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M-Business: The Race to Mobility
Preface
Fortune is like the market, where many times, if you can stay a little, the price will fall.
—Francis Bacon
The twentieth century is a distant memory. The e-commerce hype has barely subsided, and the media, venture capitalists, and stock markets have already moved on to the mobile Internet. Everywhere you turn—newspapers, magazines, television, even the sides of city buses—you encounter debate about mobile business (or m-business). With the countless mobile scenarios being envisioned, managers have to correctly evaluate trends, avoid faddish solutions, and sort through the many options available to them. Indeed, accurate judgment of the short- and long-term value of the multitude of offerings requires careful consideration, a keen eye, and informed skepticism.
The most challenging question confronting business executives tasked with keeping their companies competitive is not “Is mobile business going to happen?”; it’s “What form is it going to take and how do we use the technology to continuously innovate and improve?” At first glance, m-business can seem like yet another buzzword. But if you look closer, you’ll find there is a significant difference: M-business is not a business fad tied to a single method or strategy, but rather the next step in the technology curve. It is simply a way for improved customer interaction and new operational efficiencies. It builds on all the investments in e-business.
M-business, like many so-called revolutions, offers the spectacle of a succession of companies, products, and even industries getting their few minutes of fame and then fading away. It’s like riding a roller-coaster as technologies, consumer tastes, financial conditions, and competition change ever more quickly. It seems that the mobile environment is changing faster and becoming more uncertain with each turbulent day, and questions are emerging from everywhere. In this high-risk environment, the need for a cogent roadmap that can help navigate through the chaos and anticipate the next change is very obvious.
What This Book Is About
Why this book? Why now? Most of the discussion about the mobile Internet is about consumer applications—portals, instant messaging, or streaming media. The implications of mobility on enterprise solutions—customer-facing, employee-facing and supplier-facing—have not been explored in detail. This is a significant gap as the mobile Internet moves from a “toy” to a “tool” in its evolution.
M-business, not m-commerce, is the focus of this book. Most C-level executives are grappling with the following questions as they think about the future: Is m-business for real? What application scenarios are most promising? How can existing multi-million dollar investments in ERP and CRM solutions be leveraged? What new solutions can be built on the emerging mobile platforms that will have a positive return on investment (ROI)?
Also, a core strategic question facing many companies: What comes after e-business? If “m” comes after “e,” how do they relate? It seems intuitively obvious that e-business is evolving from a PC-centric model to a multi-device, multi-channel, and mobile model (m-business). But what is not so obvious is how the current landscape of enterprise applications will evolve and where the opportunities are in the near and long term. What new value propositions will companies look to create in their never-ending quest to become more competitive and customer-focused? How can companies further improve internal operations and employee processes? These questions form the basis for this book.
The goal of M-Business: The Race to Mobility is to provide a business perspective of the m-business landscape that is insightful and useful for managers. Our goal in this book is to dispel mobile myths that are causing companies to waste billions of dollars creating poorly conceived solutions. This is not a technical manual; plenty of other books cover the nuances of 3G broadband, mobile protocols, and new programming languages. This book will, however, help anyone understand the basics of m-business and how it should be applied.
The focus of this book is practical: helping senior management plan for and manage m-business investments. In our mission to demystify m-business, we hope to provide a complete picture of what’s behind the m-business innovation cycle; discussion of how different companies are developing go-to-market strategies; and insights and examples from real companies. At the same time, our goal is to provide a flexible framework for thinking about m-business that you can apply to your business context.
Who Should Read This Book
This book’s timeliness and insights into the structural changes in enterprise solutions make it useful to a broad audience:
- Senior management and strategic planners charged with developing business strategies
- Consultants helping corporate executives shape their companies’ competitive future
- Information technology managers leading their teams with strategic decisions
This book is a must-read for all managers, consultants, entrepreneurs, and business school students who have been discussing and reading about the mobile revolution and who are interested in knowing how they can capitalize on the next wave of business innovation.
How This Book Is Organized
Chapter 1 describes the emergence of mobile as a new variable affecting business. We discuss the lessons learned from e-commerce and also lay out the structure of the mobile marketplace. Chapter 2 describes the broad trends that are driving the mobile economy. A framework for thinking about the mobile landscape is presented in Chapter 3.
Chapters 4 through 9 explore the various elements in the mobile framework. The goal is to identify clear, rational, strategic design choices that are responsive to evolving customer and employee needs. Each chapter describes the various business scenarios in which mobile applications are useful.
The last chapter is prescriptive, focusing on the challenges of becoming mobile by describing the design process and explaining how to undertake it. In today’s business environment, the stakes are high and failure is swift. How an organization mobilizes itself into constructive action will determine its ultimate success.
Finally, if there is one thing that should become clear beyond a shadow of a doubt as you read through this book, it is that fundamental structural changes in technology, business applications, and competition are taking place. Mobile business is moving from the fringe to the mainstream. Although many of us are not quite prepared mentally to deal with yet another technology wave, we must. Our customers and companies will demand it, and we will need to respond. So buckle up and get ready for another roller-coaster ride!
Acknowledgments
We have learned much through our research, speaking, consulting, and executive education engagements and extend thanks to the many people to whom we have talked—in particular, Peter Zencke, Peter Wesche, Howard Beader, Dave Robbins, Dan Pantaleo, Keith Wright, Alan Tripp, Shirish Netke, Philip Bernosky, Macy Andrews, Hemant Taneja, Gary Rohr, Vipanj Patel, Larry Roshfeld, Nagesh Vempaty, Fred Tanzella, Richard Welke, Diyakar Pushkoor, and Ananth Rao.
Thanks to the many people at McGraw-Hill who made this book possible—in particular, our editor, Michelle Williams, whose enthusiasm for this book was contagious. To Keith Gribble, thank you for your patience and expertise in editing our book. At e-Business Strategies, we thank Pavan Gundepudi for his help. And finally, thanks to all our family and friends, in particular Lynn Lorenc for her friendship and advice.
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