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Top 5 Reasons Companies Need Mobile Application Management 

Feb 20, 2014 06:00 PM

 

 

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Mobility is a reality of today’s business environment. Look around and you’ll see people working on smartphones and tablets at coffee shops, on trains, planes and yes, even at their kids’ soccer games. While mobility is a boon for employee productivity, it has created security and management challenges for IT organizations.

Many companies turned to Mobile Device Management (MDM), expecting it to be a panacea for enterprise mobile security, only to find that relying solely on MDM was simply not enough. While MDM is important, there is more to an enterprise mobility strategy than just managing devices. Enter Mobile Application Management (MAM). Today, companies are broadening their mobile strategy to include developing, deploying, securing and managing mobile apps.

If you’re wondering whether you need to add MAM to your mobile strategy, here are five reasons why you should:

1.     It’s about the apps, people: For all the talk about mobile devices, the reality is that it’s about the apps. Mobile apps and the data they access are what drive mobile productivity and efficiency. Today’s tech savvy workforce isn’t waiting for IT to give them mobile apps either. Employees are increasingly using whatever apps they want for file sync and share, note taking, communication, and more to maximize their job performance. According to Forrester, 25% of employees globally are bringing their own mobile apps to make up for the missing apps they need to get their jobs done.[1]

2.     Protect corporate data, regardless of device ownership: Support for Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) is the new normal. However, companies are struggling with how best to secure corporate data on personally owned devices. According to Gartner, 20% of BYOD programs will fail because IT is trying to implement MDM solutions that are too restrictive. Restricting what users can do on their devices and threatening to wipe data – both corporate and personal – makes users leery. Instead, organizations are turning to mobility solutions that separate personal and corporate data, allowing IT to retain control of corporate data while leaving personal apps and data alone.

3.     Maintain user privacy: MAM protects employees from the enterprise. It sounds odd because so often the focus is on IT preventing corporate data from mixing with unauthorized personal apps. Yet, the reverse is also true. With MAM, personal apps and data stay personal. Employees, partners and consultants can rest easy knowing that corporate IT doesn’t have visibility or control over personal stuff. That’s also good for IT organizations, which don’t want the added liability and overhead of managing personal devices.

4.     Simplify the multi-platform headache: Today’s mobile device diversity is an IT management migraine. IDC research indicates that the enterprise device landscape continues to become increasingly fragmented with IT departments supporting multiple mobile operating systems.[2] These operating systems all provide different API interfaces and security management capabilities making it practically impossible to ensure consistent policies and controls. MAM solutions, like Symantec App Center, simplify this multi-platform headache by providing consistent security and management across the mix of devices, operating systems and ownership models within the enterprise.

5.     Expand mobility to the extended enterprise: Ultimately, mobility is about is about boosting mobile productivity and transforming business processes across the extended enterprise of employees, partners, suppliers, contractors/consultants and customers. However, for a variety of logistical and regulatory reasons, a device-based approach to mobile security just isn’t feasible. For example, consultants, suppliers and partners will not give your IT organization control over their tablets and smartphones. Only when apps and data can be protected and managed independent of device-level controls, can organizations broaden support to the entire enterprise and truly reap the benefits of mobility.

Today’s mobile business environment requires a holistic approach to security and management. A comprehensive mobile strategy extends beyond managing devices to protecting the apps and information.

 

[1] Workforce Personas and the Mobile App Gap, Forrester, November 2013

[2] The State of Mobile Devices within the Enterprise in 2013: An IDC Survey of Devices, Platforms, Decisions, and Deployments, June 2013

 

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Jan 12, 2017 03:36 PM

Businesses don’t need a mobile apps

 

It is a wide spread push around for a mobile first thinking. I am absolutely sure that for an offline brick and mortar type company the mobile first strategy should be very different from what some companies are trying to sell them.

What’s left is account tools and quick customer interaction. Businesses relying on sales of products which is competitive can not hope for people to install anything which will be selling them staff. That’s a wrong tactic. Getting sales pushes and knowing that there is somebody around to help just in case is a totally different approach and a way to build trust.

History repeats itself? Years ago websites were built for no other purpose as to have it. Only then came the knowledge of how to make it useful, how to promote it, what to publish there etc. In our mobile century businesses get many offers to built their own mobile applications, in fact there is even an MLM pyramid type company selling the same mobile app to businesses like butchers and sex shops by changing pictures and button names. Not kidding! But there is a great difference between a mobile application and a web site. Businesses putting any hopes into mobile apps are to be disappointed as they never were with a website.

Mobile phone is an intimate space

It is simultaneously a source of opportunity and of a great problem. There is such an amount of articles and studies describing what can go wrong, so it makes no sense to repeat anything. Smart phone screen space is the most intimate electronic channel and people only let in those dear to them. The results – 95% of mobile apps are used once-twice until a farewell, making app creation and support a financial burden and a risk. For most causes other then making an app a virtual business of its own.

Often businesses’ attempts to make the app more “useful” by adding even less sense in a form of news or Facebook/Twitter feeds and developers gladly fulfill this useless task. But do you think people really want YOUR news, want to “really listen, instead of just waiting for their turn to speak”? – © Fight Club. Of course, some die-hard fans do, plus friends and family.

As more and more people consider a mobile service a 21st century norm of life, a paradox gaining grounds:  “Yes, please”, - they would like to have that instant mobile convenience everywhere. But, “Oh, no”, - they will think twice before letting you in by installing anything. Don’t take our word for it, find a Google’s take on this – instant and progressive apps.

Competing with specialized apps makes no sense

There is a team of overpaid professionals behind many of them with the daily task of kicking the competition. No wonder that only 200 mobile apps, out of a whooping 1.6 million of official app store count, own more then 70% of eyeballs time.

 

Don’t recreate anything that “Pro Apps Club” already has. If you goal is to complement your current real world operations with mobility then stop at that! Make it short, concise and clear. Make your mobile front office for customers into a “one-glance actionable dashboard”. Show them all the important current info, like payments due, days left, orders in progress, and let them act upon it.

Business must be findable on a smart phone, not in browser.

Average person already uses 27 apps, so if your business’s app has a low chance of being on “A” list, then you should be aiming at something else. Think of good “education” – it is not just about remembering everything, but more about knowing where to quickly look anything up.

Do what you have done before with web search – make sure people have many ways of quickly finding you and getting serviced right away. Only this time it should be smart phone centric. If 50-70% of online search is done from a smart phone, then the only thing you should think about is how to preempt a browser search and be instantly found by your customer.

Solution for real life business is a mobile front office, not just a mobile app.

The same unified front office should be everywhere at once. It is the only way to reach as many people as possible. Some will let you into their intimate home screen space by putting your icon there, some will prefer a mobile instant messenger chat bot, others a services oriented ServiceBook, yet many will still access you from a browser or just save your contact with an access link.

Easy right? All you need now is up to 10 different IT systems and 3-5 people! Or you can use Mobsted App Maker – the only do-it-yourself cloud solution in the world that can do all that at once. 

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