10 Steps to Mobile Application Implementation

Interested in developing Mobile Sales Force or Mobile Field Service Application? First time implementing a mobile application? Don't be intimidated. By following a logical sequence of steps gained from observing many mobile projects, you can reduce potential missteps and wasted time and resources.

1) Process Needs and Gap Analysis.
What's the project all about? Have you done a "voice of the customer" analysis to identify what specific pain mobile needs to address? The first step in any mobile initiative is to undertake a thorough process analysis that determines where the business is operationally, and where it wants to go to meet performance objectives. Only then can a meaningful discussion about mobile technology's role in getting a company from current state (AS-IS) to future state (TO-BE) take place. Questions to address as specific areas for mobile enablement are considered include:

• Is the information associated with the job function time-sensitive?
• Would converting to a mobile environment make the staff more productive?
• Will it reduce the cost of operation or increase customer satisfaction?

If it accomplishes these goals, then move forward.

2) Feasibility Study.
The next step is to make a more detailed value analysis of introducing mobile apps to supplement or replace existing enterprise applications. This analysis should specifically examine internal costs, current expenditures (for instance, on communication resources and information technology), and provide a detailed cost scenario of what would happen with the introduction of the mobile strategy.

3) Cost Justification.
A mobile application initiative cannot be implemented without a thorough understanding of the financial and business milestones that a company is striving to meet. With the Needs/Gap Analysis and Feasibility Study completed, it is a good idea to get key players in Finance to develop a strict return-on-investment (ROI) analysis. The goal of this step is to assess: What is the opportunity cost of spending valuable resources on this project as opposed to other projects in the portfolio? This will be one of the most important elements in justifying the project internally.

4) Senior Executive Buy-in.
Is mobile technology part of your business strategy? Do you want to use it as a channel to provide great service to customers? Strategic initiatives cannot be realistically pursued-or even funded-without steadfast support from the executive suite. The degree to which a strategic mobile data initiative is successful, or fully implemented, can be traced to the level of commitment that exists with VP and C-level executives. The goal of this step is to make sure that senior management is convinced that this initiative will add value?

5) Pick a Pilot Project and Interdisciplinary Project Team.
Mobile initiatives can range from enterprise wide to automating a task to test the waters. It is important to minimize the scope of the project if you are doing this for the first time. Make sure that you have a team that reflects the strategic commitment made to the project. It should not only consist of the technology staffs, but also include operations, finance, and line of business managers who will be affected by the rollout. The interplay between team members with different backgrounds and perspectives will not only help solve problems, but also introduce innovative benefits that were not identified in previous analyses.

6) Detailed Requirements.
Requirements analysis asks the simple question: what's the pilot all about? This involves going through the following steps:

• Requirements Definition -- User profiles are essential to mobile application design. If users are inexperienced it creates all sorts of problems for the designers and developers of information and software systems. The key is to understand the challenges that the users present to the design and development team before major design decisions are made.
• Requirements Analysis -- Look at the interrelationships among requirements, the relative importance of requirements -- (nice to have) or (must have), and implementation costs. Once requirements have been assessed with reference to costs it's possible to rank-order them. This requires you to assess whether the requirements are of high, medium or low importance.
• Requirements Modeling - Next model requirements using use cases, data flow diagrams, entity relationship diagrams, and integration models. We also use static screen displays and interactive prototypes.

Finally make sure that you have a requirements change management process. All it requires is an agreement that new requirements will be assessed according to their expected impact upon on the existing schedule and budget. If there's evidence to suggest that the impact will be substantial (more than 5%), then the requirements definition, analysis and modeling process should be re-run.

7) Technology Partners.
Pick the technology partners whose products and services will support the end-to-end process very carefully. There are three basic categories of partners: network providers, hardware platform providers and software/application providers. Most companies should choose the software provider first because application integration is of paramount importance. In selecting hardware providers, consider the mix of technology that is going to be needed to optimize the work force. The sales team, for instance, might need mobile access from laptops that double as sales presentation platforms, while the field service team needs a more compact and rugged PDA to address their mobile computing and communications requirements. Network decisions will be derived from these two technology decisions. Ideally, companies want to have access that is ubiquitous, regardless of the device platform.

8) Implementation Plan and Rollout Schedule.
The implementation phase of a rollout is an immense logistical monster. There is an almost infinite set of variables to be tracked during the process. Among the questions to keep in mind during this stage of the project:

• How can the system be implemented in the least disruptive way possible?
• How long will it take for applications to be built?
• How long will a third-party application developer or the internal people take to load the software into the hardware?

First, before beginning a project it's important to have all requirements in place as well as the technical implementation details nailed down. The fewer the changes the smoother the project during execution.

9) Usability Testing and Pilot Stage.
Picking the right pilot site to test and work out usability, technical and operational glitches is critical to the success of a strategic rollout. The pilot environment must be rigorous and robust-it must support a proportional amount of traffic and run the broad array of applications that will be supported by the enterprise mobile data system.

10) Rollout and Management.
By the time the rollout begins, there should be a critical mass of players within the organization that have a vested interest in the success of the initiative. The project team must have systems in place to get feedback on problems, and a rapid response team to get out and resolve issues promptly so that the enterprise at large does not lose faith in the initiative.

Once the mobile application is rolled out, it is time to plan the next version. To help in strategic planning regular feedback meetings should be held to explore new ways to leverage the technology, business processes and human resources to improve service to internal or external customers. This "voice of the customer" exercise is invaluable in developing a useful application that exceeds the initial estimated ROI.

Bottom-Line
Mobile enterprise applications are an idea whose time has come. Analysts and pundits predicted that mobile Internet was on the verge of taking off. Now, there's no denying it.