the rise of holistic enterprise mobile engagement

A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper Commissioned By OpenMarket

The Rise Of Holistic Enterprise Mobile Engagement

August 2013

Forrester Consulting


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Table Of Contents

Executive Summary ................................................................................................................................................................................. 2

The Mobile Shift: New Opportunities, New Challenges .................................................................................................................. 3

Businesses Crave Customer Engagement ........................................................................................................................................... 7

Mobile Engagement Platforms Will Emerge As Force Multipliers .............................................................................................. 16

A Coordinated Engagement Strategy Will Help You Surf The Mobile Shift ............................................................................. 19

Appendix A: Methodology................................................................................................................................................................... 20

Appendix B: Demographics/Data ....................................................................................................................................................... 20

Appendix C: Endnotes .......................................................................................................................................................................... 22

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Executive Summary

The shift to mobile devices represents a fourth great revolution in computing, and it’s remaking the way we

communicate. Over the past 50 years we’ve gone from mainframes to minicomputers to PCs, from browsers to

smartphones and tablets. With each move we’ve made a generational leap in the way we engage with each other, the

brands we buy, and the companies we work for. During each transition the opportunities for more personalized and

more relevant engagement have grown, but seizing these opportunities is easier said than done. It requires a thorough

understanding of new technologies, device platforms, communication patterns, and personal preferences, and it

demands significant changes to existing technology infrastructure, processes, and skills.

In May 2013, OpenMarket commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the current state of mobile engagement at

large enterprises. To get the best picture of how companies are adapting to the mobile shift, Forrester developed a

survey that asked business leaders about their mobile efforts. Conducting an in-depth survey with 167 mobile channel

decision-makers, Forrester found that these enterprises regard the mobile channel as one of their most important

communication channels. Customer engagement is a top priority in the mobile channel, but companies are struggling

to balance their investments in internal staff and external mobile services with the speed required to meet their

engagement needs. When it comes to how companies are driving their mobile engagement, it’s clear that they view

mobile communications as just a small part of an overall engagement strategy. As a result, there is a high level of

interest in adopting advanced mobile services including SMS, MMS, push messaging, email, voice, and QR codes to

drive a holistic engagement strategy.

Key Findings Forrester’s study yielded four key findings:

• The mobile channel is a top business priority. The importance of reaching customers via the mobile channel

has grown to the point where it’s virtually tied with PCs for top priority. It’s more important than ever for

businesses to get their mobile engagement strategy in place as soon as possible.

• Customer engagement is a clear priority for mobile strategy. Engaging with customers trumps supporting

employees or partners or driving revenue through the mobile platform. This engagement goes beyond awareness

and consideration of products and services; it aims to improve customer satisfaction, provide support, and build

long-term loyalty.

• Mobile engagement is about more than mobile apps. Most businesses incorporate SMS, MMS, and bar codes or

QR codes into their mobile strategy today. Many are looking to add advanced features like call queuing, two-way

SMS, voice recognition, push notifications, and click-to-chat to their engagement strategy over the next year.

• Organizations struggle to master the challenges of the mobile shift. The organizations we surveyed are

spending, but it’s questionable if they’re spending enough to sustain more than a few ongoing mobile projects.

Many are using internal IT resources, but these teams are dealing with a multitude of integration, security, and

process challenges. Rather than struggle to build a mobile infrastructure, we suggest that these teams focus on

solving business problems and look for opportunities to use third-party mobile software and cloud-based services

as a force multiplier.



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The Mobile Shift: New Opportunities, New Challenges

For technology professionals, change is constant—like waves rolling in from the ocean. While it can be pleasant to sit

back and watch the innovations rolling in one after another, the real rewards come from being part of the action—from

surfing the waves and, in particular, from finding the “seventh wave” that lets you ride all the way into the shore. When

surfing the waves of new technology, it pays to find that seventh wave―to invest early in those innovations that have

real business value, that will remake the market. The Internet is one obvious example. Another is mobile.

Need proof that the mobile shift really is remaking the market? Look at what’s been happening in the past five years.

We’ve seen enormous spikes in consumer adoption of mobile phones, especially smartphones. The numbers are

staggering: more than 6 billion mobile devices worldwide and more than 700 million smartphones sold in 2012 alone.1

The mobile shift impacts all aspects of communication, customer engagement, and business operations. As a result,

mobile devices redefine how enterprises engage with customers, employees, and business partners. Increasingly, a

smartphone is the first device people reach for when they need information (see Figure 1). We see that, while

consumers mainly use their tablets at home, they use their smartphones in all kinds of places, whether it’s the living

room, car, store, or restaurant.

Figure 1

Smartphones Are Used Everywhere, Tablets Are Used At Home

Base: 11,094 US online adults (18+) who own a smartphone and go online on a smartphone weekly or more

Source: “The State Of Consumers And Technology: Benchmark 2012, US,” Forrester Research, Inc., January 15, 2013



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And it’s not just consumer engagement that’s changing. What we see with consumers is reflected by what we see at

work. It’s especially true for information workers — those who process and act on information as part of their jobs.

Whether it’s a conference room, another building on campus, a manufacturing plant floor, or the showroom floor,

employees also tend to reach for smartphones and tablets more often than PCs or laptops (see Figure 2). Increasingly,

your employees are demanding a mobile-first approach as much as your customers expect it.

Figure 2

Information Workers Shift To Mobile Devices When They’re Away From Their Desks

Base: global information workers using each device

Source: “2013 Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends,” Forrester Research, Inc. February 4, 2013

The mobile shift presents countless opportunities to improve customer engagement. These opportunities extend

throughout the entire customer life cycle, from awareness to consideration, through conversion to loyalty and

advocacy. Mobile lets brand marketers engage consumers when they’re outside of their home and away from traditional

channels. When choosing products, mobile engagement allows customers to read reviews, learn about specific product

and service features, and make comparisons in an immediate, interactive, and educational way. Mobile devices can

provide marketers with immediate conversion opportunities, including click-to-call capability and mobile commerce,

while measuring positive responses.

The mobile shift also creates opportunities for improving operational engagement. Ongoing engagement in the mobile

channel can improve customer service, enable self- and peer-driven help, and lower operational costs by reducing call

center load and customer complaints. Organizations can enhance engagement and awareness during regular

interaction through real-time access to information. For example, an effective mobile messaging strategy can drive the

selection of additional services during a vacation stay at a resort, or a mobile app can provide the latest information

about a financial portfolio or service interruptions. Mobile can provide the most up to date information, which helps

sales reps accelerate decision-making and shorten sales cycles.



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Many of these new engagement opportunities stem from the particular characteristics of smartphones — they’re highly

personal devices, they’re almost always on, and they’re almost always connected to the Internet. Smartphones enable

immediate, quick interactions and allow businesses to reach out and alert customers, employees, and partners through

multiple channels, including SMS, MMS, push notifications, email, and voice. Their smartphones know more about

users’ habits and desires than any other device: their preferred language, their location, what they’ve searched for, where

they’ve been, and where they’re likely to be in the future. A user’s smartphone can be used as a way to provide enhanced

identification and authentication for secure transactions. It can be used as a wallet, an access card, and a remote control

for other nearby devices.

The significant opportunities of the mobile channel are reflected in how highly business leaders prioritize it. In

conducting an in-depth survey with 167 mobile channel decision-makers, we found that mobile phones have already

become the second most important channel through which businesses engage with customers, employees, and business

partners (see Figure 3). In fact, when it comes to channel priority, smartphones (at 28%) are nearly tied with PCs (at

31%). And tablet support isn’t far behind as the fourth most important channel, behind brick-and-mortar stores (for

those companies that have them). We expect that, over the next few years, mobile channels will continue to grow in

importance, as more and more devices emerge and as the capabilities of smartphones and tablets continue to expand.

The call to action is clear: You must have a mobile engagement strategy, and you don’t have a lot of time left to put one

in place.



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Figure 3

Mobile Phones Are A High Priority Engagement Channel For Business Leaders

Base: 167 B2C mobile channel decision-makers

Source: A commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of OpenMarket, May 2013

The mobile shift offers many new business opportunities, but they don’t come free. Businesses must make substantial

investments and changes to their processes and systems architecture to properly support mobile devices. These changes

include:

• Support for new platforms and multiple device types. You still need to support PCs, but now you also must

support several mobile platforms and a myriad of devices, form factors, and operating system versions. Your

mobile services will also need to stay up to date and keep working when new versions of popular mobile

platforms are released. You’ll need to look for mobile messaging services that reduce cross-platform complexity

by providing consistent programming and service models — or expect to see a significant rise in your client-side

development costs.

• Engaging customers with a mix of channels. Mobile devices add new ways to engage users that go beyond

traditional applications or web pages. Mobile features such as SMS and MMS, push notifications, social

networking, email, and voice can increase engagement if you know how and when to use them. We find that the

best mobile experiences mix multiple tactics; for example, use SMS or push notifications along with or instead of

apps for customer service use cases such as shipping alerts, bill reminders, and appointment notices, or mix SMS

text with URLs to mobile-friendly websites.

46%

49%

35%

5%

11%

3%

28%

1%

1%

22%

24%

27%

15%

21%

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9%

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28%

31%

Smart TVs

In-car systems

eReaders

Print media

Telephone/IVR

Tablets

Brick-and-mortar/retail stores

Mobile phones

PCs

Not used Low priority Medium A priority Our top priority

“How important to your overall corporate strategy is it to engage with customers, employees, and

business partners across the following channels/devices?”



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• Faster delivery of services and new content. In the mobile channel, rapid delivery matters. Campaigns with

time- or location-sensitive offers need to get customer attention and drive immediate action. Customer service

data needs to be fresh; if it’s a few hours old, customers or employees may not get the information they need in

time to make an important decision. Imagine keeping customers waiting to check into their hotel room or pick

up a rental car because they weren’t promptly notified when their service was ready.

Faster service delivery is also a consideration when it comes to choosing which mobile tactics to employ.

Needing to crack open a mobile app and resubmit it to app stores every time you make a change is not

sustainable. An enterprise mobile engagement strategy that incorporates SMS and MMS bypasses the need for

users to find, download, install, and use a mobile app and avoids the hassles of dealing with app store updates

to surface new content. It makes it easier to experiment with new engagement tactics, measure their results,

and keep the ones that work.

• An updated integration strategy. The move to a mobile-first strategy involves a very different architecture that

connects your existing systems of record (which store and process information) with new systems of engagement

(which distribute information and work hand-in-glove with carrier networks, often connecting through public

cloud infrastructures).2 This integration layer will need to scale up to support thousands of connections with

variable latency and scale down during off peak hours. In addition, many companies are finding that it’s not just

their own on-premises systems that are part of this integration puzzle but also services from third parties that are

integrated and aggregated in their distribution tier.

• Finding (and paying) for mobile talent. It takes a specific set of skills to successfully design and implement

mobile processes. We are not surprised to find that many organizations turn to experienced third parties like

design agencies, mobile ISVs, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers. Acting as force multipliers, these third

parties enable businesses to overcome staffing and expertise gaps and help speed time-to-market for new

engagement services.

Businesses Crave Customer Engagement

We asked business leaders how they’re looking to more effectively leverage mobile communications and the challenges

they face in doing so. When we asked them about their top three priorities for the mobile channel, there was a clear

focus on engagement (see Figure 4):

• Increased customer engagement is the top priority. At 63%, increased customer engagement is far and away the

top priority business leaders have for their mobile channel strategy. This self-reported focus on customer

engagement matches what we hear anecdotally in our conversations with brands and spans the entire customer

life cycle, from lead generation and awareness through consideration, conversion, and purchase to customer

support, loyalty, and even brand advocacy.

• Improving customer satisfaction requires ongoing engagement. Improving customer satisfaction is the next

most important priority, at 38%. An ongoing conversation with repeat customers is a key step to building loyalty

and driving repeat purchases. It’s especially true in industries with high levels of competition and easy product



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substitution. In our survey, business leaders in financial services, retail and wholesale, and media entertainment

and leisure all ranked customer satisfaction higher than the average — not surprising, as all three industries are

investing heavily in the mobile channel to attract and keep customers.

• Increasing direct revenue is an important, but secondary, consideration. Twenty-seven percent of business

leaders surveyed singled out increased revenue and sales as a driver for the mobile channel. For the business

leaders we surveyed, the mobile channel comes in second only to the PC as a revenue channel and ahead of brick

and mortar stores for all industries except retail and wholesale (see Figure 5).3 Our take? While engagement,

satisfaction, and customer acquisition outrank direct revenue, it’s still a consideration for many firms.

• Employee and partner needs take a back seat to customer needs. Only one in five survey respondents said that

employee or business partner enablement was a top priority. While that may change over time, it indicates that

business leaders are less focused on employee and supply chain issues and more focused on engaging with

customers. This reflects a prioritization of scarce resources in the short term, as many companies we speak with

have dozens of mobile projects on the books and scant resources to devote to them. As a result, customer-facing

projects tend to get the nod first.

Figure 4

Customer Engagement Is The Top Mobile Priority



1%

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20%

22%

25%

27%

35%

38%

63%

Other (please specify)

Test the waters/learn about the mobile channel

Drive traffic/sales in other channel (e.g., physical stores)

Appear innovative

Reach particular consumer segments

Increase brand awareness

Improve employee or partner engagement

Build loyalty

Reduce operating or marketing costs

Generate revenue/sales completed in mobile channel

Acquire new customers

Improve customer satisfaction

Increase customer engagement

“What are your company’s top 30 priorities/objectives for your mobile communication strategy?”

(Select all that apply)



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Figure 5

Driving Revenue From Mobile Phones Is Important



As External Spending Lags Behind Demand, Pressure Mounts On Internal Staff We noted in the previous section that employee and partner engagement is taking a back seat to customer-facing

priorities. We also noted that we suspect that this is due to prioritization in a resource-scarce environment. This

assertion is not just based on what we’ve directly observed — it’s also evident in this survey:

• More than 60% of business leaders are investing less than $5 million in mobile in 2013 . . . When we asked

business leaders how much they’re spending on mobile services and vendors, they replied that it’s toward the

lower end of the project spectrum (see Figure 6). More than 60% of survey respondents are spending less than $5

million on external mobile services and vendors, and 40% are spending less than $1 million. Realistically, this

level of budgeting will support a handful of projects at best, well below the level of mobile needs we see at most

large enterprises.

• . . . but staffing levels are high, which means labor costs drive capacity. While less than a third of the

enterprises we surveyed are budgeting more than $5 million in mobile spend in 2013, almost a third have 50 or

more people working full time on mobile within their company (see Figure 7).

51%

43%

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In-car systems

Smart TVs

eReaders

Telephone/IVR

Print media

Tablets

Brick-and-mortar/retail stores

Mobile phones

PCs

Not used Low priority Medium A priority Our top priority

“How important to your overall corporate strategy is it to transact and drive revenue from

customers using the following channels/devices?”



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Figure 6

External Mobile Spending In 2013 Is Low But Growing



10%

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Don’t know

Less than $250,000

Between $250,000 and $500,000

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Between $1 million and $5 million




More than $50 million

“What kind of investment in mobile do you see your company making in 2013?”



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Figure 7

Labor Costs Absorb A Large Proportion Of Mobile Spending



This focus on devoting internal resources to mobile efforts is somewhat surprising, as we often find that in the early

stages of a technology shift, companies will outsource projects because they simply don’t have the in-house experience

required to successfully exploit new technologies. That’s been our experience with the mobile market over the past few

years, but it now appears that companies are starting the hard work required to build in-house expertise. In particular,

it appears that they’re investing in internal IT skills for custom mobile app development. Almost four in 10 of the

business leaders we surveyed indicated that they’re using internal IT resources to custom build mobile solutions (see

Figure 8).

8%

0%

4%

10%

13%

14%

21%

31%

Don’t know

None

One

Two to four

Five to nine

10 to 14

15 to 49

50 or more

“Approximately how many people within your company are working full time for your company’s mobile efforts globally?”



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Figure 8

Businesses Are Investing In IT Skills To Build Custom Mobile Infrastructure



The problem with the picture painted by this data is that it creates a situation that’s untenable in the long term. Without

a change in strategy, demands and spending on internal resources will continue to mount as mobile platforms and form

factors proliferate. That’s especially true for companies that invest in native client-side applications, as each has its own

programming language, development frameworks, and messaging APIs. We recommend the following tactics to keep

your mobile budgets from growing out of control:

• Prioritize core processes. When working in a resource-constrained environment, it makes sense to focus

internal expertise on the business processes and functions that create a competitive advantage. That’s also true

when it comes to the mobile channel. We recommend focusing internal developers and business leaders on

enabling existing systems of record for mobile and improving the integration infrastructure required to provide

up to date, accurate information that’s as fresh as possible.

• Leverage cross-platform solutions to reduce delivery costs. Most firms simply can’t afford to write the same

mobile features and functions three or more times, yet that’s exactly what happens when they adopt native point

solutions specific to popular smartphones. It takes numerous disciplines to manage multiple code bases and

3%

4%

4%

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7%

7%

9%

19%

39%

Using a managed service, provided by a carrier or SaaS partner

Outsourced to an interactive agency

Licensed and configured an application that was already built

Assembling a platform from component services purchased from multiple vendors

Have not yet selected an approach

Outsourced to our eCommerce platform vendor

Licensed a platform and built a mobile site/application with in-house tools

Outsourced to an agency specializing in mobile services

Custom built internally/in-house with our own IT developers

“Which statement below best describes the implementation approach you are pursuing for your mobile strategy?”

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Capture from existing vendors. They're already outsourcing this need.

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Massive OPPORTUNITY !!! GTM Focus = to shift these to Outsourced with Hitachi !!!



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coordinate simultaneous releases of new features — but that’s exactly what customers expect. We’ve spoken with

many companies that warn of launching a new capability on one platform before others because it irritates

customers that use alternative mobile platforms.

A better strategy for broadening mobile engagement is to define a feature once and use a cross-platform

solution to make it available on multiple device platforms simultaneously while minimizing the amount of

device-specific code you have to maintain. A key part of keeping multiplatform delivery costs under control

comes from selecting communication channels — like SMS, MMS, email, and voice — that are consistent

across device types. Adding these tactics to mobile app development or using mobile messaging alone

maximizes engagement while keeping deployment and maintenance costs in line.

• Use services to manage mobile infrastructure complexity. Connecting mobile devices to existing systems isn’t

exactly straightforward. In most cases, IT shops have minimal experience integrating with carrier infrastructure,

building asynchronous message routing architectures, and using analytics to assess which customer engagement

tactics are working and which aren’t. Mobile service providers can help organizations quickly accelerate in all

these areas by providing a ready-to-go platform that’s simple to integrate into existing, on-premises applications.

As Demand For Advanced Mobile Services Increases, Delivery Challenges Rise While businesses are still ramping up their spending on mobile initiatives, their use of mobile engagement tactics

beyond simple apps is already well established (see Figure 9):

• Most enterprises are already using SMS to engage mobile users. Seven in 10 business users are already

deploying SMS notifications as part of their mobile strategy, and this will move even higher in the future.

Widespread adoption of SMS is good, as it allows companies a ubiquitous way to engage with virtually every

mobile user. SMS can serve as a standalone engagement channel, part of a larger integrated engagement strategy,

or both. For example, in a fraud detection scenario you’d want to alert customers on their mobile devices whether

or not they’ve installed your mobile app.

• Bar codes and QR codes are widely employed, and customer adoption is growing. Six in 10 mobile channel

decision-makers are using bar codes or QR codes, and they’re starting to get better returns on those investments.

Overall, 20% of mobile phone users and 22% of smartphone users scan and use bar codes or QR codes, up from

5% for mobile and 15% for smartphones in 2010. But implementation challenges remain: Too often, the planning

for codes doesn’t go far beyond generating a free code and printing it somewhere. As a result, many bar code use

cases don’t point to mobile-optimized content, offer little-to-no communication from the benefits of a scan, and

sometimes even have poor physical placement.

• Other services lack majority status today, but won’t tomorrow. Most other advanced mobile services are not

yet currently deployed by a majority of business leaders. However, plans to adopt them in the future signal a firm

desire on the part of business users to incorporate these services into an overall engagement strategy. In

particular, push notifications and text-to-speech are set for strong growth, with click-to-chat and voice

recognition not far behind.

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• NFC and geofencing will lag behind the adoption rates of other mobile services. Few mobile channel decision-

makers use either geofencing or near field communications (NFC) today, and adoption will continue to lag

behind other services over the next year.

Figure 9

Businesses Are Incorporating Advanced Mobile Services



The results of increased demand for advanced mobile services and thinly stretched staff are predictable. Instead of

focusing on maximizing ROI and maximizing the outcomes of their mobile investments, organizations struggle to keep

all the challenges of building advanced mobile engagement infrastructure under control. These challenges span fiscal

and technical dimensions (see Figure 10):

• Integration expense is a top concern . . . It follows that with IT-led custom mobile projects as the primary means

of delivering advanced mobile services and applications, budgets would be stressed as the developers hardwire

mobile services into existing systems of record. Fifty-five percent of survey respondents report this as a significant

or critical challenge to their mobile strategy.

• . . . and it’s not just the expense of integration. The actual process of integration presents a challenge to 47% of

survey respondents. Common issues include service-enabling existing systems; providing a scalable, reliable

16%

23%

32%

35%

37%

38%

40%

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Geofencing

Near field communications (NFC)

Text to speech

Push notifications (e.g., APNS, C2DM)

Click-to-chat

Voice recognition

Direct carrier billing

2-way SMS

Call queuing

Bar codes or QR codes

SMS notifications

Use now Plan to use No plans

“Which of the following mobile technologies does your company use today in your mobile

strategy, or plan to begin using in the next 12 months?”

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messaging infrastructure; and integrating apps with other advanced services such as messaging, carrier services,

and analytics.

• Data privacy and security is also a primary concern. With new architectures, code, and client platforms, it’s

little wonder that security is a top concern. And while the primary security threat for mobile platforms comes

from physical theft of unsecured devices, other issues such as app hijacks or clear text transmission of personal

information are also possible. This problem is most acute for respondents in financial services and healthcare,

where 43% and 39% of survey respondents rate it as a critical problem.4

• Mobile platform sprawl creates a maintenance headache. The third most challenging aspect of mobile strategy

is the number of platforms and the complexity of integrating applications and services when each platform uses a

different language and framework. As a result, most firms don’t properly budget client-side development

resources, and a need for regular updates blows budgeting. The result — more projects get deferred as the

maintenance demand of early projects eats up more of the existing mobile budget.

• Required speed of execution exacerbates mobile service delivery. The gap between IT capability and business

needs shows up in multiple ways: 43% of respondents say it’s a critical or significant problem that their IT

organization can’t move fast enough to support B2C efforts, while 38% also say the rate of platform release is a

significant or critical problem.

• Integrated mobile strategy isn’t a pressing concern, but it should be. Our survey found the least worrying issue

among respondents was that their current B2C, B2B, and B2E mobile strategies are disconnected. While it’s

possible that this lack of concern indicates ample coordination on the part of respondents, that doesn’t match

what we see anecdotally. Although many businesses are using advanced mobile services like SMS and MMS for

B2C initiatives, few exhibit a unified mobile strategy for providing B2C marketing, B2C customer service, and

B2E operations. More often, these functional areas are treated as three mobile silos with different teams working

to support each one. In the long run that’s not cost-efficient and leads to technology sprawl while increasing

integration expense.

Many of the challenges our survey respondents report stem from a common source. Their IT shops are struggling to

build and maintain a mobile solution in-house with existing skills and technologies. This approach can work for early

pilots and can support a limited number of applications and services, but it’s not sustainable as mobile engagement

becomes increasingly important. We expect companies to increasingly look to ISVs and SaaS providers for platforms

that provide speed, new functionality, flexibility, and customization with a complete focus on the mobile channel so

that IT shops can focus on core business needs instead of engagement infrastructure.

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Figure 10

Integration Expense Is The Top Mobile Challenge



Mobile Engagement Platforms Will Emerge As Force Multipliers

So how do you reconcile expanding budget pressure with increased demand for advanced mobile services? We suggest

that companies focus on driving early successful business outcomes that demonstrate a positive ROI. If early results are

good, then executives are more likely to expand mobile investments. But that’s easier said than done — given all the

heavy lifting involved in setting up infrastructure, acquiring skills, and developing an integrated engagement strategy,

it’s not uncommon to see enterprises spend years with little to show for their efforts or investments. Reducing the time

it takes to deliver mobile engagement is key — the faster you can understand what works for different mobile users, the

faster you can tune your mix to fit customer needs while keeping costs under control.

18%

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14%

15%

16%

28%

16%

Our B2C mobile strategy is disconnected from our B2E and B2B mobile strategy

Integrating with carrier specific services like direct billing, SMS/MMS and location

Form factor variations within the operating systems

Complex or expensive licenses for mobile solutions

Maintaining existing apps/sites by releasing frequent updates

Rate of releases of the different operating systems/platforms

Complying with regulatory requirements

Channel skills

Our IT organization is not moving fast enough to support our B2C efforts

Finding skilled developers to design the user interface and experience

Integrating mobile solutions with back-end systems

The number of different platforms/operating systems

Data privacy and security around mobile

Expense of integrating mobile into current back-end systems

Not a problem 2 3 4 A critical problem

“How challenging do you find the following aspects of your mobile strategy?”



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You need to implement mobile infrastructure to prove a business case, but building the infrastructure to do so is time-

consuming and expensive and takes specialized skills. It would seem to be a Catch-22. We’ve seen this sort of

conundrum before at the early days of the shift from client/server to web-centric architectures. In the early days,

developers focused on building web infrastructure as well as company-specific content and had the same challenges in

developing and testing clients that would work with different browsers.

But that’s not how it’s done today. In response to these challenges, we saw the emergence of platforms (i.e., middleware,

content management systems) specifically tuned for building web applications and delivering web content to employees

and customers. We’re seeing a similar trend in the mobile space — the emergence of platforms that ease and speed

mobile service delivery by:

• Automating delivery of advanced mobile services. A mobile engagement platform provides prebuilt services

that work across multiple mobile platforms including smartphones, feature phones, and even tablets. By

integrating these services into a single delivery framework, the platform makes it easier to quickly deliver a

unified customer engagement experience that works across multiple channels and engagement modes. A mobile

engagement platform also pre-integrates the tools developers need and provides infrastructure that’s ready to go

as soon as they need it. Writing the complex logic for “table stakes” functionality is better outsourced to experts

than built in-house. For example, a platform can help automate common processes such as customer opt-in to

services, stopping message delivery, providing help, and message subscription services.

• Integrating mobile services into a unified engagement experience. Many businesses are consumed by their

mobile app strategy today, but there’s more to mobile than just apps. For one thing, mobile-optimized websites

are still needed to handle incoming browser traffic. More importantly, the best way to grow the user base for a

mobile app investment is through regular engagement, and integrating messaging (whether SMS, MMS, or push)

is a time-tested tactic that increases overall engagement by pushing customers past the “drop-out zone” where

they download an app, use it a few times, and then forget about it. Enterprises shouldn’t be using these channels

separately from each other, but in harmony to provide a unified customer engagement experience.

• Removing developers as an implementation bottleneck. A mobile engagement platform offers development

flexibility by supporting multiple implementation approaches. Of course, internal IT-led development teams can

use it, but standardizing APIs also makes it possible for third-party developers to augment internal staff. A mobile

engagement platform also pre-integrates APIs from third parties like mobile carriers and specialists and service

UIs that provide non-developers a way to graphically set up mobile service workflows and reduce the time it takes

to round out an engagement strategy. The service UIs in particular are important, as they allow businesses to

update engagement tactics without requiring new custom code or redeploying a new version of a mobile app.

• Reducing labor costs while scarcity exists. With the high labor costs for mobile development and growing

project backlog, it makes sense to reduce dependence on hard-to-find mobile developers wherever possible. This

doesn’t necessarily mean a large upfront investment in on-premises hardware and software, as modern mobile

engagement platforms are available in a SaaS model. A SaaS-based mobile engagement platform doesn’t require a

large upfront commitment to hardware, software, or additional labor costs in the form of system administrators.

It also makes it easy to quickly deploy new engagement services as they become available, usually through

updated versions of the engagement platform’s service interface or APIs. SaaS platforms also have the advantage

of on-demand capacity, which allows an enterprise to quickly scale up infrastructure as demand grows or even



Page 18

vary demand to suit short-term needs like event-based messaging campaigns, emergency alerts, or breaking news

updates.

• Simplify variation in carrier service offerings. Developers tend to look at carriers as a “dumb pipe” — providing

access to applications and services even where the carriers offer unique services. The last thing developers want to

do is codify special allowances for multiple carriers’ custom services into a mobile strategy. They want to program

to consistent APIs or services that abstract carrier specific implementation wherever possible. A mobile

engagement platform takes on this complexity burden, abstracting across carrier service implementations. As an

example, this might include working with carrier-specific SMS implementations around the globe or abstracting

across the various push messaging implementations developed by smartphone platform providers.



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A COORDINATED ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY WILL HELP YOU SURF THE MOBILE SHIFT

The shift to mobile is big. It has the potential to severely tax your existing strategy, infrastructure, and skills, and to outstrip

your initial budgets. The rapid pace of innovation combined with the variation of services and requirements across carriers

and geographies will leave those attempting to do everything themselves scrambling to keep up. Successfully managing

the mobile shift will take skill, flexibility, and time. It will require a coordinated mobile engagement strategy that integrates

apps, SMS, MMS, email, push notifications, and advanced carrier services into a single toolbox. To get there:

• View mobile engagement as much more than building apps. While industry observers tend to focus on the

number of apps in stores, billions of apps downloaded, and “developer-gets-rich-overnight” stories, it’s clear that a

sustainable engagement strategy goes way beyond the app. The high adoption rates of advanced mobile services

like SMS, MMS, and QR codes, coupled with plans to adopt call queuing, voice recognition, and click-to-chat, show

that mobile channel decision-makers are thinking holistically when it comes to their engagement strategy.

• Understand and use the unique aspects of the mobile channel. Your IT peers may treat phones and tablets as

like devices because the manufacturers, programming languages, and application frameworks are the same. But

from a usage perspective that’s not the case, as each device — phone, tablet, and PC — is used in different ways, in

different locations, and at different times. Mobile phones also have access to additional capabilities like SMS and

MMS and are almost always on, connected, and nearby. If you want to optimize your mobile engagement strategy,

make sure you take advantage of the personal qualities and additional engagement tools that mobile offers.

• Use cloud infrastructure to speed delivery and reduce costs. Smart enterprises are using the technical

characteristics and flexibility of cloud infrastructure to accelerate their mobile engagement plans. Whether it’s a

public cloud that connects to mobile devices or a mobile engagement platform delivered via SaaS, scale-out

infrastructure is allowing these companies to quickly test the waters, engage customers through multiple

touchpoints and interactions, and focus on building engagement strategies instead of engagement infrastructure.

And the pay-as-you go model reduces upfront costs which results in less risk and a quicker return on investment.

• Engage throughout the sale and beyond. Customer engagement should be long-lived — it starts with awareness

and consideration, builds through a purchase, and then continues on after the purchase to help build loyalty.

Reaching out to users to remind them of the value you provide plays a critical role in building a long-term

relationship that will lead to repeat purchases and referrals. Make sure you focus on a long-term engagement

strategy — through the entire customer life cycle — and provide enough value and functionality in the mobile

channel to fully realize the personalized, contextual view into your customers’ thoughts so you can anticipate their

preferences and meet their desires. If you maximize convenience and make it easy for them to engage with your

brand (by any means), you’ll be well on the way to turning transactional sales into long-lived, meaningful customer

experiences.



Page 20

Appendix A: Methodology

In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 167 organizations in the United States to evaluate the effects of

the shift to mobile on marketing strategy and customer engagement. Survey participants included decision-makers in

marketing and IT with responsibility for marketing strategy decisions, software decisions, or architecture decisions.

Questions provided to the participants asked about the importance of engaging and transacting with customers over

specific channels and about various aspects of the firm’s communication strategy. The study began in May 2013 and

was completed in May 2013.

Appendix B: Demographics/Data

Figure 11

Region And Company Size



US100%

“In what country do you live in?”

500 to 999 employees

18%

1,000 to 4,999

employees28%

5,000 or more

employees54%

“Using your best estimate, how many employees work for your firm/organization

worldwide?”



Page 21

Figure 12

Job Title



Figure 13

Decision-Making Responsibility



15%

14%

13%

26%

13%

11%

8%

Manager in IT

VP/director in IT

Senior-most IT decision-maker in the firm (e.g., CIO, CTO)

Manager in line of business/function (e.g., marketingmanager, sales manager, product manager)

VP/director in a line of business/function (e.g., director ofsales, accounts receivable director)

Executive in line of business/function (e.g., VP of marketing,Senior VP of manufacturing, VP of sales)

Senior-most business leader (e.g., owner, president, C-levelexecutive other than CIO)

“Which of the following most closely describes your job title?”

44%

46%

46%

50%

59%

62%

64%

Sales force enablement — forecasting, CRM, sales planning

Architecture — enterprise architecture, technology strategy, integration

IT security — infrastructure or data security, threat and vulnerability management, identity management

Hardware infrastructure — PCs and mobile devices, servers, server virtualization, data center

Third-party services

Software — enterprise application or infrastructure software, custom software development

Marketing strategy — channel strategy, eCommerce, go-to-market planning, B2C mobile

“Which of the following categories of decision-making do you have responsibility for?”(Select all that apply)



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Appendix C: Endnotes

1 Source: “Global Smartphone Shipments Reach a Record 700 Million Units in 2012,” Strategy Analytics, January 25,

2013 (http://blogs.strategyanalytics.com/HCST/post/2013/01/25/Global-Smartphone-Shipments-Reach-a-Record-700-

Million-Units-in-2012.aspx).

2 In 2010, Geoffrey Moore laid out the case for “systems of engagement” as a new type of architecture distinct from

traditional “systems of record.” For more information, read “Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT: A

Sea Change in Enterprise IT,” AIIM (http://www.aiim.org/futurehistory).

3 For retail and wholesale respondents, brick-and-mortar stores outrank the mobile channel as a top priority by a 54%

to 35% margin.

4 Related regulation mandates include HIPAA for healthcare providers and GLBA for financial services companies.

the rise of holistic enterprise mobile engagement

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