Mobile enablement in Digital age

Gone are the days when we used to carry big fat wallet filled with cash, coins, multiple credit cards, business cards, travel tickets, movie tickets, personal notes, papers with names, numbers and the list can go on.

Mobile technologies have transformed the way we live, work, learn, travel, shop, and stay connected. More than 80% of time is spent on non-voice activities.

The rapid growth in Mobility, Big data, IoT and Cloud computing technologies has changed market dynamics in every industry and is changing customer behavior. Digital Transformation has become the norm.

Mobile is spearheading this transformation by putting businesses on the move and by connecting the enterprises with customers, partners, employees and machines.

Businesses are fast realizing that they need to offer their customers cutting-edge mobile applications that will help them engage with the brand and its services, in near real-time.

Some innovative use of mobiles in digitization:

• Payments - NFC payments, Biometric payments using finger scans, facial recognition, voice recognition, retina based check. Major players in this space are PayPal, Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay etc.
• Virtual or digital currency
• Tsunami of Apps from Google maps, to zomato helping us throughout the day
• Retailers can use targeted mobile campaigns for customer acquisition, retention
• Live streaming apps like Meerkat and Periscope delivering targeted content to site-specific users which benefits both the consumer and the creator.

Impact of mobile enablement:

• With mobile enablement, a merchant can enhance your payment experience and boost operational efficiency
• Real time communicating with the customer, can be greatly enhanced through mobile enablement. Businesses can quickly respond to customer complaints or questions through social media, or the apps
• By analyzing the data generated by mobiles using Big data Analytics, businesses can give personalized experience to consumers
• Digital assistants like Google Now, Siri are helping everyone

Here are some well-known industry examples:

• Starbucks processes over 8 million mobile transactions each week, this data of mobile user behavior to customer preferences, is then analyzed by a team of data scientists for insights.
• Coca Cola is using mobile apps for field sales folks, equipment service teams and knowledge workers and commercials like get free coke on mobile
• The emergence of hyper-local startups like Jugnoo, Zopper, Grofers and PepperTap using mobile first strategy
• Virgin Atlantic, Bank of America, Delta, Chipotle have their industry leader apps for fantastic customer experience

As the penetration of smartphones and internet is increasing with 5G and beyond, along with the changing shopping behaviors, the mobile revolution is here to stay and impact the Digital Transformation further.