Developing an actionable enterprise mobile application strategy.

1. The Essential Guide to Becoming AN
ENTERPRISE app
rock star
Part 1:
Developing an actionable
enterprise mobile
application strategy

2. Introduction
Mobile devices and mobile enterprise applications are changing the way enterprises
communicate. This disruptive technology brings new opportunities for organizations, including
a fresh approach to business processes and change management. If implemented thoughtfully,
this technology can not only drive real change, but also drive real business value.
This 3 part series will guide you through:
1 Developing an actionable mobile enterprise application strategy
2 Creating a business case for mobile enterprise applications
3 Choosing the right Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) partner
Source: Symantec 2012
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
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3. Developing an actionable mobile
enterprise application strategy
Many companies spend months developing strategies that do little more than justify what
they wanted to do in the first place. That’s not a good strategy, nor is a high-level plan that’s
developed without thinking about implementation. We’ve developed a five step fast-track
process for developing a thoughtful, actionable strategy that will guide your enterprise through
the spider web-like supply chain of developing an actionable mobile enterprise application
strategy. Best of all, this process will take you weeks instead of months to complete.
The process consists of 5 simple steps that almost every company could deliver in about
4 weeks:
1 Evaluate how your company and employees use mobile devices and applications today
2 Benchmark competitors and companies in adjacent industries
3 Interview key stakeholders and identify use cases where mobile can transform your business
4 Prioritize the use cases based on opportunity size, complexity, cost and commonality
5 Analyze use cases and determine which processes should be shared across the business
We will explore each one of the action items listed above in more depth. And the end, you’ll be
ready to get started developing your actionable fast-track mobile enterprise application strategy.
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
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4. 1
Evaluate how your company and
employees use mobile today
From accessing and sharing files, synchronizing calendars, and managing tasks to delivering
customer presentations on iPads, most companies are surprised to learn how pervasive the use
of mobile applications already is among their employees.
This evaluation often brings to light many opportunities and challenges. An upside is that
many employees are already using mobile apps frequently and are savvy users of mobile apps
and devices. A downside is that organizations quickly discover there is no or little control over
company data and mobile devices.
How are your employees
using apps today?
This leads you to the first two activities of your mobile enterprise application strategy:
1. Implement a mobile device management platform (MDM) and mobile application
management platform (MAM), if you don’t already have one, or upgrade it if it doesn’t
tackle your newly discovered security challenges.
2. Consider quick wins for securing and consolidating existing enterprise apps used by your
employees, such as a document repository managed by the company rather than by
employees (Box, Dropbox, SharePoint, etc), professional accounts for notes and task
management (Evernote, DoIt.IM), contact sync and backup services.
Source: Symantec 2012
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
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5. 2
Benchmark competitors and companies
in adjacent industries
This could be challenging for comparing enterprise apps since enterprise apps are usually not
publicly available on app stores. But, you’ll find that most companies and vendors like talking
about what they do and therefore a lot of information is available online:
Search online for your competitors’ initiatives
Look for market research on enterprise apps in your industry
Check out case studies in your industry by the major vendors
Identify companies from adjacent industries and look online to see what they are
doing
How have other
succeeded or failed?
Benchmarking is the best way to inspire and get buy-in from management (especially when they
are skeptical about deploying apps), but the most valuable information you’ll gather from this
exercise is identifying a “working knowledge” from other companies of:
1. Strategic success: Learning the failures of others (and your own prior failures) helps
marketers avoid the same pitfalls and succeed in future.
2. Strategic failures: Most often, an application fails when it does not meet the
objectives that were established before its release.
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
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6. 3
Interview key stakeholders and identify use
cases where mobile can transform your business
“The hardest single part of building a software system is deciding precisely what to build.”
- Fred Brooks, author, The Mythical Man-Month
The best way to understand business needs is to ask the people that can benefit most from
mobility services. Ask C-level executives, secretaries, warehouse employees and IT support
staff to answer the following:
What use cases can
transform our business?
As an [actor] I want [action] so that [achievement].
This use case model is an excellent tool to communicate with users and stakeholders about
mobile services in a language they can understand. This will also set you up for the next two
actions of your enterprise mobility strategy:
1. Break down a system into manageable pieces.
2. Begin to define the functional requirements.
transformative
nice
to have
useful
no way
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7. 4
Prioritize the use cases based on opportunity
size, complexity, cost and commonality
Using the methods above, most companies easily identify hundreds of potential use cases
where enterprise mobility services can improve processes and help their employees’ day-today workflow.
The challenge now is to focus on the ones that will have the biggest impact and result in a
few quick wins. Start by taking all the use cases and rank them from 1 to 10 in the following
categories:
Opportunity size: How much could it cut costs, improve productivity or increase
revenue? (Where a 10 means it is a big opportunity)
Complexity: How difficult or simple is the implementation? (Where a 10 means it is an
easy implementation)
Cost: How much is this puppy going to cost you? (Where a 10 means it is a low cost)
What will have the
biggest impact?
Commonality: Is the use case applicable across multiple lines of business? (Where a
10 means it is applicable across the entire business)
Calculate and...
1. Identify the top scoring use cases as well as a few quick wins to focus on.
2. Develop a roadmap for the next 12-18 months (Expect it to change over time as
you’ll be learning from the initial development and user feedback).
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
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8. 5
Analyze common needs across the business
Most businesses have multiple business units (Sales, Marketing, Field workers, HR, Finance,
IT, etc) with different mobility needs, but this does not mean that you will not find synergies.
Any company planning to deploy more than three enterprise apps should consider a Mobile
Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) as part of the strategy to share technology, minimize
time to market and cut development overhead across business units.
Use the results from the use case prioritization exercise in Step 4 (“Commonality”):
1. Identify what use cases, if any, would make sense to provide centrally in the
organization and start mapping out the requirements.
What use cases should
we provide centrally?
2. Set aside budget for a MEAP which centralizes global functionality but allows
individual business units the freedom to develop their own apps (more on MEAP in
Part 3 of this series).
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
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9. Conclusion
Now that you have a mobile enterprise application strategy based on REAL business needs,
it’s time to get buy in and convince stakeholders to spend the money needed to succeed with
execution.
Coming Soon: More information on becoming an enterprise app rock star is coming soon in
Parts 2 and 3 of this series:
􀁴􀀁􀀁
Part 2: Creating a business case for mobile enterprise applications
􀁴􀀁􀀁
Part 3: Choosing the right Mobile Enterprise Application Platform (MEAP) partner
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
1
2
3
4
5
Evaluate
How are your employees
using apps today?
benchmark
How have others
succeeded or failed?
Interview
What use cases can
transform our business?
Prioritize
What will have the biggest
impact?
Centralize
What use cases meet
common business needs?
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10. DMI
About DMI
DMI Sales Team
One Rock Spring Plaza
6550 Rock Spring Dr
Bethesda, MD 20817
U.S. Sales: 855.963.2099
Intn’l Sales: 240.200.5848
sales@DMInc.com
DMInc.com
DMI is the world’s leading provider of enterprise mobility services and solutions. We build enterprise class mobile solutions that generate results for
the world’s top brands and businesses. Our mobile solutions combine the award-winning user experience design that has made us one of the top
creators of consumer apps, with the deep middleware and engineering expertise that we’ve used to build and manage enterprise applications for the
most demanding IT departments in the world. DMI mobility solutions improve business processes, tap new revenue streams, build customer loyalty,
and increase employee productivity. And we offer a full range of Managed Services to securely set up, configure, and manage your mobile devices.
The proof:
We’ve built more than 400 mobile apps—in the past 12 months alone—for more than 150 leading organizations—like Disney, Coca
Cola, Toyota, Vodafone, P&G, The National Guard, and Universal Studios.
We offer brilliant creative and user experience: Our mobile app development group was named the Best Branded App Developer at
the 2012 Mobile Entertainment Awards.
We have 500,000 devices under management for more that 100+ clients, including many Fortune 500 companies—like BP, Johnson &
Johnson, Sears, The Associated Press, Allergan, and more. At BP, we’re deploying 1,000 managed mobile devices each day.
We provide 24 x 7 x 365 mobile service support for more than 500,000 users. DMI is the one call our customers need to make to
resolve any issue—devices, apps, infrastructure, even carriers.
We offer a full range of security options that include Federal-grade hardware-based security, two-factor authentication, secure
container, and sophisticated encryption solutions.
With our expertise and economies of scale, we can provide mobility management at a higher service level and on average 20% lower
cost than most companies can do on their own.
Pervasive excellence is our commitment to quality service. DMI is one of only a handful of companies that is CMMI L3 appraised for
both application development and services, as well as ISO 9001:2008, ISO 27001:2005, and ISO 20000-1:2011 certified. Our average
D&B Open Ratings performance score from our clients is 94/100.
The essential guide to becoming an enterprise app rock star (Part 1)
©2013 Digital Management, Inc. All right reserved.
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