Keeping Promises: How to Avoid Misfires in Mobile Enablement with a User-Centric Approach Kurt Gerstner, Vice President of Unisys Modernization Center of Excellence Enrique Lander Sanchez-Biezma, Manager and Joao Pedro, Practice Director, of Unisys ESCoE: Spanish Center of Excellence Bharani Ravishankar, Senior Engagement Manager at Unisys Global Services India Center of Excellence No matter where organizations reside in the mobile world, they need to stay focused on the ultimate prize: enhancing the value that they offer customers while improving their ability to promote internal collaboration and growth. But how can an enterprise tap into that potential without putting itself at risk? As mobile interactions represent a critical touch point among customers and partners, they require serious attention as companies move forward with new or expanding mobility initiatives. If it’s early days at an organization, mobile technology may be confined to accommodating the mobile device needs of a select group of workers and providing a narrow range of capabilities. Others may be further along—actively working to develop enterprise bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, or trying to determine the best way to extend access to critical, already mobile-enabled enterprise applications. Yet, as each step on the mobile maturity curve brings it own set of considerations and concerns, some things remain constant. Mobile applications must support key business goals, securely and cost-effectively—and when implemented correctly, incorporate a user-centric focus for long-lasting enterprise value. Focusing on User Needs Getting results from mobility initiatives requires understanding what is possible, and effective, to accomplish. While it’s tempting to make every bell and whistle available, some features can actually be counter-productive. For example, cluttered user interfaces can make it difficult for customers to complete transactions—or for employees to follow standard workflows—when using mobile applications. The result? Frustrated end-users and poor adoption rates—reducing anticipated revenue growth and productivity gains alike. For this reason, it’s important to take a user-centric approach to mobile application development. This involves evaluating business requirements from the user’s point of view. How easy is it to access and use the application? Are related screens clear and readable, with intuitive navigation and process flows? With a user-centric mindset, priority features are easily identified, while extraneous, low-value ones can be removed from the development effort. In the end, the mobile experience should be a user-friendly interaction that seamlessly blends functionality with mobility. Teaming for Success Employing Effective Techniques and Tools Embracing mobility is both a technology and cultural change, with varying customer and worker expectations related to where and how they can access and use enterprise applications. Building mobile applications to suit the needs of these diverse user groups requires a team with a comprehensive set of skills: Organizations that can ramp up new mobile-enabled solutions quickly have the advantage over slower-moving competitors. That’s why it’s also important to evaluate the tools you or your solution provider use based on approaches that accelerate mobile application development. • Developers who live and breathe mobile, and have worked extensively with multiple mobile device types and platforms • Senior IT architects who are expert at integrating mobile applications with enterprise systems, in both traditional and cloud computing environments • IT security and services specialists who can address all aspects of mobile application and device security and management, including role-based security, • And business and industry consultants with keen insight into critical processes and a full understanding of mobility-related policy and compliance concerns. Just as essential are partnerships with providers of mission-critical applications, such as SAP and Microsoft, and with leaders in mobile technology, including Apple and Google. Many organizations find this combination of talent and know-how by partnering with an enterprise solution provider that can take them through the ins and outs of a proposed mobile solution—preventing false starts caused by a lack of technical and business process knowledge. But what does it ultimately take to speed development cycles? For starters, it takes skilled use of native tools such as Apple Xcode. Developers who have experience using its storyboard features can typically build and release a prototype in just a few weeks time. It’s essential to put something into users’ hands early that can be iterated until there’s agreement on the aesthetics, flow, and style. Agile development can also reduce development time frames through an “inspiration room” approach. Using this technique, organizations discuss and agree upon the aesthetics of the proposed mobile application before a working prototype has been developed. By doing so, issues around look-and-feel are immediately addressed, eliminating what could be lengthy cycles devoted to this down the road. Patterns are another effective tool for shortening the development cycle. They allow a developer to essentially “pre-solve” a problem. For example, workers in certain environments may still rely on a clipboard-based process to record data, afterwards entering that information into the supporting application. To streamline this process and eliminate errors that occur from manual data entry, developers can create a documented, reusable pattern that connects “clipboard” style work to data sources and then apply that to current and future mobile application development efforts. We’ve found this pattern to be particularly useful in our work with major engineering firms. It’s become part of a portfolio of patterns that we reuse for mobile application development across a number of industries. This includes patterns for mobile-enabling incident alerts and IT service management requests relate d to utility plant operations and shopping cart functions for online retailers, among many others. By using a combination of all these tools and techniques, the best developers will help organizations quickly design and deploy business-critical mobile applications. 2 Mobile-Enabling Enterprise Applications Make it mobile and make it fast. Many organizations are under the gun as demands for anywhere, anytime access to their mission-critical applications keep growing. But satisfying these customer, partner, and employee requirements takes careful planning and technical expertise to reap the benefits of mobility in a practical and secure way. Prioritizing User Needs and Establishing Use Cases Improving business process efficiency and increasing productivity are the primary goals of many mobile enablement initiatives. And whether this involves mobile-enabling newer applications like electronic medical records, or revamping existing mobile applications, organizations should begin by taking stock of their priorities. A recommended first step is to participate in a mobile assessment. Among many considerations, organizations need to evaluate: • the current level and effectiveness of the functionality provided through existing mobile applications • the new features or capabilities they’re looking to support, and their impact on ease of use, user acceptance, and business process value • the intended audience for the mobile application, as well as their level of sophistication and usage expectations By going through this process, organizations can identify best-use cases for mobile technology and develop a long-term strategy to solve specific, concrete challenges. This will enable them to roll out features and solutions based on high-priority needs, as well as avoid engaging in unnecessary and time-consuming proofs of concept. Overcoming Technical Challenges in Integration, Performance, and Security Yet, in their eagerness to deploy mobile applications, organizations often take short cuts that can sabotage a positive end result. For example, many try to transform a traditional enterprise application into a mobile one without reengineering any of the related business processes. But, in fact, a certain amount of process change is typically required for optimum performance in the mobile world. This could include eliminating a user’s need to enter text in favor of drop-down boxes that better accommodate the keyboard restrictions and small-screen profile of smart phones. Going from a traditional to mobile-enabled application also presents technical challenges from an integration perspective. That’s because SAP, Oracle, and other core backend systems have APIs that are not designed to be consumed by a mobile device. To overcome this limitation and permit data exchange, some type of gateway must be implemented. Using products such as Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP) or Antenna software streamlines the enablement effort by providing the capabilities to manage wireless transactions and communication between an enterprise backend system and the mobile devices accessing it. Once this integration has been accomplished, the backend system can easily scale to support a variety of mobile devices and platforms, simplifying what could otherwise be a complex, time-consuming task. We’re currently using this approach to develop and integrate a mobile application for a major telecom provider so it can support a marketplace of enterprise applications via a software-as-a-service platform. As a best practice, organizations should initially work with “friendly” business partners to test and introduce new mobile capabilities—striving for an early “mobility win.” In addition, collecting partner feedback along the way helps organizations fine-tune their mobile applications to maximize effectiveness before making them widely available. 3 Removing complexity from backend integration also improves performance. But to fully meet user expectations for responsive interaction, organizations must also determine the right amount of data and contextual information required for the mobile application to perform key functions. If this is not properly evaluated, large amounts of data sent to thousands of devices could end up overloading supporting systems—causing noticeable delays or even shutting down critical IT services. For example, one application we recently developed pre-sorts data on the backend system. Then, in response to a specific query, the receiving mobile device gets only the specific information it needs—without having to process all the data itself. Taking steps to minimize data exchange and on-device data storage makes mobile applications more secure, as well. Because the more data organizations make available to mobile devices, the more data they potentially put at risk. For this reason, only the data that is absolutely essential to support a specific business process should be exposed to, or requested from, mobile users. For example, if a mobile banking application requires some type of biometric or photo identification, there’s no additional need for customers to supply their social security numbers. Ultimately, organizations need to employ a variety of procedures to secure both users and their access to mobile applications. In addition to data and device encryption capabilities, an enterprise can also benefit from the use of “security sandboxes,” which isolate a specified mobile application from other applications that users might download onto their mobile devices. While this offers another level of protection, organizations should ensure far-reaching oversight through clear policies for mobile device management and use. 4 Benefiting from Cross-Platform Applications Mobile application enablement can provide innovative ways to connect with and deliver new capabilities to internal and external users. A major factor in how this is accomplished revolves around the choice of development platform. For some mobile applications, native development works best, but in many cases, cross-platform is the best approach. Let’s explore why. When to Use Cross-Platform? Determining which platform to use for mobile enablement depends on the answers to several key questions: • Does the mobility initiative involve a mission-critical application that requires a highly customized user interface to address complicated workflows or functions? • Is the audience for the application limited to a specific community of users? • Does the organization currently restrict mobile device usage to one standard platform and/or type of device? • Are there staffing and/or budget concerns around development and maintenance efforts? An affirmative answer to all these questions would point toward native development, which is well suited to supporting the particular needs of more complex applications and their users. On the other hand, cross-platform development provides an ideal solution for organizations looking to support a wider audience of users by making their mobile applications available across multiple devices and platforms, alike. With this “build-once, deploy many” approach, they can fully embrace BYOD policies, while decreasing related development, maintenance, and operating costs. Developing Cross-Platform Applications Supporting Device-Specific Presentation Achieving the best results from cross-platform development requires business savvy and technical expertise. As organizations enter the development stage, they should review what they are trying to accomplish. For example, rather than simply extending a web-based application, they need to think of how the application could become more interactive or what additional features it could provide to serve as a new revenue channel or meet other goals by adding “smartness” to the application. When end users access a mobile application, they want to obtain information and perform business transactions as easily and productively as possible. Regular users of Apple iOS and Google Android, as well as Blackberry and Windows Phone and Windows Mobile for ruggedized devices, expect consistency in the navigation and look-and-feel of applications. To that end, cross-platform applications should be designed to mimic that experience as closely as possible within the confines of the specific device used for presentation. This can be achieved by using CSS authoring tools such as Sass and Compass, which provide style sheets with multiple themes and branding. Incorporating them into the design process ensures that the final application will resemble what customers are used to seeing and interacting with on their particular mobile device. We helped one organization take advantage of this approach by determining how it could improve its cargo portal service. First, we examined the process used to book and track cargo—identifying what manual data entry steps could be removed from the process. Second, we mobile-enabled the streamlined process and eliminated the need to work from a fixed computer so that employees are more productive. GPS, biometric, and camera technologies can also add another layer of intelligence to mobile applications. This calls for integrating them into a desired mobile device by building an API on top of the mobile device platform using a plug-in development method that leverages tools such as PhoneGap to access configuration data from the device. Unisys has provided these capabilities to several customers, including one who requested a four-factor authentication process (voice, face, GPS, and passcode) to support secure online purchasing. During this process, there are some design parameters to keep in mind based on device type. For tablet-based presentation, developers can take advantage of the larger real estate to offer more functionality and potentially improve the layout of workflows as available space permits. Alternatively, smart phone-based presentation will require a more streamlined user interface to support the same overall function. The underlying application, which remains the same, recognizes and calls the appropriate presentation format based on the type of accessing device. 5 Extending Long-Term Value and Use People First Works Agile development methodologies and other iterative processes, such as Unisys Rational Unified Process (URUP), help identify user requirements, speed development, and create a roadmap for overall development efforts. This includes defining the architecture to support future mobile applications so that organizations can provide the scalability, reliability, and availability required by their anticipated workloads. Mobile applications open up a world of opportunity. With the right team and resources, organizations can make better choices around the capabilities, platforms, and devices needed to support mobile user requirements. And it’s this user-centric approach that will help organizations meet their strategic goals for enhanced service, greater productivity, and business growth. Provisions should also be made for regular automated testing to uncover the impact of new mobile device software releases on existing mobile-enabled applications that support earlier versions. Monkey Talk is one open source tool that can help developers with this specific task. It’s also essential to test the ability of backend systems to easily support the workloads generated by the mobile applications with which they are integrated. 6 About Unisys Mobility Apps Centers of Excellence (CoE) The Unisys Mobility Apps CoEs are innovation centers focused on developing native as well as cross-platform mobile apps. Our mission is to accelerate the adoption of new technologies and modernize existing customer applications. We offer end-to-end app development services, beginning with solution roadmap and design, implementation and publishing into app stores, to support and maintenance. Our offerings are rooted in highly skilled mobility experts, competitive pricing, and strong relationships with global partners such as Apple, SAP, and Microsoft. 7 For more information, e-mail [email protected] or visit www.unisys.com © 2012 Unisys Corporation. All rights reserved. Unisys and the Unisys logo are registered trademarks of Unisys Corporation. All other brands and products referenced herein are acknowledged to be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders. Printed in the United States of America 06/12 12-0168
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