How Mobile Phones Are Used in Business - Essay Example

24 July How Mobile Phones are used in Business Nowadays mobile phones have become an integral part for every business organization and many companies have replaced their computers and laptops with smart phones and thereby achieved high productivity. Tablets of today have much more wireless capabilities than traditional laptops. Fast adoption of technology by consumers leads the retailers to evaluate the use of technology to support the new connected consumers. In retail, a tablet can serve as both an easy to use constantly updated catalogues, as well as a point of sale device, or to provide personalized assistants and shopping service to customers. (The Changing Face of Retail: The Store of the Future: The New Role of the Store in a Multichannel Environment 7). In order to explore this opportunity better applications have to be developed by the retailers to enhance in-store experience and invest in their network connectivity. (8). There are many applications available for smart phones like web browsing, communication, email, telephone and instant messaging, entertainment such as games, movies and music, social networking, banking and location based services. It has been reported that daily 1600 applications (Brussels) are added to mobile services. Thus the consumerization of smart phones has become an irrevocable turning point in corporate environment, which has transformed how business entities do their operations. PART -1 There are multiple approaches to how the smart phone devices are integrated into the corporate infrastructure for tapping best benefits out of them. Many IT industries connect BYO devices via Wi-Fi (Bring Your Own Device) “which allow employees to work from the device of their choice” which help the employees to have “full access to specific services” (Smartphones and Tablets in the Enterprise: Managing BYO Device Programs 1). Many innovations on smart phones have occurred in recent years and resulted in “multi touch input, gesture based interaction, advanced soft keyboards, enhanced connectivity and a great number of dedicated special purpose application”(Bao et al. 1).  On the other side there are limitations which make difficulties for the users to understand the information’s quickly. Different Options Available for Mobile Devices 1. Leverage Device Capabilities: Making full use of device capabilities is the first objective of any mobile devices application. Especially equipment such as “sight (camera), hearing (microphone and voice phone connections), touch (touch screen), and sense of location in space (GPS)” (Best Practices for Developing Enterprise Smartphone Apps 1). There are additional features like integrating enterprise applications with other capabilities on the phone devices. 2. Create Task Oriented Applications: In present corporate world, applications generated are enterprise oriented which are more powerful and sophisticated. Mainly users prefer particular devices to complete specific tasks. “For this reason, you should consider breaking down comprehensive back ends into small, helpful task-driven applications” (Best Practices for Developing Enterprise Smartphone Apps 1). One of the applications like GPS mapping in smart phones will help the user, to get directions from time to time or as and when required. Similarly, when a report builder, after attending meeting needs a fresh data of that meeting, he or she can use voice recognition and speech to text technology. In addition, cameras can be used and recorded pictures and videos can be integrated into the system as a part of customer record. 3. Adopt a Context Sensitive Approach: In mobile device it is time consuming for users to browse and reach to the destination. To avoid this, users can be directly take to the task which they want to perform. Besides, an application given can perform many tasks and manage multiple objectives. 4. Minimize End User Typing: In a smart phone application data is entered through a soft keyboard which is displayed on the touch screen. Nowadays mobile applications use a clever technique to reduce the effort on typing as possible by displaying optional words. The main reason behind this is these smart phones have physical keyboard which is smaller as a result they use such techniques to made it more user friendly. Some techniques are Use of swipe in text messaging Use of camera, video, bar code scanning etc. Use of geographical information, location. Which are not available on laptops. These facilities, enable employees to save time And thus increase their productivity. 5. Support All Devices: In this competitive world, smart phones are increasing rapidly so that companies should always be alert and should target all upcoming smart phones platforms to save on time spent on the devices and thus increase their productivity. These cross platforms are growing in popularity, which pressures such device to come up with new application to withstand competition. 6. Support Enhanced Offline Users: Data synchronization is an important factor when it comes to offline users “. Whether users are offline or not they should be able to access the information. To enable offline access in the application certain changes have to be made. For that there two method; polling-based synchronization” “This method mainly drains the life of battery and gives older data.” push-based synchronization” Most people prefer to use push based synchronization in modern application.  Phones which support push capabilities are iphones, Android and Blackberry. 7. Handle Back End Data Changes: Customers always require quick and easy access to the information. Therefore the application should be in such a way to handle ongoing changes and update information. Few developers had succeeded in handling such issues by custom approach and convert such studies to the smart phone applications. How Restaurant Use Tablets and Smart Phones in Business: By focusing on a restaurant business, marketers need to use separate smart phone and strategies in order to reach a high range of customers. One of the report found that “65 percent of searchers are looking for restaurants within walking or short driving distances” (Brandau). Other users mainly look for business locations and rests of the users ask directions and restaurant phone number. Smart phones provide information either through browsing or through a particular application and the way users use these method influence their behavior. To be in touch the customers, restaurant focus on where the customers are and that is online. If the restaurant do not maintain a web presence they are not relevant to the customers. With the help of online ordering customers can access the menu at leisure they can choose what he/she needs and make an order. It is a labor saving process since it does not require many people to answer the calls. Online ordering makes busy person’s life easier. One of the important restaurant strategies is social media. Through facebook interface there are many active users who make orders directly. Self service kiosk is another way for customers to do their banking, shopping, order foods from restaurant etc… since everyone do not have smart phones or iphones kiosk is a better alternative. Mobile Restaurant User Profiles: Mainly the users access the availability of restaurant when arises the need for food. Certain mobile restaurant user profiles are; The Savvy Patron: This type of consumers actually knows where they have to find the information and what they are looking for. The Social Foodie: Decision of this type of consumers always depends upon friend’s guidance. The On-The-Go Diner: This type of users spent most of their time within the restaurant category. PART-2 A company has to go through following steps to implement mobile devices into their firm; Define Business Mobility Goals: Under this a mobility steering committee should be established in order to coordinate the efforts of enterprise. What are the goals? How those goals can be achieved? Which application should be used to be more valuable? Should be analyzed. Develop Business Cases and Prioritize the Roadmap: Convert those goals in to a “list of desired mobile applications” (Implementing an Enterprise Mobility Strategy 7). Executive summary should be created for each mobile application in order to identify primary objectives, different business benefits, its features, primary users and beneficiaries etc… Integrate Mobile Channel with Existing Channel: In recent environment customers, partners and employees want to access information through smart phones and tablets. For this, it is important to define how mobile application differs from other channels. Develop Use Cases for Mobile Applications: A detailed study of users, situation and transaction is essential. What are the needs of users? What is the available information? In what form should it present? What are the available, reliable and type of wireless connectivity in that particular location? Identify Target Mobile Devices: Here, decides “whether the application will be deployed to smart phones or tablets or both” (Implementing an Enterprise Mobility Strategy 7). In a mobile application development life cycle security consideration should be factored. It helps in avoiding security vulnerabilities. Application developers supply the creativity and talent behind millions of applications in the market. Their main focus is to develop tools and utility applications. Many developers approach applications as projects rather than products, so they are less motivated to the application. Application developers are mainly full time employees. “A market that includes hundreds of thousands of small companies creates an innovative and competitive environment in which most firms have fairly equal footing and no single voice dictates the direction of market development” (Cravens 12). Use of mobile devices and smart phones has experienced a tremendous growth in past years. Employees bring mobile devices to the working place and which motivate them. It mainly increase employee productivity, client services, and reduce It cost. For many IT executives security of mobile phones has become a top concern. Security threads are increasing mainly due to variety of communication mechanisms and rapid increase in the business applications. Works Cited Bao, Patti et al. Smart Phone Use by Non-Mobile Business Users. n.d. Web. 24 July 2013. Best Practices for Developing Enterprise Smartphone Apps. Motorola Solutions Inc. 2012. Web. 24 July 2013. Brandau, Mark. Study: Restaurant Strategies Differ for Smartphone, Tablet Apps. Naion’s Restaurant News. 2012. Web. 24 July 2013. Brussels. Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. European Commission. 2013. Web. 24 July 2013. Cravens, Amy. A Demographic and Business Model Analysis of Today’s App Developer. GigaOM Pro. 2012. Web. 24 July 2013. Implementing an Enterprise Mobility Strategy. Deloitte Development LLC. 2011. Web. 24 July 2013. Smartphones and Tablets in the Enterprise: Managing BYO Device Programs. Enterasys Secure Networks, Inc. 2011. Web. 24 July 2013. The Changing Face of Retail: The Store of the Future: The New Role of the Store in a Multichannel Environment. Deloitte LLP. 2011. Web. 24 July 2013. Read More