera with LED flash
1.3 mp front-facing camera
QWERTY keyboard
Android 2.2
16GB internal memory (Micro SD expandable to 32GB)

Smartsoft Mobile will now be offering an aggregation of platform information and rumors in a special four part blog series. For the first installment Apple is highlighted... Enjoy!

Apple
iPad used for business 73% of time
White iPhone 4G launch delayed due to a light leak
Apple released iOS4.2 Beta for Developers on July 27, 2010
Sales of iPhone 4G were 2m in one month
Sales of iPod were 3.3m in Q1
Apple is now the world’s third largest computer manufacturer (including iPad)
82% of iPhone 3G owners waiting for bugs to be worked out before iPhone 4G upgrade
iPad is trouncing internal sales expectations; as a result LG can’t make enough screens
Beginning on July 30, 2010, customers can purchase iPhone 4G in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. iPhone 4G is available for purchase through Apple’s retail and online stores and Apple® Authorized Resellers.
iPhone 4 will move to Verizon Q1 2011
iPhone 5 rumored release as early as Q1 2011 due to issues with iPhone 4G

Apple has begun filing patent applications for 1st party (i.e. Apple produced) iOS apps that include screen drawings of well known 3rd party (i.e. independently produced by developers for the App Store) apps.

Is Apple trying to steal the hard work and shatter the good will of App Store developers? Is Apple merely showing how App Store apps could hook into future Apple apps/hubs? Is it something in between?

This could represent another shift in the tide, where platforms all require a black box submission of apps by hardworking app developers and designers....