Keeping Promises: How to Avoid Misfires in Mobile Kurt Gerstner,

Keeping Promises: How to Avoid Misfires in Mobile
Enablement with a User-Centric Approach
Kurt Gerstner, Vice President of Unisys Modernization Center of Excellence
Enrique Lander Sanchez-Biezma, Manager and Joao Pedro, Practice Director, of Unisys ESCoE: Spanish
Center of Excellence
Bharani Ravishankar, Senior Engagement Manager at Unisys Global Services India Center of Excellence
No matter where organizations reside in the mobile world,
they need to stay focused on the ultimate prize: enhancing
the value that they offer customers while improving their
ability to promote internal collaboration and growth.
But how can an enterprise tap into that potential without
putting itself at risk? As mobile interactions represent a
critical touch point among customers and partners, they
require serious attention as companies move forward with
new or expanding mobility initiatives.
If it’s early days at an organization, mobile technology may
be confined to accommodating the mobile device needs of
a select group of workers and providing a narrow range of
capabilities. Others may be further along—actively working
to develop enterprise bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies,
or trying to determine the best way to extend access to
critical, already mobile-enabled enterprise applications.
Yet, as each step on the mobile maturity curve brings it own
set of considerations and concerns, some things remain
constant. Mobile applications must support key business
goals, securely and cost-effectively—and when implemented
correctly, incorporate a user-centric focus for long-lasting
enterprise value.
Focusing on User Needs
Getting results from mobility initiatives requires understanding
what is possible, and effective, to accomplish. While it’s
tempting to make every bell and whistle available, some
features can actually be counter-productive. For example,
cluttered user interfaces can make it difficult for customers
to complete transactions—or for employees to follow standard
workflows—when using mobile applications. The result?
Frustrated end-users and poor adoption rates—reducing
anticipated revenue growth and productivity gains alike.
For this reason, it’s important to take a user-centric
approach to mobile application development. This involves
evaluating business requirements from the user’s point of
view. How easy is it to access and use the application? Are
related screens clear and readable, with intuitive navigation
and process flows? With a user-centric mindset, priority
features are easily identified, while extraneous, low-value
ones can be removed from the development effort. In
the end, the mobile experience should be a user-friendly
interaction that seamlessly blends functionality with mobility.
Teaming for Success
Employing Effective Techniques and Tools
Embracing mobility is both a technology and cultural change,
with varying customer and worker expectations related
to where and how they can access and use enterprise
applications. Building mobile applications to suit the
needs of these diverse user groups requires a team with a
comprehensive set of skills:
Organizations that can ramp up new mobile-enabled
solutions quickly have the advantage over slower-moving
competitors. That’s why it’s also important to evaluate the
tools you or your solution provider use based on approaches
that accelerate mobile application development.
• Developers who live and breathe mobile, and have
worked extensively with multiple mobile device types
and platforms
• Senior IT architects who are expert at integrating mobile
applications with enterprise systems, in both traditional
and cloud computing environments
• IT security and services specialists who can address all
aspects of mobile application and device security and
management, including role-based security,
• And business and industry consultants with keen insight
into critical processes and a full understanding of
mobility-related policy and compliance concerns.
Just as essential are partnerships with providers of
mission-critical applications, such as SAP and Microsoft,
and with leaders in mobile technology, including Apple and
Google. Many organizations find this combination of talent
and know-how by partnering with an enterprise solution
provider that can take them through the ins and outs of a
proposed mobile solution—preventing false starts caused
by a lack of technical and business process knowledge.
But what does it ultimately take to speed development
cycles? For starters, it takes skilled use of native tools
such as Apple Xcode. Developers who have experience
using its storyboard features can typically build and release
a prototype in just a few weeks time. It’s essential to put
something into users’ hands early that can be iterated until
there’s agreement on the aesthetics, flow, and style.
Agile development can also reduce development time
frames through an “inspiration room” approach. Using
this technique, organizations discuss and agree upon the
aesthetics of the proposed mobile application before a
working prototype has been developed. By doing so, issues
around look-and-feel are immediately addressed, eliminating
what could be lengthy cycles devoted to this down the road.
Patterns are another effective tool for shortening the
development cycle. They allow a developer to essentially
“pre-solve” a problem. For example, workers in certain
environments may still rely on a clipboard-based process
to record data, afterwards entering that information into
the supporting application. To streamline this process
and eliminate errors that occur from manual data entry,
developers can create a documented, reusable pattern
that connects “clipboard” style work to data sources and
then apply that to current and future mobile application
development efforts.
We’ve found this pattern to be particularly useful in our work
with major engineering firms. It’s become part of a portfolio
of patterns that we reuse for mobile application development
across a number of industries. This includes patterns for
mobile-enabling incident alerts and IT service management
requests relate d to utility plant operations and shopping
cart functions for online retailers, among many others.
By using a combination of all these tools and techniques,
the best developers will help organizations quickly design
and deploy business-critical mobile applications.
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Mobile-Enabling Enterprise Applications
Make it mobile and make it fast. Many organizations are
under the gun as demands for anywhere, anytime access to
their mission-critical applications keep growing. But satisfying
these customer, partner, and employee requirements takes
careful planning and technical expertise to reap the benefits
of mobility in a practical and secure way.
Prioritizing User Needs and Establishing
Use Cases
Improving business process efficiency and increasing
productivity are the primary goals of many mobile
enablement initiatives. And whether this involves
mobile-enabling newer applications like electronic medical
records, or revamping existing mobile applications,
organizations should begin by taking stock of their priorities.
A recommended first step is to participate in a mobile
assessment. Among many considerations, organizations
need to evaluate:
• the current level and effectiveness of the functionality
provided through existing mobile applications
• the new features or capabilities they’re looking to support,
and their impact on ease of use, user acceptance, and
business process value
• the intended audience for the mobile application, as well
as their level of sophistication and usage expectations
By going through this process, organizations can identify
best-use cases for mobile technology and develop a
long-term strategy to solve specific, concrete challenges.
This will enable them to roll out features and solutions
based on high-priority needs, as well as avoid engaging in
unnecessary and time-consuming proofs of concept.
Overcoming Technical Challenges in
Integration, Performance, and Security
Yet, in their eagerness to deploy mobile applications,
organizations often take short cuts that can sabotage a
positive end result. For example, many try to transform a
traditional enterprise application into a mobile one without
reengineering any of the related business processes. But,
in fact, a certain amount of process change is typically
required for optimum performance in the mobile world. This
could include eliminating a user’s need to enter text in favor
of drop-down boxes that better accommodate the keyboard
restrictions and small-screen profile of smart phones.
Going from a traditional to mobile-enabled application
also presents technical challenges from an integration
perspective. That’s because SAP, Oracle, and other core
backend systems have APIs that are not designed to be
consumed by a mobile device. To overcome this limitation
and permit data exchange, some type of gateway must
be implemented.
Using products such as Sybase Unwired Platform (SUP)
or Antenna software streamlines the enablement effort by
providing the capabilities to manage wireless transactions
and communication between an enterprise backend
system and the mobile devices accessing it. Once this
integration has been accomplished, the backend system
can easily scale to support a variety of mobile devices and
platforms, simplifying what could otherwise be a complex,
time-consuming task. We’re currently using this approach
to develop and integrate a mobile application for a major
telecom provider so it can support a marketplace of
enterprise applications via a software-as-a-service platform.
As a best practice, organizations should initially work with
“friendly” business partners to test and introduce new
mobile capabilities—striving for an early “mobility win.” In
addition, collecting partner feedback along the way helps
organizations fine-tune their mobile applications to maximize
effectiveness before making them widely available.
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Removing complexity from backend integration also improves
performance. But to fully meet user expectations for
responsive interaction, organizations must also determine
the right amount of data and contextual information required
for the mobile application to perform key functions. If this
is not properly evaluated, large amounts of data sent to
thousands of devices could end up overloading supporting
systems—causing noticeable delays or even shutting down
critical IT services. For example, one application we recently
developed pre-sorts data on the backend system. Then, in
response to a specific query, the receiving mobile device
gets only the specific information it needs—without having
to process all the data itself.
Taking steps to minimize data exchange and on-device data
storage makes mobile applications more secure, as well.
Because the more data organizations make available to
mobile devices, the more data they potentially put at risk.
For this reason, only the data that is absolutely essential to
support a specific business process should be exposed to,
or requested from, mobile users. For example, if a mobile
banking application requires some type of biometric or photo
identification, there’s no additional need for customers to
supply their social security numbers.
Ultimately, organizations need to employ a variety of
procedures to secure both users and their access to mobile
applications. In addition to data and device encryption
capabilities, an enterprise can also benefit from the use
of “security sandboxes,” which isolate a specified mobile
application from other applications that users might
download onto their mobile devices. While this offers
another level of protection, organizations should ensure
far-reaching oversight through clear policies for mobile device
management and use.
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Benefiting from Cross-Platform Applications
Mobile application enablement can provide innovative ways
to connect with and deliver new capabilities to internal and
external users. A major factor in how this is accomplished
revolves around the choice of development platform. For
some mobile applications, native development works best,
but in many cases, cross-platform is the best approach.
Let’s explore why.
When to Use Cross-Platform?
Determining which platform to use for mobile enablement
depends on the answers to several key questions:
• Does the mobility initiative involve a mission-critical
application that requires a highly customized user
interface to address complicated workflows or functions?
• Is the audience for the application limited to a specific
community of users?
• Does the organization currently restrict mobile device
usage to one standard platform and/or type of device?
• Are there staffing and/or budget concerns around
development and maintenance efforts?
An affirmative answer to all these questions would
point toward native development, which is well suited
to supporting the particular needs of more complex
applications and their users.
On the other hand, cross-platform development provides
an ideal solution for organizations looking to support a
wider audience of users by making their mobile applications
available across multiple devices and platforms, alike.
With this “build-once, deploy many” approach, they can
fully embrace BYOD policies, while decreasing related
development, maintenance, and operating costs.
Developing Cross-Platform Applications
Supporting Device-Specific Presentation
Achieving the best results from cross-platform development
requires business savvy and technical expertise. As
organizations enter the development stage, they should
review what they are trying to accomplish. For example,
rather than simply extending a web-based application, they
need to think of how the application could become more
interactive or what additional features it could provide to
serve as a new revenue channel or meet other goals by
adding “smartness” to the application.
When end users access a mobile application, they want
to obtain information and perform business transactions
as easily and productively as possible. Regular users of
Apple iOS and Google Android, as well as Blackberry and
Windows Phone and Windows Mobile for ruggedized devices,
expect consistency in the navigation and look-and-feel
of applications. To that end, cross-platform applications
should be designed to mimic that experience as closely as
possible within the confines of the specific device used for
presentation. This can be achieved by using CSS authoring
tools such as Sass and Compass, which provide style
sheets with multiple themes and branding. Incorporating
them into the design process ensures that the final
application will resemble what customers are used to seeing
and interacting with on their particular mobile device.
We helped one organization take advantage of this approach
by determining how it could improve its cargo portal service.
First, we examined the process used to book and track
cargo—identifying what manual data entry steps could be
removed from the process. Second, we mobile-enabled the
streamlined process and eliminated the need to work from a
fixed computer so that employees are more productive.
GPS, biometric, and camera technologies can also add
another layer of intelligence to mobile applications. This calls
for integrating them into a desired mobile device by building
an API on top of the mobile device platform using a plug-in
development method that leverages tools such as PhoneGap
to access configuration data from the device. Unisys has
provided these capabilities to several customers, including
one who requested a four-factor authentication process
(voice, face, GPS, and passcode) to support secure
online purchasing.
During this process, there are some design parameters
to keep in mind based on device type. For tablet-based
presentation, developers can take advantage of the larger
real estate to offer more functionality and potentially
improve the layout of workflows as available space permits.
Alternatively, smart phone-based presentation will require
a more streamlined user interface to support the same
overall function. The underlying application, which remains
the same, recognizes and calls the appropriate presentation
format based on the type of accessing device.
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Extending Long-Term Value and Use
People First Works
Agile development methodologies and other iterative
processes, such as Unisys Rational Unified Process (URUP),
help identify user requirements, speed development,
and create a roadmap for overall development efforts.
This includes defining the architecture to support future
mobile applications so that organizations can provide
the scalability, reliability, and availability required by their
anticipated workloads.
Mobile applications open up a world of opportunity. With the
right team and resources, organizations can make better
choices around the capabilities, platforms, and devices
needed to support mobile user requirements. And it’s this
user-centric approach that will help organizations meet their
strategic goals for enhanced service, greater productivity,
and business growth.
Provisions should also be made for regular automated
testing to uncover the impact of new mobile device software
releases on existing mobile-enabled applications that
support earlier versions. Monkey Talk is one open source
tool that can help developers with this specific task. It’s also
essential to test the ability of backend systems to easily
support the workloads generated by the mobile applications
with which they are integrated.
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About Unisys Mobility Apps Centers of
Excellence (CoE)
The Unisys Mobility Apps CoEs are innovation centers
focused on developing native as well as cross-platform
mobile apps. Our mission is to accelerate the adoption
of new technologies and modernize existing customer
applications. We offer end-to-end app development services,
beginning with solution roadmap and design, implementation
and publishing into app stores, to support and maintenance.
Our offerings are rooted in highly skilled mobility experts,
competitive pricing, and strong relationships with global
partners such as Apple, SAP, and Microsoft.
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For more information, e-mail info1@unisys.com or visit www.unisys.com
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