As per Michael Leboeuf, “A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” No one can question the logic. However, you still need a strategy to ensure that the customer is your happy customer, and not that of your competitor. In today’s competitive world, customer acquisition and retention is really hard.
As per Michael Leboeuf,
“A satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all.” No one can question the logic. However, you still need a strategy to ensure that the customer is your happy customer, and not that of your competitor. In today’s competitive world, customer acquisition and retention is really hard. You need to always bring your A - game if you intend to win and grow. And from a technology stand point, mobility could well be your A - game.
A lot of organizations struggle with building a sustainable mobility strategy. This is because they are focused on a product or service today, when they should be designing for a gamut of services for tomorrow. So the focus should shift from a tactical current approach to a strategic future-centric approach. There are some key considerations that you need to think about when designing your mobility strategy. If you already happen to have one, think about these when you are reviewing it or updating it.
1 Uniformity of experience: The one thing that is not present in today’s mobile landscape, it is consistency. There are so many types of devices, with multiple platforms, each with multiple versions of the operating systems.
This creates a formidable challenge for the developers and device management teams, since they are expected to work with a diverse and fragmented landscape, while maintaining the same performance and experience.
When designing your strategy, keep this conundrum in mind. It does not necessarily mean selective focus. It means that you need to be prepared to address this landscape
2 Federated data sources – Typically, the enterprise data resides in multiple silos. You would have a different system for finance, another one for HR, a third for sales numbers, and another one for order management.
Any of these data sources cannot help in enterprise decision - making in isolation. In order to have a true decision support system (DSS), you need to have all the data available in one place. It does not mean that you need to create a massive database. It simply means that the interface to your system needs to federate with multiple backend systems.
The mobility interface will provide much more value if it is synced to multiple data sources rather than one monolithic source.
3 Be cognizant to the users’ needs: Typically, IT operations are driven by policies that have not been revised for ages. This makes them follow the same standard operating procedures that were followed in the era when IT used to lock down the machines, disable USB drives, and not allow the users to install Google talk on their machines.
Coming from that thought process, IT teams are unprepared to handle the fluid world of mobility and BYOD. They are unresponsive to the user demands. This turns the users off, and makes them bypass the technology resolution groups.
As a part of your strategy, ensure that your tech support is geared to handle the users’ requests.
4 Security: In the world of mobility, security threats are manifold higher, since the devices are out of the control of the security teams for the most part. Therefore, the focus on security is paramount. The device needs to be secured against unauthorized access, the application and data needs to be secured from malware attacks, and the internal systems need to be processed from hackers abusing the end point devices. This makes the security job challenging and requires specialized tools.
Security has to be an integral part of the enterprise mobility strategy.
