Mobile Analytics A guide to getting started

Business on the go Convergence of business, time, freedom, and pleasure has never been better. However, not long ago, these were mutually exclusive. It is no longer necessary to conduct business sitting behind a desk. You can mix in a little fun while measuring performance, and all this can be done at any time. Increasingly, at many organizations, people from the top down are on the go often globally to make the business run smoothly. Ten years ago, laptops, coupled with Wi-Fi access, were a boon to mobile productivity. Business travelers when they could find a connection and a place to sit could gain access to some business intelligence and analytics functionality. However, with the rise in the number and types of mobile gadgets, laptops have been joined in the carry-ons and briefcases of many business travelers by smart devices such as tablet computers and smartphones. Increasingly, business people especially executives are demanding the ability to perform meaningful analytics activities from their mobile devices. Their reasoning? It is along the lines of If I can play fantasy football and analyze and make stock market trades from my smartphone or tablet, I should be able to run my analytics tools too. It is hard to argue with that logic. With the increase in performance and capacity of smart devices, and with the new breed of analytics software that has hit the market in the last five years, it has become easier to adapt even the most sophisticated analytics applications to run on mobile platforms. Now, these busy executives and salespeople can have their analytics capabilities embedded right along with their fantasy football on their mobile devices. However, there are some bumps in the road to the full implementation of mobile analytics (MA). The vendor environment is changing fast, and everyone seems to have the killer app. This leaves a great deal of uncertainty as to which major players if any will continue to dominate the market. To address this situation, adaptability is a key in determining which and how many vendors companies will choose for their MA implementation. The other snag is the all-too-frequent human tendency to get blinded by sophisticated technology and choose tools and applications for their cool factor rather than how well they meet the needs of the business. To prevent this, the business side of the house should lead the process of selecting MA capabilities and defining the needs that are to be met. In other words, any adoption of MA technologies must be predicated upon how well those technologies fit the business and how well these are integrated to the enterprise information infrastructure. Even though a clich, all that glitters may not be gold. Why MA? Freedom and power Before any MA applications and technologies are chosen, it is wise to define the expected benefits that can be gained from an MA implementation. It is easy to start the building process before fully understanding the benefits and making a solid business case for MA to the C-Suite. However, it is critical to define the business case so that expectations can be managed and delivered appropriately. First, MA can help companies free their analytics capabilities and the knowledge its workers and executives need from the confines of an office. This allows for analysis on the go without the need to be in a particular location, such as near a Wi-Fi connection (or a chair, for that matter). With this capability, companies gain flexibility and agility. Instead of trying to solve problems from a desk, they can be out on location to detect, analyze, and begin to solve business problems more quickly, thus moving from a reactive to a proactive management style and meeting the needs of the business and the customer more quickly and effectively.

Mobility also facilitates executive mind share where ideas do not have to wait until executives are actually in the C-Suite to be shared and explored. To be sure, while most executives have had laptops for some time, these are beginning to seem big and bulky. Even the time to start or shutdown a laptop is beginning to seem like a burden and increasing numbers of already busy professionals are ditching constant use of their laptops in favor of mobile devices for doing many tasks. Analytics should be and can be added to that task mix. With MA, executives can use their mobile devices to quickly and seamlessly share their ideas any place, at any time. Finally, and obviously, MA is designed to increase productivity of the workforce. This is a direct corollary to the benefits above. With an increasingly mobile workforce including executives that travel extensively there is a critical need to be productive away from the office. Executives must also stay in touch with their far-flung networks to be productive. With the implementation of MA, downtime is decreased and productivity increased because there is instantaneous access to powerful analytics information to share knowledge, understand problems, and take action without having to stop and find a place to connect or conduct a face-to-face meeting. Functionality requirements for MA There is no one-size-fits-all tool or technique that will enable companies to achieve all of the benefits discussed above. However, there are some toolset features and criteria that, if met, can help companies select the toolset and platform that most effectively meet their needs. It perhaps goes without saying that any MA toolset must integrate seamlessly with a companys overall analytics infrastructure. The toolset chosen should not require the organization to build and maintain extensive MA infrastructure or to re-author applications for separate mobile devices. It should allow for application building across popular mobile platforms. It should connect to back-end data sources while helping users take advantage of native mobile device behaviors, such as scrolling, touch screen technology, speech recognition, and global positioning systems to navigate menus and reports and take action on issues they encounter in the field. Another critical feature of any MA toolset chosen is the ability to customize applications to workforce and rolebased needs. Executives will not have the same information or functionality requirements as salespeople, technicians, or even midlevel managers. Any MA toolset should be able to accommodate a wide-ranging set of functionality, including the ability to view and work with historical and summary data in detail as well as the ability to pull down and explore real-time data that is critical to identifying and solving problems quickly in the field. For example, an executive might want a 360-degree view of customers, suppliers, and key performance indicators at a glance in

a dashboard format so that potential problems can be dealt with before they become major revenue-impacting issues. Midlevel managers might want access to project timelines and details, while line managers might want to scan inventory for appropriate stock levels or to monitor customer complaint data. Almost every user groups needs are different, and the MA toolset should accommodate those needs. Simply putting data out there for mobile-device access by a variety of users is not enough. It is essential that MA applications be easy to use and intuitive. Users should not have to squint to read data or browse through multiple screens to get a big picture of the data. Instead, the toolset chosen to implement MA should allow for automatic formatting of downloaded data for viewing on the mobiledevice screen, and it should facilitate the creation of a simple and intuitive interface. In this same vein, the toolset should support the creation of mobile applications with significant flexibility in how it can be used so that mobile users can access, run, and interact with reports in the same way that they would if they were using a laptop or desktop at the office. The mobile application should have the same functionality as the corporate application within the constraints of technology and budget. The data should also be dynamic. Users should have access to real-time corporate data not just canned or pre-run reports in a dashboard format that facilitates effective knowledge discovery and timely action. Finally, any MA toolset chosen should have sophisticated, reliable security features, both at the device and transmission level. The very nature of mobile computing opens the door to a plethora of security risks. For average mobile users, those risks are high enough e.g., identity theft but for corporate users, the risks rise exponentially. Data is perhaps the most valuable asset any company owns, and data must be kept confidential and secure from unauthorized access or loss at all times. Cultural critical success factors for MA Aside from the technical requirements of an MA implementation, there are other, more human concerns. Perhaps the biggest differentiator between failure and success of MA initiatives (or with most information technology (IT) initiatives for that matter) is the control of the projects scope. It is essential to have a road map in place that plots where the implementation will start, how it will progress, and what success will look like. Using the road map, the first step is to start small. The next step is to build on success and propagate those results throughout the enterprise. One way to accomplish this goal is to identify the business area or function where MA can effectively deliver the most value and implement MA to that function. From that success, build out as time and budgets allow.
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The next critical success factor is to constantly monitor whether or not the MA implementation is meeting the information needs of the business even though those needs might be changing on a frequent basis. A good way to define and refine as required those needs is to conduct an information needs assessment as an early-stage step in the MA initiative. As we discussed above, the MA implementation will only be successful to the extent that it meets the needs of the user community and helps users at various role levels solve problems and increase productivity. With an up-front needs assessment as a guide to development, it can be easier to validate that the business needs are being met throughout the implementation process. Also, as we discussed above, a critical technical requirement for an MA toolset is that it integrates with the organizations existing data/IT architecture. This integration capability should be analyzed and tested well before the system is deployed to the user community. If a substantial number of users have trouble accessing data, performing analysis, and completing critical tasks in the field, the C-Suite might be reluctant to commit funding to take the project enterprise wide, and the entire MA implementation will flounder. The final cultural critical success factor for MA implementation is that it should provide true insight at the executive level, not just data that overwhelms users with numbers, charts, and graphs. The system should provide information that is meaningful and pertinent to each users role, and it should have easy-to-use, but sophisticated, information exploration features so that users especially executives can spot trends and solve problems before they mushroom into serious issues that threaten to cause real damage. To be sure, this is a technical requirement, but it is also cultural vis--vis the thought process that must go into defining what information is meaningful to particular user groups and how that information will be disseminated and used.

Visible trends in MA The rise of mobility is evident in the fact that most sector leads have started to roll out mobile applications, though in varying degree. An early adopter is the airline industry, where one can now plan a full itinerary sitting in a coffee shop or in a cab for that matter. The life science sector is also providing near real-time access to their customers and enabling patients to stay on top of their health conditions. Leading consumer and industrial products industry players have provided executive dashboards to their key position holders and decisions are being made increasing on time and with accuracy. Realization of this in a span of the last three to four years is incredible and the writing is visible on the wall. Conclusion The technology behind MA is stabilizing at a much faster pace than before, with better and faster hardware, middleware, and clients being introduced in the market. It is no longer an if question to adopt MA, but a when question to be answered. Organizations with solid enterprise information management systems need very little to magnify their return on investment from their entire IT investment. However, a strategy which deals with the challenges discussed above will likely be the key to success in the adoption of MA. For more information, please contact: Scott Heckman Director Deloitte Consulting LLP + 1 303 312 4707 sheckman@deloitte.com Amit Agarwal Manager Deloitte Consulting LLP +1 214 240 9865 amitagarwal4@deloitte.com Keith Waldrop Specialist Master Deloitte Consulting LLP +1 404 631 3205 kwaldrop@deloitte.com

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