[x]cube LABS is a leading digital strategy and solution provider specializing in enterprise mobility space. Over the years, we have delivered numerous digital innovations and mobile solutions, creating over $ 2 billion for startups and enterprises. Broad spectrum of services ranging from mobile app development to enterprise digital strategy makes us the partner of choice for leading brands.
Welcome to [x]insights weekly! Here we bring to you a weekly roundup of news, views and insights, that you are interested in from the mobile world. From enterprise app development, big data to Internet of Things- we have it all covered here.
The CIO who fails in mobile will lose his job.
Mobile has changed the way people shop, access information and take buying decisions. And this is impacting businesses in a big way fundamentally shifting their approach and compelling them to reimagine their strategy. The current business environment calls for enterprises to be at the top of their mobile game to succeed. To win the battle, CIOs have no choice but to get their mobile strategy right and think mobile as a catalyst to digital transformation and market success. It’s simple- succeed in mobile or lose your job. Read more
How to secure your Internet Of Things?
While Internet of Things is going mainstream in its adoption, security remains its key concern. How to ensure data integrity and consumer privacy in an environment wherein hundreds of devices are interconnected and continuously emanating data? The security threat-if not addressed to customer perception- may result in loss of millions of dollars pouring in by companies. Dealing with network connectivity threats, on-device data security, device isolation and other steps is necessitated to strengthen IoT security. Read more
Leverage cloud to sharpen your mobile strategy
Enterprises are adopting mobile to boost employee productivity and keep them connected anywhere, anytime. However, devices and apps are just the first step to mobility. The real value of enterprise mobility can only be achieved when it is responsive and contextual to user needs. PBX is relic. Today you need cloud to keep pace with the changing business environment and your employee needs. Read more
Mobile & Wearables: Where should CIOs focus on?
Mobile is completely embedded in business. The latest entrant, wearables too have serious use cases in business. And many enterprises like healthcare, manufacturing etc., are employing it to their advantage. In the current scenario, CIOs should focus on ascertaining how they can mix different tech and tools to optimize benefits, understand how mobile, wearables and IoT etc., is changing the work-style of their users, build a foundation for tech enabled change and be bold to experiment with new ideas to see what works. Read more
9 cyber threat predictions in 2016
These are challenging times in the digital world. Enterprises are not just adopting technology but building ecosystem connecting various devices, apps and networks. The scale is getting bigger and bigger. And with it the challenge to strengthen your security. In 2016, business are predicted to face threats around ransomware, attacks on wearables, infiltration on automobile systems, attempts to exploit weak cloud environments, sale of stolen data and integrity attacks on financial sector. Read more
PurpleTalk culture is characterized by its fun environment, open-minded, employee-friendly policies and inclusive decision making. The objective is to ensure that we create a conducive environment for technology innovation, encourage out of the box thinking, continuous learning and individual development.
While as an organization we think we are doing a good job at it, what would be better than a hard fact check ? So we asked our employees what has been their experience with PurpleTalk and this is what some of them had to say..
Welcome to [x]insights weekly! Here we bring to you a weekly roundup of news, views and insights, that you are interested in from the mobile world. From enterprise app development, big data to Internet of Things- we have it all covered here.
How IOT driven real-time maintenance is changing the game?
Preventive maintenance is good but suffers from a major shortcoming- it is based on accepted practice rather than on real conditions. But all that is changing as manufacturers leverage IoT for real-time maintenance. Data emanating from their products is helping them predict maintenance issues remotely, diagnose it and improve customer experience. Read more
5 tips in building enterprise apps that your employees will happily use.
Enterprises are significantly spending on building mobile apps for their employees. However, many of them fail to inspire usage resulting in losses. Understanding your brand, thinking design and user experience and other critical elements play a major role in inspiring app usage and boosting its success.Read more
3 ways big data is transforming healthcare
Big data can be a real game changer for the healthcare industry. As quality of care becomes the focus, big data analytics can help hospitals and physicians in driving innovation, enabling real-time innovation, creating better patient-physician engagement and enhancing security. Read more
Plentiful options but how to select the right cloud provider?
Creating the right cloud environment is paramount for enterprises seeking to seize new opportunities offered in the digital economy. The market today offers a range of choices in enterprise cloud computing. However, it is important that the right cloud provider is chosen. While service offerings is blurring with most of cloud providers, it is the experience of the provider that is emerging as a differentiating factor for building a cohesive cloud environment.Read more
What it takes to become a digital enterprise?
Enterprises seeking to transform into a digital enterprise are hitting in the dark and struggling to find the right path. From ‘where to begin’ to ‘Have we reached there yet’- the questions capture businesses’ digital dilemma. While there is no ‘a one size fits all’ solution yet but still there are 6 strategic factors that can take any enterprise to their destination in the digital landscape. And there are 6 signs also to tell you whether you are becoming a digital enterprise.Read more
Nearly a third of the apps are downloaded and abandoned. Users don’t return back to it. There are ample cases of low budget mobile projects setting records as well as high budget mobile apps failing to deliver. More than technology and money, success of an app depends on its strategy. Here are 6 mobile app strategy tips to ensure your app realizes its goal
1. Think user
Build a mobile app user persona based on his personal and professional data. Think of his interests, motivations, challenges and frustration. See how you can add value to his life.
2. Solve a problem
How you can solve his challenges or cater to his needs with your app. The problem should be big enough for your mobile initiative to be feasible. You can alternatively look to provide a better solution to existing problem like Google did with its search engine. You can also seek to adopt an existing solution to your niche area like Airbnb and LinkedIn have done.
3. Accentuate the experience
Users want their apps to be as good as the personal apps they use. Create simple yet delightful experiences. Plan the app navigation in such a way that he gets access to the entire app in shortest possible way. Personalize experiences by monitoring his behavior and browsing history.
4. Leverage the best technology
Pick the platform where majority of your users are if you are constrained by budget. Check if cross platform app development will serve your purpose. Build in social media integration, device hardware access, device integration features if the app functionality demand.
5. Sell value
Instead of selling the software, sell its value proposition. Create a crisp value proposition and use it as a promotion message for the app. Heavy budget marketing can just give you the initial boost and sustain it till the cash is flowing. But once marketing stops, your app will begin to fade away. It’s the value proposition only that will keep it alive in the long run.
6. Re-engage
It is not just enough to get huge downloads. You would also want your user to use your app frequently. And that doesn’t happen on its own. Users need a reason to use your app again and again. Refresh content, interact via messaging, gamify to boost re-engagement.
Mobile apps are for human. Apps that better serve your user interests become long-term companions. So focus on him/her while building your mobile app strategy and reap the benefits.
Welcome to [x]insights weekly! Here we bring to you a weekly roundup of news, views and insights, that you are interested in from the mobile world. From enterprise app development, big data to Internet of Things- we have it all covered here.
Enterprise mobility trends predictions for 2016
2015 has been an excellent year for enterprise mobility with wider adoption, cutting across industries, and many innovative deployment of mobile tech in business. In 2016, enterprise mobility consisting of mobile, wearables, cloud, big data and Internet of Things will be prominent tech force with integrated computing as the strategy. The lines will blur. And with it, mobile will replace desktop as primary computing platform, enterprises refocusing on apps and increasing focus on mobile security. Read more
3 ways big data can improve quality of home healthcare
The Affordable Care Act has put tremendous pressure on providers to reduce readmissions and keep costs in check. Under the new policy, healthcare providers can leverage big data to improve their home-based healthcare services and address new challenges. Big data can help in constant monitoring of patient-diagnosis of diseases, keep it in check and prevent hospitalizations and emergencies. Read more
How to reduce cost of risk by governance at app level?
Enterprises implementing cloud systems need to implement governance at all levels. However, most businesses implement governance at physical infrastructure and virtualized cloud, ignoring the app level putting their data to risk. App level governance can help you to cut down cost of risk associated with unauthorized and malicious app usage in addition to providing other benefits.Read more
How mobile app testing can save your app from draining your customer’s device?
One thing is clear – customers don’t like apps eating up battery life of their devices. Secondly, apps don’t perform well on low-battery devices. So one of the prerequisites for the success of your app is – low battery consumption and performance. Mobile app testing can help you detect battery-related issues of your app and address them before it becomes your customers’ and your businesses’ nightmare. Read more
Now robots to rev up brick and mortar retailing, cut $450 billion ‘out of stock’ loss
Speed, automation and analytics have been the major reasons behind internet retailers eating market share of high-street retailers. However, things are swiftly changing with automation and analytics making their way to physical stores. A retail robot launched last week seeks to bring shelf auditing and product analytics to the stores helping them reduce $450 billion annual loss worldwide due to out-of-stock items and empty shelves.Read more
Welcome to [x]insights weekly! Here we bring to you a weekly roundup of news, views and insights, that you are interested in from the mobile world. From enterprise app development, big data to Internet of Things- we have it all covered here.
Enterprises are using Gamification to make customer journey fun, and getting desired results. Is your business doing it?
Gamification has a strategic importance in the digital world. As enterprises, across sectors, look to create memorable experiences, occupy their mind space and boost loyalty, gamification can be the right tool for boosting customer engagement. And many industries like health, wellness, and education are leveraging it to their advantage. However, gamification just doesn’t mean pushing some badges, points and ribbons. It goes deep into understanding user motivations and interests, aligning it with your business goals to create an engaging and rewarding program. Read more
10 awesome Big Data applications for businesses
Big Data Analytics is the flavor of the season. And rightly so. Leveraging data analytics to gain critical insights is worth in gold. But where exactly do enterprises employ big data analytics? Practically everywhere. From customer behavior understanding, process streamlining, predictive maintenance of machines to performance optimization of employees – big data and analytics encompass all things. So, check out some awesome applications of big data analytics for your business. Read more
To build a killer mobile app, think human-centric design
User experience can make or mar your mobile app. It’s just that simple. Human-centric design can help you unlock your app’s true potential by preventing failures and charting out an experience map of your users. This will not only help you smoothen your mobile workflow and help users navigate like a breeze but will also reward you with actionable insights to build new processes and products. Read more
Smarter way to manage cloud storage apps than just blocking them
To safeguard their sensitive data, enterprises block – mostly personal and storage – apps. But this is not the smartest strategy, and leads to employee resentment. Especially when you follow a BYOD model. So, what’s the alternative? What else can be done without compromising data security? There are ways to protect your data while allowing employees to use whatever apps they feel like. The secret lies in using the mobile management server the right way. Read more
How to engineer reverse innovation to succeed in emerging markets?
To succeed in emerging markets, businesses have to deliver solutions of reasonable quality, good performance, and at an affordable price. To build products that are acceptable to customers in emerging markets, companies need to understand many socioeconomic factors and then find the technology to solve it. And solving this puzzle can lead to reverse innovation and a disruptive leap helping you find the secret sauce for success in developing economies.Read more
AppIndex- a popular app development marketplace- has published a new report on top mobile app development companies in India and [x]cube LABS is proud to make it to the illustrious list. In its report ‘Top App Developers in India 2015’, just 13 app developers from across India could make the cut. Appindex chose the top app developers, for its list, based on a range of criteria including tech competencies, expertise, level of business focus in addition to their experience working for large and SMEs.
Since its inception in 2008, [x]cube LABS has been recognized in various global fora for ingenuity and mobile expertise. A global company, with over 400 employees and offices across the world, and major focus in US market, [x]cube has experience developing over 700 disruptive apps and created over $2 billion for its clients. Over the years, we have partnered with several Fortune 1000 businesses and innovation driven startups providing world-class services and innovative solutions in wearables, gaming, cloud solutions, big data, analytics and the Internet of Things.
Welcome to [x]insights weekly! Here we bring to you a weekly roundup of interesting news, views and insights, that you are interested in from the mobile world. From enterprise app development, big data to Internet of Things– we have it all covered here.
When faced with- shape up or sink challenge, what should enterprises do to ‘wow’ customers?
2015 saw major disruption and innovation in the market that made existing customer service models dated and redefined customer engagement. 2016 will be no different. As customers expectations move up, businesses face the hard reality: shape up or sink. In the disruptive world, businesses need to not only need to think digital and mobile first but also be customer-obsessed, get better insights on buyers, personalize their experiences and offer new experiences every time. Read more
How to use mobile referral smartly to cut down costs & add virality to your user acquisition campaign?
Customer acquisition is key to success of your mobile app or product. However, in these times, when it’s raining apps and every business going mobile, acquiring users is tough and expensive. A well-planned mobile referral program can do wonders and bring virality to your promotional campaign. However, market segmentation and product-fit mix will be the decider. Read more:
How understanding the inextricable relationship between big data analytics and cloud can help enterprise maximize RoI?
Enterprises are turning to big data analytics to make sense from volumes of data and gain insights from it. However, it is the cloud that is offering greater flexibility and cost-effectiveness to big data analytics. Tying their analytics strategy with cloud strategy can further help enterprise in maximizing their RoI and gaining new efficiencies. Read more:
From key fobs to jewelry – Mastercard turning everyday objects into smart payment devices.
Wearable and Internet of Things is changing the way business is done. Smart Home, Connected Car, Smart clothes and so on. The payment industry is also not left untouched by the disruption of tech. In what could revolutionize the payment industry, Mastercard plans to transform everyday objects into payment devices. The new move has the potential to disrupt not only payments industry but also retail POS, making life easier for shoppers. Read more
6 technology trends revolutionizing the financial services industry
Financial services industry is facing key challenges like reduced margins, higher customer churn, service/product accessibility and regulatory compliance. Technologies like mobile, wearable, big data and Internet of Things can help the industry effectively address the challenges and keep their business strategy aligned to changing customer expectations. Read more:
We believe in creating ingenious and intuitive mobile app experiences. Our design strategy revolves around human centric design approach. And that’s why [x]cube has been the partner of choice of top Fortune 1000 brands. While we consider client & user satisfaction to be the ultimate hallmark of our success, recognitions at global platforms keep us motivated and aspire for more.
Continuing its winning ways, our award-winning design team has bagged top honours in Davey Awards and Graphic Design USA (GDUSA). “Mattel’s Ever After High” an app designed and developed by us for leading toy manufacturer Mattel won us a Davey Silver Award! The Davey is sanctioned and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a “Who’s Who” of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms.
Two of our apps, Booxie & Hobson was also honoured recently in Graphic Design awards. Graphic Design USA (GDUSA) are leaders in graphic design publications, and recognizes the work of design professionals in their digital and print publications showcasing the best in American Graphic Design.
All Hallows’ Eve, also known as All Saints’ Eve and commonly, Halloween, has long become an integral part of popular culture in the west. The tradition of trick or treat, cosplay, decorating places with jack-o’-lanterns and other props are what this day is all about. Gradually, Halloween is becoming a global phenomenon which is welcomed for the fun quotient it adds to our lives. When Halloween came calling this year, PurpleTalk was ready and in my experience, it easily was the best observation of the festival so far.
The festive ambience was in the air a few days prior as we were notified of it. A day before Halloween, two ghouls paid us a surprise visit. They went around announcing the festival, getting everyone’s attention and spreading the excitement. When the day arrived, PurpleTalkies were decked up as anything but saints. Hollywood characters, monsters from horror movies and popular sc-fi lifeforms overran the floors. Teams were formed according to departments or projects. Each team was asked to choose a theme and dress up accordingly. The promise of unlimited fun and exciting prizes saw the teams give us their best. Some of the prominent themes included Batman movies, Zombies, Mummies and Vampires.
The celebrations moved into top gear as judges went around in the evening inspecting the teams and interacting with them about their choice of themes. Artists got busy painting faces and before long, familiar looks transformed remarkably as creativity unfolded. The evening was crowned in style as all the participants gathered in the eleven floor for group photos.
All Hallows’ Eve was thus appropriately hallowed! Here’s looking forward to the next event.
Businesses are building mobile apps for their employees, customers and processes. Most of them are spending considerable resources in their mobile projects. But still many organizations are struggling justifying ROI of their mobile spending. Finding the right metrics to focus is critical to calculating the success and resultant ROI of your enterprise mobile app. Here are 5 key enterprise mobile app metrics that matter
1. Enterprise App adoption
How many of your customers or employees have downloaded the mobile app? Not just numbers but also percentage as numbers can sometime be deceptive. Is it in expected lines? It would be worth remembering that app downloads and installs in their own don’t define success of your app. But is a good starting point.
2. App usage and retention
This is the key after you have succeeded in getting a good number of downloads. How often and long do your employees are using your apps? How do different target groups are interacting with your app? What is the average time spent in your mobile app? How many users are active?
3. User experience
Is your app smoothly running? How long does it take to load? How good is your user onboarding process? How often your users are reporting of app crash? Most of the enterprise apps fail to succeed primarily because of poor user experience. Used to cool, sleek and personalized app experiences in personal lives, users today demand similar experience from enterprise apps.
4. Goal Achievement
What are your goals? The goals will vary for each app. For a HR internal app, it can be efficiency, faster approvals, time & cost savings etc., whereas for a field servicing app, it can be labor time saved, productivity, cost savings etc. Are you achieving the set goals?
5. Funnel Behavior
There are 4 stages to your mobile app funnel- onboarding, engagement, conversion and retention. Funnel behavior will be different for each app and would hugely depend on the nature of app- productivity, ecommerce, customer servicing etc. Tracking funnel behavior at each stage is important.
There are power analytics tools available that can give you detailed data on all key enterprise mobile app metrics mentioned above. Chasing the right metric will not only help you to define success and measure enterprise app ROI but will also provide actionable insights and input to further improve your app and optimize its success.
Most enterprises recognize that end-user- his needs and requirements must be put at the heart of the ecosystem to realize the full benefits of their mobility initiatives. They also understand that without widespread adoption, whatever mobile apps or solutions they are building, will not deliver desired results. Most, however, do not know where to begin. You can start by answering a set of questions, like
What type of devices will suit their work (smartphone/tablet or both)?
Will the company own the device or should the employees be allowed to bring their own?
Which users groups will be eligible for mobile enablement (Field staff? Managers & above? Everyone?)
Do you understand the work process and needs of your targeted user group?
What apps will help them do their work efficiently?
What kind of data will they need anytime, anywhere?
What are their mobile maturity profiles?
What kind of security mechanism needs to be placed for each user group to prevent threat to sensitive data?
Similarly, while building a customer-facing app, you can begin with
What is your customer profile?
What kind of information would they want from your apps?
What type of transactions would they like to do with your app?
How can the UI/UX of the app help improve customer engagement?
How can you add value to your customer-facing solution to reinforce your brand message?
Answers to these and similar questions will help you understand your user requirements better and will provide you with a list of considerations that can be a good foundation for your mobile strategy and app development roadmap.
Technology has transformed retail business. Starting with web, mobile websites and now shopping apps- retail industry today has a completely different look. The adoption of mobile apps in retail has not only brought convenience, speed and cost-effectiveness to customers but has also given critical tools to retailers to granularly segment their audience, find the right channel to target them, understand their needs and expectations and personalize experiences.
Tools like predictive mobile analytics have empowered retailers to behaviorally target shoppers, engage with them at right moments in the buying journey and influence their decision. From customer feedback, buying history to transactional data- data and analytics tools are arming today’s online retailers with valuable actionable insights.
Here are 3 game changing benefits of predictive analytics for mobile apps
1. Product recommendation
Predictive mobile analytics can not only influence first sale but can also trigger upsell/cross sell through recommendation engines by helping you handpick products for your customers. The recommendation tools analyses customer buying pattern, browsing history and other criteria to recommend products that are best suited to his interest/purchasing power etc.
2. Customer Engagement
Understanding customers is key to effective promotion and engagement. Predictive analytics provides you with critical insights on customer tastes, preferences, buying history, price sensitivity etc., that can help you engage with your buyers effectively and influence their buying decisions. For mobile apps, it can help you design effective engagement strategy to trigger more app usage, personalize experiences and thereby boost sales.
3. Customer Feedback
Today’s business is more about listening to your customer than telling about yourself. Powerful analytics tools can help you analyze mountains of data from multiple touch points- social media, forums, websites etc., to to glean precise insights and give you an accurate idea on your customer’s engagement with your brand and business.
The applications of predictive mobile analytics is not just limited to customer-facing side apps but also encompasses internal apps for store operations, merchandising, supply chain etc. From giving you real-time data on stock availability, shelves occupancy, product positioning, stock movements- predictive analytics will help you take critical business decisions on time, pushing sales and saving a lot of dollars.
Cloud and integrated services have gone mainstream in enterprises. With mobile becoming core to any enterprise strategy today and businesses looking to mobilize their processes and people, app developers have leveraged mobile cloud computing to build intensive, data rich applications. Mobile cloud computing brings various benefits like scalability, flexibility, real-time data access and cost-effectiveness allowing businesses with limited budget also to use content rich, transaction intensive applications. However, there are a few challenges for enterprises to address while adopting cloud application for their mobile apps, like
1. Limitations of mobile devices
Though smartphones & Tablet are getting powerful everyday, still these are not close to desktops in energy management, processing power, storage capacity etc. It is therefore essential for mobile app developers to optimize energy management by partitioning of application functions and offload energy sapping processing functions to the cloud.
2. Network and Bandwidth
Mobile apps mostly run on wireless connectivity which means longer latency, slow connectivity, diverse access schemes and intermittent coverage etc. This challenge can be addressed by moving clients and server closer to each other and rerouting traffic as per location and cache capabilities.
3. Platform fragmentation
This can be a challenge when user group is using different platform-iOS, Android and Windows etc. App developers need to optimize the apps across all platforms and ensure that all users get similar app experience and feature access.
4. Data security & user privacy
Security of sensitive data and ensuring user privacy is a major challenge for enterprises building apps on cloud. Data on mobile devices is more vulnerable to threats and attacks than desktops. The security issues may range from data integrity, authorization, cloud model security issues etc.
Mobile cloud computing, despite having a few challenges, is the future. And as performance and experience become critical for business and consumer apps, app developers have to find the best solutions to address mobile cloud challenges.
The budget of developing an enterprise app is a serious consideration when a business decision maker like you sits down to plan his mobile project. There are many other things but cost of app development ranks higher. So, what is the cost of building an enterprise app? The answer is ‘It depends on what you want in/from your app’. Not a simple answer? Yes, because there is none. There are many drivers to a mobile app development cost. The more you want, the costly it will be. let’s see what they are
1. Devices
Are you developing an app for smartphones or Tablets or both? Are you building an app that will be integrated to your proprietary device- a wearable or a sensor? Your budget will increase as you start covering a wider range of devices. For integration to specialty device- the budget will depend on communication protocol, complexity of integration etc.
2. Native or Cross Platform
The platform strategy is a key driver to your enterprise app development costs. Will your enterprise app support one particular platform- iOS, Android, Windows or do you want it to be compatible across all platforms. Generally, if all other things remain constant, the cost of an iPhone or iPad app development is higher than that of building android apps or Window apps. A cross platform app development strategy may be the right pick but the functionality and experience of the app is nowhere closer to a native one.
3. User log-in
Another aspect that can make a difference of a few thousand dollars in your mobile project budget. If you want secure login in your app then it will cost you. However, a secure login safeguards your app from unauthorized access and ensures data security and hence spending a little more to protect your sensitive data is a good idea.
4. App Features
Will your app need location based services? Will it have in-app purchasing functionality? Will it have any engagement tool? Do you want any other custom add-on? All the feature additions may cost you anything between $1000 to $10,000 and more in custom features.
5. Analytics
These days most of the enterprises integrate analytics tool in their app so as understand its usage, user behavior, app performance etc. The data collected can be critical in measuring your app performance but it will push your budget up. The cost of analytics integration depends on the vendor, tool and expertise needed to integrate it.
In addition to these, there are other considerations like your app distribution & marketing strategy, maintenance and upgradation frequency that have an impact on your app budget. Understanding the key drivers to an app development cost will help you plan your budget to perfection and prevent any offshooting.
97% healthcare organizations participating in a Forrester survey agree that the IoT will be the most strategic technological initiative their organization will undertake this decade.
90% of healthcare IT departments are prepared to make the necessary changes to implement IoT solutions.
52% of all respondents already have some form of IoT solution in place or are in the process of implementing an IoT solution, while another 30% have plans to do so within the next year.
Internet of Things is transforming healthcare by completely redefining the way people, devices and apps connect and interact with each other. From personal fitness and wellness sensors, implantable devices to surgical robots – IoT is bringing in new tools and efficiencies in the ecosystem resulting in more integrated healthcare. There are several social and technology factors that are pushing healthcare organization to leverage IoT and usher in a connected healthcare ecosystem. Here are the key factors
Social Factors
1. Aging Population
Faced with a rapidly aging population, the country has been forced to explore innovative caregiving methods like Internet of Things to meet the demands of older adult population.
2. Patient Protection Affordable Care Act
The landmark legislation focussed on accountable care is making connected care a necessity for the U.S. High costs and fragmentation have long been ailing the healthcare system in the country calling for significant improvements in resource utilization and collaboration across healthcare systems.
3. Shortage of Human Resources
Hospitals are facing shortage of trained staff. Also the cost of hiring good talent is putting significant pressure on hospitals to optimize staff utilization by leveraging new technologies like IoT.
Technical factors
4. Advancements in mHealth
Hospitals are already using mHealth technologies with visible results in productivity, cost efficiency and revenue generation. Internet of Things promises to encompass siloed executions into a system-wide implementation connecting people, devices and other things.
5. Cloud & Big Data
There have been rapid advancements in cloud computing and big data enabling providers to store vast amount of data and share it across systems. Moreover, big data analytics empowers them to process data emanating from various sources. transform it into insights and drive better decision-making impacting patient care and treatment outcomes.
6. SaaS & HaaS
Internet of Things is driving the growth of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Hardware as a Service (HaaS) model, helping healthcare organization to eliminate CAPEX on new software and hardware. It also enables providers with limited budget to get access to advanced technologies with scalability.
With the competition in the post-reform era getting intense, more and more healthcare providers will embrace connected healthcare to drive excellence, be competitive and improve treatment outcomes.
The stakes are getting higher and higher for enterprise apps. With businesses putting mobile at the heart of their strategy, aligning mobile initiatives with their business goals and investing significant time & resources in app development- it is more than necessary to get things right. Here are 5 mistakes to avoid while navigating the treacherous waters of developing an enterprise app–
1. Failing to solve the OS conundrum
The first question to ask as you sit down to strategize on your mobile project is- Will your app run on iOS, Android, Windows or all? While it is easier to fall prey to stereotypes and choose iOS as it is big money or pick Android for its humongous user base; your platform consideration should depend on the nature of your app and your mobile strategy. If you are building a consumer app then you should look to pick anyone OS as per your comfort and gradually move to others covering as much ground as possible. For enterprise apps, the choice would depend on your device policy-BYOD or not. If your organization follows a BYOD policy then start with most used OS in your enterprise and then building an app for other platform.
2. Skimming on user experience
Many enterprise apps fail to take-off the ground due to lack of user interest and employee usage. Users, your employees or customers, appreciate engaging and personalized user experiences. They want the same level of experience which they get using personal apps. So invest in design and UX/UI. Keep it simple to use and cut-off repetitive tasks.
3. Not integrating analytics
The beauty of the digital world is the availability of real-time data that cuts guesswork, enables quick decision-making and help you correct mistakes quickly. Whether you are developing an enterprise app or a consumer app, integrating analytics is beneficial. Getting data on number of users, frequency of usage, time spent and retention etc., can throw a lot of actionable insights on user behavior and help you leverage it to further improve your app.
4. Waiting to get the app perfect before launching
Mobile apps don’t get perfect at once, they become perfect after several reiterations. Launch a minimum viable product in a small market, get data on user response, take corrective actions and continue doing it till you get it right for the larger audience. Keep refreshing your app with new features and experiences at regular intervals to get users hooked to it.
5. No plan for app deployment
The app is in final stages of development and you don’t have an app release strategy. Even a free consumer app need aggressive release strategy to succeed. For enterprise apps, you need to consider its distribution source, management tool and usage policy. For consumer apps, you need to think about app store publishing and app marketing. So create a mobile app deployment policy in advance to ensure successful release of your app.
The cost of developing an enterprise app, in-house or outsourced, is high. Add to it the brand image and other intangible investments on building an app and ensuring the success of your app becomes that much critical. Keep the above mistakes in mind while strategizing your next enterprise app development project and make your app a success.
Retail has been an early adopter of mobile technology. Today most retailers have made mobile central to their strategy, operations and customer servicing. So much so that many retailers have gone ‘app only’ to be more competitive and encourage customer loyalty. However, building a mobile app doesn’t guarantee success. With every retailer providing services via mobile, your app needs some distinguishing factors to attract users, provide better experience and, thereby, drive ROI. Here are 7 key success factors to drive higher ROI from your mobile retail app
1. Draw your mobile strategy
User-centricity should be at the heart of your strategy. Do a detailed study of your existing technology infrastructure, processes and people to understand your business requirements. Work closely with other stakeholders to arrive at a roadmap with benchmarks for short, medium and long-term goals.
2. Create Innovative Mobile Experiences
Your mobile solutions must offer dynamic, interesting experiences to hook shoppers. Create solutions that are useful and valuable to users and enrich it with relevant content aided by technologies like Augmented Reality, RFID and QR coding, etc., for better customer engagement. Build a user-friendly, instinctual interface that provides easy interactions and ensures speedy performance.
3. Personalize User Experiences
Leverage analytics tools and recommendation engines to keep track of your user behavior and personalize their experiences by suggesting products based on buying history and user interests. This will also help you influence user decisions by intervention at key buying phases and also upsell and cross-sell.
4. Integrate With Social
Today’s shoppers interact with brands via social. They are most likely to trust their social tribe and follow their advice. Ensure that your mobile app is integrated with social media channels to help your customers tell and share their stories.
5. Make It Scalable
Your solutions, chiefly customer-facing ones, need to be scalable enough to support high usage during holiday seasons and other festivities. Choose a multi-platform or cross-platform development strategy to attract a broader audience.
6. Secure Your Data
Your mobile apps will store and distribute key customer and corporate data, more so if you have ecommerce integration. It is of utmost importance that you have a robust multi-layered mechanism in place to check unauthorized access and data loss. Security is key to customer trusts.
7. Leverage Data for Growth
Make use of the data collected from various sources to better understand your customers and their buyer journeys and keep improving your app features to stay ahead of the competition.
Customer loyalty is key to success of your retail mobile app. With every brand giving access to their products through mobile app, keeping these 7 factors in consideration while building your next app will boost loyalty and help drive ROI of your mobile app
Mobile has transformed the way business operate. Today mobile is central to any enterprise’s core strategy with many embracing the mobile first mindset.However, as enterprise mobility grows, it is also creating a complex environment with multiple platforms, device types and apps resulting in governance and security issues. A mobile center of excellence (mCoE) is a popular strategy to bring standards and governance in mobile adoption, implementation and use in enterprises. A mCoE offers many benefits to the enterprise including
1. Tighter Collaboration
It can act as a coordination center between various business units to reduce gaps, cut down repetitive processes and reduce costs. It improves alignment across various mobile programs initiated by different business units and ensures that these programs are geared towards achieving the larger objective.
2. Cuts down development time
An excellence center can help expedite your mobile development processes by creating and making use of existing reusable frameworks and streamlining processes.
3. Consistency in user experience
A common reason behind failure of many an enterprise apps is lack of consistency in User Interface (UI) and user experience (UX). Users want experiences that they are used to in the personal lives. A mobile CoE can create a checklist for design and user interaction to bring consistent user experience.
4. Strengthening the security
With data and information security becoming a critical issue, a CoE provides you with with a standardized and centralized governance leading to better monitoring and management of devices and apps. Also frequent security audits from the center will help organizations in ramping-up their security architecture.
5. Center for transformation
Today mobile is at the heart of strategy for enterprises embracing the mobile-first approach. A mCoE with an integrated architecture and approach will help you adopt mobile-first mindset quickly. In addition, it will also be a catalyst for innovations by offering thought leadership and helping organization discover and exploit new opportunities in the mobile space.
Enterprise mobility presents new opportunities for businesses to go lean, become agile and be more responsive to their customer needs. Given its potential to usher a transformative impact in business, it has become crucial for enterprises to think deep down and embrace mobility in a strategic way. A mCoE can not only help you in bringing order in your existing environment environment but can also help you prepare for the future.
Internet of Things is changing the face of healthcare by completely redefining the way people, devices and apps connect and interact with each other in the ecosystem. From personal fitness and wellness sensors, implantable devices to surgical robots – IoT is bringing in new tools and efficiencies in the ecosystem resulting in more integrated healthcare. It promises to enable providers to better patient care, improve treatment outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. IoT offers hundreds of opportunities for hospitals and providers to promote wellness, boost patient care and save lives while optimizing resources through process excellence and automated workflows.
By leveraging connected healthcare solutions, patients can be monitored on a real-time basis, thereby cutting down unnecessary physician visits. Advanced homecare facilities will cut down hospital readmissions and stays.
2. Improved Treatment Outcomes
Connected Health enables caregivers to get access to real-time information resulting in data-driven, informed decisions and evidence-based treatments can help provide timely care and boost treatment outcomes.
3. Real-time Disease Management
With continuous monitoring of patients and access to real-time data, diseases can be treated proactively before their condition worsens.
4. Minimizes Errors
Automated workflows, accurate data collection and data-driven decisions cut down wastes, minimize errors and reduce system costs.
5. Improved Patient Experience
Connected Health genuinely focuses on patient centricity. Better accuracy in diagnosis, proactive treatments, timely physician intervention and improved treatment outcomes lead to accountable care resulting in high trust among patients.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is set to play a transformational role in healthcare. However, winners will be organizations that are better prepared to manage digital disruption caused by IoT and are successful in integrating it with their overall care environment to build integrated healthcare ecosystems.
Read our latest eBook to understand how your organization can leverage IoT to disrupt market, improve treatment outcomes and be at the forefront of excellence.
As stakes get higher and higher for businesses adopting mobile as a strategy, choosing the right platform- native, hybrid or web; becomes crucial. By making the right platform choice, enterprises can lower their TCO, get most from their mobile investments and provide better experience to the users. Each platform has its own strengths, weakness and suitable use cases. So, how to make the right choice? These 5 tips will help you make the right platform choice for you next mobile app development project
1. User Analysis
Conduct audience analysis to understand your users, their expectations. Customer facing apps need to be impressive in user experience to boost retention and engagement. So go native. Enterprise mobile apps need to be compatible to multiple platforms and need easy maintenance and up-gradation. So you can either choose hybrid or web.
2. App Features
Identify the functionality requirement of your app. If it needs access to device features like Camera, GPS etc., then opt for native apps. For apps that majorly serve content to users, choosing a hybrid platform or web apps architecture will be the best.
3. Development Time
What is your go to market timeline? A native or a hybrid app takes time to build when compared with web apps. So check on that before deciding on the platform.
4. Budget
The total cost of ownership for a native mobile app development is higher followed by hybrid and web apps. However, TCO also depends on app functionalities. Some feature rich web or hybrid apps may cost you more than a simple native app.
5. App Upgradation & Maintenance
How soon do you need app upgradation and maintenance? Native apps are quick to incorporate new features added in OS, whereas for cross platform apps, you need for tool developer to make the features available. Similarly, maintenance of native and hybrid apps becomes complex as it needs app store approval every time the app is revamped.
Making the right platform choice is key for the success of your mobile app project. Keeping the above factors in mind will help you make the right choice.
The manufacturing industry is excited about leveraging wearable tech in the shop floor. Already many companies are using wearable devices for product design & development, employee training and security etc.
As per a research by Goldsmiths and Rackspace, productivity of workers across 85 companies increased by 8.5%, and job satisfaction levels rose by an average of 3.5% with the use of wearables.
Wearables brings a range of benefits for manufacturers but at the same time it also brings a few challenges, especially in a sector like manufacturing which involves high degrees of risk, costs, and requirement for precision.
1. Cost
The basic challenge is the affordability of the wearable tech. The average price of wearable devices are around $1500 (whereas for consumer products the average price is $300).
2. Safety
Yes as much as safety is an opportunity it is also a challenge in manufacturing. You don’t want your employees to have something which may restrict their vision or distract them while working on a heavy machine. Operating the device with gloves on also becomes a challenge.
3. Power Backup
Wearable tech uses modern devices like sensors, Bluetooth, GPS, storage chips which consume a lot of power. Power backup thus becomes a challenge in manufacturing where people work for long hours without access to recharge points.
4. Design & Aesthetics
The success of wearable lies on how the wearable is able to replace a conventional device. In a manufacturing setup where workers are working in extreme spots like under machines or on cranes you don’t want to burden them with extra devices. The user should not feel burdened or uncomfortable while using wearables. The device should be robust enough to absorb all types of vibrations, dust, dirt, temperatures, etc., that it is exposed to.
5. Data Privacy
Enterprises are vary of the fact that confidential data would be at risk as the data is stored on a cloud or transferred through Bluetooth. The biggest challenge of wearable tech providers would be to ensure privacy and security of the clients. A lot of employees would also not want their privacy being tracked with the location tracker on the device.
Wearable device manufacturers and other stakeholders have to quickly address these challenges to make it more adoptable in the industry. Once done, it will help the industry achieve higher productivity, precision and safety.
Wondering how best you can use wearable tech for your business? Get market trends and expert insights on wearable tech in manufacturing by downloading our latest eBook.
Out of millions of apps published in the app stores, half of the apps don’t break-even resulting in financial losses for the developers. Over 50% mobile apps lose half of their users in the first 3 months. Tough, isn’t it? But then there are apps like Angry Birds, Instagram, Twitter etc., that script new success stories by continually adding new customers to its list while retaining the old ones. In fact, its the old customers that play a major role in acquiring new customers. ‘Virality’ is in online what ‘word-of-the-mouth’ publicity is in the physical world. Its free but it also take something out of ordinary. While there are many proven ways to get your app go viral with new ones discovered with each successful viral campaign, but if you study all the successful apps they have these 3 things in common
1. Value
All successful apps add value to a user’s life. It may solve a problem, simply entertain or do both. But offers something which is relevant, unique and valuable. Is your app offering any value to your users? Is you app positioned rightly so that the value is at its core?
2. Built-in virality
If you want people to talk about your app then you should enable sharing it with their friends and showing it. If A has downloaded a new game and he finds it interesting then he should be able to share this game via mail, chat, social media etc., with his friends. Also he needs to be encouraged to do so. So how about some incentives in form of coupons, virtual currency etc., for people who share your app?
3. Keep it fresh
The reason half of the users leave the app in the first 3 months is that they get bored of it. Google, Twitter, FaceBook know it and hence work on improving the experiences. So keep your app fresh by continually improving it. Monitor user behavior to identify opportunities for improvement.
And aggressively promote till your app gets the minimum threshold of users to initiate virality. Push it to reach a certain number of downloads by marketing it inside and outside the app stores and from there it will start attracting users on its own.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is not a buzzword anymore. It is gaining significant traction and is all set to become the dominant technology in the enterprise space. According to a report by BI Intelligence, it is estimated that by 2019, IoT will be double the size of the smartphone, PC, tablet, connected car, and the wearable market combined. It will result in $1.7 trillion in value added to the global economy in 2019.
Image Credit: BI Intelligence
So, what’s driving IoT growth in enterprises? Here are the 3 drivers that is pushing growth of enterprise IoT–
1. Helping enterprises build competitive advantage and boosting operational efficiency
Many organizations are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to fend off threats from new entrants. The ability to use and capitalize on the data collected by IoT is helping firms build and sustain competitive advantage. Companies are using IoT to find new revenue streams and improve margins. For example, industrial equipment manufacturers are selling outcomes, like machine hours, rather than just products.
IoT is also helping companies increase their operational efficiency by enabling them to monitor assets in a real-time basis. For example, monitoring shipping containers for temperature changes that could affect the quality using battery-powered sensors and 4G LTE connectivity.
2. Better understanding of customer behavior resulting in improved customer experience
IoT is helping organizations improve the customer experience by providing organizations with data necessary to better understand customer behavior. Organizations can use data to understand where the customer is and what they are doing. This makes it possible to understand what the customer needs.
IoT is transforming the delivery of goods and services. For example, major retailers are leveraging telematics and asset tracking solutions to speed-up order delivery. And the same data can be used to offer customers the ability to see exactly where their delivery is via a smartphone app or a website. IoT is also enabling organisations to reach out to tap new markets.
3. Improving safety and reducing risks
IoT is enabling organizations to improve environmental standards, improve efficiency and cut waste. IoT can help employees working in hazardous areas by alerting them to hazards. Automobile and train companies are also fitting vehicles with IoT-enabled systems that can predict and help prevent accidents.
IoT is also enabling organisations to remotely monitor sensitive inventory, equipment, and plant & machinery. Connection motion sensors with locks and alarms can help detect unauthorised access and automatic activation of countermeasures.
It’s still early days for Internet of Things in enterprises. As the adoption of IoT grows more in enterprises, we will see businesses leveraging the technology in discovering new benefits for them and optimizing it.
To know about enterprise IoT in detail and how your business can benefit from it, download our latest eBook ‘Building a Connected Enterprise’ here.
Testing a wearable app has become a brand new challenge for test engineers. Wearable to app communication is important, and creating that connectivity/ association can be a primary cause for concern. The word wearable refers to the electronic system that is being incorporated into items such as clothing and accessories which can be worn or attached to the body. Wearables are integrated with sensors and are communicated to via an application installed on primary devices like smartphones or tablets. Wearable apps consist of both hardware and software components, and applications are incorporated into various wearable home appliances, tech and vehicles. Let’s look at some of the challenges that testers face while testing wearable apps.
Data Sync
It is a very important challenge in testing the wearable application. Test engineers need to be more focused on data sync and need to check if data from the tablet/smartphone is synced properly to the wearable apps. QA plays a crucial role in testing the data sync especially when the connection of the device through bluetooth is lost, device gets switched off due to low battery, when wearable apps and device get disconnected or reconnected to each other. Communication between the wearable and the app is very important, hence testers need to be more careful while testing.
When wearable apps get synced to each other, the data on the actions performed by the user in Apple Watch or in other devices needs to be synced properly without any technical issues.
Screen Size/UI
Testing a wearable application is different from testing mobile apps. Another challenging task for testers, therefore, is testing the resolution of the application on wearables like Apple watch. As the screen size of the Apple watch is very small, test engineers need to be more cautious on UI/design of the application. The user should find the look and feel of the application to be user-friendly and not clumsy. The application look and feel should be user-friendly and not be clumsy to the user.
Functional Testing
Wearable apps have come to the market with a bunch of sensors, and while testing the application with different kinds of sensors, the functionality should not be affected, but needs to remain the same as expected. QA testers have to come up with new and different scenarios for testing wearable applications since customers will use different kinds of wearable devices.
Battery Life
The other major challenge for testers as well as developers is the battery life of smartphones or wearables (by kaseman). Many different test scenarios come into place when the battery of the phone or the wearable device is OFF while testing the wearable-to-app. The data of any actions performed by the user when the battery is off in the primary device or the wearable has to be saved. Whenever the battery is ON, the data of the device and the wearable need to be restored.
Testing on Real Devices
Testing the application on a real wearable device is quite essential. Very few emulators are available in the market to test the wearable applications, and it is also possible that they may not provide accurate test results. Hence, testing the application on a real device is a challenge for testers.
Jyothirmai works as a Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She has 4+ years of experience in Mobile, Web and Desktop applications, and expertise in testing different domains like Health Care, Social and Insurance.
Launching a mobile app? You are not alone. Rough estimates suggest that in Apple appstore and Google Play, close to a million apps are published every year. All vying for user attention. Needless to say, in an extremely crowded marketplace, mobile app user acquisition has become highly competitive.
Further, mobile app user engagement too has become a lot tougher. Data from Localytics suggests that 52% of the apps lose half of their peak users in 3 months. Here are 5 simple yet smart tips to help you make your app popular and make users hooked to it.
1. User Experience
Ensure that your app is free from all technical flaws and provides excellent first impression to users. Make customer on-boarding simpler and easier. Optimize the login and account creation process. Provide your users guides and FAQs within the app.
2. App Marketing
In the crowded marketplace, marketing your app to give it visibility is important. Make use of all customer acquisition channels mobile advertising, social media promotion, paid search campaigns, app store marketing, in-app promotion etc.
3. Personalize experiences
Track your user behavior leveraging advanced analytics tools. Deliver targeted and customized content to your mobile app users based on their preference, context etc.
4. Make loyalty rewarding
Reward users who are continuously using your app. Motivate users who have not returned after using your app once or twice through attractive incentives. Make use of event-based triggered automation techniques to encourage further use.
5. Listen to your users
App success depends on user satisfaction. Listen to your audience using surveys, feedbacks, app store ratings, user behavior metrics etc., and accordingly optimize your app offerings. Continuously engage with your customers to understand their needs.
Among millions of apps released every year, only a few thousand succeed. Most fade away within weeks of launch. Optimize your mobile app user acquisition and promotion strategy to make your app a grand success.
Security concern tops the table among major challenges faced by enterprises in their mobility journey. Critical corporate data and consumer privacy is at risk, in the absence of a robust security mechanism. Consider these numbers from ‘2015 Security Report’ published by pure-play security vendor CheckPoint:
106 unknown malware hit an organization every hour: 48 times more than the 2.2 downloads per hour reported in 2013.
96 % of organizations studied used at least one high-risk application in 2014, a 10 point increase from the previous year.
81% of the organizations analyzed suffered a data loss incident, up 41% from 2013.
So mobility in enterprises is at more risk compared to last year. And therefore need for a secure mobile environment is of critical importance for organizations.
Types of enterprise mobile security threats & measures-
Threat types
Challenge
Measures
Devices
Portability of devices makes it vulnerable for theft, loss etc.
Device locking, wiping of data, memory card security etc.
Data & Information
Emails, financial data, customer data etc., can be misused by unauthorized access.
User authentication, data encryption, log monitoring and device protection
Network
Breach of enterprise network, unauthorized Bluetooth access
Robust network security, credentials based access
Disallowed apps
Accessing apps from non-trusted sources can lead to Trojans and malwares etc., in the network.
Monitoring app usage, splitting profiles for personal and corporate usage, allowing approved app usage
Malicious software
Attacks from sophisticated malware, viruses and Trojan horses
Security software, spam protection software.
Enterprises adopting mobility need to look beyond MDM and consider mobile security comprehensively encompassing devices, apps, data, network etc.
How will your enterprise handle disallowed devices, non-compliant apps and unauthorized user access?
How will your organization handle critical corporate data from falling-off into wrong hands due to loss or theft of devices and breaches in security?
How will you monitor and manage user behavior?
How will you lock and wipe data from devices lost or stolen?
What policy will you adopt for employee owned device?
How will you ensure that you have a centralized control and capability to track each device, record their behavior and when required take preventive mechanism?
Answers to above questions will help enterprise build the right mobile security strategy and framework to safeguard their data and gain more from their mobile investments.
The Global Mobile Banking Report2015 by KPMG predicts that the number of mobile banking users worldwide will double to 1.8 billion over the next four years, accounting for over 25% of the world’s population.
The banking landscape has changed over the years. Massive shift in consumer behavior and expectations, regulatory challenges and emergence of new technologies present new challenges to banks. In the new banking environment, banks are adopting ‘Mobile First’ approach to serve customers better and stay competitive.
The changing landscape Mobile Phone and Tablet Usage are soaring. Access to mobile networks is now available to 90% of the world population and 80% of the population living in rural areas.
Mobile banking, which started off with banks offering services like balance inquiries, checkbook requests, etc., via SMS and later with the browser through WAP and GPRS, has, over the years, widened its scope to include a huge part of banking operations, both internally and externally. Today, banks are adopting a mobile first strategy and investing heavily into mobile and other related digital technologies like cloud, social, wearables and Internet of Things. As mobility takes center stage in the technical infrastructure of banks, business processes are being reengineered and new models are being explored. Mobile payment processing, location-based services, add on devices, etc., has led to a greater extension of mobile solutions enabling banks to provide the seamless banking experience to their customers.
Today, banks not only use mobile devices and applications as a channel to offer services to customers but also as a tool to connect within the organization, empower their workforce and control its various processes and assets. So, we not only see basic banking operations performed through mobile devices and applications, but we also see increased use of mobility solutions within the organizations for complex operations like asset management services, loan approval processes and database management.
The customer’s attitude towards mobile banking has also undergone a sea change. Far from being wary of doing financial transactions on mobile, as was the case in the early days, people, owing to ubiquity and convenience today, have nicely warmed up to the concept of banking on their devices and are pretty comfortable paying utility bills and transferring funds on the go.
The drivers
Several factors are at play behind the growth of mBanking or mobile banking–Smartphones and tablets have become ubiquitous. Consumers are welcoming banking services on their devices. Internet connectivity has widened its spread and is getting faster. Mobile apps are more powerful and secure enough to integrate with banking processes and operations. While powerful game changing drivers like faster ROI, higher productivity and a direct and personal communication channel with the customer base have attracted banks to embrace mobility, customers are excited about quick anywhere anytime services.
One of the significant benefit that has made banks embrace mobile technology is cost efficiency. The above graphic illustrates how mobile can bring significant cost efficiency in transactions.
Mercatus LLC Survey on mobile banking discovered some interesting results, validating how mobilizing operations and services can boost customer acquisition, brand perception and sales. The report reveals that–
Banks offering mobile financial services can increase new customer acquisition by as much as 60%.
Mobile financial service capabilities have more impact on a consumer’s decision to select a bank than availability of online banking, access to ATMs or nearby branches.
Banks offering mobile financial services should anticipate as much as a 60% increase in sales.
Customer acquisition promotional offers including mobile financial services outperformed those that did not include mobile financial services by nearly 30%.
It can decrease the cost of acquiring a new customer by as much as 20%.
The Possibilities
Retail banks are mostly using mobile in following ways
Payments: Banks are rapidly leveraging mobility solutions to enable customers to use their mobile devices to make payments at stores. Similarly, efforts are ongoing to facilitate person-to-person payments, allowing money to be transferred from one person to another like PayPal.
Branch less Services: What about the ability to deposit documents like checks, pay order, etc., by simply scanning the check and sending the image to the bank rather than depositing the physical form in the bank?
Customer Engagement: Mobile apps can help banks engage with customers, offer real-time advice/suggestions for up-sell/cross-sell based on the past history and make banking fun via gamification, contests etc.
Location based Services: Many banks have already embraced the location-based capabilities of mobility solutions to locate ATM’s, bank branches, etc.
Within the organizations, powerful enterprise solutions have facilitated a spectrum of services on mobile devices. Bank employees today not only use mobile devices to connect and interact within the organization through email, messenger etc., but also use it to access various company resources like Management Information Systems, Transaction Management and Sales Force Automation, etc. Mobility solutions for banking are making processes leaner and quicker not only with their own might but also by complementing other technologies.
Today, mobility for banking is not only a viable medium but also an enabler that can act as a force multiplier for other channels. Mobile applications are quickly replacing bank mobile websites by providing a better experience and secure transactions. With wearables like Google Glass and Smart Watches gaining traction among customers; some banks have started experimenting by proving banking services on wearables. Some banks have also introduced mechanisms that enable interaction between the ATM and the mobile devices of the customer. Armed with a smartphone or tablet, a user can connect his device wirelessly to the ATM, authenticate and make a withdrawal or transfer fund s through it without a debit or credit card.
The challenges
The ride, however, is not so smooth. There are multiple challenges facing the banks as they move to leverage mobility solutions. The biggest impediment is banks struggling to creating a comprehensive mobile strategy resulting in mobile implementation in silos. There is a massive proliferation of devices differing in form, functionalities and features. The challenge will be to come up with one solution that fits all and offers seamless experience across.
While the world may be stepping into 4G, bandwidth latency and coverage is still an area of concern if mBanking is to adhere to its promise of anywhere, anytime banking. The security of banking transaction over the air is another complicated challenge which calls for continuous intervention as the technology evolves. Decision makers should also keep an eye on the scalability and reliability of their mobile infrastructure as the usage grows and mobile devices become the major channel instead of just yet-another-channel of contact between customers and the branch.
The trends point towards a future where banking will be real-time,anytime with mobile being the key enabler. New technologies like Big Data, Internet of Things, Cloud etc., will further build on the mobile and bring a paradigm shift in banking. Tapping into the opportunities available will help banking institutions derive enduring value.
Our Recommendations
Embrace mobility: Mobile banking is here to stay. It offers tremendous value to both banks and customers. The opportunities are endless. Devise clear strategy: A comprehensive strategy encompassing your people, processes and services will help you better leverage mobile and get higher RoI.
Focus on consumer experience: Create an omni-channel, user-friendly and secure mobile banking environment.
Pick the right platform: Diversity in screen sizes, functionalities and operating system necessitates banks to adopt a multi-platform approach.
Turn data into Insights: Monitor user behavior leveraging advanced analytics tools. Customer intelligence will be the guide for future.
Lay down the groundwork for next generation of m-banking: Emerging technologies like IoT, Wearables etc., promises more opportunities. Be ready to seize them.
The beginning
The world of convenience banking on mobile phones and tablets is very engaging. A powerful value proposition! However, it is just the beginning. The swift pace of change in mobile technology is opening new opportunities, driving innovation and prompting banks around the world to ask “What else?” This is a big shift from, “Why go mobile?” a few years back. The evolution has led many banks to not only see mobility as an enabler towards greater customer access to their services, but also as a game changer in the disruptive world.
With the increase in the number of smartphones available in the market, people started trusting technology and are using mobile devices to perform different tasks in their day-to-day life which ultimately led to a leap in the development of mobile apps. Being user-friendly, smartphones and apps are being handled even by children below ten. However, if an app is excellent but isn’t user-friendly, then it will not reach the target audience/users. So, this is one area where mobile developers and testers need to concentrate.
Mobile app testing is not simple as there are multiple parameters that need to be considered and tested. As we know, testing is something where we need to do the things repeatedly which requires a lot of time and patience. This is when testers tend to make mistakes.
Making mistakes is a normal human tendency so it’s not uncommon for people to make mistakes in life – personal or professional. While it’s a fact that it’s the tester who always finds mistakes in the tasks performed by others, there’s also a possibility that even testers make mistakes during testing. A mistake will be negotiated when it is small but some mistakes are more accountable, and one should take care to avoid them.
Let’s now analyze some mistakes that need to be avoided, and how to avoid them.
Proceeding to test the project without an in-depth knowledge of business logic and functional requirements
A mobile app will be developed in a very short time; so, sometimes the tester will test the app without knowing the complete requirements of the app. This should be avoided because a tester will not cover all user flows in the application if s/he doesn’t have an in-depth knowledge.
1. Inadequate language skills in reporting bugs
Besides being a fast-growing trend, developing mobile apps is new to everyone involved. Getting the terminology right is, therefore, a difficult thing. This is where a tester will make mistakes. This should be avoided because without a proper description of the issue, a developer will not be able to fix it.
2. Prioritizing UI over functional aspects
As the adage goes, the first impression is the best impression. All said and done, people will always prioritize looks over other things – this is true in the case of a mobile app as well. Even a tester gives more priority to the UI and takes more time in testing only UI while giving less time to functional aspects. This mistake should be avoided at any cost and same priority should be given to both functionality and UI.
3. Not capturing crash logs which makes identifying the bug difficult
If a simple crash occurs after the app is released into the market, it irritates the user a lot and the negative impact it creates may prove to be disastrous (by kaseman). In fact, it makes users uninstall the app at times. So, while testing, if the tester does not capture the crash logs, that makes it difficult to fix the issue later on.
4. Flaws in reporting formats
For a tester, finding bugs is as important as sending reports. However, due to the time constraints, testers tend to commit mistakes in sending the reports.
5. Coverage of testing on different OS versions
Due to lack of time on hand, testers end up covering testing on fewer devices. This should be avoided because when an application is designed for multiple devices, testing in fewer devices will not be enough. As every device will have a different configuration, the issues that crop up will also be specific to that device. So, before releasing any app into appstore/play store, testing should be covered in all supported devices.
6. Conclusion
Delivering a quality product at the end of the day is important to testers. So it’s important that testers take care to avoid mistakes at every stage of testing because once the app is made available on App Store/Play Store, even the smallest of mistakes can have a huge negative impact.
Preethi works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and has experience in Mobile and Web Application testing in different domains like Social, Gaming and Healthcare.
The adoption of cloud computing in businesses has grown manifold in the last few years. For some organizations, cloud has become the go-to model to become more cost-efficient, productive and innovative. Over the years, cloud computing in enterprises has undergone many changes. Here are 11 stats you need to know about enterprise cloud computing
1. Size of market
Enterprise cloud subscription revenues predicted to reach by 2018.
Source : Appsrunthecloud
2. Cloud is rapidly growing
CAGR growth in spending on cloud computing infrastructure and platforms from 2013 through 2018.
Source : Goldman Sachs
3. Cloud taking center stage in enterprise IT
IT decision makers are planning to increase spending on cloud computing in 2015.
Source : Computer World
4. Enterprises are embracing cloud computing
Enterprises will have at least half of their infrastructure on cloud-based platforms by 2018.
Source : Digital Business
5. IaaS is popular
Organizations surveyed are running applications or experimenting with infrastructure-as-a-service.
Source : Right Scale
6. Hybrid cloud is popular as a strategy
Enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy, up from 74 percent in 2014.
Source : Right Scale
7. Public cloud preferred over private
Organizations are using public cloud while 63 percent are using private cloud.
Source : Right Scale
8. Still there is enough space for growth
Enterprises run less than a fifth of their application portfolio in the cloud.
Source : Right Scale
9. Cost-efficiency is the major driver for enterprise cloud
Businesses surveyed are using cloud to drive cost efficiencies while 42% are using to better enable mobile work force.
Source : KPMG
10. Cloud boosting business performance
Business surveyed experienced improved business performance as a result of cloud implementation while 70% experienced cost reduction.
Source : KPMG
11. Data and privacy are major challenges
Enterprises find Data loss and privacy risks as most challenging areas when adopting cloud while for 50% intellectual property theft is the major challenge.
Source : KPMG
As Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, puts it “It (cloud computing) has security, directory, identity, privacy, storage, compute, the whole Web services stack”. With so many benefits to offer, cloud computing in enterprise will continue to grow.
Testers are used to performing routine tasks on a daily basis – be it setting up or configuring or refreshing test environments. These tasks can be quite frustrating as they are time consuming – especially when the number of testing combinations grow in mobile environments where new devices are introduced every year which need to be tested.
But, is it possible to increase the productivity while avoiding these frustrations?
Yes, it is very much possible when cloud comes into the picture with its unlimited computing power available on demand. Virtualization enables us to have multiple pre-configured test setups ready, and allows us to spend less time configuring and more time performing testing which would make testers more productive. The cloud gives us the added benefit of mobility, as all resources are centralized and easily accessible through the Internet, which means that teams from across the globe can collaborate with ease.
So, what are some of the advantages of cloud-based testing? Let’s look at the top five benefits
1. Anywhere, Anytime Access
Easy access through the Internet allows team members to work from anywhere, anytime. It’s a known fact that Cloud Testing is perfect for Agile. Agile development is a concept which enables cross-functional teams to get involved at every stage of the development process and also take care of every step in testing. Cloud testing empowers stakeholders with access to all tools available in the company regardless of where they are located or what they are working on at the moment.
2. Increase in Productivity
If frustrations and time spent on configuring can be minimized, it helps the team in spending more time on actual testing, thus increasing the productivity. There are over 20,000 device models in the market with 27 different varieties of operating systems. At a minimum, we can achieve a test coverage of over 600,000 scenarios. Nonstop cloud testing gives you the luxury of expanding the amount of scenarios you can cover in the same time period.
3. Cost Reduction
No capital expenditure and much faster deployment times means you can have minimal project start-up cost and infrastructure cost. To perform testing, to load the tool and to provide a substantial hardware/ infrastructure platform in-house, you can straightaway opt for the cloud service provider without investing in tool licenses (by aaron). You have an option of choosing a tool of your choice depending on the product to be tested. The service provider will ensure that the latest version of the tool is provided. So, instead of paying a very high amount to buy a tool, keeping track of updating it with latest patches, getting bothered about the new release, and then depending on it for all your product range, you just need to ‘pay as you use’.
4. Perfect for the Mobile Economy
Twenty percent of all online commerce is on mobile, and ten percent of this is online. Since the concepts of mobile commerce and online commerce didn’t exist 15 years ago, the growth of these markets is eye-popping. The present generation has created an entirely new way of doing business and it is changing everything. The one and only method that puts an application through such a rigorous process, to make it ready for the unexpected surprises that will come in traffic and usage, is cloud testing.
5. Continuous Integration
The development team is also benefited because continuous testing leads to continuous integration. Adding a piece of a code each time to a mobile application which is to be tested is very complicated, as it has to be redeployed. Cloud testing ensures there is always a tester closeby. It means that you can test under larger scenarios right away. New builds can become new versions faster than ever before, benefiting not only the testing team but also the entire development team as well. And the mobile application tester has a wider variety of devices to choose from. Any tester can choose any device, rather than only the physical devices he can access to. A tester can book devices in advance, as he knows exactly when he wants to test on which device. Making all devices available to all testers eliminates the need to buy more than one type of device for multiple teams, and saves a lot of money.
Shravani Keerthi works as Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS, and has 4+ years of experience in Mobile and Web Applications in testing varied domains like Social, Gaming, Logistics and Insurance.
In this era of digitization and smartphone revolution, it would be difficult to find someone who hasn’t played or heard of mobile games! Typically the easiest to play and less time consuming, mobile games enthuse all smartphone users alike. However, most game developers target children and young adults as they’re more likely to try new games than their adult counterparts.
Mobile games can be played on portable devices like tablets or music players and smartphones as they require less memory and processing speed compared to other console/PC games. Many of today’s mobile games are based on open source or commercial game engines like Play Canvas, Unreal, Cocos2D, Construct and Unity3D, most of which provide great tools and frameworks to get your game built quickly, with graphical features. Even with their limited resources, good mobile games make more revenue in the market compared to PC/console games, and can even serve as an excellent means of advertising.
All mobile games have one goal in common – to keep end users entertained, engaged and thus increase repeated visits and rate of retention. Entertaining end user is more complex than one can imagine, especially when we look at the domain in which most mobile applications are built. Herein lies the significant difference in testing games and applications.
So which aspects of gaming make testing a challenge?
Multi player – Tested in two different approaches – host and client, where data is received from the server that creates numerous test cases to cover all the scenarios.
Network – Testing a game under various networks depending on the speed/ types can impact the performance as the game is played with backend server.
Fun – Creating a game with fun as an integral part is a daunting task. A game with a bad review will not attract users to download the next version. As every user has his/her own definition of fun, testing the fun aspect is imperative.
AI – Unlike mobile applications, games have AI implemented in them. Complex games have complex AI mechanisms, and it takes more time and patience to test the accuracy of the AI.
Realism – Domain expertise plays an important role as users can easily spot the unrealistic actions.
The what-s and why-s of different testing approaches
Installation testing – To verify whether the game is installed or uninstalled without interruptions.
Performance Testing – To verify the behavior and performance of the game under particular conditions like low battery, bad network coverage and low memory.
Certification Testing – To verify the guidelines set by the mobile platform.
Usability testing – To verify if the game is user friendly.
Interrupt Testing – To verify the behavior of the game when user gets a call, message, notifications, alert messages, etc.
Memory Testing – To verify whether the device lags due to lack of memory which may affect the performance of the game play.
Functional Testing – To check whether each feature is working as per the design, and the game play meets the requirements.
While playing mobile games is fun and easy, testing these games before launching to ensure excellent quality and seamless game play is complex involving many steps and procedures. The goal of every game developer and tester is to provide users with a flawless product that helps them not only enjoy gaming but also keep coming back to the brand for more versions or newer games. If the gaming app companies succeed in giving what users want, without compromising on the quality, they’ve surely gained a loyal user for life!
Sindusha Rudraraju works as a QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS and has over 2 years of experience in desktop, web and mobile applications. She is ISTQB certified and has experience in testing business applications and games.
The adoption of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices has expanded the growth of mobile applications in recent years. As mobile devices have become the primary medium of interaction for consumers as well as businesses worldwide, mobile applications have started driving these interactions. Nowadays, mobile apps put the business operations in the hands of consumers who are literally running businesses.
However, the big question is: “What makes a mobile app compelling enough to influence consumer behaviors and make them engage with your brand or product?” Of course, a strong mobile app development strategy is the foundation of any successful mobile app, but one key component in app development is testing which ensures your mobile app meets customer expectations and business goals.
Testing plays a critical part in the application’s success or failure. Mobile application testing is important to ensure that the app meets quality standards. Mobile apps should pass the quality test before it is released to Play Store / App store, and reaches end users.
So, how do you optimize your mobile testing for better success?
The main challenge in testing mobile applications is testing in a variety of devices, platforms, screen resolutions, memory sizes and connectivity options to ensure that the app is supported in multiple platforms and devices. Given below some things that one needs to follow to achieve success:
OS Version: The mobile app should be tested on all major stable OS versions.
Screen Resolution: Test the mobile application in different screen resolutions because the user experience varies on different screen sizes and screen resolutions.
Form Factor: The mobile application may act differently on smartphones and tablets. Therefore, if the app is compatible with both phones and tablets, then it should be tested in both form factors.
Mobile testing should cover different platforms like iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows, and multiple versions of Operating System for each device when the application is mentioned as being compatible with all. Testers need to also test the app in several permutations and combinations, every time, to ensure zero defects.
A majority of the mobile application’s functionalities depend on network connectivity. So, testing the mobile apps in real network environment is essential to get the real picture and assess the behaviour of the app in real mobile networks. Therefore, testing should be covered in different types of network conditions like WiFi, 2G, 3G, 4G and also without network, besides testing it in different bandwidths.
A few more points to remember
While testing the mobile app, testers should also think about the different battery backup states like low charge, medium charge, high charge and perform tests accordingly.
Performing Beta testing on your mobile app is one of the effective methods of mobile app testing which gives you access to real world testers, devices and actual networks.
You need to ensure that application works fine when it is upgraded to the next version or when bugs are fixed. Tester should be responsible to perform upgrade testing for every release of the app.
Complete functionality & UI of the application should also be tested in different devices with different versions to ensure that the application meets customer expectations.
Automation testing can be started once manual testing is performed, and it is preferred when the application is growing and when there are a large number of test cases related to functionality. Automation testing saves you time and is most useful to perform regression testing – especially when any new features are added and those changes are not reflected upon old features.
Performance testing can be done when you want to test the mobile application by giving excess load and by testing a huge number of users performing the same action at the same time.
Conclusion
A well planned mobile app testing strategy will ensure quality and performance of mobile application especially when testers select correct target devices, right mix of emulators, physical devices and testing methodologies.
(Divya Priya works as a Software QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. She is an ISTQB certified tester and has over 2 years experience in testing mobile & web applications for different domains like Education, Social, Gaming, Travel, Finance and Hardware Integration.)
If you’ve users who need to set up alarms for regular reminders about taking medicines, or customers who constantly worry about the way their insurance claims are handled by your agents, then jumping on the bandwagon of mobile solutions will ensure that you partake of the gains — financial and otherwise — a la top Insurance companies like United, Geico and MetLife.
Why mobile solutions?
In these times of uncertainties in the global economy, players in the insurance industry are bound to face many risks. In order to assuage the fears of customers and have an edge over competitors, it has become imperative for insurance providers to offer a new range of products with their customers’ needs in mind. Mobile solutions (read creating mobile apps), therefore, have become a natural choice for insurers to improve the ROI and empower them to gain their customers’ trust.
How do mobile apps help?
Mobile solutions help insurance companies in a lot of ways – especially when it comes to handling claims. They certainly help increase efficiency, customer satisfaction, user engagement and loyalty, besides reducing formalities of paperwork to a large extent. According to a report put together by Forrester, by 2016 there will be 1 billion smartphone users globally which shows the tremendous potential created for mobile solution providers to leverage this growing trend.
We’ve put together a five-point strategy to help you understand how mobile apps can work to the advantage of insurers.
1. Have an edge over competitors
If you can deliver claims-related stuff right to the user’s smartphone, you have gained an edge over competitors by winning a loyal customer. Involving employees in customer-engagement activities and improving the productivity of insurance agents will increase your chances at being successful. The other tactics that you can employ include consistent app experience for users, reduced cost per transaction which can be achieved by providing efficient service(s), and improvement in user base and loyalty, among others.
2. Make claims processes simple
An insurance app will be the most handy tool when it comes to Claims. It is believed that a mobile app can improve the efficiency of handling insurance claims by 25%-30%. While it makes consumers’ lives easier by letting them make claims using their smartphones, it also eases the workload on employees, by eliminating a few tasks, and helps them use their time productively in user acquisition and engagement (by aaron). The ability of a smartphone user to take pictures at the scene of the accident helps make a strong impact on the insurer.
3. Deliver what customers want
Although not all apps created in the insurance industry are for customers alone, it’s good to have more consumer-oriented apps in place. In a survey conducted by PwC, over 75% of the participants in the age group of 25 to 44 use health and wellness apps regularly, understand the benefits of an app in comparison to traditional methods of service and, hence, expect apps to provide “Alerts and Reminders”, “Access to your personal health record”, “Access to specific disease info/products”, “Provider/specialist search”, and “Disease Management apps”.
A targeted mobile strategy, especially in the realm of health insurance, is the need of the hour, writes PwC in its report
“Smartly designed mobile applications can provide a competitive edge, especially for younger consumers. But to see the biggest return on investment, insurers should think about conducting targeted market analysis, assessing the value of popular/high-use apps for activities such as exercise tracking and food intake, and building on mobile applications that have already proven successful with other audiences.”
4. Improve customer engagement
How can you engage customers in better ways? As a service provider, you can ensure that consumers can report an accident, a theft or a loss; take, upload and submit photos from the scene of an accident; do claims; make an inventory of all valuables in your home for insurance purpose; or seek information on getting your vehicles repaired. Policyholders sure have a field day now with many top insurance providers vying with each other to woo customers with their mobile solutions. Having realized that mobile apps can make claims process easier for customers, the companies are now trying to attract more users even while retaining the existing ones by providing an excellent customer experience.
5. Increase revenue opportunities
Mobile apps are certainly cost-effective and, therefore, provide the right incentive to companies to leverage the mobile space. Insurance providers are in a better position today in terms of gaining customers’ trust through multiple means of customer engagement thereby ensuring satisfaction. From getting the requisite information on policies available, and comparing various options and providers available, to browsing the company’s website to understand the different kinds of insurance policies before making a choice, from buying policies and upgrading the existing ones to reaching agents and paying bills using a smartphone, now the users have umpteen reasons to celebrate. This customer-centric focus is what improves the chances of revenue increase for companies.
To sum up, there are a bunch of things that mobile apps could do to benefit both the providers and their customers: tracking insurance claims, enrolling for a particular plan or purchasing it online, get an in-depth understanding of the company’s products, learn ways to improve their health via healthcare and wellness apps (some of which are created by insurance companies) are just a few in the list.
“Health is Wealth” – this line sounds more meaningful nowadays than it did in the past as consumers are now worried about the food they eat, activities they do and the effect of these on their health. This consciousness of well-being that makes consumers avoid unhealthy habits that have a negative impact on the system has influenced even software development, and this phenomenon is called “Lean Software Development”.
Lean Software Development is the advanced part of the Agile Process, in which every part of the process is addressed more efficiently by focusing on the throughput while reducing the risk. This is put in practice by identifying the waste and delays in the process.
As these changes are necessary for the effective development of software, how to adopt the methodologies and strategies to achieve quality is a major challenge faced by the testers.
Testing in Lean Software Development yields benefits such as a good understanding of the flow that is directly proportional to the throughput. It helps in identifying the gaps that increase the time spent on estimating and planning test products, thereby achieving Quality in the shortest time possible to deliver value to the customer.
Lean is Mean
The process of testing in Lean Development model requires a committed QA team to ensure continuous improvement in order to understand the process within the context of business needs and to plan the testing process accordingly. The prime focus should be on adding value while improving the ability to achieve goals in the limited amount of time.
Aggressive testing strategy and futuristic planning (like taking notes from User Stories and Release Planning meeting) will help the testing team to zero in on requirements which, in turn, help in formulating test cases, scenarios and other testing artifacts.
Constant analysis is done on the factors that cause the time delay and hindrances to the progress of the sprint. Thus, noted points are added to the team retrospective and are discussed during the Retrospective Meeting.
Lean Development design is effective because every aspect of the process is designed in a way that the tasks carried out resemble a flow of events. This flow is the key to achieve Quality.
Test Flow in Lean Model
The testing process is redesigned in the lean development model wherein the bottlenecks that halt the progress are identified and eliminated. To achieve this, each task is broken down at the resource level. This process helps the cycle in two ways: identifies the exact number of tasks that can be carried out by the app testing team and injects a sense of ownership and responsibility to each member of the team.
Hence, each individual in the testing team is fully aware of his responsibilities and tasks and will be clear in contacting the concerned developer for carrying out the task given to him. This eliminates the wastage of overburden on the team which leads to delay in the delivery of a quality product.
Automating the testing process is an effective way to improve the time utilization for testing and thus plays a prominent role in the Lean environment. Automating the process also helps in achieving quality in a reduced time. Identifying the areas where automation is required is the challenge the team needs to address for its effective implementation. Having a thorough knowledge on the requirements helps in deciding this.
Regression testing in Lean environment plays a vital role in deciding the quality of the product while keeping time constraints in check. As a tester, the challenge is to keep the time short without compromising product quality.
For this the process of prioritizing the testing aspects during the regression is crucial. One needs to identify the areas which might be affected the most and which are affected the minimum. This helps in framing the time stamps for the regression process.
“Shrinking the Testing Duration without any compromise in Quality” is the defining line that describes the testing in Lean Software Development mode.
Bhargava Yellamraju works as Senior QA Engineer at [x]cubeLABS. He has 5 years of experience in Mobile, Web Application and Security Testing and has built significant expertise in various domains like Health Care, Finance, Banking and Procurement.
Technology advancements, especially web, mobile and then social media, has changed the buying process. Today’s customer engages with your sales rep at a much later stage. Before he engages with you, he already knows a lot about your company, product/service and may be had a chance to talk to a few of your customers on social media. In the current environment, your salesperson has to be more knowledgeable, swift in action and be able to take the customer to the final sale.
Mobile Sales Enablement Tools can step up your sales team for the changed sales process and arm him with the necessary tools and information to win deals.
Customers are better informed today. They seek solutions and financial justifications to buy a product or a service, and you only have a few minutes to catch his attention. Instantly attract customer’s interest with the right storytelling and highly customized digital assets like 3D videos, CAD drawings, animations, online assessment tools, graphics, and ROI calculators, etc. Make your presentations notable by giving them the feel of your products and services and show them its benefits. Update the content on-the-fly to make it fresh, relevant and customized to your call requirements.
2. Sales Quota Attainment
Identify and capture best practices of your ‘star performers’ and share them with other team members. Monitor sales methodology practices and asset utilization to optimize your sales approach. Automate your sales tasks like follow-up, customer feedback, etc., so that each of your reps follows the same procedure. Get insights from analytics to discover buyer preferences, pain points and response-time, etc., to prepare your team for objection handling in different scenarios through collaboration and team exercises.
3. New Customer Acquisition is Tough Expensive
New customer acquisition is a long and expensive process. It is far cheaper to cross sell/up-sell to an existing client. However, most sales reps struggle to cross-sell/up-sell because of lack of skills and knowledge to execute cross-selling strategies. Help your sales force aggressively cross-sell/ up-sell through fine customer segmentation, need-based product suggestions and personalized recommendations.
As per a survey, 76% of reps from companies that use mobile sales tools attained their sales quotas, while just 53% of reps from companies without a sales mobility strategy did so. A mobile sales enablement can go a long way in driving the sales effectiveness of your team.
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