Vision from the Top 2013: Jan Aleman, Servoy

Which of the following current topics will significantly change the market in the next year? And what is the impact? (Business Intelligence/Analytics, Customer Engagement, Mobile, Security, or Social)

‘Mobile First’ strategies and ‘Cross Device Journeys’ are the areas where software companies are challenged. Mobile and portable devices, started by smartphones and tablets have been driving IT’s biggest disruption in the last 10 years. Mobile Banking is driving most of the innovation and adoption of ‘mission critical’ applications. In 2012 we have seen at the customers of larger sized banks that for the first time mobile usage exceeding the use of the desktop version of the same online banking application. Banks and business that have ‘mobili-fied’ there business are now optimizing customer journeys that roam over multiple devices; for example applying to an application through a desktop app, and tracking progress and providing additional information through a portable device while using the branch as the fulfillment center (still).

Both developers, security specialists, IT architect are challenged from application architecture, frontend and server technologies, the way APIs are exposed, but most of all the use cases have become agile. And the next frontier is business applications.

We are entering the second wave of mobile application that blends ‘single codebase’ deployments based on hybrid technology combined with a ‘person first strategy’ (besides mobile first, the needs of a user remain leading) that enhances the cross channel user experience, as we know it.

In a nutshell, ‘Mobile First’ means: design (and develop) an application for a portable device first, instead of traditionally making the mobile version a stripped down version of the initially developed desktop version.

Mobile applications require very different usage, development and deployment patterns. Interestingly they force us to grab the essence of the user interactions and make them fairly easy to use.

So when (and how) do we start? Should you go research for another year what to do? Most successful companies in mobile business applications ues the approach: Start today and start learning immediately. Of course your first apps won’t be perfect, deploy them to your loyal users (or friends and family first) and get their input to improve.

What's great about mobile apps is that they are ‘fit for purpose’; optimized for the job and mostly limited in functionality. There is a high probability that you can easily extend or reuse on what you already have: the more advanced mobile platforms will connect directly to your existing systems: both business logic and data.

Just some success factors that other companies have seen in the field:

1. start today
2. select an end to end platform that covers the full lifecycle of your application.
3. reuse the business logic and data you already have in your systems/
4. focus on user centric and process optimized applications
5. make sure the UX (User Experience) is top notch, and the app desirable
6. follow a ‘mobile first’ and ‘user-first’ strategy: when you start thinking about new functionality visualize how this would work on a mobile device, then build it first on mobile. You will find this will lead to great improvements in user experience on your desktop products
7. experiment with different pricing models; there is no golden standard for pricing but a lot of opportunities around. Try a few different models and see what works in your market and we have seen successfully in consumer markets.

This is an excerpt of a whitepaper that I have published on my blog that highlights success stories executed by ISVs that have adapted mobile technology in their business application domain. blog.servoy.com

This interview was published in SIIA's Vision from the Top, a Software Division publication released at All About the Cloud 2013.