Enterprise Mobility

Enterprise mobility helps organizations efficiently handle day-to-day business activities using a smart, mobile-based solution that enables anytime, anywhere operations. Enterprise mobility provides a seamless experience to business professionals on-the-go, empowering employees to access data and core business applications on-demand, thereby improving overall agility, productivity, and customer satisfaction.

In the current digital era, every organization needs an effective enterprise mobility strategy to enable remote operations, maximize revenue, and stay ahead of the competition. A mobile go-to-market strategy has become vital for successful digital transformation in any organization.

Enterprise mobility solutions are available for every industry, irrespective of size or geography. By integrating various new-age technologies, mobility solutions have enabled tremendous growth in almost every industry, including:

• Banking and financial services
• Insurance
• Manufacturing
• Healthcare
• Education
• Retail and e-commerce
• Media and entertainment

Online payment modes, mobile wallets, and e-banking apps have improved the overall customer experience. Furthermore, process-centric apps have enhanced the engagement experience for employees.

Some of the main processes where enterprise mobility has proven to be valuable include:

• Customer onboarding
• Loan origination
• Credit card issuance
• Account opening
• Policy issuance
• Dispute management
• Change request initiation and approval
• Agent profiling
• Provider contract management
• Online classes and coaching
• Order and sales management
• E-commerce
• Digital media publishing
• Customer analytics

Case in Point

Consider the personal loan origination process to understand the important role of mobility.

• A user logs into a bank’s mobile app and submits their basic details to apply for a loan
• The bank’s loan department receives the request, verifies the details, and assigns it to a field agent for document and customer signature collection
• The field executive visits the customer and, using a tablet, they launch a loan initiation app to quickly capture customer details, upload documents per KYC norms, and submit the application
• The back-office team then reviews and validates the data submitted by the field agent and sends it for managerial approval
• The manager tracks all assigned requests and approves or rejects the request appropriately using an approval app
• Once approved, the agent and the customer receive a notification on their mobile devices regarding the status of their loan request application

With the help of mobility solutions, customers get a more personalized experience, field agents become more efficient with faster, paperless processing, and managers gain quick access to review loan requests on-the-go.

• Device and Application Management – The IT department must supervise the authentication, configuration, and utilization of mobile devices used to access business data and applications. This ensures the secure management of devices and the safety of corporate data and resources
• User Experience – The objective of enterprise mobility is to meet end-user requirements and provide a seamless experience. The ability to access core features in offline mode, personalize app settings, share data over a secure network, and facilitate self-servicing, can all lead to a positive user experience
• Quick Market Roll-out – Enterprise mobility helps businesses rapidly address customers’ varying needs by developing and deploying mobile solutions to boost their go-to-market strategy and drive sales, thereby achieving faster growth
• Security – Data can become vulnerable in the absence of a strict security model. A robust enterprise mobility framework must provide complete data protection by integrating with backend technologies. Strong data encryption and multi-layered security are essential to meeting data protection policy and audit requirements
• Scalability and Customization – An agile and future-ready organization requires an enterprise mobility platform that is flexible and scalable enough to prioritize customer preferences and manage change requests on short notice

Define Clear Business Goals

It is imperative that enterprises outline their goals, as mobility solutions can help minimize operational costs, improve customer service, reduce onboarding cycles, provide a flexible working regime to their employees, and more.

Perform Competitive Analysis

Creating a detailed competitor analysis matrix can help enterprises build a strong mobility strategy.

Focus on User Experience

Based on business needs, organizations should adopt one of two approaches to define user experience—(1) developing a mobile app, or (2) creating a web app.

Select the Right Development Framework

There are multiple low code and no-code enterprise mobility platforms on the market that offer various solutions on Android, Windows, and iOS platforms. Low code platforms can enable business users to develop basic app prototypes and cater to business needs. Enterprises must ensure that the platform they choose can integrate seamlessly with existing systems, provide a centralized view of core processes, and enable scalability per future requirements.

Choose the Right Vendor

Identifying the right mobility solution and vendor requires in-depth research and planning. Organizations should create a vendor selection team and evaluate potential vendors based on:

• Cross-platform development experience
• Expertise across various lines of business
• Solution and implementation ownership
• Market presence and customer base
• Security and governance model

Outline a Strong Security Strategy

Organizations must define a high-level security strategy to ensure data protection, a secure flow of information across various channels, and authorized access to critical data.

• Increased productivity and revenue generation
• Improved customer experience
• Reduced operational costs
• Effortless data collection
• Faster decision making
• Enhanced data visibility

There are various factors that indicate which type of app is best suited to specific business use cases and go-to-market strategies, including:

• Type of business process
• Overall project timelines
• In-house development skills
• App budget
• Required features
• Customer base
• User experience
• Targeted platforms

Here is a quick comparison of native and hybrid apps:

It is a common misconception that mobile and web apps are similar. However, the two are different from a development and deployment standpoint.

• Mobile apps are specifically built for Android, iOS, and Windows platforms and are installed on native devices. They offer a faster and more responsive experience than a mobile website. Furthermore, they can leverage the device’s core capabilities to provide an intuitive interface and can function in offline mode
• Web apps can be accessed using any web browser provided there is an internet connection. Web apps are responsive and can accommodate different screen sizes. Their cost-effectiveness and lack of dependence on regular updates make them more appealing

Low code application development platforms provide business users and core developers with a quick design and code base that reduces the overall time and effort needed for app development.

Key Benefits of a Low Code Mobility Framework

• Pre-built app templates
• Dashboard view
• Navigational form view
• Ready-to-use adaptors for quick integration
• Multilingual support
• Reusable components

Low code frameworks also help meet the growing need for citizen developers, enabling them to create basic app prototypes and distribute the workload of core developers.

Field agents need to connect with customers constantly to execute various business activities, including document collection, loan initiation, claims processing, and KYC verification. To streamline agent-customer interactions, a mobile app for field agents must offer advanced imaging, data extraction, and data optimization capabilities.

Advanced imaging helps automatically detect documents and remove extra noise, ensuring that agents capture clear images of required documents. Perspective correction, bar/QR/MRZ readers, image conversion, and auto-cropping are a few additional features that can make an agent’s job easier during document collection.

Data extraction enables the collection and auto-filling of key data into the required form fields. This reduces the overall data entry time and improves accuracy. Furthermore, data optimization ensures faster, more secure transactions.

Benefits for Field Agents

• Productivity – Execute more transactions per day in a paperless environment
• Customer Service – Reduce overall processing time, thereby improving the agent-customer engagement experience
• Data Visibility – Provide a uniform and structured layout to capture data and attachments in real time

• Cross-platform Apps – Owing to the global popularity of both Android and iOS, organizations are opting for mobility solutions that can develop hybrid apps that easily run on any platform and device
• BYOD – Under the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) model, organizations are enlisting IT teams to install their company app on employees’ personal devices, giving them the freedom to access important data as and when required, thereby improving their work and decision-making capabilities
• AI – Enterprise mobility can be bolstered by artificial intelligence (AI)—using voice assistants, natural language processing, document classifiers, chatbots, face recognition, and biometric authentication to completely transform the customer experience
• Multi-experience Development Platforms – Multi-experience development platforms will gain more traction in the coming years as they support a strong low code approach and can develop cross-platform apps for smartphones, Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled devices, and wearables
• IoT Advancements – The coming years will see organizations embrace intelligence, especially with the increased use of IoT and enterprise mobility across many business use cases and industries
• 5G for Faster and Stronger Mobility – The arrival of 5G will revolutionize the mobile industry with increased data speed, stronger and more stable network connectivity, and greater freedom to rapidly transmit larger amounts of data
• Advanced Imaging and Video Processing – Real-time analytics for managing unstructured data, such as images and videos, will soon become integral to all business processes. Organizations will be able to facilitate processes, such as document classification and facial recognition, and enable secure, touchless, and paperless operations by leveraging advanced imaging and video processing capabilities
• AR and VR – Organizations are very keen on experimenting with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies to improve customer experience, resulting in numerous real-life applications across the automobile, sports, gaming, and entertainment industries

Business leaders must weigh their options carefully while identifying the ideal enterprise mobility framework. Based on each business leader’s perspective, there are specific criteria to consider in order to make the right selection.

Business/Strategic Perspective 

• Does it help increase employee efficiency even when they are on the go?
• Does it increase revenue earned through field agents?
• Does it make the customer experience better?
• Does it bridge silos and connect employees?
• Does it help the enterprise quickly achieve its go-to-market for mobility?

IT Perspective 

• Does it enhance the existing IT systems?
• Does it ensure security and data protection?
• Does it require any changes to the existing data center?
• Does it integrate easily with existing applications?
• Is there a need for internal IT resources to manage and maintain the solution?
• Is the vendor compliant and does the solution meet all the business and IT requirements?