BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

What's Missing in Enterprise Mobility? Context.

Following
This article is more than 9 years old.

Many companies miss what is different about mobile. One critical difference is that mobile provides essential data sources and functionality for creating of contextual services. These contextual services are derived by combining data from internal resources, third-party accessible data sources (e.g. reviews, mapping data, and weather data) with sensor data from mobile and IoT devices (e.g. location, vibration, motion). Most of our existing PC based processes weren’t designed to collect and act on data from such a diverse set of resources.

As companies convert existing PC apps into mobile apps, the apps team focuses on location-enabled communications and services, which are the low hanging fruit of contextual information. Leading companies are using location to tailor the type and timing of communications based on knowing if the user is at home, in the mall, at the office, or at a customer’s site. Location is just the first of many types of contextual data that a company should be using as it builds its mobile services. Specifically, companies should also be looking at other types of context such as:

  • Time: Creating an optimal experience frequently requires understanding the time of day. An individual may desire different services or communications based on the time of day. Companies can employ time data in conjunction with other contextual data, such as an individual’s previous behaviors, to understand the optimal type of communication and the optimal time to deliver it. Another dimension of time is based on providing the right information or service at the optimal moment. I call this a right-time experience, which provides a person with the right information, at the right moment, on their device of choice.  The optimal time for a communication or service relates to reacting to a change in situation (context). Truckers can use real-time traffic data in applications to reduce the time they spend in traffic, waiting for an open loading dock, and being on the road.
  • Current Process and Action. By understanding the users current process, a company can determine the proper flow of a transaction. If you have defined the most likely scenarios where a consumer is trying to accomplish a task (e.g. purchase a product, log an expense), IT can design a mobile application that highlights what information may be most valuable in the context of completing that process or action.
  • Device Type, Device State, and Presence. Mobile fundamentally changes the way companies should build its apps and web sites. Both should adapt to the user’s device and the quality of the network. The software should automatically adjust how it presents the information based on the screen size and what navigation methods (touch, voice, gesture) are available. The app should understand how to respond when there's a momentary lapse of connectivity. Given that people will be moving around with more than one connected device, device presence will highlight what a person is using at that moment. Presence will span across devices to include nontraditional devices such as cars, wearables, conference rooms, and videoconferencing equipment.
  • Environmental Conditions. Many of today’s connected devices have embedded sensors that will provide environmental conditions to context-aware applications and services. The trick is to design applications to collect and use various types of environmental context, such as air quality, temperature, humidity, and weather forecast. For example, a transportation company can use sensors in trucks to ensure the delivery of fresh produce on time by monitoring temperature and humidity during the delivery process. consumers and many industries such as utilities, manufacturing and healthcare will use connected sensors to improve their lives.
  • Motion. Motion is heavily utilized in the digital fitness domain, but is equally relevant in enterprise mobility. Motion can be used to define how an experience should proceed. For example, if you are driving, you're conferencing system can automatically switch to handsfree mode and allow you to launch a conference call or navigate an app with voice prompts. Many devices also come with magnetometers and accelerometers to provide information for direction and orientation. Companies can use this data to monitor corporate asset health and improve service uptime. For example, companies can use motion sensors in machinery to monitor equipment health and prevent unplanned outages. The wireless connections enable companies to transmit sensor data and alerts to headquarters to schedule maintenance.

These are just a few examples of the wealth of contextual data that is available to us today from mobile and IoT devices. There are many other sources of publicly available data, such as traffic conditions and reviews, that could also be used to enhance business processes as well. However, companies need to design next generation mobile apps with context in mind or all this opportunity will be laid to waste.