The Three Biggest Benefits of Enterprise Mobility in Agriculture

Posted on May 13, 2013 by admin

Mobile communications technology has quickly become the world’s most common way of transmitting voice, data, and services in the developing world. Given this dramatic change, businesses across industries have begun to explore how they can capitalize on the mobile channel to deliver information and services to customers in more personalized and cost effective ways. Applications in mobile banking, for example, have gotten a lot of attention in the last 5 years, popularized by the success of services such as mPesa in Kenya. Similarly, mobile healthcare initiatives have also gained some steam, lauded for their ability to deliver services to people in remote areas of the country with no access to hospitals.

One industry that has till date remained relatively untouched by the impact of mobility is agriculture. However, Uniphore works with some of India’s largest Agribusinesses to leverage voice and data technology on mobile phones in order to achieve more cost effective operations, automating the information and market channels prevalent in their operations.

Broadly speaking, there are three major functions that can be achieved by mobility in agriculture.

  1. Providing access to information: The most widely used mAgri apps are used by businesses who need to provide users with access to useful, relevant information. An example is where a farmer can get commodity prices in various urban markets through a simple request made on a mobile phone. Asymmetrical access to pricing information is a weakness of rural markets. Middlemen can buy farmers’ produce cheaply and sell it at high prices unless farmers have the same information about the prices for their produce in specific markets.  These applications are especially relevant for governments and nonprofits.
  2. Providing access to extension and advisory services: Many businesses across the agriculture domain employ mobility solutions in order to enable timely extension and advisory services to the farmers with which they work. These applications often provide advice to farmers on problems and opportunities in agricultural production, marketing, conservation, and family livelihoods. Businesses in crop manufacturing have found that extension services over mobility enhance the quality of crops from the farmers as well as the loyalty of the relationships with the farmers.
  3. Fieldforce automation: The primary communication channel for many agribusinesses is a network of human agents, known as a fieldforce, who continually visit farmers and collect their relevant updates. In addition to collecting data for the businesses, these agents are also responsible for providing information and services to farmers. Currently, a lot of information that is captured and transmitted is written on pen-and-paper forms, then sent back to the head office in regular intervals. This causes significant delays in business processes and suboptimal communications across operations. Therefore, with enterprise mobility, agents are given smartphone applications in order to collect information on their mobile device, and immediately submit it to the office. This significantly reduces travel costs as well as expenses associated with pen and paper.

Together, these three types of application enable more efficient operations across the agriculture domain. In addition to bringing down operational costs, mobility applications also support the livelihoods of farmers, creating a win-win scenario across stakeholders. 

 

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15 Criteria to Use when Selecting Your Enterprise Mobility Vendor

Posted on May 1, 2013 by admin

As the number of mobile devices now outpaces humans on this planet, mobility is becoming a more critical part of enterprise technology strategy. However, many organizations don’t know how to move to this new mobile world, and they can’t afford costly mistakes like a failed investment, which could damage their reputation. These businesses need help with their enterprise mobility strategy, and they’re turning to mobility services providers to design, develop, and support their mobile applications.

Today’s enterprise mobility market comprises many providers, ranging from the agencies that specialize in user interface (UI)/design work to development boutiques to large multinationals.  Different service providers often specialize in different elements of enterprise mobility support — from ERP implementations to cloud solutions to customer experience transformation projects. Furthermore, vendors often vary in their capabilities across areas required for success in enterprise mobility services, such as mobile design, mobility strategy, mobile application development, testing, security, and support.

According to Forrester Research, there are four types of firms that have skills in the enterprise mobility market:

  • Design firms and agencies, which focus on user experience. Organizations that seek highly creative, innovative mobile projects — especially for consumer-facing apps— should consider agencies and design-oriented consultancies. These firms pride themselves on hiring highly skilled, creative developers and the best design talent they can find.
  • Technology boutiques, which excel at mobile development and focus on flexibility and value. Smaller mobility practices provide more nimble, flexible, and lower-cost alternatives to large technology consultancies. With mobility moving so quickly and taking a high priority at many organizations, mobility services buyers may want to consider a smaller shop where they can have attention from top executives and more flexibility in pricing and delivery models versus larger peers who will be more tied to corporate policy. Uniphore is one of India’s leading examples of a boutique mobility provider.
  • Global multinationals and outsourcers, which provide breadth and depth of mobility services. Global technology consultancies have deep pockets to invest in building mobility resources (organically and inorganically), global resources, and a broad range of technology expertise. They are a strong choice for many larger-scale mobility initiatives, especially ones that require broader technology expertise that smaller firms lack, such as mobile initiatives that touch SAP or heavy analytics initiatives.
  • Telcos, which provide highly managed services and extensive network integration. Telecommunications providers offer the broadest range of mobility solutions, especially in categories including device and network management. Leading telecommunications options for mobile solutions also have a strong heritage in enterprise applications and consumer applications so that they can deliver an end-to-end mobility solution to customers.

Given this broad range of vendors, it is often difficult for businesses to understand how to evaluate different offerings against their needs. Therefore, Forrester has developed 15 criteria in order to help businesses weigh their options and see how various solutions providers stack up against each other. Below is a summary of these criteria, grouped into three high-level buckets:

  • Current offerings:
    • (1) User experience and usability capabilities.
    • (2) Process and advisory capabilities (understand how providers can help businesses navigate the business goals, industry, and domain needs that surround their mobility projects)
    • (3) Strength of the technology practice (numbers and breadth and depth of tools, industry resources, IP, and technology prowess)
    • (4) End-to-end capabilities of the provider’s ability to deliver mobility services (from strategy to implementation to testing and QA through to hosting and cloud options and ongoing support)
    • (5) Strength of the provider in enterprise applications and how the mobility practice ties into other relevant practices.
  • Strategy:
    • (6) R&D (dollars of investment, dedicated centers of excellence, patents)
    • (7) Go-to-market strategy (how they differentiate, and)
    • (8) How focused the provider is on mobility services.
    • (9) Target Market (how they tailor marketing, sales, and solutions for well-defined target markets)
    • (10) Pricing and business models.
  • Market presence:
    • (11) Installed base (mobility services customers)
    • (12) Mobility services revenues
    • (13) Mobility revenue growth
    • (14) Mobility employees
    • (15) Overall financials for the corporation

When evaluating vendors on these criteria, businesses will find that providers differ in their individual strengths and weaknesses by industry, domain, geography, and service line (i.e., creative design versus process consulting versus technical developer services). Based on the priorities and budget of each individual organization, these criterion will help executives evaluate which vendor can help them to truly get the most from their mobility investments.

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[Video] How Lending Companies & MFIs in India use Mobility to Increase Productivity and Reduce Fraud

Posted on March 27, 2013 by admin

It’s no secret:  Lending institutions in India are struggling – relying on an unproductive fieldforce for business development and customer service. These field agents are daunted by the slow process of manually collecting customer information, transmitting it to the office for processing, then waiting for approval. Such labour-intensive data processes also cost businesses time and money.

To stay competitive, you must be responsive to employees and customers at all times, while constantly overcoming logistical barriers. This requires a powerful fieldforce automation tool that connects your people, processes and technology together to achieve accurate and rapid decision-making.

Here is a video tutorial on mForce, Uniphore’s fieldforce automation solution. mForce helps replace paper-based workflows with easy data capture across a range of mobile phones. Step by step, the video elaborates on the various benefits your business can gain through a robust fieldforce automation tool:

  • Reduce sales and services cycles through real-time data exchange between field agents & back-end business managers
  • Diminish paper-based workflows with easy data capture across a range of mobile phones
  • Slash form filling time through speech and predictive text inputs
  • Gain better visibility of cash flows and diminish fraud with electronic payment collection tools
  • Reduce manual document collection and processing with a high-resolution mobile scanner
  • Monitor the live movements of employees with location tracking modules

Click here to start watching the video now.

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Examining the Mobility Stack

Posted on March 12, 2013 by admin

In its quarterly update about Enterprise Mobility, called Perspectives, Tata Consulting Service wrote an interesting article about the multiple layers of an enterprise mobililty platform. They argue that before selecting a platform, it’s critical to sort out confusion surrounding platform requirements. The key to addressing this problem lies in correctly defining each of the layers in mobile platforms and examining how those layers mesh with the organization’s IT architecture. Only with this information can IT organizations see whether their mobile platform strategy is sound. The central arguments of the article are summarized below.

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Despite the business needs, technical possibilities, and a desire to use mobility as a lever for productivity, the complexity of the mobile ecosystem creates a certain ambiguity around the platform requirements for both enterprises and telecom service providers. To meet these platform-related challenges, multiple layers must be understood and addressed from the platform perspective. These layers can be broadly categorized into the User Devices layer (mostly smartphones and tablets), Transport/Network layer, Device Management layer, Applications/Services layer, and the Enterprise Portal layer.

 

 

 

Enterprise Portal Layer

In most enterprises, the Enterprise Portal layer serves as the gateway for authentication and provides access to applications and services. Enterprise mobility requires integration of this portal into the Device Management layer. This layer has two views: the administration view to manage the mobility of the enterprise and the application access view for users of enterprise applications and services.

Key considerations at this layer include an integrated view that enables system administrators and operators to manage most of the aspects of the mobility of their employees and associates. In other words, this layer should not only serve as a window to all the layers below it, but also facilitate the integration of this platform into any other classic IT systems. Considering the fact that many enterprises have outsourced their IT and infrastructure management operations, this layer should ideally be extendable to IT service providers with the requisite access, authentication, logging, and reporting mechanisms.

Application/Services Layer

The Application/Services Layer is the core framework for service creation and delivery. This is the fundamental user plane layer exchanging enterprise data between the applications on the smartphones and the backend enterprise application. Ideally, this plane should be seamless between the user device and backend IT; specifically, a database on the device which is used by one or more applications. This layer should also support online and offline modes and provide synchronization with backend systems. It requires a thorough analysis of parameters such as the data intensity needs (e.g., light or limited data transfer, medium to heavy data, and rich data transfer) of the applications, the usual usage conditions (e.g., actively mobile, portable office, etc.), primary information usage (i.e., messages, alerts, forms, tables, knowledge, etc.) and the type of data exchange (i.e., email, SMS, file transfer, alert, etc.).

Device Management Layer

The Device Management Layer, a relatively new addition, is what makes mobility feasible. It plays a critical role from both the end device perspective and the enterprise operations perspective. It provides an inventory view of the enterprise mobile assets and their status, verifies compliance to corporate policies before access to enterprise data, and provides remediation solutions.

The Device Management layer also performs critical functions of device authentication. It can lock the device in case of undesirable handset changes by the user, loss, or theft. Most device management products allow remote wipe. A comprehensive Device Management layer also allows pushing applications and patch upgrades to the mobile device in both silent mode (without user intervention) and assisted mode (with user intervention), making it appropriate for problem resolution separate from policy enforcement and security management.

Transport/Network Layer

The Transport/Network Layer is the layer for voice and data connectivity from the telecommunication service provider partner. However, with convergence and unified communication, this layer has been extended beyond the traditional telecommunication service provider domain.

Most smartphones today can switch to a WiFi network, saving on data costs. The platform for enterprise mobility should leverage this feature and incorporate security management at a separate layer (i.e., not tied to a particular access mechanism). In essence, an enterprise mobility platform should remain decoupled from the access network.

User Devices Layer

The User Devices layer is fundamental to mobility because it is the end device that provides the mobility and serves as a window for applications and services to the end user.

While end-user devices have motivated enterprise mobility programs, they also bring significant challenges. One of the key reasons for the challenges lie in the focus on consumers by most of the platform and device OEMs and ignoring or at least underplaying the needs of the enterprise. The aspects to consider at this layer, which obviously vary depending on the nature and goal of business, are shown below.

 

Once all four levels are interpreted and analyzed, it is only then that a business can genuinely develop an enterprise mobility platform that will be comprehensive and genuinely address the needs of their business.

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The Only Solution for the Indian Insurance Market: Voice-based mobility

Posted on February 27, 2013 by admin

Over the last 10 years, the value of the Indian insurance industry has grown at a compounded annual rate of around 20%. Nevertheless, today, there are several issues inhibiting the continued expansion of the sector. One major concern is the high cost of onboarding and serving customers across the nation, given infrastructure deficiencies and linguistic complexities. Furthermore, fraud is on the rise, causing Indian insurance companies a collective loss of Rs 30,000 crore in 2012.

In order to tackle the challenge of customer interaction across the country, most insurance companies have built a large nation-wide agent network. Agents travel to meet customers and help them evaluate and select an appropriate policy. While this high-touch interaction helps to vigorously develop business, it is an increasingly costly method as companies expand outside of big cities.

Furthermore, once an insurance policy is sold, the business must continue to service the customer. This typically occurs through a combination of agent interaction and call centre staff. However, phone-based interaction is riddled with insecurity, as it is difficult to validate the identity of the customer with high levels of certainty. Furthermore, huge investments are required to set up and maintain an effective contact centre. Therefore, for most insurers in India, handling customer interaction across the country remains both a security headache and a logistical nightmare.

Insurance companies need a robust and innovative mobility solution that smoothly and securely automates a large part of customer contact workflow. Some insurance businesses have explored the use of web and Smartphone applications to handle customer interactions. However, these applications can be easily hacked. As malicious users compromise customer accounts and confidential information, the enterprise bears the cost of fraud losses, damaged reputation, and litigation. Increasingly stringent password requirements targeting this problem are too challenging for customers to recall, and result in reduced successful authentication rates.

Moreover, in India, smartphone penetration is still extremely low – below 10%. Although this number is steadily growing, most platforms cannot cater to local Indian languages, and are unusable and unfriendly to the vast majority of the Indian population. A different mode of communication is therefore required.

To overcome the limitations of smartphone applications, the ideal solution will use Multilingual Speech Recognition and Voice Biometrics to automate customer acquisition and servicing processes for insurance companies. A speech-based mobility solution will enable Insurance companies to significantly reduce the costs of customer interaction while simultaneously enhancing security and customer satisfaction.

Here are some examples of how speech-based mobility can support Insurance automation:

  1. Customer onboarding: During the sales process, the agent gathers a Voice Biometric sample of the customer using any basic mobile phone. This voiceprint is stored along with the rest of the customer details in the backend MIS. In the future, the MIS will automate an outbound call to the customer to verify their personal details. The customer will first have to authenticate their identity through their voiceprint, and then they can confirm whether or not the details in the system are correct.
  2. Alerts and reminders: In addition to outbound dialling for profile registration, the solution must be to automatically alert customers of important information throughout the life of their policy, such as payments dues, policy lapses, and forthcoming policy maturity.
  3. Call center automation: Speech recognition technology easily handles a large proportion of routine calls from customers, such as changes to policy details, simple claims, statement requests, policy information, and bill payments. When the customer calls, rather than being routed straight to a call centre agent, he or she is first asked to authenticate their identity using voice biometrics. Once their identity has been verified, the customer simply speaks the service they would like to avail, like ‘make a payment’ or ‘review my policy.’

For more information on voice-based mobility solutions, download our free whitepaper by clicking here.

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India: Moving Towards A Mobile Enterprise

Posted on February 12, 2013 by admin

A  mobile  enterprise  can  be  defined  as  one  that  enables  its  constituents to  access information, to communicate, and to collaborate in real-time, on an as-needed basis, from any location, at any time. Mobility is generally facilitated by smart mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones, etc. and often delivered using mobile applications.

Recently, Springboard research did a report on Enterprise Mobility in India. They found that India  is  one  of  the  world’s  fastest  growing  wireless  market,  but  the  adoption  of  mobile enterprise solutions is still in its nascent stage and set  to grow  tremendously in  the next five years.

As Springboard Research discusses, India’s path to enterprise mobility will go through three phases. The first phase of mobility is called “The Automated Workforce.” This level of enterprise mobility involves solutions such as Document Management Systems (DMS), Field Force Automation (FFA), Salesforce Automation (SFA), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).These are critical applications that integrate internal processes and client-facing resources. They allow mobile workers  to minimize  paperwork,  reduce  back-to-office visits, improve productivity,  and  achieve  higher  sales  closing  ratios  by  simplifying  and  automating  their day-to-day processes.

The second level of enterprise mobility adoption is known as the “Always Connected” level. These solutions include Unified Communications (UC), Location-based Services (LBS), and Business Intelligence (BI). These applications extend anytime, anywhere, any device real-time communication and collaboration capabilities to employees. Enterprises can leverage LBS to track vehicles and employees in real-time, while information can be extracted, analyzed and reported using BI. This will help to break organizational silos and enterprises will eventually benefit from increased synergies.

Finally, the highest level of enterprise mobility is the “Pervasive Mobility” stage. Enterprises embracing Pervasive Mobility will deploy key applications such as Mobile Point-of-Sale (MPOS), Social Networking Services (SNS), Financial Management System (FMS), and Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS). This is the advanced stage of a mobile enterprise, which integrates function-specific applications. These applications enhance brand image and facilitate efficient administration of internal operations such as finance and human resources. Incorporating these applications into the enterprise’s implementation strategy will achieve enterprise-wide mobility.

Traditionally,  Indian  enterprises  have  not  been  proactive  in  embracing  mobility,  due  to limited  budgets,  knowledge  and  awareness.  Enterprises have been indifferent about including mobility as part of their strategy, planning, and processes. In 2009, less than 7% of mobile workers in India used a smart mobile device. Those businesses that do have an enterprise mobility strategy are primarily still in the first phase: “The Automated Workforce.”

However, due to dynamic economic conditions and rigorous business requirements, CXOs are increasingly becoming aware of mobility and are even willing to implement it within their organizations.  Furthermore, smart mobile devices will find their way to nearly two9thirds of the country’s mobile workforce by 2015. Going  forward,  Springboard  Research  believes  that India,  Inc.  will  undergo  a  mobile  revolution  over  the  next  four  years  and  move  steadily toward “Pervasive Mobility”.

Attributed to: Springboard Research

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The Rise of Voice Biometrics on Mobile Phones

Posted on January 29, 2013 by admin

Let’s be honest: most of our lives revolve around our mobile phone. We hold a lot of personal information on our phones themselves, like photos, e-mails, contacts. Moreover, we often use mobile apps or voice calls to the major institutions with which we deal throughout our lives: our bank, hospital, insurance company, etc. While this offers convenience of accessing data anywhere and anytime, it simultaneously surfaces major concerns about privacy and security.

Risks of Data Loss to Mobile Phone Users

Imagine that tomorrow you misplace your mobile phone. The prospect of all your confidential information slipping into the wrong hands is terrifying.  Even if you think your data is secure in an application, it isn’t hard for someone to guess of steal the password or PIN code that you use to unlock these applications. Therefore, both consumers and enterprises feel a sharp need for a more robust security solution to protect all the information that is traditionally passed and stored on mobile devices.

Need for Voice Biometrics in Mobile Phones

Biometric identifiers are the distinctive, measurable characteristics used to label and describe individuals. With all types of biometric applications on the rise, voice-based authentication is one approach that seems to engender less resistance among users than other biometric forms of security. Voice recognition is non-contact, non-intrusive and easy to use. Indeed, voice biometrics seems the obvious choice for securing mobile phones, given that the primary function of these devices is to enable voice communication.

By deploying voice authentication, it eliminates the need for the user to use a password for low risk access.  This helps the user since they are often forced to keep password lists since they have to deal with so many enterprises requiring them to use passwords. Overall, by using tokens the user already carries, like their smart phone, it enables easy ways to provide stronger authentication at low enterprise management costs. 

How Does Voice Biometrics Work?

Voice recognition technology is possible after making a digital model of an individual’s voice that can serve as a stored profile or template of that voice print. Words and phrases are broken down into various kinds of frequency patterns that, taken together, describe someone’s unique way of speaking. The templates are stored in databases for matching like other kinds of biometric data.

Each time the user accesses the application, they are required to repeat a passphrase or random set of numbers. The user’s voice is then compared to the template stored. If the match is within a certain threshold, the user’s voice is confirmed.

 Previous Issues with Voice Biometrics

Until recently, voice biometrics was not considered as a serious candidate for securing mobile phones because many challenges affect its accuracy. These include poor-quality voice samples; the variability in a speaker’s voice due to illness, mood, changes over time; background noise as the caller interacts with the system; and changes in the call’s technology (digital vs. analogue, upgrades to circuits and microphones, etc).  

 Current Advancements in the Field of Voice Biometrics

With recent advancements in this technology, voice biometrics has become quite robust and reliable. These technologies are continually improving and many of the former problems with this recognition technology have been overcome to make it more reliable.

For example, background noise was once a problem that could interfere with accuracy rates. However, new recognition techniques and devices are being used to reduce background noise to offer better accuracy.

Today, voice biometrics recognition technology has low error rates, making it extremely secure and reliable, and another big advantage for those who plan to use it for a security system.  With the integration of biometric fraud analytics, even better security strength can be achieved by today’s voice recognition equipment.

Large Scale Adoption

With these advancements in technology have come large-scale adoption of voice biometrics. Here are a few of the most recent examples:

 

About the Author: 

Richard McMunn, is the founder and director of the UK’s leading career website How2become.com helps people prepare for and pass recruitment process in order to acquire their dream job. The website offers a wide range of books, dvds and courses for those who want to take their preparation to the next stage. 

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The Four Components of Every Successful Enterprise Mobility Initiative

Posted on January 15, 2013 by admin

At last week’s ‘Mobile India’ conference in Bangalore, Enterprise Mobility was the hot topic on the minds of many of the high-profile participants. In one panel, representatives from KPMG India, AT&T, Infosys, Ramco Systems, Huawei, Sasken Technologies and Uniphore debated and deliberated on the challenges and opportunities of today’s networked world for Enterprises on the Move.

According to Uniphore’s CEO, Umesh Sachdev, there are four major challenges to successful enterprise mobility initiatives in India:

I. Security: Real-time connections via enterprise applications combined with local storage of data on mobile devices increase the potential for exposure of sensitive, confidential and legally protected data.

II. Usability: In India, voice calls are still the preferred mechanism of communication on phones, not sophisticated smartphone applications. Moreover, there is a lack of applications in local languages. Most of the current enterprise mobility applications ignore these trends, have an unintuitive user interface, and involve a steep learning curve.

III. Compatibility: With the rise of BYOD, enterprises can save significant capex costs. However, this same trend presents a challenge for businesses to keep up with new platforms and devices. Mobility applications must be scalable across iOS, Android, and basic phones, or otherwise risk a slower adoption.

IV. Integration: Mobile initiatives are only successful if they have access to a robust backend IT infrastructure with which they can interact and feed data. New mobility initiatives must therefore integrate with legacy IT systems.

With these four problems, the solution is to create and deploy an enterprise mobility solution that is secure, personal, compatible, and end-to-end.

To ensure a secure solution, enterprises must create an ‘Encryption Container.’ This means that encryption should happen on the device itself – irrespective of whether the device is corporate owned or consumer owned. Also, to protect any data that is in transit, encryption must be present between the device and the servers behind the enterprise firewall. Furthermore, an enterprise mobility solution must enable remote access control, giving a small group of administrators permissions to remotely erase the information on the devices. Less security-intensive tasks like loading software can be delegated to a larger group of administrators. This is commonly known as Mobile Device Management. Finally, mobile applications must involve some level of user authentication to prevent unauthorized usage of a device and/or application. Depending on the needs of the enterprise, methods of verification can vary from low-security tactics such as PIN codes or password, to high security methods such as voice biometrics.

The success of any mobility initiative is be measured by how often and well it is used by employees. Therefore, the solution must be catered to the personal needs of the users, and compatible with their mobile preferences.  You must make sure to understand your employee’s preferences and expectations in terms of devices, applications and services, and assess their technology skill capabilities. Given the diverse demographics of India, with various languages, phone types, and literacy levels, a robust mobility solution must work across devices all platforms, including basic mobile phones. It should also enable inputs to be given in an intuitive form, through a combination of data/3G application, SMS, and speech technology, and include functionality in local languages. Multilingual Speech Recognition is an important component of any mobile solution as it meets all these requirements.

Finally, any enterprise mobility solution must answer the information needs of employees from end-to-end.  Mobile apps need timely enterprise data to empower business processes and mobile users. For examples, sales representatives often use applications to quote prices to their customers. For this, they rely on sound, real-time integration to a back end system through middleware. Furthermore, the results, insights, and collaboration outputs generated via mobile apps should have a way of being fed back to systems of record. Managers making decisions will thus have real-time insight into the processes and cashflows of the company. In order to accomplish this two way street, mobility platforms must have comprehensive integration capabilities.

To see Uniphore’s presentation elaborating on these points, go to http://mobileindia.kpoint.com/.

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What all CIOs must know about Change Management & Enterprise Mobility

Posted on January 2, 2013 by admin

Enterprise mobility can improve an organization’s productivity, optimize logistics operations, enhance customer relationships and streamline supply chain management. New mobile applications provide sales staff with updated information about their customers and new ways for field forces to work more effectively. However, one of the major challenges associated with enterprise mobility is user adoption. If employees and customer don’t find the applications easy, intuitive, and personal, then they will resist the change – and the ROI of an enterprise mobility investment will be much lower. Tata Consultancy Services recently published a white paper discussing this issue, and four strategies to overcome it. We’ve seen these practices work first hand with our customers, so we have summed up the major points below.

In order to overcome this challenge of adoption, any organization seeking to deploy some form of IT optimization must understand the principles of effective change management. The right strategy will take into account four basic criteria that every individual goes through when deciding if and when they will accept and embrace the change. First, people must understand what the change is and why it is important. This enables them to contemplate the change and how it affects them. Second, people must believe that the change is practical so that they have the confidence to embrace it. Change always involves doing things in new ways, which in turn requires new skills, information, or tools.  Third, people must believe that change is the right thing to do. Embracing change requires a personal belief that the change is the best course of action. Finally, people must be willing to step out of their comfort zone. This involves letting go of existing commitments and relationships.

Traditional change management approaches are quite accomplished in the first two areas: communicating the rationale and practicality of the solution through different types of “push” strategies including town halls, intranet web sites, and training sessions. What is missing is instilling the desire to change and engendering the courage to act on that desire. In order for this to happen, people need to feel a sense of control. They need to feel that they’ve been given an adequate forum where their needs and concerns have been understood and incorporated.  In short, they need to be part of the decision-making process.

In the context of IT, in large automation projects, one often finds a gap between the automated process and those expected by users. Eventually new process is imposed on people who are skeptical on the efficacy. The adoption of the system faces a natural resistance. Rather than creating a solution and pushing it to stakeholder groups, project teams should make the stakeholders “pull” the solution by choosing to change. This push/pull balance is formed by creating four pressure points as stakeholders move through the various levels of commitment to a program.

1) Build a foundation on change methodology – Having a planned approach for change, involving external facilitation to guide project teams and stakeholders through the change process, provides a foundation upon which change programs succeed.

2) Engage stakeholders in decisions and the vision behind them – The project team identifies stakeholders to participate, defines the decisions to be made, builds the solution, and trains stakeholders. This push frames the decision for stakeholders and provides them with the means to bridge the gap between current and future states.

3) Help leadership break down barriers – Mobilize and align the stakeholder groups’ top management around the program’s priorities, vision, and solution. This creates an environment that fosters widespread involvement and participation in the program; it provides the leadership necessary to break down barriers and guide the program to success.

4) Identify agents of change and make them champions within their groups – When stakeholders participate in the creation of the solution and solicit widespread commitment from their peers, they become agents of change who pull the solution from the project team and make it their own. This is an important distinction. As senior leaders take on more responsibility for the success of the program, the project team has to learn how to work with much broader participation from stakeholders.

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The Secret Behind Keeping up with rapidly evolving technology in Enterprise Mobility

Posted on December 17, 2012 by admin

Mobile devices are everywhere and used by everyone. This pervasiveness creates opportunities to make employees more productive, engage with customers in a more targeted and personalized manner, and cut costs across enterprise operations. Due to the huge gains that Enterprise Mobility brings to businesses across industries,  Zinnov  recently asserted that India’s market for these solutions will reach 1 billion USD by 2015.

But there are a few key challenges that still restrain enterprises from making the most of their investments in mobility. First, mobile technology is constantly changing.  The enterprise has to deal with the proliferation of devices, vendors, and services – from Java, Nokia, Apple, Google Android, BlackBerry, and so forth.  Moreover, enterprise workflows and business processes are also changing. Employees, customers, and other business stakeholders expect a relatively rapid application development and enhancement timeline, aligned with the shifting operations and needs of the business. Because of these challenges, enterprise IT must be ready to meet diverse end users, engagement modalities, use cases, security challenges, etc – while in a short time period.

In order to simultaneously embrace the advance of mobile devices in the workplace and keep up with rapidly evolving processes, enterprises must invest in an application development and management platform. Uniphore, for example, provides our enterprise mobility customers with mCAS, which allows them to build, deploy and manage their own fully-customized, cross-device applications from one central framework.  The mCAS platform offers simple drag-and-drop menus, completely avoiding code-based architecture. Once a manager has designed a new application, he quickly deploys it to multiple devices. All applications can be deployed and rolled back with a simple click, compressing the release cycles of new applications.

Studies show that 60% to 80% of the cost of an enterprise application goes to maintenance and new features that get added after the first version is released. Even if you can develop new applications really fast, you still need a simplified change process during the entire application life-cycle. This will allow you to keep evolving your applications to get more value out of your IT investments, year after year. Therefore with a solution like mCAS, business managers can quickly update, add or change content on the application at any point, without the need to re-compile code. Changes and updates can be implemented from a central framework, then deployed instantly – allowing the business to be more responsive, agile and efficient.

Most enterprises are concerned with the security risks involved in digitizing their processes and mobilizing their people. Application managers like mCAS soothe this concern by giving companies the ability manage the security of applications and devices. All applications are automatically instrumented to collect monitoring and performance data. At any point, businesses can access all runtime information centrally to detect, isolate and correct potential security breaches. Furthermore, enterprises can use the application management platform to can easily protect their data through a variety of security techniques, including user authentication, remote data control, and encryption support.

Given the fast moving world we live in, it is critical that enterprises adopt a mobility solution that can keep pace with new technologies and business processes. Application development and management platforms are a critical ingredient of any scalable enterprise mobility solution.  The right one will make your IT department more responsive to business users’ requests, and reduce the application backlog with the resources you already have. Most importantly, you will get the biggest bang for your enterprise mobility investment buck.

 

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