Bevil Wood­ing

It was on­ly a few years ago that busi­ness­es had to be con­vinced that hav­ing a Web site was a nec­es­sary part of their busi­ness. Many ini­tial­ly felt that cor­po­rate Web sites were a pass­ing fad, best del­e­gat­ed to the in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) de­part­ment and not wor­thy of at­ten­tion or in­vest­ment. Busi­ness lead­ers of­ten asked le­git­i­mate ques­tions like: why do we need a Web site? and what val­ue will it add to the busi­ness? That quick­ly changed, how­ev­er, as the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the In­ter­net soon meant that busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments were ex­pect­ed to have an of­fi­cial Web site pro­vid­ing ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and ser­vices.

To­day, there is a sense of d&ea­cute;jà vu. Busi­ness lead­ers are ask­ing sim­i­lar ques­tions about the mo­bile rev­o­lu­tion and, more specif­i­cal­ly, about mo­bile apps. De­vices like Ap­ple's iPhone and iPad, RIM's Black­ber­ry, An­droid phones and the slew of An­droid tablets are hav­ing a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment. More and more con­sumers as well as busi­ness users pre­fer the portable, in­stant-on con­ve­nience of their smart­phones and tablets to the com­par­a­tive­ly clunky and less in­tu­itive PCs and lap­tops.

It is in this con­text of the ris­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty and func­tion­al­i­ty of mo­bile de­vices that busi­ness lead­ers must think about de­vel­op­ing mo­bile apps for their cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and staff. The promise of eas­i­er ac­cess to ser­vices, greater brand vis­i­bil­i­ty, in­creased cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and im­proved ser­vice de­liv­ery is too great to ig­nore.

Busi­ness con­sid­er­a­tions

The two key strate­gic dri­vers in the evo­lu­tion from tra­di­tion­al busi­ness mod­els to next gen­er­a­tion mo­bile en­abled busi­ness­es are per­son­al­i­sa­tion and ag­gre­gat­ed ser­vice de­liv­ery. The fo­cus on "m-busi­ness" should there­fore be on im­prov­ing busi­ness process­es, in­creas­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery ef­fec­tive­ness and strength­en­ing cus­tomer loy­al­ty. Mo­bile apps pro­vide busi­ness­es with pre­cise­ly these ca­pa­bil­i­ties. There are a num­ber of im­por­tant con­sid­er­a­tions that busi­ness­es need to be aware of.

Mo­bile plat­forms

Hand­set sta­tis­tics give an in­di­ca­tion of what plat­forms should be pri­ori­tised when de­vel­op­ing mo­bile apps. In the Caribbean re­gion, Black­ber­ry de­vices en­joy strong mar­ket share. How­ev­er, de­vices which run the An­droid plat­form are sta­tis­ti­cal­ly the most pop­u­lar glob­al­ly. Ap­ple de­vices al­so have strong glob­al growth rates. Busi­ness­es need to con­sid­er whether their apps tar­get one or more mo­bile plat­forms based on known of their cus­tomer base or tar­get au­di­ence.

Broad­band In­ter­net ac­cess

The price and speed of mo­bile da­ta plans sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­flu­ence the adop­tion of apps that de­pend on ac­cess to the In­ter­net. Users and de­vel­op­ers in the re­gion of­ten cite the poor per­for­mance of mo­bile net­works in the Caribbean as a ma­jor im­ped­i­ment to the de­ploy­ment of mo­bile apps. The func­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with a mo­bile app need to be com­men­su­rate with the av­er­age broad­band speeds and lev­el of ac­cess. For ex­am­ple, mo­bile broad­band speeds in a mar­ket in­flu­ence whether an app is built to sup­port on­line trans­ac­tions (like di­rect air­line book­ings) or whether it on­ly works in of­fline mode (like dis­play­ing air­line timeta­bles).

De­vel­op­er ca­pac­i­ty

The ma­tu­ri­ty and depth of the de­vel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty strong­ly in­flu­ence the type and com­plex­i­ty of the apps de­vel­oped in a re­gion. The de­vel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty cov­ers more than soft­ware pro­gram­mers. It in­cludes user in­ter­face de­sign­ers, qual­i­ty as­sur­ance spe­cial­ists, and oth­er re­lat­ed tech­ni­cal sup­port roles. For the lo­cal de­vel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly grow, more de­vel­op­ment busi­ness has to be di­rect­ed their way. For this to hap­pen lo­cal busi­ness have to recog­nise the im­por­tance and ben­e­fit of build­ing up the lo­cal mo­bile ecosys­tem.

Grow­ing the app-econ­o­my

Build­ing the lo­cal mo­bile ecosys­tem is cen­tral to the de­vel­op­ment of the in­dige­nous app-econ­o­my. In the Unit­ed States alone, the mo­bile app in­dus­try has led to the cre­ation of near­ly 500,000 jobs since 2007. What more, the mo­bile ecosys­tem con­tributed to net job cre­ation even when the over­all US em­ploy­ment rate were plum­met­ing.The im­pact of app econ­o­my on de­vel­op­ing and emerg­ing economies is even greater. Glob­al­ly, mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment hotspots in­clude Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa, In­dia and Brazil. In Bangladesh, for ex­am­ple, the mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment in­dus­try is worth near­ly US$42 mil­lion and in­cludes com­pa­nies that em­ploy more than 100 peo­ple to those that em­ploy less than ten. Mo­bile app de­vel­op­ment is now seen as a ma­jor glob­al in­dus­try and the app-econ­o­my is a key growth area.

The Caribbean, with its abun­dant sup­ply of raw de­vel­op­ment tal­ent, has a tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ty. From an im­me­di­ate busi­ness per­spec­tive, there are a num­ber of ad­van­tages in us­ing lo­cal or Caribbean-based de­vel­op­ment re­sources. It can al­low busi­ness­es a much greater lev­el of con­trol, ac­cess and re­la­tion­ship with the de­vel­op­er. It can al­so be more cost ef­fec­tive. At a wider lev­el, un­der­stand­ing the im­por­tance of grow­ing the mo­bile ecosys­tem mo­bile al­lows busi­ness­es play a crit­i­cal role in de­vel­op­ing the lo­cal and re­gion­al app-econ­o­my. For this, busi­ness lead­ers must be able to see be­yond to­day's bot­tom line and in­vest in se­cur­ing to­mor­row's.

For busi­ness­es to take their place in the grow­ing glob­al mo­bile econ­o­my, they must strate­gi­cal­ly in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of the lo­cal in­dus­try. Mo­bile apps that meet lo­cal needs are pow­er­ful cat­a­lysts for tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven de­vel­op­ment. Ul­ti­mate­ly, the biggest ben­e­fit of build­ing busi­ness apps lies in the longer-term pos­i­tive so­ci­etal im­pact of in­creas­ing in­no­va­tion, tech­ni­cal com­pe­tence, em­ploy­ment and wealth cre­ation.

Pros and cons

Pros

1. Ac­cess On the Go. Mo­bile apps pro­vide the fa­cil­i­ty for peo­ple can ac­cess prod­ucts and busi­ness ser­vices even when on the go. While users can ac­cess Web sites on mo­bile de­vices, mo­bile apps pro­vide plat­form spe­cif­ic op­ti­mi­sa­tions that al­low you to of­fer more com­plex ser­vices and en­hanced user ex­pe­ri­ence.

2. Ser­vice qual­i­ty track­ing. When some­one down­loads an app to their mo­bile phone, you gain a di­rect con­nec­tion to them. This helps in the track­ing crit­i­cal da­ta-from con­sumer pref­er­ences to staff pro­duc­tiv­i­ty-which is nec­es­sary for in­formed de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

3. So­cial con­nec­tion. The gi­ants in on­line so­cial net­work­ing such as Face­book, Twit­ter and Linkedin all sup­port mo­bile app in­te­gra­tion of their ser­vices. This can be a re­al boon to busi­ness­es seek­ing to be­come more so­cial­ly con­nect­ed to their cus­tomer base. It al­so al­lows busi­ness­es to con­nect with cur­rent and fu­ture con­sumers and gov­ern­ment ser­vices to con­nect with their con­stituents.

Cons

The de­ci­sion to de­vel­op mo­bile apps for your busi­ness rais­es a num­ber of ques­tions. What are the costs and over­heads? What is the com­plex­i­ty in­volved in de­vel­op­ing specif­i­cal­ly op­ti­mised apps for mul­ti­ple plat­forms? What are the is­sues in­volved in main­tain­ing mo­bile apps?

1. Mul­ti­ple plat­forms. There are var­i­ous mo­bile plat­forms like iOS, An­droid, Sym­bian, Black­ber­ry and Win­dows. Each plat­form re­quires unique de­vel­op­ment ex­per­tise. Even with­in plat­forms, dif­fer­ent ver­sions add com­plex­i­ty and cost to de­vel­op­ment. If the com­plex­i­ty of mul­ti-plat­form de­vel­op­ment is a con­cern, it is pos­si­ble to de­vel­op a mo­bile op­ti­mised Web site that can be ac­cessed by any mo­bile brows­er.

2. App sup­port. The mo­bile land­scape is very dy­nam­ic. Busi­ness aps need con­stant up­dates to stay rel­e­vant. Main­te­nance and reg­u­lar up­dates re­quire re­sources and come at a cost.

Bevil Wood­ing is an In­ter­net strate­gist with the US-based re­search firm,

Pack­et Clear­ing House and the chief knowl­edge of­fi­cer at Con­gress WBN, an in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Fol­low on Twit­ter: @bevil­wood­ing, and

Face­book: face­book.com/bevil­wood­ing