Requirements for Mobile Computing (Part 1)
A mobile workforce improves productivity by enabling employees to engage with customers, coworkers, suppliers, and partners face to face and in real time. When employees leave their laptops in the office, they expect mobile applications to provide the same level of access to ERP and CRM applications, customer data, product information and workflow support pertinent to their jobs as they have in the office. They want to access this information through Web 2.0 applications or mobile applications developed for mobile phones or tablets.
Mobile computing is fast becoming essential for many organizations to remain competitive. Let’s take retail for instance. Retail stores must now accommodate the technology preferences of tech-savvy consumers that want to shop and compare prices from their smartphones and tablets. These sophisticated consumers find product information, promotions and prices from competing stores by scanning UPC codes when they are at the store. Retailers that adapt to how these consumers prefer to shop and, further, offer special applications that can be accessed through mobile devices will gain a competitive advantage over retailers that don’t.
IT organizations realize that they must boost the productivity of mobile employees while minimizing associated support costs. However, not everyone knows where to start building an enterprise mobile strategy—a big problem because mobile computing is driving user behavior, and to remain competitive, businesses must enable employees to communicate and share data on the move. To get started, it is best to start with an enterprise mobility strategy. An enterprise mobile strategy helps address an organization’s strategy, requirements and approach for mobile computing. The strategy should focus on three key factors:
- Identifying and addressing user needs,
- Integration with existing IT applications and data, and
- Providing innovation to improve business processes.
A thorough Enterprise Mobility Strategy should provide a roadmap to deliver improved productivity, reduced capital and operating expenditures, and increased strategic agility to maintain a competitive advantage. In formulating the strategy, the following questions should be answered.
- Who will need to access IT services through mobile devices (employees, customers, suppliers, partners)?
- What are user requirements and expectations for mobile computing?
- How do employees want to use mobile computing to improve productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and increase sales?
- What IT services do the users need to access (email, CRM, ERP, etc.)?
- What devices should be supported? Should more focus be placed on smartphones or tablets? What platforms should be supported? Is it truly necessary to support ios, Android, Windows Mobile, etc?
- Should employees be issued a smartphone or should they provide their own?
- Should employees be provided an allowance to encourage adoption? If the devices are owned by corporate, what are the applicable asset management policies?
- What security policies and mechanisms need to be in place to protect data and services?
- How will IT provide user support for issues such as bugs correction, data integration, security administration, governance, change management, and operations management?
- Which applications need to be mobilized? Which should receive priority?
- How will corporate branding and user experience issues be addressed in application design?
In future articles, I will address how to go about eliciting needs for mobile computing, so pleased check back often. Please download our product fact sheet to find out how the Enfocus Requirement Suite™ can be used to help you define your enterprise mobile strategy, prioritize your mobile applications portfolio, or define requirements for a mobile application.