We know the customer is king (Part 1). And that in order to compete in today’s marketplace, organizations everywhere are looking to differentiate themselves through a mobile experience that provides customers access to personalized services when and where they want them (Part 2).  Hey, it’s good to be the king.

But how do you make this all work?  Is all you need to do is walk down to your IT shop and have them crank out a really fancy app with all the bells and whistles and the customers will come beating down your mobile door?  Not exactly.  Organizations are realizing that mobile apps alone are not enough.

Some of you who have been around the block a few times may remember a time before the Internet (a time that was truly the dark ages).  And if you do, you remember how the internet and eBusiness changed everything.  It provided the opportunity to re-invent business models, to streamline operations and for new competitors to enter the marketplace.  It led to a transformation of industries, one where the winners leveraged the Internet to re-invent how they delivered services to customers and the losers used the internet as just another channel to convey the same old information.  The winners revolutionized industries….the losers disappeared (anyone out there bought an encyclopedia recently?).

The only difference between the Internet revolution and the mobile revolution is that mobile is happening at a much faster pace.  But the same principles apply.  You can use mobile capabilities to transform your business or you can drift off into oblivion. 

The first thing you have to recognize is that mobile provides an opportunity to re-evaluate how you operate and how you deliver services.  If you try to align mobile apps on top of your current business processes you are going to fail.  81% of leading organizations already recognize that Mobile is changing how they do business.  And if that is the case you need to be able to transform your business processes in order to keep up.

And Forrester Research Inc. has noted a similar trend as they expect the global spend on engagement services to outpace that spent on app development services by 32%.  What that means is organizations will be spending more money transforming their business around mobile than developing apps.  It is a recognition that just like eBusiness; mobile business is more about the business than it is about the mobile.  And that is a huge epiphany. 

So now that you know what has to happen, how do you get there?  Check out my next blog in a few days to see how we can use mobile to transform your business.

To learn more visit our Smarter Process and MobileFirst website or reach out to your IBM representative.

Or contact me via email, twitter, Linkedin or post a comment to this blog.