Decode Your Enterprise Mobile Strategy In 6 Simple Questions

Every enterprise will benefit from a unique mobile strategy. Understand how you can have all the information needed to define a mobile strategy through 6 simple questions.

“What is the mobile strategy which fits my business like a glove?” that’s the booming question in the board rooms of every enterprise, both big and small. This comes in the wake of companies realizing that mobile is the consumer’s most preferred medium. A simple way to understand mobile’s impact is to check the percentage of traffic that your website derives from mobile.

Despite the mantra that the consumer is the undisputed king, it is interesting to note that only 16% of companies worldwide have a mobile strategy in place. A majority of these companies are still optimizing their website for mobile, and most of those still approach mobile in a piecemeal, tactical way, rather than utilizing it to transform their businesses.

There is no one master blue-print that works for mobile strategy. Every enterprise faces different challenges, including digital value propositions, mobile’s affect on purchase decisions, internal processes, current IT infrastructure and investments, mobile knowledge and capabilities and the business’s vision. In this article, I ask you six crucial questions. If you are an enterprise with no mobile strategy so far, this will be a great place to start. If you have a enterprise mobile strategy already defined, then these might make you question it.

1. Who are your mobile consumers?

Let’s begin with the most important person in your mobile universe: the user/ consumer. What are the device usage behaviors exhibited by your target audience? If they are highly tech-savvy, then you can win them over with the hottest mobile technologies. If they are digital migrants who have just switched to mobile, then it would be wise to aide them with a gradual transition. Understanding your consumer’s intent and the context in which mobile will be preferred over the web and a real-world interaction is also crucial.

2. What are your business objectives?

In most cases, mobile always follows the business and technical strategies of an enterprise. This could drastically affect your ROI against your allocated budget for mobile. Since, mobile has acquired the cult status of “the first screen” in your user’s life, it is only logical for your enterprise to move it up the strategy ladder. If you are looking to cross-sell your products through partnerships, mobile can help you create that alternate channel, in a more cost-effective and attractive way. If your business objective is to alter the frequency of user-engagement, then mobile provides a broad spectrum of options, ranging from trivia to engagement. If you are competing with a better product, then mobile provides you with options like Augmented Reality and gamification, which can make your product interaction more innovative.

3. Do you have your business-case ready?

It is difficult to understand the effectiveness of any strategy until it is out in the real world. But, a business-case is the next best thing to a real-world application; it helps you understand the relevance of your mobile strategy for your current position. Take a look at the changing landscapes of device-usage and the competition. Decipher which mobile strategy will take you ahead, apply it to your business or process. There, you have your business case ready!

4. How will your customer engage with you via mobile?

Often, in my practice, I’ve observed people hit the research bar with a vengeance to identify applications similar to the one they want to build. While one application would have worked wonders for an enterprise, based on their business needs, the same might not apply to your organization.

The best way to decode this is to create a user-flow. Placing yourself in your consumer’s shoes and understanding how you will interact with your own brand, via mobile, is all that you need to capture. Will you prefer mobile for information or purchase or loyalty or entertainment? Will you want a regular engagement or well spaced-out engagement? Do you utilize mobile to complete all your actions or is mobile the support medium in a particular process? Integrating mobile seamlessly with the customer’s engagement behavior will ensure that your mobile strategy is well-accepted.

5. Are your stakeholders in line with the mobile vision?

In order to achieve the maximum impact, it is necessary to build a consensus for a top-down mobile agenda. A mobile task force, even with the highest proven efficiency, cannot execute a company’s mobile agenda without board-room support. Think about how many stakeholders within the organization are threatened by a new mobile presence. While there is a formula to project conversions in smaller enterprises, the only way to solve this challenge in larger organizations is to align the stakeholders with the mobile vision or involve only select stakeholders who are open to a single mobile agenda and introduce mobile only for their processes.

6. Do you have your ‘execution strategy’ in place?

Since your enterprise will forge an association with a mobile partner based on the execution compatibility, all of the questions boil down to executing the mobile strategy. Would your enterprise benefit from collaborating with a design agency and a development hub, or would you want to outsource mobility to a single-window partner? Would a group of freelancers working out of your office give you better control? Have your execution strategy so that you exactly know who you would prefer working with!

The bottom-line: Just like every human has a distinct fingerprint, every enterprise will have a unique mobile strategy. These questions do not help you with deciphering your strategy completely, but in my experience, these questions, accelerate the process in a way that will benefit both your organization and your consumer.

Source for Statistics: Survey conducted by CMO Council