The Cloud and other forces – Climate change, or just the weather?
I’ve been having trouble getting a handle on the relationships between the nexus of forces / third platform themes of social media, mobility, big data, analytics, and the cloud…
I’ve been having trouble getting a handle on the relationships between the nexus of forces / third platform themes of social media, mobility, big data, analytics, and the cloud…
With all the talk of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service models, businesses are increasingly questioning their continued use of on-premises and […]
The use of mobile business intelligence (BI) as a framework to enable faster, better-informed decision making continues to expand as the technology advances and more users become mobile ready. Whether you’re planning a project for a business app or developing a strategy, it’s critical to gauge your mobile BI app’s readiness for a complete mobile user experience.
Here are five must-have features that are critical to delivering a complete mobile BI experience.
Successful mobile business intelligence (BI) solutions demand a mobile mindset. When we design for mobile BI, we aren’t just building a report or a dashboard. We’re designing to deliver a superior mobile user experience each and every time. This means we need to consider all facets of user interactions and take a holistic approach when dealing with all aspects of the “mobile user life cycle”. This life cycle starts before installation and does not end after the mobile asset is downloaded and consumed.
Whether you’re planning a project for a mobile business app or developing a mobile business intelligence (BI) strategy, it’s critical to gauge your users’ overall mobile readiness. Even though sales of mobile devices continue to increase, some mobile users show chronic use of PC-era habits.
Yes, the mobile savvy Millennial Generation is taking the workforce by storm, but they don’t necessarily represent the largest portion of business users. Mobile-ready users, on the other hand, will display at least some of the following characteristics.
I am often amazed to discover that the lack of communication in technology projects stems not from a lack of resources but from wrong assumptions made about what’s perceived to be communication as part of a mobile business intelligence (BI) strategy. Just as we know that social media analytics isn’t just about counting Facebook likes or Twitter tweets, we should know that in mobile BI an announcement e-mail along with an attached instruction document alone isn’t synonymous with communication. When developing a mobile BI strategy, you must consider all facets of communication—that includes not only multiple channels but also different formats. Moreover, you must pay attention to both quality (effectiveness) and quantity (volume and frequency) of the content to ensure its maximum effectiveness.
When people think of support activities, they typically consider the post-Go-Live time frame. I believe support—in a holistic view—starts before you Go Live. Whether we’re doing beta testing or entering the UAT phase, we’re already interacting with real users, or at least, we should be. This is an important opportunity to test not only your support infrastructure, but also your rollout documentation and any other artifacts that will supplement your support strategy.
As a best practice, you want to include as many of the real users of your mobile platform as possible. Moreover, for multi-audience solutions, you want to include as many roles and regions as feasible. In mobile BI, this could mean different regions to ensure different networks, local customizations, and so on are tested and validated.
When I bring up talent management as part of a mobile business intelligence strategy, I’m often met with that “deer caught in the headlights” look. I realize that talent management is typically used in the context of human resources, but I also see it playing an important part in the development of a mobile BI strategy. As with any technology project, in mobile BI we need to effectively manage three basic resources: technology (hardware, software, network), processes (business or technical), and people. Of the three, I believe talent is the most important one that we need to get right the first time.
When the term design is used in mobile business intelligence (BI), it often refers to the user interface (UI). However, when I consider the question of design in developing a mobile BI strategy, I go beyond what a report or dashboard looks like. As I wrote in a previous post, when designing a mobile BI solution we need to consider all facets of user interactions and take a holistic approach in dealing with all aspects of the user experience. Here are three areas of design to consider when developing a mobile BI strategy.
Do you have all three layers of mobile BI security covered: device, app, and data? All of the convenience and benefits of mobile devices provide a particular security risk, complicating matters for the technology managers. When we think about the three layers of security in mobile BI, each layer plays an equally important role. Moreover, each layer represents a specific component of a user’s access profile. Therefore, it’s vital not only to understand how each layer completes the security picture, but also to make sure they work in tandem.