Image by Bekathwia

Once upon a time, there was a company executive. He lived in a large organisation and loved coming to work every day.

One day, he went out into the world to look for a mobility solution provider. Off he went, happy as can be, wide-eyed and eager to please. “This should be easy!” he thought to himself, “Mobility is all the rage and is cheap!”

Soon, he became lost. Although the path looked familiar, there were false paths and traps everywhere. He took refuge in a small coffee shop and ordered a flat white to calm down.

Looking over he noticed there were only 3 tables, each with people already sitting there. So he approached the first table and asked to sit down, to which the young kids replied “sure thing bro, have a seat”.

After chatting for a while, the company executive discovered the 2 young kids were Mobile App Developers! Wow. What luck, so he started talking about his company needs to see if they would fit the bill.

The discussion went well at first, the kids were very engaged, and were young and enthusiastic. But as time went on he discovered they wouldn’t suit his needs. Yes they were cheap, but he was currently meeting with the entire company, both of the staff. How could he rely on this organisation to get the outcomes he needed? Would they be able to finish the job? They had only been around for a year; they were too small, too cheap, too risky and too distracted. They kept taking phone calls from new prospects and from clients, while trying to drink their coffee, talk to him and answer emails. When they started talking about augmented reality and didn’t know what an ERP or CRM was (is that a game?) his face dropped.

So the executive excused himself, grabbed his coffee and shuffled dejected to the next table.

There he saw three refined older gentlemen, each wearing a well tailored suit and drinking their macchiatos. They stood up as he approached, extended warm greetings and business cards. Wow, he thought, and upon reading the cards he discovered they were executives of one of the largest system integration firms in the hemisphere, what luck!

As he went through discussing his needs, they were all over it, they were talking his language, they understood complex installations and talked about the companies 1000′s of staff, 1000′s of clients and 1000′s of skills. This company could certainly handle it. Couldn’t they?

Then he started asking more questions around pricing and delivery. “Sure, we certainly have the resources to take on your job, we regularly run at 70% utilisation and can ramp up very quickly, first we bring in our requirements and motion study teams, they should take around 3 months going over your systems and processes with numerous workshops to ensure we design the right solution, then we can start architecting the solution either on site or on our premises. Once we sign off the use cases, requirements definitions and high and low level designs, then we can engage the delivery teams to program the project into our schedule. We think around 100 people at 12 months should be doable at $2,000 a day.”

The executive then picked himself up off the floor and thought “OK, so there is less risk, but they are way too expensive, not very agile, and too big!”

So he dusted off his pants, went to order a replacement flat white (a big one) and went to try and unwind at the last table.

As he sat down, the mid thirties gentleman extended a warm greeting and identified himself as being from a specialist mobility organisation of four years standing, with 40 staff in 3 countries. As they spoke, the executive began to feel better and better. This organisation was not too big, not too small, but just right. It was not too risky, not too slow, but just right. They didn’t have 1000s of past clients, but they certainly had a good track record and could show an impressive range of clients with complex systems integration experience focused on mobility.

However, the best part was that despite seeming the best choice, they fell nicely between the $10,000 quote of the small two-man company and the millions quoted by the large company. To tell you the truth, it was a little more than he originally had in mind, but through the ongoing discussions he came to understand that a mobile application that delivers a real return on investment is not somehow a magical software solution that doesn’t have the cost of traditional software development, but rather is pretty much in line with any other style of software development on any other platform. Which in hindsight was actually pretty obvious.

He walked out into the sunshine and back to the office, all the while wondering why he went out thinking mobility solutions would be vastly cheaper than other enterprise software application project in the first place, but happy he didn’t have to spend millions and wait a year or more to get it done.

Research shows enterprises are beyond the dabbling stage with mobility. Analyst firm Gartner, in its tech predictions for 2012 and beyond, foresees that by 2015, mobile application development projects will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of four to one. Additionally, Gartner, in its 2013 advice for enterprise IT groups contemplating project plans, states that “application delivery teams need to re-establish themselves as trusted solution providers for mobile, cloud, social and information initiatives.”

Any way you slice it, plans for enterprise mobile applications are expanding rapidly. That means to keep pace; enterprise IT and business leaders need to be both ambitious in their mobile strategy, and efficient in its execution. Furthermore, mobile applications should no longer be considered side-shows or pilot projects, but vital to the overall strategic IT plan.

In reality, developing enterprise mobile applications could be a complex and time-consuming process. The application has to run on multiple devices, must connect to multiple back-end systems, provide secure data access in today’s bring-your-own-device (BYOD) world, and be available even when the user is out of coverage. All these factors can be addressed by selecting the right enterprise mobility platform.

To keep pace with mobility leadership, enterprises need to do strategic things well, like establishing executive leadership for mobile strategy, working with employees and customers to identify innovative application ideas, and by having CIOs make mobility a vital part of IT strategic plans.

In other words, the days for dabbling with mobility won’t cut it anymore. To be a market leader, you have to be prodigious and productive in your mobility efforts.

Image by richardefreeman

By now most people are aware of the smartphone revolution. But we are constantly being asked HOW these new devices can actually be used to deliver a real benefit for business.

It seems strange to us that it is taking so long for the world to catch on to the real possibilities. The signs are all there, but for some reason we are only finding pockets of people starting to realise the potentially massive benefits.

We find that the biggest hurdle is generally in the imagination of the people involved, but we also generally find it requires very little prompting. With only a couple of nudges, most of the people we talk to rapidly get to a level of understanding that is like a cork popping. Suddenly a plethora of opportunities appear and the flood gates open.

We are also yet to find a business that doesn’t benefit in some way from mobility. Why is that? Well, if we boil down the essence of what mobility provides, it is:

• Immediate access to information
• Immediate connections to other people
• Immediate involvement in process and workflow

So, essentially, it provides a way to directly interface processes, information and people to any target individual. This fits just about any role in any organisation; everyone works with a combination of processes, people and/or information every day they turn up to work.

Integration: The key to productivity

We are also currently seeing the “there’s an app for that” phenomenon. This, on the face of it, appears to be a logical conclusion. ie: you would like a to-do list? There’s an app for that. How about a shared note-taking facility, yup! Ok, what about mobile VOIP telephony? Video conferencing? CRM? Workflow? Bug Tracking? … Yup, yup, yup and double yup!

However, we still see this as a fragmented “solution”: Working in the “CRM” app to look up your contacts, then switching to maps to find them, then, once you arrive, you flip between iBooks (for your sales collateral), a forms app (to fill in the application form for the sale), your CRM (to copy the details into your forms app), the web browser (to demonstrate your products), the camera to record a drivers licence ID, and so on… How laborious! Then you need to send the photos from the camera or photos app to Dropbox or via email to your work account, and export the form to pdf and email it, or save it to Dropbox in the same folder, or log in to that app portal to download the completed PDF… Phew!

So how does all this provide a cost saving, a more efficient process, or value to the worker? Well, maybe it does, but not optimally. There is a cost of inconvenience, an overhead that comes along with the benefit, that takes the shine off.

The first generation of mobile applications

If you are “mobile” but with adhoc or partial solutions such as these, then you may get jaded and lose faith in the promise. But don’t feel alone, so many organisations are in the same boat. The truth is, the current generations of products are as juvenile as software written in the first few years after the invention of the Personal Computer. It’s a new platform with people scrambling to understand it’s capabilities.

We coined the phrase “The Appdustrial Revolution” to describe what is about to occur. We are only at the beginning of the new age. Society is going to understand the real possibilities soon and organisations are going to have to adapt and adopt to remain relevant or run the risk of being left behind.

The next generation of mobile applications

Start thinking bigger. Dare to dream! You should not be surprised to learn that the devices we are using now have the capability to deliver what you expect of them. But it’s not until people take these devices seriously and understand that software development takes time and money to get a serious application off the ground, that we will start seeing these “third generation” business applications.

It should be easy to look at your phone in the morning, see your itinerary without even unlocking it, swipe your first appointment to see directions and change the order to accommodate the lunch meeting you have, arrive at your appointment and have your phone tell you who you are meeting (along with their children’s and dogs names), swipe and a new application form appears (pre-populated with the client details), take photos directly on the form, sign with your finger and submit the details as a new application file to kick off the fulfilment process.

The next generation is now

So why did I give this blog the title “Real Mobility”? Well, in our experience, the majority of people who think they are “doing mobility” are not there yet. However, this is all doable RIGHT NOW! And people are starting to catch on.  If you are not thinking at this level and already in discussions with a capable and reputable expert organisation to deliver these solutions for your organisation, you should be preparing to be surpassed because your competitors are most likely already going down this path.

Prepare to ride the wave, or you may well end up getting crushed in the shore break.

Image by the Iconfactory and arts4art

A Mobile Strategy is not an IT Strategy.  It is not a Marketing Strategy.  It is not an App strategy. It is not a BYOD policy.  It is not a device policy.  It is not Mobile Device Management (MDM). It is not a Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MADP).

A Mobile Strategy is all of the above and more.

A Mobile Strategy is about mobilizing your business processes, bringing enterprise functionality to the end user so that he or she can access it via a user friendly interface, at the right time, with the right information and on their device of choice.

I have written before, that someone somewhere within your business is doing something in mobility.  And because of this, your Mobile Strategy needs to include all areas of your business.  Yes it needs to include IT. But it also needs to include sales, marketing, finance etc.

By including all areas of your business you will reduce your Total Cost of Ownership.  You will be able to better plan, budget, prioritize and see a quicker ROI when all areas of your business form part of your Mobile Strategy.

Google’s Eric Schmidt was quoted as saying, “You don’t have a future strategy if you don’t have a mobile strategy.”  And he is correct.  With the projection that by 2016 there will be five billion mobile users, a mobile strategy is imperative for every business across every industry now.

So before you start your mobility strategy, I urge you to bring together your IT and business leadership team along with key vendors to challenge the current status and brainstorm on the ways that innovative mixes of technologies can be utilized to mobilize your business.

Um… OK…. Can I ask why?

Apps are useful aren’t they? They are all the craze at the moment. We can look up events, go shopping from the couch, choose from 100s of different free chat clients, play word games with friends, have a combined magnifying glass / torch (or several), and make funny looking photos with our camera.

Throw away apps

That is exactly my point. These are “apps” in the classic sense of the word (yes, I realise “classic” is odd in this context, being the whole smartphone app industry is only 5 years young), but there is a misconception about “apps” that needs to be understood. Apple (followed by the rest of the industry) started the concept of a disposable simple utility gadget program called an “app” – most likely because it was a catchy name and made software “cool”.

But the market was quickly flooded with millions of torches, fart apps, and angry birds look-alikes.

Don’t waste your money

To compete in a flooded commodity market, the only differentiator is price; so all the commodity app producers began the “race to 99c”. Unfortunately this only works for commodity apps because they are cheap to churn out, small, and had a huge market with undersupply. So the name “app” has unfortunately become synonymous with cheap, small and useless. Unfortunately for these developers, the market was suddenly flooded and it became impossible to make your name with a fart app any more.

So our frequent advice is “don’t build an app, don’t waste your money”.

App Developer vs Mobile Application Developer

Wait, isn’t iApps an “App Developer”? So does that mean I am essentially saying don’t come and see us?

No, that’s not the message at all, “App Development” is generally easy, and there are a lot of start-ups and garage companies around Australia all vying for those small disposable projects. We are not in that category. We are a “Mobile Application Software Developer” – a consultancy focussed on delivering value and return on investment to the application sponsors, business owners and most importantly, to the end user. It is only through delivering a truly valuable tool to the end user that your concept will be adopted.

An “App Developer” takes your specification and tries to undercut the market to build as cheap as they can, this is indisputable, look at the market pressures and lack of differentiation. You can easily tell an “App Developer” when you try to call them and they tell you to email your idea. Then they send back a quote for $5,000 or $10,000 dollars.

Is your budget for your mobile application enough?

But the real warning sign here is the price tag, if you are looking at developing an “App” and have a budget of only $10,000 then you fall in the category of customer we seriously advise to “put your money into something else, you are just about guaranteed to find a better return elsewhere”.

About the only use of $5000 in the Mobile Application world, is to forget building your own app and purchase a “templated” app for your company, like the eCoffeeCards, the Clubs Alive and others. They have spent the requisite $100s of thousands developing a robust and capable Mobile Application and back-end servers and integration required to deliver real value at that price point. A custom app of your own on that budget will only buy you a glorified web page.

100s of thousands of dollars! What did I just say?

If you ask any larger mobile application cloud-based provider what it costs to create a compelling product and they will easily quote upwards of half a million. Sure there are cloud analytics and cloud platforms (PAAS) to aid in development, but they are only really a time saver for complex “Apps” (= very simple mobile applications).

When you are trying to build a rural platform for the entire supply chain, or providing a new style of auction platform or an iTunes-like authoring and sales system for business documents, you need custom servers and a solution specifically architected for that need. Building such software takes time and resources, all of which come at a cost.

What to look for in a mobile application developer

A true mobile application developer will take you on a journey to understand not only why you should forget about “Apps” and look at delivering real value, but will also help you to understand the need for solid software experience, qualified server and client architecture teams and application of proven project management philosophies to ensure delivery of a quality product on time.

A real mobile application development firm will have veterans of the software industry, people who cut their teeth programming for the aeronautical industries, or space programs, areas where mistakes in software can cost lives. Here, a substandard product will have disastrous effects.

The next wave of mobile applications

Now is the beginning of the next wave of mobile applications, your potential users are beginning to understand what can be done with mobility and how it can enrich their lives. They have already become jaded with low value “Apps”, useless trinkets that get deleted or forgotten.

That time is gone and the party is over, now is the time to shift to reality and look at a budget to cover design, build, testing, ongoing support and maintenance, marketing, and all the costs behind launching your new business or building a tool that truly connects you with your customers, your suppliers, and your staff.

Image by William Hook and HowardLake

“I have an idea to build a mobile application, but I have no idea what to do next?”

I am amazed at how many people say this to me even before they know what I do for a living. Yes folks, it is on everybody’s mind, so it’s time to educate yourself, if you are going to create the next killer mobile app!

Whether you want to create an application for your business, build the next Angry Birds, improve an existing application or just have a great solution to a problem, you need to focus on the Return On investment (ROI).

The first thing I think about when reviewing an application idea for a client is “how is this going to provide a return on investment for the client?” I don’t know many people who are happy to pour money into a project without some form of ROI.

To ensure to se a ROI, make sure you are producing something that adds value to the end user.

It is important to work with a developer that has the skillset to not only build your application, but to also enrich it to be the BEST possible version of your idea! There are so many applications just waiting for somebody to improve them, to make them the BEST!

This scenario has shown us time and time again that it is not so much about being first to market, but being the BEST to market.

ROI must be a major consideration in your developer’s approach! Why would anyone consider developing applications for clients on specifications that offer no value to the end user? It is an important part of the process to spend the necessary time with your developer, making sure that you are delivering a product to market that is going to be successful.

If you feel that you are dealing with a developer that is purely fitting your specifications within your budget, you should see this as a definite red flag. You want to engage with a developer that doesn’t only deliver technically, but can also identify any vital components missing in the design that would be detrimental to its success. The reverse can be true also!

The unfortunate truth is that you will likely have no problem engaging with a developer that will not only build you “exactly” what you have asked for, but it may also (miraculously), fit perfectly within your specified budget! Sadly there are millions of applications that now fall into this category.

Take your time and find the firm that works best for you. You’ll know when you find them, as they should instill a confidence in you that will make the relationship feel right.

I take my phone everywhere and like most people I only use it probably 2% of the time.

Why?

If we look into the usage patterns of a smart-phone user, the majority of us only use our phone when it asks us to. The other times it’s to quickly look something up or record something. And every time I use it for that second reason, it TAKES TOO LONG!

I am time poor and I want an app that doesn’t REQUIRE me to do a lot. I want an application that DOES IT FOR ME.

The apps I use most frequently do that very well. I can quickly call people and read and acknowledge an SMS in seconds. I can find my children in one tap, look up my drivers license number, or get told when my wife picks up the eggs.

I do NOT use apps that take 3 taps to do anything. They demand too much of me, they waste my precious time and are just TOO HARD.

So learn from the best applications, stop asking too much of your audience and stop thinking that delivering value comes when they search for it. Don’t classify me in a broad segmentation of the populace and push me offers that might vaguely interest me.

Instead, just tell me when MY team scores a goal, remind ME of the family details of the people I am about to meet and send ME something that I am directly wanting to make a decision about right now!

If you require LESS of me, I will use you more. When you provide more value to me, you become my new favourite application.

Created using image by gd08.

If you are thinking of building a mobile application, then let me show you the proven way of ensuring it is successful.

There is a fundamental flaw in the traditional way businesses built software. It is the fixed approach. Traditional software projects are treated as a singular unit, with a start and a stop date, a fixed budget and a fixed set of requirements.

The solution is a more agile approach. No, I am not advocating complete developer anarchy by giving the developer free reign over the timeframe and budget. What I am talking about is a shift in thinking, not a huge shift, but a minor tweaking of the traditional model to be more “agile“.

The Old Way

You see, historically, companies with large budgets have built software in spite of themselves. They have had very large budgets to throw at the project no matter the problems that occurred.

But this approach does not work in today’s economy. To succeed today businesses (particularly start-ups) need to be frugal with spending, fast to market and must be able to change direction to accommodate market needs.

In the past larger organisations have been able to ignore these simple rules because of their large budgets. Instead they took a long time to develop a huge product to try and meet a perceived need. It only really “worked” because the “good times” we enjoyed so organisations kept throwing good money at bad projects until they worked no matter the cost

With the advent of the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) the money tree died in many organisations. All organisations, no matter their size, needed to watch expenditure, plan ahead, never assume assured cashflows, reduce spending and become more frugal. In other words, become more like a start-up again.

Solve End User Pain

There has now been a shift in the industry and success is measured differently. Projects have smaller budgets, but still need to be effect and have a strong ROI. The way to accomplish this is to focus on the end user pain and build solutions to solve that pain.

Businesses need to start at the end. Start by asking the end user what their biggest challenges are. Spend the time finding out what make their job difficult and solving that pain.
Minimum Viable Product

If you take this simple paradigm shift, it greatly simplifies the process of specifying what we call a MVP (minimum viable product). This term is heavily used in the start-up industry and describes the smallest most beneficial product we can create (ie fastest and cheapest) to deliver initial value to the end user and therefore gain a user base upon which to build our business.

By stripping away all the features back to the few that actually make an end user productive the cost is reduced and development speeds up. The key is to release he software to end-users quickly and constantly adjust the new versions according to the feedback provided. Thus ensuring you are only working on what is important to the end user.

Fast Short Cycles

Twitter is a classic example, and thousands of businesses since have replicated this success. ALL have released small and simple products to fit a specific USER need. Many have grown into successful businesses, worth millions of dollars with stable and powerful, feature-rich products.

If you look into each of these successful mobile applications you will find that that in almost every case the “project” has been fast and short, followed by ongoing permanent staff constantly enhancing and improving the initial product based on customer feedback. Each has delivered real value to the end user FIRST and then built a revenue and business around that solid user base.

User Feedback is Key

All businesses, large or small, need to become smarter in expenditure and deployment. Don’t get bogged down by “guessing” what the user wants and “building everything” to try and meet their needs, or “studying them” like lab rats to determine what cheese they like. Instead, focus on one or two of their pain points, deliver those solutions fast and commit to a small team of developers to immediately start making improvements based on early feedback.

Think like a start-up (no matter how big you are), start at the end, and above all remain agile.

If you want to ensure your next mobile application is a success, then call us on 1300 665 900.

Image by CalypsoCrystal

We all know the world is going mobile. But have you really thought about how mobility is going to affect your business?  The way you do business? The way you interact with your customers and your employees? The way they want and expect to interact with you?

We are all consumers in our daily life. So how have we changed?  Personally, I Skype before using my mobile phone.  I WhatsApp rather than txt. I use my banks banking App rather than Internet banking and I use social media to interact with my colleagues and friends. I now travel with a smart phone and tablet rather than a laptop.

As a consumer I now expect to interact with my employer the same way I interact in my personal life. Your customers, business partners and employees also expect to interact with you in a mobile way.

But how can mobility change the way you do business? It is no longer just about the way you interact with your customers or getting an App that looks good.  It’s about giving your customers, business partners and employees the tools they need to handle critical tasks and make informed decisions in real time – no matter where they are.

If 2012 has taught us anything about mobility; it’s that mobility in business is on the rise. A few interesting statistics;

• By 2014, there will be more than 70 billion mobile app downloads from app stores every year. That’s almost 10 app downloads for every man, woman, and child on earth, every year. And that number is rising.
• By 2014, most businesses and organizations will deliver mobile apps through private app stores.
• By 2016, tablets will outnumber PCs by a ratio of 4:1.
• 60% of mobile enterprises are anticipating significant IT budget increases to pay for mobility initiatives.
• 83% of mobile app developers plan to use cloud based services by 2014.

And according to another recent study, more than 1.19 billion workers – 34.9% of the global workforce – will be using mobile technology by 2013.*

Mobile is going to affect your business.

Do you want your business to be left behind?  It is naïve to think that today someone, somewhere in your business isn’t already planning or doing something in mobility.

Developing a mobile strategy is key. Next weeks blog will be “How do I develop a Mobile Strategy”.

* “Worldwide Mobile Worker Population 2009-2013 Forecast” (IDC, 2009)

CYBER criminals stole confidential information and financially defrauded one in five major Australian businesses in 2012, a new government report has revealed.

Released today by Attorney General Mark Dreyfus QC, the 2012 Cyber Crime and Security Survey Report shows more than 20 per cent of 255 organisations in Australia’s energy, defence, communications, banking and water sectors reported a ”cyber incident” last year, despite the majority using security software and firewalls.

The number of incidents may be even higher than indicated by respondents, the report notes, as some attacks may have gone undetected.

The most serious attacks involved the use of ”ransomware” and ”scareware” – malicious software that either locks a computer system until a ransom is paid, or launches a hoax virus and demands payment to ”remove” it.

One scareware attack mentioned in the report displayed fake warning screens claiming to be from the non-existent ”Anti Cyber Crime Department of the Federal Internet Security Agency”, saying the organisation’s computers had been ”associated with criminal activity” to discourage them from reporting the scam to police.

More than half the organisations who reported an attack said they had been deliberately targeted, with 17 per cent saying criminals had stolen ”confidential or proprietary information” and 10 per cent reporting financial fraud.

In one case, an organisation reported the theft of 15 years’ worth of critical business data.

The attacks come despite more than 90 per cent of all respondents saying they employed digital security measures such as anti-virus software, anti-spam filters and firewalls.

Commissioned by Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) Australia and conducted by the Centre for Internet Safety at the University of Canberra, the report will be annual.

Mr Dreyfus said Australian businesses needed to be mindful of the risks of operating online.

”The digital economy has opened up myriad opportunities for Australian businesses to deliver goods, provide services and communicate with people more effectively. But with every online opportunity comes the risk of criminal exploitation,” said Mr Dreyfus.

”Cyber attacks have shifted from being indiscriminate and random to being more coordinated and targeted for financial gain.”