Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes

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Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
• Cognizant 20-20 Insights

Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
To better service today’s on-the-go decision makers and inform their
need for proactive planning and strategic execution, organizations must
deliver anytime/anyplace data access and analytical capabilities to a
vast array of mobile devices. Read on to see how your organization can
build this capability in record-setting time.

      Executive Summary                                     this more critical than in the emerging space of
                                                            mobile analytics, where IT teams must quickly
      There is a mobility arms race underway in
                                                            pilot and deploy new ways of delivering business
      business, and if you are reading this white paper
                                                            intelligence to keep on-the-go decision makers
      on your computer, you may already be behind.
                                                            up to speed in areas like budgeting, selling and
      One of the most exciting opportunities on the         marketing, and better inform strategic decision
      horizon for enterprises of all kinds is tied to the   making.
      emergence of rich digital experiences through
                                                            As enterprise mobility grows, businesses are
      increasingly small and powerful mobile devices.
                                                            jumping in feet first — although they are not nec-
      Mobile technologies are changing the way people
                                                            essarily prepared. At the same time, the increas-
      communicate, work and play. In fact, much of
                                                            ing use of smart devices and tablets is making
      the innovation we are seeing across industries is
                                                            mobile analytics a key component of organiza-
      driven by the adoption of mobile apps.
                                                            tions’ IT strategies. The good news is that some
      According to IDC,1 the world’s mobile workers will    of today’s more sophisticated and advanced
      number 1.3 billion by 2015 — representing 37.2%       business analytics platforms can deliver ad hoc
      of the global workforce. And the percentage of        analyses on mobile devices, including tablets.
      individuals with mobile access to the Internet is
                                                            This white paper offers an outlook on the forces
      expected to grow exponentially (see Figure 1).
                                                            driving enterprise mobility, along with insights to
      Mobility is now front and center for businesses,      help enterprises embrace mobile analytics capa-
      governments and other institutions as they seek       bilities quickly and effectively.
      to accelerate decision making and extend their
      reach to customers and constituents across            Why Mobile Analytics is Important
      channels. And since user demands typically            Given the ubiquity of mobile devices and the role
      outpace development cycles, it is imperative to       they will play in analytics, it is important to under-
      have a process in place that enables a detailed       stand how their capabilities will affect the organi-
      glimpse of the “to-be” application. Nowhere is        zation (see Figure 1, next page).

      cognizant 20-20 insights | december 2013
Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
Percent of Global Internet Traffic from Mobile Devices

    35

    30
                                                                   30%
    25

    20

     15
                                                       15%
    10
                                             10%
     5                 2.4%        6%
             1%
     0
            2009       2010        2011      2012      2013         2014

Figure 1

•   Improving the end user experience: Mobile          Moreover, doing this in real time differentiates
    Web analytics should be conceptually familiar      winning companies.
    to marketers who work with traditional Web
    analytics. Both are useful for understand-         •   Delivering custom content: Customized
    ing how customers consume content, and                 reports provide a more organized way for enter-
    what changes can be made to optimize their             prises to look at their data. Once businesses
    browsing behavior.                                     have established the programs and features
                                                           that work for their customers, they can better
    Performance is often seen as the biggest               justify future investments. With the addition of
    problem for mobile users; therefore, establish-        data on the connecting device, mobile sites can
    ing very specific “cause and effect” scenarios         be increasingly optimized to suit the specific
    via analytics reports can show which segments          interests of each consumer. Customization and
    need attention in order to improve the overall         personalization is a great way to convert visits
    customer experience.                                   into sales; organizations should use this ability
    >>Native apps or HTML5? While native apps              to their advantage.
      may still hold an edge in performance, includ-   Custom reports can also be incredible time savers
      ing enriching user experiences and afford-       if the right reports are generated. Rather than
      ing opportunities for monetization, HTML5        spending time searching for important metrics,
      offers advantages in other areas, such as        organizations need analytical data that is neatly
      cross-platform deployment of mobile appli-       separated into columns. This allows for deeper
      cations, control over distribution, and the      assessments, which can lead to more meaningful,
      ability to overcome platform-fragmentation       more actionable insight.
      challenges.

•   Real-time data collection: Data is the corner-     Mobile Analytics in 60 Minutes
    stone of engaging business campaigns. Mobile       As a result of the rising number and types of
    analytics harnesses the power of data to create    mobile devices, laptops have been replaced
    more relevant, engaging messages that can          by “smart” devices such as tablets and smart-
    increase ROI. Given mobility’s fast-changing       phones. Increasingly, business people — especially
    and dynamic nature, real-time relevance is         executives — are demanding the ability to perform
    what matters most to enterprises. Constant         meaningful analytics activities from their mobile
    monitoring can deliver up-to-date knowledge        devices on the go, without the burden of cumber-
    to perpetually refine the user experience          some carry-ons.
    through features such as interactive visualiza-
    tion, an interface to apply filters and various    However, as with any greenfield initiative, there
    views of data.                                     are likely to be obstacles in the road. Any adoption
                                                       of mobile analytics technologies must be predi-
A complete lifecycle perspective on how individu-
                                                       cated upon how well they fit the business, and
als use reports/apps to improve user engage-
                                                       how well they are integrated into the enterprise
ment is key to succeeding with mobile analytics.

                        cognizant 20-20 insights       2
Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
information architecture. As with most elements            and non-relational sources, and loading the
of mobility, speed is of the essence. There are            same for subsequent operations (see Figures
many analytics tools that fall into multiple cat-          2 and 3).
egories. They can differ significantly, and can
serve a variety of purposes within areas like
                                                       •   Interactive bar chart and tables: Interact with
                                                           report charts and tables, including on-the-fly
content marketing. For example, Marketing AI2              sorting, filtering and formatting of column
provides analytics that inform content optimiza-           values and headers (see Figure 4 and 5).
tion for B2B marketers. Google Analytics3 allows
companies to customize reports, measure the            •   Data virtualization: Integrate multiple data
impact of social media and mobile applications on          sources into a single metadata view to enable
Web site traffic, and calculate conversion rates.          analysis and reporting across disparate
Likewise, Japersoft4 Mobile BI allows business-            sources, without requiring ETL3 or a data
es to create highly interactive reports; provide           warehouse.
online and cross-tab sorting, filtering, conditional   Looking Ahead
formatting and column move/hide, along with
                                                       Mobility’s growing pervasiveness as a marketing
format changes that can be saved for re-use.
                                                       channel makes it more critical for organizations
Given market demand for real-time mobile               to analyze in real time how they attract and reach
analytics and Jaspersoft’s interactive report-gen-     customers. Mobile analytics puts the brilliance and
eration capabilities, we used this tool to create      power of data into the hands of decision makers
a marketing analytics application in 60 minutes.       at the moment of need, and in more useful ways,
We tried various business-intelligence features of     to derive meaning and enhance decision making.
the software, such as dashboard creation, inter-
                                                       In 2014, over 30% of the market will use smart-
active charts and configuring mobile reports with
                                                       phones as their primary mobile devices (as
dynamic input controls, for example. Figures 2
                                                       shown earlier in Figure 1). Clearly, mobile activity
and 3 offer a glimpse of some of the business
                                                       is spiking, regardless of an enterprise’s size,
intelligence features that were created using Jas-
                                                       industry, marketing spend or mobile platform
persoft’s mobile analytics tool. So successful was
                                                       strategy. Mobile analytics can help organizations
this proof of concept that we have applied what
                                                       of all shapes and sizes deliver the right informa-
we learned to assist a U.S. multinational conglom-
                                                       tion to the right audience, at the right time, and
erate interested in incorporating mobile analytics
                                                       at the right place to advance their business objec-
using interactive charts and a dashboard.
                                                       tives.
Among the key features we used to create a
                                                       Increasingly, businesses consider mobile analytics
solution for our customer were:
                                                       vital to achieving cost savings and productivity
•   Dynamic parameter: Build a dynamic data            enhancements. Interactive reports help business
    store by extracting data from various relational   leaders make better decisions. Individuals who

Building a Dynamic Data Store

Figure 2                                               Figure 3

                        cognizant 20-20 insights       3
Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
Interact with Report Charts and Tables

Figure 4                                                  Figure 5

regularly use business intelligence (BI) mobile           specific objectives, key performance indicators,
analytics can noticeably improve their everyday           and the methodology and tools for assessing and
operations by incorporating state-of-the-art tools        optimizing the organization’s mobile marketing
into their assessments and reports. Intuitive             efforts. No matter how simple the application,
solutions enable company administrators to                analytics gives stakeholders a level of insight that
bolster workplace efficiency in shorter periods of        their application might not achieve otherwise.
time.                                                     Every mobile portal and business customer
                                                          requires a different set of metrics/reports. While
Mobile analytics for business intelligence allows         analytics fundamentally provides data, it is the
teams to quickly review large data sets in formats        reports and configurations that really drive
that are easy to understand. Highly interactive           business value.
reports enable viewers to identify trends that
could help their organization gain a competitive          As technology advances, particularly in the
edge. Additionally, business intelligence mobile          software arena, so do the choices of mobile
analytics reports are more scalable than tradition-       analytics suites. However, keeping up with the
al reports, and can be integrated across multiple         complex dynamics of technology advancement
departments to help decision makers more effec-           and choosing the right candidate can seem a
tively evaluate comprehensive materials. The              daunting task. As a result, companies should be
sooner we seize this opportunity, the greater our         mindful of the effects mobile analytics has on
competitive advantage will be.                            IT processes, and have the agility to respond to
                                                          these impacts with viable solutions.
To realize the best ROI with mobile analytics,
organizations need a strategy that incorporates

Footnotes
1
     “IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020.” IDC, December, 2011.
     http://cdn.idc.com/research/Predictions12/Main/downloads/IDCTOP10Predictions2012.pdf.
2.
     http://marketing.ai/.
3.
     http://www.google.com/analytics/.
4.
     http://www.jaspersoft.com/.
5.
     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load.

                             cognizant 20-20 insights         4
Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
References
•   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_web_analytics.

•   http://www.marketingprofs.com/.

•   Isson, Jean-Paul and Jesse Harriott. “Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value
    from Your Data.” Wiley. October, 2012.

About the Authors
Giri Muthusamy is a Senior Associate within Cognizant’s Manufacturing & Logistics Business Unit focused
on Java/J2EE projects. His interests revolve around the design of enterprise applications and RDBMS
concepts. Giri holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and is also a Microsoft SQL Server
certified professional. He can be reached at Giri.Muthusamy@cognizant.com.

Rahul Ramalingam is a Technology Specialist within Cognizant’s Manufacturing & Logistics Business Unit
focused on Java/J2EE high-level system design and application development, and building enterprise
software applications. He has an engineering degree in computer science and holds various software certi-
fications, including IBM Rational solution designer — OOAD and TOGAF 8 Certified Enterprise Architecture
Practitioner. Rahul can be reached at Rahul.Ramalingam@cognizant.com.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process out-
sourcing services, dedicated to helping the world’s leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in
Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry
and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50
delivery centers worldwide and approximately 166,400 employees as of September 30, 2013, Cognizant is a member of
the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing
and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

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Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes
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