Mobile has been picked up by businesses. However, it didn’t come in through the processes most of us thought it would. The IT-industry tried for years to sell mobile solutions to accelerate internal processes. Field service, sales support, and logistics support were main target processes.
The industry did succeed in getting a few successful projects in place, but from an overview perspective nothing really happened in ten years. That’s all changed now, and it was the apps that brought business attention to mobile. Here are some thoughts on the whys and whats.
  • apps are facing the client, ie they are externally facing
  • externally facing technology can drive revenue and brand recognition
  • buyers of externally facing technology is most often sales and marketing teams
  • sales and marketing teams have bigger budgets than service teams
  • apps weren’t an option until apple showed how app distribution should work
  • process of acceptance of mobile solutions is similar to what we saw in internet solutions (first external web site, then internal intranet)
The irony is that in all this customer facing app frenzy, I am hearing more and more:
Well, if can do this for our customers, can’t we accelerate field service too!?
Yes, we can because now we’re coming from the right place. From customer facing first, to internally facing second. My only advice is: don’t go internal before you’ve done your first successful customer facing app.