Mobile Trends 2011 – Can it Be…at Long Last, the Real ‘Year of Mobility’

2011: The year of mobility? Or not?

For as many years as I can remember the analysts have been predicting the ‘year of mobility.’ As a friend once described analysts to me, they are great at predicting the past. Ok. Sounds good to me but did we maybe miss the ‘year of mobility’ or is it more like a slow crawl through the ages? I guess the analysts are pining for the old days of CRM when it seemed like one day there was nothing and the next day CRM ruled the world and all the smiling children frolicked in fields of cotton candy and bubblegum. And the pot smoking has got to stop right now.

What we saw in the past with leapfrog technology adoption is just that, a thing of the past. With the collapse of the dot bomb era and the free spending ways of old there were too many failed attempts at projects that cost too much money to just jump onto the next bandwagon.

What we see now is more calmly calculated and well thought out. In some cases analysis paralysis has set in but for the most part it is an evolutionary change not a revolutionary change.

Mobility in 2011 will continue to be a primary focus for most enterprises but one of the major shifts will be to address two distinct facets of the market: 1)Internal Enterprise, 2)External Customer Facing. This shift has begun slowly but is picking up steam. The days of IT making all technology decisions in a vacuum and then positing these selections on the business are over. The best practice process is now to ask the business what it needs and then select technologies that support the ever-changing need.

The new player in all of this is the Marketing organization.

In the past mobility projects were targeted at a specific internal user group (field service, field sales, help desk, and so on down the line). The goals were to decrease costs , increase productivity, improve billing cycles, improve customer care, etc. This is the stuff that Marketing people loath. There’s nothing glitzy in increased margins. You don’t do a press release and interview your own internal field worker and ask them how their life has improved (usually). Customers don’t typically volunteer to do a case study because you can bill them faster. There’s just no sex appeal to this kind of improvement.

Now we see the sand shifting. As enterprises look at their consumer markets it’s now time for the logo police and the department of brand enforcement to get heavily involved. Marketing is getting involved early and driving direction on many projects for two reasons: They own the brand and they have the budget! As consumers become more mobile the interaction with their providers will have to adapt. Enterprises will need a mobile presence and just viewing the existing web site on a smaller screen doesn’t cut it anymore.

When it comes to user experience it is the visionaries in many Marketing organizations that are pushing the envelope.

Unburdened by technology limitations (and not being the ones who have to deliver a working product) these geniuses create an image and brand presentation that furthers the companies reach, provides valuable content and interaction and increases brand loyalty. This is a facet of mobility that has only begun to start to take hold. For 2011, definitely a trend.

And did I mention budgets? For many enterprises the Marketing and Advertising budgets dwarf the GDP of most small countries (a typical business unit would kill for such a budget). Marketing and Advertising consider their new mobile applications to be strategic in nature and providing long term benefit. That’s another trend for 2011.

As one marketing guru at a very large company recently mentioned to me, ‘Is that all this is going to cost? Hell. We probably spend more on paperclips in a year than that.’  That deserves three exclamation points – !!! I’m not sure how many paperclips they use in a given year but when their gross Marketing and PR budget is over $100M he’s probably not too far off the mark.

The other thing that these Marketing folks are looking at is that applications built using Marketing and PR budget dollars are not perishable. Consider that a well produced TV commercial can cost hundreds of thousands (or in some cases millions) of dollars. The commercial usually has a shelf life and once it expires the cost is lost. But a well designed mobile application can be expanded and enhanced. New features can be added and additional functionality can be accessed as the user journeys though the customer life cycle. This is a huge advantage if it is done right. Doing it right will be – we hope! – a trend for 2011.

Doing it right involves proper planning and selecting a technology platform that allows you to deploy rapidly, manage change, update apps on the fly, target app behavior on different devices and most importantly be able to provide an outstanding user experience. Happy users will share their experiences with others and become an extension of your PR effort.

The only downside to the new Marketing influence is a tendency to use “unconventional” mobile processes. For instance, using a PR firm to mock up screen shots for a target device, then having them build a one-off app for that device and not being able to scale or address other devices without writing new apps for each device. This is fine for the first deliverable but what happens when you want to change the apps or add new functionality. The answers is, complete re-write of each app for each device. Same effort and cost as the first phase. That, we hope, will not become a trend in 2011.

This is where the right mobile application platform really shines.

Combining your Marketing team’s vision and flare with the IT department’s knowledge of technology will allow you to select the right mobility platform for you and your requirements. Work together to build a plan and select the right platform to execute the initial deliverables as well as provide the ability to keep evolving as your needs change.

Will 2011 be the year of mobility, how the heck should I know, I’m not one of those analysts! It will be a year of interesting change and shifting market dynamics. All of this spells a wild ride and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Meanwhile, field service…there’s nothing like it. It may not be a mobile trend in 2011, but we and our $10 budgets are still the mobile pioneers that created what those Marketing, Advertising and PR teams are now riding.

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Tags: Brian Philbin, Business Mobility, Enterprise Mobility, Mobility - General