The Role of IT Consulting Practice: A Successful Enterprise Mobility Solution

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1 The Role of IT Consulting Practice: A Successful Enterprise Mobility Solution 1 Nurul Fahimah bt Fakhri, 2 Jamaludin Ibrahim Abstract: Mobile technologies are progressing to advance and reform the technology landscape promotes a global connectivity where people can access information in a real time from anywhere. This revolution has changed the way business is conducted including Information Technology (IT) consulting organization to reconsider the benefits of mobile technology and inclusive mobility consulting strategies to retain clients and heightened consulting performance. IT consulting field focuses on providing expert advice and assistance on the best use of information technology to meet the business objectives of an organization including writing, modifying, testing and supporting software to meet the customer needs. Whereas, mobile technology refers to mobile applications allows communication or interaction via mobile devices. The advancement of mobile technology in the enterprise market has concerned many companies to face the challenges for their Enterprise mobility. Hence, IT consulting practices play a significant role in providing Enterprise Mobility Consultancy to turn the mobility challenges from a concern into a competitive advantage. This paper to study the successful enterprise mobility solution by examine the two IT consulting organizations and the services provided to their clients as mentioned in the literature review. Keywords: IT consulting, Mobile technology, Mobile applications, Enterprise mobility, Enterprise Mobility Consultancy, Mobility challenges and Enterprise mobility solution. 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, mobile technology has been boarded by the businesses to optimize the organizations as mobility serves the consumer market cost of entry (benefits, n.d). The effective use of mobile technology is well-said can result in organization s competitive advantages including enhanced customer experience, efficiencies, flexibility, product and service innovation and access to new markets (Kennedy Consulting,2014). Thus, many organization make decision to go for mobile solution. However, the challenges in implementing mobile solution in an organization requires the expert hand like IT consultancy to make it work. The emergence of technology consultants as such mobility services introducing mobile consulting as the practice to assist company towards it mobility solution. Today, the arrival of mobile technology has also leads to the arrival of challenges for companies to embed its Enterprise mobility. The challenges such as device management, security of data and devices, strict policies and increasing costs needs to be tackled in a structured and professional approach to make sure that enterprise mobility turn into one of the key business drivers and contributes company competitive advantages in an ever emergent mobility world (Services, n.d). Thus, the enterprise mobility consultancy may play an important role to drive a successful mobility solution. The critical steps for mobility strategy approach required for a successful mobility solution are assess the value of enterprise mobile, applications, define the company s mobility technology strategy and forming a mobility center of excellence. 2. PROJECT BACKGROUND An enterprise mobility consultant have to sustain with new devices, new platforms, and progressing current demands. The mobility services consultant teams struggle the same problems as traditional applications consultants face including an explosion of data, infrastructure swapping to the cloud, a demand for applications to be social as well as the need for mobile solutions to run on keep shifting panoply of multiple mobile devices and operating systems (Herbert, 2013). Therefore, the role of an enterprise mobility consultant is crucial to serve the client in eliminating challenges for a successful enterprise mobility solution. The challenges are include to integrate devices with enterprise information systems, defeat challenging of change management tasks mainly in arranging the IT department for disruptive Page 197

2 transformation, inherent technological volatility in the keep growing mobility space, signal the right steadiness to allow employees using their own devices for work while retaining access control and maintaining privacy and security (Reddy, Chigullapalli, Albo, & Wallace, 2012). Hence, it requires the mobility Consultant to exercise a detailed needs evaluation before, during and after the move for mobility solution are met. Besides, the consultant has to prepare a comprehensive cost analysis to that fit the parameters of the company s budget (Resources, 2012). Consequently, the advent of technology consultants like mobility services presenting mobile consulting as the best practice to support company towards it mobility solution. As a result, an enterprise mobility consultancy become a reliable platform to turn mobility challenges from a concern into a competitive advantage for a company. I. It Consulting Practice: 3. LITERATURE REVIEW IT consulting field concentrates on serving expert advice and assistance on the finest use of information technology to achieve the business objectives in an organization including writing, modifying, testing and supporting software to meet the customer needs. In providing professional advices, IT consulting firms often work on behalf of companies to evaluation, manage, implement, deploy and administer systems. This practice is recognized as outsourcing (objectives, 2012). The IT consulting industry can be seen as a four-tier system (objectives, 2012): a) Professional services firms which support huge professional workforces and command high bill rates. b) Staffing firms which place technologists with businesses on a short-term basis. c) Independent consultants who are self-employed. d) Information security consultants. IT consulting is an area of the IT service market. By emerging or obtaining a robust and experienced technology consulting team, IT services companies can cooperate with decision-makers and obtain more control over technology implementation. According to (Freedman, 2000), there are seven stages of IT consulting framework as a proposed approach to the IT advisory relationship in engaging with client as illustrated in figure 1: Figure 1: The IT Consulting Framework The above figure shows the IT consulting process starting by approaching the client as the initial contact range from a short meeting to a lengthy facilitated work sitting with a team of client representation. Next, negotiation the relationship phase is to identify objectives, roles and deliverables of the engagement which need to be documented. In approaching these engagement, it requires to visualize success by facilitating the client to look beyond the problem to its ultimate solution. The need to understand the client s situation is helpful in motivating clients to participate in the process. The design solution option is the highest point of creativity in IT consulting for business problem s development solution. To understand human, technological, business and elements of process has to be utilized by innovative consultants in designing strategies. The design strategies include identifying problem, solution optimization and client s culture suitability. Besides, design solution have to be practical and affordable, carry on standard based and can be maintained and supported. In performing excellence consultative role, collaboration to select solutions has to be highlighted by presenting to client with applicable solution options and prepare them to make selection. The final stage of IT consulting process is to deliver business result. In this phase, the schedule, scope and activities complexity can vary widely as it s depending on the expectation set in the beginning of the relationship. Page 198

3 II. The Role Of Enterprise Mobility Consultancy: The IT consulting practices may enhance Enterprise mobility consultancy by identifying a company s competitive advantages and developing strategy for mobile solution. The company s competitive advantage in current economy can be gained through converging numerous mobility trends (Insights, 2011): 1. Organizations of all sizes are observing to the fast-growing economies and may realize largely reachable potential customers via mobile phone. 2. Mobile device-touting millennial are motivating transform the way businesses operate and engage with customers. 3. Companies are progressively looking to virtualized operating models that support real-time collaboration which available anytime, anywhere. 4. The development of new business process models can be influenced by the mobile Web, social tools and embedded phone technologies. In addition, the companies may use mobility to drive productivity and revolution by performing three critical steps. Figure 2 illustrates the activities or steps organization should do. Figure 2: Mobility Strategy Approach Sources: 2011, Cognizant Insights The critical steps for mobility strategy approach are: Assess the value of enterprise mobile applications Clear understand of business activities, roles and end product opportunities, how to control mobility in these environments, how to recognize and produce a portfolio of applications that drive to business effectiveness, conversion and disruptive business models. Define the company s mobility technology strategy Mobile architecture has to be developed which composed of hardware, software platforms, security and an application distribution infrastructure, as well as communication procedures. Forming a mobility center of excellence The use of common set of standards is required to develop, deploy and support mobile application along with manage the mobility architecture. Besides, the adoption of the applications should drive across the enterprise, while keeping up with the fast shifting environment. Page 199

4 III. Mobility Consultancy: A Successful Mobility Solution: The successful mobility solution is referring to the ability of mobility consultancy to deliver its uniqueness deliverable. The review on Fujitsu consulting which uniquely positioned to deliver enterprise mobility solution can be taken as the approach for a successful mobility solution. Fujitsu consulting offering below approach (FUJITSU, 2004) : 1. Real-world experience. Fujitsu consulting delivers real-world experience with traditional carrier networks, as well as third-generation (3G) and public wireless LANs, to merge IT and telecom for the mobile workplace. Fujitsu constructed network infrastructures that are conveying next generation mobile applications in the 2.5G, 3G, and public wireless LAN environments. 2. The right knowledge set. Mistakes with mobile application highly can be avoided as Fujitsu offers deep knowledge of network technology (traditional and emerging), the wireless carrier footprint, and network migration plans. 3. Solutions for today and tomorrow. Support current network infrastructure and provision future migration as technologies emerge. 4. Integration expertise. Afford professional services expertise in Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Fujitsu Middleware Service Delivery Architecture (SDA) to resolve the integration challenges of multiple legacy systems, mobile devices, applications, networks, and security 5. The right fit. Able to present the solution to suit client s business and IT environment as well as leverage the existing IT infrastructure. 6. Unique voice-enabling capability. Fujitsu own a unique voice enabling capability which may enhance flexibility and ease of-use. IV. Client Industries: Information Technology Consulting: 1. Client industry : Healthcare a) IT consulting company: Innomobileapps Innomobileapps is an enterprise mobile app development company delivers worldwide enterprise mobility solutions to small companies, large organizations and government agencies (Innomobileapps, 2015). Innomobileapps was established in 2009 began with serving web and mobile consulting for businesses in Atlanta area but now become a large organization with offices across the US. The company serves businesses to enhance employee productivity and expand workflow process by rolling out enterprise mobility solutions by engaging with customers in an approach that the whole cycle of development, testing, deployment and training is given care of. One of the service offered by Innomobileapps is Enterprise Mobility Consulting. b) Enterprise Mobility Consulting Service Innomobileapps having a strong experience engineering team with appropriate skill to offer mobility services (Services, 2015). The company provides personalized services to its client as enterprise mobile app consultant. The mobile consulting services team address the complete range of challenges involved to make the client s mobile application become successful. By having a consultative approach towards engagement as technology partner as well as clients enterprise mobile app consultant, full understand the clients business need and constraints are completely taken care. c) Case Study: NaviTouch EHR NaviTouch is a broad electronic health records (EHR/EMR) service provider that goals at providing medical professionals align with the advancement of information technology (Navitouch EHR, 2015). NaviTouch EHR is an existing web portal where medical professionals, mainly doctors to access information on their patients provided by the company for internal and external system. The internal system allows hospitals links physician, clinician, patient registration, patient portal, and billing whereas the external systems connect hospitals, clinics, specialists, primary care physicians, pharmacies, and Page 200

5 medical labs for faster and more proficient treatment. However, the existing web portal required the doctors to visit an online system to get the patients medical information that might lead to time consuming as well as required manually type recorded by operator when it comes to error prone on doctors voice. Besides, below are the problem identify in existing system: Time consuming for retrieving the patients medical records history. Manual typing of a doctor s voice recordings were error prone. Manually to upload image. The doctors have to spend more time to key in medical records instead of their life saving tasks. Fatality increase due to delay in getting the accurate information. Decrease of hospitals income due to slow processes. Hence, NaviTouch desired to make the issue be resolved simpler and more accurate. The company proposed to integrate the system with mobile application which allows the doctors to retrieve or record information easily and instantly so that it became convenient when it demanded. This also may speed up treatment, improve health care and the hospitals revenue. The Innoppl expert team prepared a careful analysis of the condition and decided to produce an ipad app that could permit the doctors to retrieve required data from the web portal including x-rays/scan reports of patients. In addition, the app also has been developed with a voice to text converter to enable to the doctors voice recording can be textually record into the device as well as image capture functionality where the doctors can click and save images of the patient s body parts and face of for future reference. The expert consulting team from innoppl analyzed the current EHR system and developed an ipad app accurately as it projected. Careful attention has been given on the user interface (UI) of the ipad app to be matched the NaviTouch EHR web portal. In the initial testing phases, the speech-to-text-converter API wasn t perfect and up to the mark. As a final point, Google speech to text converter API that popped out various textual selections for accent was taken, integrated with the app, and positively tested. As a result of those functionality developed for ipad app, NaviTouch is now able to deliver the best in class mobile EHR solution to its clients. The invention of this application able to save doctors time on every patient that leads the doctors to attend more patients. Besides, the overall revenue of hospitals has noticeably increased, while the statistics of fatalities have extremely reduced. 2. Client industry: Travel a) IT consulting company: Content Science Content Science is an award-winning consultancy in Atlanta, GA advising Fortune 500 companies, startups, institutions, and government agencies around the globe on digital content strategy (Content, n.d). The services provide are consulting, research, and training. The company s name Content Science because content is, indeed, a science. The team study what works well and what doesn t so companies can make informed decisions about content. b) Case study: InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) booking online Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) is one of the first chains to accept booking online. In response to the growth of mobile adoption, IHG has responded with successful mobile websites and mobile applications. In 2011, the explosion of mobile adoption in the US else well around the world has been sensed by IHG about the critical content to remain heading of mobile marketing in 2012 and beyond. Besides, IHG identified their approach to content had to be smart with its seven global brands. As IHG faced 2012 and beyond, the Mobile Solutions Group identified several challenges comprising: Optimizing planning and booking a hotel for smooth easier. Beyond booking and planning for IHG best touch customers before, during, and after a trip via mobile. Ownership and process on IHG to plan their investment in resources and adapt their processes aligned with fast mobile growing. Page 201

6 International needs on the adaption of IHG s mobile content strategy for global markets. Multi brand needs for IHG to make mobile UX and content more distinct for each brand while reducing the costs. Mobile complexity for IHG best reach customers before, during, and after a trip via mobile. Evaluating impact for IHG go beyond web analytics to recognize the impact of mobile on their customers. This challenges from IHG turn to opportunities for Content Science to serve high-end consulting. At first, consulting team conducted analysis including Interviewed stakeholders, documented IHG s mobile ecosystem, took inventory of and audited all existing IHG mobile sites and applications. Next, observed how IHG s current mobile sites and applications were operating. Then, the Content Science team compared IHG s present strategy to that of competitors, revised mobile marketing technologies for reach, stability, and more. Finally, the appropriate best practices in content and UX strategy is summarized. As a consultancy, analysis and recommendations are rarely offered at the same time as strategic recommendations required bottomless thought. So, the consultancy has to synthesize analysis with best practices and the goal of IHG. Considering various possibilities, develop recommendations, and identify the impact of each recommendation on the others was taken time. As a result, a set of complemented recommendations has been produced and turned IHG s mobile content and UX challenges into actionable opportunities. The engagement inform IHG s road map which the process educated the entire team including the deliverables as well as about Colleen s definition of content strategy and what it means to plan content from the inside out instead of trying to force content into a product. By the time Content Science presented their recommendations, IHG s Mobile Solutions Group was ready to take action. One of the stakeholder, Wonn explains that IHG Mobile Solutions was able to go through line by line enables assign actions and end dates for most items throughout the final meeting. He argued that those recommendation was a working product which allowed them to be very productive. This project leads IHG Mobile Solutions be well positioned to stay at the forefront of mobile marketing in 2012 and beyond. 4. LITERATURE FINDING The finding have shown two Enterprise mobility consultancies which successfully provided enterprise mobility solution services to their clients. The Innomobileapps and Content Science are Enterprise Mobility Consulting which have served excessive consulting to their clients which are healthcare and travel industries respectively. These two enterprise mobility consulting have represented by a well-experienced consultancies team to provide appropriate personalized services to its client. The team approaches especially as a technology partner or enterprise mobile application consultant make the consultant s team have to fully understand the clients business need, challenges or constraints which can drive to company s competitive advantages through effective strategies for mobile solution. The critical steps for mobility strategy approaches as mentioned in literature review are applicable to those both enterprises. Innomobileapps s client which is NaviTouch, an electronic health records (EHR/EMR) service provider has proposed to integrate the system with mobile application to accelerate treatment, improve health care and the enhance hospitals revenue. Thus, the Innoppl expert team prepared a careful analysis on the condition of the current EHR system and decided to produce an ipad app to resolve the identified problems in existing system. Besides, user interface (UI) and executing initial testing phases were done with careful consideration to develop that integrated system. As a result, NaviTouch able to deliver the best in class mobile EHR solution to its clients. To assist the Intercontinental Hotels Group s (IHG) Mobile Solutions Group response to the growth and successful of mobile adoption, Content Science team has analyzed the current EHR system together with conducting interviewed stakeholders, documented IHG s mobile ecosystem, took inventory of and audited as well as observed the operation of all existing IHG mobile sites and applications. Then, compared IHG s present strategy to that of competitors, revised mobile marketing technologies for reach, stability, and more. Finally, the suitable best practices in content and UX strategy is summarized. 5. CONCLUSION As the world is in the midst of the transformation phase of information technology, enterprises are shifting their focus toward digitizing their operations. The industry also includes healthcare and travel industries. Enterprise Mobility Consultancy has to guide customer to make future-proof strategic choices regarding devices, applications, usability, companywide policies on mobility, employee benefits, cost management and more. Besides, during the Enterprise Page 202

7 Mobility Consultancy track, all key information has to be gathered through series of interviews with different team representatives in clients company, analyze and compile existing documentation and policies to generate an intermediate report to develop mobility strategies. Managing the value created by the digital economy is becoming more challenging as the economy goes increasingly digital. Enterprises are becoming more dependent on data and also increase service quality and grow revenue by digitizing their enterprise to. Creating strong client relationships that provide repeat business is a critical success factor in today s highly competitive IT/management consulting environment. Each project offers the opportunity to add to a knowledge base that can be leveraged for future projects. This client or industry-specific knowledge is a valuable asset it provides the opportunity to improve profitability and customer service, and provides an edge in a competitive market. REFERENCES [1] Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory. (2014). (ALM publications ) Retrieved from IT Strategy Consulting: MobileTechnologies: Mobile -Technolo-ies [2] benefits. (n.d). Accelerate Your Transformation: Social, Mobile, and Analytics in the Cloud. Capgemeni Consulting,4. [3] Case Studies: Navitouch EHR. (2015). Retrieved from INNOMOBILEAPPS : A divison of Innoppl: [4] citrix.com. (2013). The 10 musthaves for secure enterprise mobility. 4. [5] Content, M. (n.d). Mobile Content + UX Strategy: IHG Gains a Smart Approach for Its Seven Global Brands. p (2013). Emerging Technology in Health Engagement. Arizona USA: A Report by WorldatWork and Buck Consultants. [6] Freedman, R. (2000). Chapter 2: The Consulting Skill Set. In The IT consultant (pp. p.17-19). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer. [7] FUJITSU. (2004). Enterprise Mobility: Productivity on the Move. Fujitsu Consulting. [8] Herbert, L. (2013). The Forrester Wave : Enterprise Mobility Services, Q p.4. [9] Innomobileapps. (2015). About us: Innomobileapps. Retrieved from INNOMOBILEAPPS : A divison of Innoppl: [10] Insights, C (2011). Enterprise Mobile Apps: How Role-Based Apps Will Drive Productivity and Transformation in Manufacturing Companies. [11] Mobile Technology Handbook. (2014). Washington,USA: Inc., Pact. [12] Nosrati, M., Karimi, R., & Hasanvand, H. A. (2012). Mobile Computing: Principles, Devices and Operating Systems. World Applied Programming (WAP) Journal, Vol (2), Issue (7), P [13] objectives. (2012). Industry Analysis: IT Consulting and Services. Advisen Insurance Intelligence, sponsored by AON. [14] Reddy, A. S., Chigullapalli, R., Albo, H., & Wallace, J. (2012). MOBILIZING THE ENTERPRISE. Cognizant. [15] Resources, P. D. (2012). Global Mobility Consulting Services. p.5. [16] Services, G. (n.d). Mobility Consulting leaflet - GPXS. Retrieved from GPXS Services website: [17] Services: Enterprise Mobility Consulting. (2015). Retrieved from INNOMOBILEAPPS : A divison of Innoppl: [18] Xerox. (2014). About Xerox: Xerox fact sheet who we are today. Retrieved from Xerox Web site: com/downloads/usa/en/x/xerox_fact_sheet_who_we_are_today.pdf Page 203