You only need to face the simple fact that 50% of corporate office space (in the US alone) is now left unused to understand that the connected worker is becoming less and less tethered to her/his desk - they are mobile. While Marissa Meyer is making valiant efforts to reverse this trend, the unfortunate news for her is that more and more workers want to be mobile, so if you want to the best talent, you'd better be able to cater for their mobile needs.
Quite simply, the speed by which Mobility is dominating our personal and business lives is staggering, and the capability of providers to mobilify their services to keep enterprises functioning is becoming increasingly significant by the day as a services differentiator. So let's take a peek at the results of the first Blueprint Report into Enterprise Mobility Services, where HfS analyst Ned May scoured over 10,000 datapoints across 270 Enterprise Mobility services contracts:
Ned, firstly, can you talk about some of the business-specific uses of Enterprise Mobility that you're seeing?
For some industries, Mobility is already table stakes, for example:
* Shipping: One of the earliest to adopt mobile solutions. Proprietary devices manage both the package status and the delivery fleet to provide real time information all the way back to the consumer.
* Market Research: In the field surveys now get entered immediately in a laptop – reducing costs and allowing for on the fly targeting of needed demographics.
For some it’s quickly getting there, for example:
* Healthcare Insurance: Membership apps for healthcare apps running on tablets allow sales reps to customize, quote, and close a new membership in the field and in a much more engaging way then possible via even a laptop.
* Travel: Flight attendants are being equipped with phablets tied into passenger data and entertainment systems that are also able to receive food and beverage requests all in an effort to better manage travelers and provide a personalized experience for everyone on the plane.
And some likely future uses:
* Car Insurance: Auto insurers will tailor car policies not based on actuarial tables and demographics but instead on real data gathered about each individuals driving habits gleaned from sensors in their smartphones.
* Retail: High-end retail shopping will become an augmented experience as laptops get handed out (or in store apps downloaded) that provides context around every item in the store, makes recommendations for complimentary purchases, directs buyers to the location of an item, allows for purchase of items sold out in one’s size, and even allows one to purchase items as they gather them rather than wait at the end to check out.
So what's been driving the Enterprise Mobility market?
The rapid proliferation of smartphones is fueling a broad range of mobile activity across most enterprises today. Firstly, there a need for the first wave of customer-facing mobile initiatives to be
Posted in: Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), Buyers' Sourcing Best Practices, Cloud Computing