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As covered on THE NEXT ENTERPRISE TRANSFORMATION: Mobile Business Apps By Jan Timothy Woodcock Thanks to a host of mobile devices from smart phones to laptops the workplace long ago ceased being limited to the cubicle. Workers are on call anytime and anywhere. But enterprises nevertheless continue to organize themselves around the traditional corporate campus, and this 20th-century mindset is colliding with an engaged millennial workforce and their always on lifestyle. The new worker doesn t operate in a fixed location from nine to five, but wherever he or she happens to be and whenever there s an opportunity to connect. As consumers, they re already always connected through their smart phones, netbooks, and ipads, even if their employers haven t adopted these technologies in the work environment. But enterprises should take note. For the first time in history the major drivers to enable a new mobile work style on a massive scale are in place. We re seeing a rush to market of new right-sized, light-weight, feature-rich and platform-rich media tablets now focusing on the enterprise. These devices are supported by telecom networks like 4G that offer ubiquitous broadband. Together the tablet and 4G are enabling the development and adoption of new and powerful mobile enterprise applications (MEAs) which have the potential to eventually turn the old 20th-century corporate business model into a millennial s dream work environment and a CEO s competitive global player. What might these apps do? There are those that can be used to share ideas, collaborate on documents, conduct online meetings, and direct workflow. There 1
are rich IT dashboards, medical apps that securely connect to a hospital s electronic health records or help with patient interaction and education. There are apps for conducting paperless auditing. There are others that enable mediarich, interactive sales presentations or map efficient pick up and delivery of goods. You ll find apps that provide sales and field forces access to a helpdesk of experts. And there are apps that access the on-premise traditional enterprise apps like ERP, CRM, HRIS, and SCM. The apps that exist today and in the near future have the potential for incremental transformation of the organization. But as more businesses take up these liberating applications, as technologies like the Cloud mature to better manage applications and content, and as devices become even more lightweight and robust, we envision the promise of a transformational mobile world in which any and all office activities can be performed from anywhere at any time. An environment in which MEAs are the impetus for changing business practices in a manner that reduces transaction costs throughout the organization, not only on campus but around the world not unlike re-engineering did 15 years ago. In short, we envision a true virtual office one that is flat, flexible, and focused on getting the job done. And we expect that the first big steps toward that transformation are taking place now with a boom in the development of MEAs and the ecosystem that facilitates them. Ready for Take Off As we begin 2011, we see a new phenomenon at its inception. Launched by Apple s education of consumers with entertainment and even some productivity apps used on the iphone, itouch, and ipad, apps have taken off and millions of savvy workers are now familiar with how to use them. They ve migrated to Androids and Blackberries. And, soon, they ll be on a variety of other tablets that include the Samsung Galaxy, Dell s Streak, HP s Slate, Blackberry s Playbook, and Cisco s Cius. According to Gartner, consumers worldwide downloaded close to 5 billion apps in 2010 compared with 2.5 billion in 2009. Revenues exceeded $6.8 billion in 2010 even though 80 percent of consumer apps are downloaded for free. That will pale in comparison to revenues for enterprise applications. According to 2
Frost & Sullivan, mobile-based enterprise solutions (including handset-based mobile resource management, mobile sales force automation, mobile office email and PIM, and mobile field asset management) earned carrier-generated revenues of over $2.3 billion in 2008 and they estimate this figure will reach $10.3 billion in 2013. Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster s estimates at the time indicate Apple s application sales since launch have been $1.43 billion and gross profits have been $189 million compared with Apple s overall gross profits of $33.7 billion during the same time period. Clearly, businesses will pay for apps and providers will profit from them. This will drive a developer rush to create enterprise apps. As for tablets, Goldman Sachs predicts that shipments will grow by more than 500 percent and that these rapid tablet sales will overtake PC sales by 35 percent in 2011. And these sales will include purchases made by business. "Clearly, businesses will pay for apps and providers will profit from them. This will drive a developer rush to create enterprise apps." Already we have vibrant examples of these devices and apps being put to use in the enterprise: GE has created dozens of iphone and ipad apps for its employees, and has established an in-house organization called the Mobile Center of Excellence to maximize app usefulness among its many business units Telecom equipment maker Tellabs has custom built a warehouse shipping application for the ipad using the Sybase Unwired Platform that connects to its SAP-based data. They claim that it s 63 percent faster than traditional laptop access Insurance company Aflac has built a dozen different mobile apps for its 70,000 sales employees Wells Fargo uses them to demonstrate financial products at investor conferences 3
SAP already has an ipad app that its customers can use to access their reports and corporate data. And, its executives use it to access business apps, briefing documents, customer information, and other corporate data Of course, tablet devices for the enterprise aren t new. Expensive precursors to mobile information management devices include dedicated devices used by utility and repair technicians to record their activities while on customer calls. But, what differentiates today s tablet is that the new devices are less expensive, more versatile, have sophisticated platforms which support a diverse set of developer-created apps, and middleware services which allow them to connect to existing apps in the corporate network. They re also light, sleek, and attractive and, importantly, boast a long battery life (e.g., 10 hours for the ipad). They re easier to use than a PC and even bring a more human approach to the user experience with their touch screens. Their superior screen resolution makes them perfect for video presentations as a sales tool. The attractive visual presentation of the product along with the ability to hand over the device for better viewing makes a strong impact in closing a sales deal. And the cost? Relatively inexpensive at below $500 compared to previous generations of dedicated, customized organizational devices that run upwards of $5,000. So, even the field service technician has the opportunity to cross sell and up-sell a customer by showing the product, checking the inventory, and then putting in the order. Enter the new tablet as revenue enhancer. The other differentiator is the emergence of 4G. Sure, you could have a tablet at your desk alongside your PC. But ubiquitous broadband via a light-weight, multifunctional tablet enables a worker s availability to address issues on demand around the world. Members of your virtual team, who may be scattered in Chicago, London, and Bangalore, only have to ping their colleagues to learn who is available to have a quick discussion about a customer issue or collaborate at that moment to view and mark up a critical presentation or document. 4
And, this is all for the existing organization. Imagine having the ability to create an instant business using these apps and devices. A start up could launch with reduced IT infrastructure expenses or perhaps eliminate an in-house IT infrastructure altogether by using tablets and applications over the Cloud. The Critical Drivers for MEA Development If you take a look at where mobile apps are now, you re looking primarily at smart phones. This is where the consumer is right now with sales having grown 96 percent from the third quarter of last year. And these phones are filled with downloaded applications. However, forecasters see that media tablets like the Apple ipad and others just hitting the market will reach 54.8 million units in 2011 and will cut into smart phone sales. And, what drives the usefulness of these media tablets? Mobile applications, of course. Mobile applications being used by mobile workers. And with mass adoption comes altered expectations for the young workforce in today s enterprises. The opportunity is emerging for companies to reduce costs by porting applications across multiple platforms. Cloud computing, for instance, is emerging. Juniper Research sees more than 130 million enterprise customers using mobile, Cloud-based applications by 2014. Additionally, large product vendors like SAP are developing mobile enterprise application platforms (MEAP). These MEAPs, or packaged mobile application vendors, are expected to be the primary mobile development platforms of choice through 2012, if you believe Gartner s predictions. As an MEA enterprise consumer, look for mobile application development among a diversity of players, from start-ups and consortiums of companies funded by investor funds to large and small existing product vendors and IT service companies. These apps will be available to enterprises through device app stores, stores operated by telcos, third-party app stores, and direct sales. They ll be hosted by the enterprise on the premise, via Cloud application stores, by telcos, third-party Cloud providers, and product vendor clouds as software as 5
a service (SaaS). And, who will maintain these apps? It could be a Cloud-based service, a telco application management service, or traditional IT service vendors. In other words, there s the potential for a rich MEA environment that is within reach in the not-too-distant future because we ll have all the ingredients the developers, the app stores, the Cloud, 4G, and sophisticated tablets all in play at one time. The Journey for the Mobile Enterprise In the short term, as enterprises begin to adopt the use of mobile apps and integrate tablets into their business models we ll see a mix of internal and external applications. And this adoption? For mainstream applications, the future starts now and adoption will be rapid over the next two years and reaching critical mass in three to five years. For the time being this is a journey of transformation, not revolution. Organizations that begin the adoption process will find that the real value is around reduced transaction costs the ability to deal on the spot with ondemand issues, to facilitate efficient multi-tasking, to enable workers to stay put yet collaborate with colleagues and clients around the world, to give on-site technicians visual and virtual help in solving problems or create sales opportunities where there were none before. The revolution comes later, as organizations that ramp up their MEA deployment begin to rethink and reshape their systems and models around mobility. "For the time being this is a journey of transformation, not revolution. Organizations that begin the adoption process will find that the real value is around reduced transaction costs..." Of course, this journey isn t as simple as the consumer experience. The bottleneck is, as always, company adoption. These mobile applications have to 6
integrate with the organization s enterprise systems. Organizations must be able to: Prioritize the business needs that mobile applications will solve Identify how the applications fit into the operating model Identify if they will build, buy, or lease the applications If they buy or lease them, do the enterprises work with a software provider, wireless services provider, or a specialist firm? Develop training and technical support capability internally or externally And, while many of the apps that could help launch the true 21st-century virtual office still remain to be created, the early sophisticated adopter benefits immediately with the competitive edge of having mobile road warriors effectively managing and communicating key information wherever they are and ready to adopt new technologies as they re available and deployed. Jan Timothy Woodcock heads the Media & Telecommunications practice at Wipro Consulting Services. He is based in New York and can be reached at jan.woodcock@wipro.com. The author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Anurag Sharma, Parijat Kumar, Ankit Verma and Krishna Chaitanya in the development of this paper. 7
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