Network - The Lifeline of Mobility

It takes more than devices and applications to connect people in your mobile enterprise to each other and to the information they need. It takes a medium to connect you to the world of information that your smart device acts as a gateway to. It takes the most invisible yet the most critical component of the ecosystem – the enterprise network. All of your communications, business processes and applications depend on it. Smart devices without access can be gaming consoles or notepads, or even coasters, but an enterprise business tool they do not make. Network forms the backbone of your business communication, and needs to remain robust and reliable in the face of changing business landscape, increasing business demands and evolving security risks.

 

What is Network Integration?

 

Network integration is quite simply, the combination of two or more networks. It is the ability to use or combine data from multiple sources while maintaining the integrity and reliability of the data. Enterprise LANs are home to the target data for most user requirements, while the access mechanism, their devices, are on either provider networks or wi-fi. The ability to allow the data and the user to interact without compromising the security of the enterprise or the experience of the user is the key to successful network integration.

 

Since the network plays a crucial role in determining the success of a business, it should deliver high performance and secured and continued access. In today’s dynamic environment, communication networks are key elements to define the success of a business. While developers are concentrating on applications & devices, it is the network of your enterprise that will enable clients and employees to take advantage of the innovations done in IT segment.

 

Networks determine the user experience as much as the application performance. A high-latency network can make users feel the pinch in terms of delays and hung apps. Therefore, it is critical to tune your LAN and last mile (if under your control) to optimize it according to your app data flow parameters.

 

Security is another important aspect of data in motion. What type of data flows between the device and the datacenter, and gets stored in the device determines the type of security that is required. Also, the vertical under which the enterprise falls determines the compliance, and therefore, security requirements. Is the data encrypted? What kind og encryption? What strength? All these factors impact the transfer over the air. Too many security blockades reduce the performance, since extra information needs to be transferred with the data (heads, security bits etc.).

 

The key is to integrate and optimize the network without compromising on security essentials. Network integration services require careful planning, designing, implementation, and management. There are various stages of network integration and successful completion of each phase plays a vital role in seamless performance of the network. This is the reason professional help is sought by enterprises when designing their networks for integration to mobile apps.

 

 How do Network integration services (NIS) help?

 

If done by experienced resources, with a planned approach, NIS can provide a multitude of benefits.

Network design for adaptability to transient needs

• Planned upgrades, expansions and configurations with zero or near-zero downtime
• Resilient architecture that is fault tolerant and high performing
• Cost optimization and efficiency gains
• Better project execution through planned deliverables and on-time execution
• Risk reduction
• Improved service delivery and controls the cost of network monitoring and management

mHealth - Mobile Apps Changing Healthcare

Mobile devices are revolutionizing the way patients are engaged by the healthcare system.

 

The mobile market for health apps are expected to increase fourfold to $400 million by 2016, according to ABI Research. This plethora of mobile healthcare apps springing up on phones shows that many doctors and healthcare companies know the value of helping patients and maintain their record.

 

The impact of this shift on the healthcare system and how consumers use and act on health information should not be underestimated.

 

The US Department of Health and Human Services calls it “mHealth.” It denotes a mobile mechanism for monitoring and improving the health of the patients, and the health services and research.

 

5 ways in which these smart phone apps can transform the healthcare

 

1. Medication Refills using Mobile Prescription: Major pharmacies like Walgreens are now offering options for refilling prescriptions without having to visit them. The “reply to refill” email allows the user to refill multiple prescriptions, select which pharmacy those prescriptions should be filled at and what time they should be filled by, and even have them shipped from a saved account.
2. Patient Tools to Manage Their Own Health: Imagine if all the information you needed for a safe and healthy recovery were handed to you on an app. provider. Apps can remind you to take pills, monitor side effects and transfer the knowledge to your provider. This would be a huge advance for the patient’s safety. In the future, These apps will schedule appointments, update you the doctor’s status, if he is   running late, help monitor medications’ side effects, and help you follow your care plan accurately. These changes will engage patients with their health and healthcare in new ways.
3. Self-Monitoring Apps: For patients who do not require constant observation and are not in any risk, there are self monitoring applications available which allow them to take control of their own health. They can know physiological metrics like heart rate, blood pressure, weight, muscle tension, BMI, pule etc. they can even set targets and work towards achieving them. This gives them satisfaction and visible rewards for maintaining their own health.
4. Tools to Reduce Medical Fraud: These apps have the ability to track people and transactions in space and time. So, it is simple. When you scan your Medicare card at a pharmacy, an app would allow Medicare to instantly trace that transaction. This saves you a lot of fretting and fuming trying to figure out your expenses, and keeps your information safe.
5. Apps to Reduce Complexity Healthcare is a complex system, and the complexity is at times a deterrent to patient engagement. There are long waits, queues, non-transparent cost and quality to name a few challenges that the convalescent people face when dealing with the healthcare industry. A lot of these challenges are not necessary, and many can be mitigated using simple techniques. For e.g., if you know the number of patients waiting ahead of you in a doctor’s office where you are scheduled for a visit on your mobile, you can manage your time better, and save the wait in the reception area. If your smartphone remembers your appointments, medication times, and the medication levels and provides you timely reminders, your life will definitely become much easier.  Further, using geo location services, you can locate the nearest pharmacy, place an order containing your insurance information, and give you a scheduled pick up time at the click of a button.

Develop the Right Financial Apps

Smartphones have secured a strong place in our lives. We are living in a world where the majority of our daily chores are completely taken care of by our mobile devices. There is an app for almost everything. These apps are becoming a north star for millions of Americans who use them to navigate through life-reading emails, reading a book, playing games, listening to songs, shopping, learning and lots more. It is unbelievable to see how things have become just a fingertip away. So it’s no wonder that our phones have become the primary way we choose to manage our money.

 

We at Copper Mobile can help businesses in creating financial mobile applications which can be used for

 

• Mobile Banking: The power of managing your account without ever having to visit your bank through a mobile interface. Check your balance, transfer funds, pay bills, configure alerts for credits / debits, click – scan – upload checks all these activities accomplished through your mobile device, 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, even on public holidays with mobile banking apps.
• Bill Management: Bill management application is a smart and simple way to keep a track of your bills. Copper Mobile offers advanced bill management solutions that will enable you to keep a track of you pending bill payments and due dates, set reminders, schedule a schedule auto debits so that you don’t miss any payment date, View details of your account, anytime and anywhere.
• Insurance Services: Policy control, account management, claims submission, tracking and receipt, payment of premium  and adding new items under your account; all these and more are actions you want mobilized with insurance apps. Insurance companies recognize the need of the same, and are fast upgrading their internal systems to integrate with the mobility interfaces.

 

So, whether you are looking for an iPhone application or an app that works on cross-platforms, Copper Mobile can help your business in developing highly functional and flawless mobile financial apps.

Enterprise Mobility – Size Does Not Matter

A common myth about enterprise mobility is that it is for the big guys. It is usual for small organizations to ignore it without having even evaluated its business case. This leads to many missed opportunities and dissatisfaction among customers and employees alike. People use mobility in their personal lives, and are now demanding it in their professional lives as well. Organizations that fail to take notice and act on this changing behavior stand to lose their standing among them. Enterprise mobility has many use cases, and most of them are irrespective of the size and vertical in which they operate.

1. Productivity: Simple tasks like email, chat, document sharing and collaboration can be made many times more effective and efficient through mobilization. Teams that can communicate and collaborate on the go are far more productive than the ones who are chained to their desks for doing the same tasks. Most of the times, it is just about a message that needs to be passed along, or an update to be sent, or an approval received. If the user has to stop to find a wireless enabled area and use his / her laptop in order to accomplish these uncomplicated tasks, we have a major efficiency loss. Mobilifying these mundane chores can benefit an organization irrespective of their size.
2. Workload Management: Managing teams that are geographically distributed, or even at different points in the same city is a daunting task if you need to have everyone working through a personal computer. Task assignments, updates, and executions in this model lead to wastage of time, since people need to return to their desks to accomplish their jobs. This is also a deterrent to the work-from-home  model, which is a big cost saver especially for smaller organizations who cannot set up an office in every city they want to operate in. Imagine a start up that wants to sell in 20 states. If they need to rent office space for every one of them, just to seat a sales guy, any hopes for profitability are lost.
3. Field Services: Any organization that has a field operation team needs to track and manage them. They need to be provided with customer information and location while on the road, and the distribution of jobs also depends on the physical location of the resources. It is not exactly elegant trying to manipulate a laptop while driving. Also, the not all field service staff is necessarily high skill candidates. Therefore, it is best to use a medium they are familiar with – their smartphones. Allowing the Field Services teams access to customer data and job queues on their smartphones makes them efficient, and saves the company money they would have spent on personal computers or handhelds.
4. Inventory / Asset Management: Asset Management is a complex process. It includes the cradle to grave lifecycle for all things important to you. This means planning / requesting, ordering, receiving / stocking, building / configuring, deploying, retiring, and disposal of assets are all in there. Even when the Asset Management process is defined, documented and followed, sifting through thousands of records while chained to your desk becomes a challenge. That is where mobility comes into the picture. If you have an Asset Management application on your smartphone or tablet, you can manage your assets on the go, through an intuitive and helpful interface.

These are but a few use cases of mobility which an enterprise of any size can benefit from. Typically, the tangible and intangible benefits of mobility more than justify the cost of mobile application development, and provide a highly positive ROI. That’s the reason companies of all sizes and from different walks of trade are embracing the M-life world over. When will you?

Dallas Based Copper Mobile Honored with Directorship Award

Dennis Cagan, Chairman of the Board, Copper Mobile Enterprise Solutions has been honored for his directorship achievements.

 

The award program, which is in association with the National Association of Corporate Directors and sponsored by Ernst & Young, Bank of America and Haynes and Boone, honors directors from Dallas- based nonprofits, as well as public and private companies.

 

The Dallas Business Journal and an independent panel of judges selected 12 individual directors, including Dennis Cagan as the 2013 Outstanding Directors of North Texas Award.

 

With an experience of having done business in 35 countries, Dennis is a successful entrepreneur with many great achievements to his name. He was the founder of David Jamison Carlyle Corp., which he turned into one of the largest distributors of computer peripherals in the USA. He currently serves as a director on the boards of five organizations, including Copper Mobile.

 

Copper Mobile, one of the leading mobile app development companies, provides best-in-class solutions for many verticals like financial services, government, field services, Hi-Tech, and Healthcare Mobility Solutions and is excited to have received this honor.

Cloud and Mobility – A Great Symbiosis

Two of the most disruptive changes afoot in the technology landscape today are cloud and mobility. Both of them are omnipresent, all pervasive, and heavily abused. A few special commonalities between the two are noteworthy. Firstly, both are having a significant impact on both the consumer and the enterprise segments. Secondly, they both are increasingly becoming interdependent on the services provided by each other.

 

The confluence of these two steams of technology advancement is creating an ocean of possibilities for the users. These opportunities are being leveraged by businesses worldwide for creating offerings around them, or leveraging them for the furtherance of their respective corporate agendas. This has been made possible by some inter-usable features of cloud and mobility.

 

Cloud is essentially time-share

 

For those of you who went to work in the 80s would remember the time-share machines, which were too expensive (also, too big) to own, and therefore, were leased out for quanta of time. Today, the computers have shrunk in size and cost considerably, with a lot of processing power. However, the workloads have also increased manifold.

 

When it comes to smart devices, it is not possible to store all the data that is required for your usage on the same device. Just think if you needed to store all the pictures and videos you have ever taken on your smartphone. 64 Gigs will start to look very small very soon. But what about the time when you want to show your friends the antics of your 2-year-old daughter? It then becomes imperative to call upon the prowess of the global time-share – The Cloud. You can store your data on the cloud, and access it whenever, wherever you need it.

 

Enterprises use this a lot for the people who need to be out in the field, where the action is. There is not enough bandwidth in the world to store local copies of corporate data on each individual device (if you can fit it there), and keep each and every one of them synced real-time. That’s where the Ether is the perfect choice.

 

Wireless networks are faster than ever

 

We have 3 options when deploying applications and data – we do it locally, or over a computer network (which is still local to the network), or we do it in the Ether (C-word). Earlier, the third mechanism was not preferred because of accessibility issues caused by slow networks and inadequate bandwidth. Today, with the evolution of 4G LTE, the wireless networks are far faster and reliable than the broadband from 2 years ago. This solves the connectivity conundrum, allowing the users to enjoy the benefits of using the benefits of the cloud on their mobile devices.

 

Communication and collaboration

 

The most important currency in today’s world is information. Organizations are fixated on the information that is generated, manipulated, stored and used by the users (both customers and employees) on a day-to-day basis. Enterprise unified communication and collaboration (UCC) platforms integrate different sources of this information into a single, cross-leveraged unit. However, when we talk about mobile UCC, there are many interoperability challenges. Some of these challenges have been addressed in the PaaS and SaaS world where the APIs, connectors and native integrations are readily available.

 

The evolution of mobility and cloud certainly present many possibilities for new services and improvement of existing offerings. If used wisely, they can lead to a solid topline and bottomline impact.

Enterprise Mobility Consulting and App Strategizing

Mobile phones were earlier considered as the medium of communication have now become an integral part of our lives. From making calls to accessing social networking sites and doing online shopping, we rely on smartphones for most of our needs.

 

One of the most important factors for this change is mobile application. They have changed the way we use smartphones and tablets. Applications are always accessible and help us in staying connected, irrespective of location barrier.

 

Mobile applications are also getting popular amongst enterprises. Businesses are looking for smart ways to work and going mobile is one of their most preferred approaches.

 

Not every organization has the team of most experienced IT individuals and developers. Therefore, it might be a daunting task for companies to create and implement a mobile strategy at work.

 

Mobility consulting is the solution to all the mobilizing worries of enterprises. Enterprises planning to become a part of the app world can seek help of mobility consultants to create a robust application that is beneficial in terms of internal management and client support.

 

A mobility consulting company will help you in determining the best mobile solution that fits your business model. It is the job of the consultants to identify your business needs, strategize about the development process, calculate the risks involved, and successfully implement the solution.

 

Hiring a Mobility Consultant:

Things to Consider

 

• The success of mobile applications has fascinated many to get into the business of development. Therefore, it is important for you to consider the relevant experience of a consulting firm before hiring it for work.
• There are enterprise mobility firm that offer one-stop-solution to clients. Instead of hiring a consultant, developer, and designer separately, it is a good idea to get in touch with a mobility consultant who offers complete solutions. This will result in better co-ordination and more cost-effective mobility solution.

 

Other than finding a mobility consultant, it is necessary for enterprises to have the right mobility strategy. The right mobile application strategy will help you in successfully accomplishing the project and deriving the desired objectives. There are certain things a company must consider in creating a mobile strategy:

 

• When it comes to choosing between native or mobile web applications, enterprises should consider pros and cons of both. Native apps are either device or OS specific and use some internal features of the device. Mobile web apps on the other hand support cross-platforms.
• If maximum exposure or consumer reach is what you are aiming at with the enterprise application, opt for mobile web solution.
• Enterprises have to decide if they want an application for the internal purpose or to improve the customer reach. Consumer-centric applications are a trend these days as they lead to better branding, marketing, and revenue generation. However, for more organized and managed work environment, businesses are also opting for an internal mobile application that is accessible to all the employees.
• Data infringement is a major concern of enterprises. It is necessary for the IT department to figure out the security issues or the possible ways of data theft. Once, we are well-versed with the hurdles, it gets easier for developers to create a robust application that would be tested on various security parameters.

 

Mobility consulting and strategizing will have a great impact on the growth of an enterprise. Therefore, businesses are suggested to go through each process carefully before starting the mobile application development process.

Mobility is a Boon to Field Services Industry

In an enterprise, two teams are the most mobile – sales teams and field services (FS) teams. While the former are primarily visiting boardrooms and conferences, the latter have the charter of being on the go almost the entire day, meeting customers’ end users and solving their problems. Be it business operational field services or technology desk side support, the FS teams have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction (CSAT). Therefore, enabling them to do their jobs better is a mission critical. Traditionally, these teams have been equipped with bulky handheld devices which are cumbersome, and have limited functionality. Enterprise mobility has changed that, and today the tools of the trade for the hands-and-feet crowd reside within their smartphones / tablets.

 

Enabling the resources on the ground to use their smartphones for work related tasks has many advantages. Firstly, they do not have to carry brick sized, cumbersome devices. Secondly, doing away with handhelds saves a lot of money in purchase and maintenance of the same. Cost is further saved because the enterprises do not need backend software and infrastructure to pull data or charge those monsters. Also, smart devices are better connected (through cellular or wi-fi networks), and the employees do not have to go through a learning curve to use them.  Lastly, the use cases for a smartphone / tablet are virtually unlimited, empowering the FS resources to access all relevant information anytime, anywhere.

 

Due to these advantages, enterprises are investing in field services mobile apps that provide very useful functionalities.

 

Work order management: These applications let the managers allocate work efficiently, and control and monitor its execution closely. From a central console, a manager can identify the resources closest to the requirement through geo location services, and assign the work to them. The agents on the ground get a notification with all the relevant details like location, nature of the work, the priority and SLA. They can then accept the work order and proceed to the location. Once done, they can update the work order with the outcome, and the manager sees the same immediately.

 

Invoice Management: Keeping a track of invoices and payments can be a headache when you have hundreds of employees on the field involved in the transactions. As an FS organization, if you have to physically collect and input all the receipts, it becomes a nightmare, and has immense potential for human error. Using a mobile app to issue invoices and receive payments, with the ability to process credit cards can greatly reduce the effort required for this process and the potential for errors.

 

GPS tracking: How many times does the help desk receive a call from an irate customer saying “I am still waiting for your person to reach here”. The standard response is “He should be there soon”. Imagine a world where the helpdesk agent can tell the customer “Sir, he is 2.1 miles from your location. As per the traffic data, he should reach there in approximately 7 minutes.” Tracking your resources and knowing here they are at all times gives your business a huge efficiency boost. Not just people, tracking assets and vehicles on the move also help security and CSAT. ‘Knowing’ is the first step towards improving, and GPS tracking systems keep you in the know.

 

These are but a few use cases for mobility in field services. Copper Mobile can help you in connecting with your field staff like never before with our mobile field service app. We design customized applications for smart devices such as mobile phones and tablets, which can be accessed from anywhere across the globe.

Does Your App Bring Out The Best In Its Device?

Every now and then an app comes out that truly mesmerizes the market in a way that users and industry experts alike didn’t even know was possible. These remarkable apps take the capabilities of a device, and through the creation of an innovative new app, absolutely bring out the best in the device it is housed on. While it is certainty no easy task, if you can come up with an original idea for an app that uses a device in a way most people had no idea was possible, your enterprise will practically be guaranteed profitability.

 

The Idea

 

Thinking up an innovative app idea that uses a mobile device in a new way is extremely difficult. It often seems as through developers have either already thought of all the good ideas, or inspiration is simply impossible to find. With that said, there are many examples of genius apps that have been created in the face of lackluster inspiration and a market full of creative app offerings. Take, for example, the Sleep Cycle app. It is an app that cleverly uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to measure sleep patterns and quality based on the user’s movements while asleep. This is a truly remarkable idea that uses the capabilities of the iPhone to its advantage. Without the iPhone’s accelerometer, the Sleep Cycle app simply would not exist and the idea of an app that gives users feedback on their sleep patterns would remain a thought still in the incubation phase of someone’s mind. This sort of symbiotic relationship between app and device — bringing out the best in the device while introducing an innovative new idea — is what makes the combination so profitable.

 

There are two basic ways to come up with such an innovative idea. You can either start by considering the capabilities of a device you wish to house your app on, or you can think of a brilliant idea first and worry about a device’s capabilities later. Typically, it is easier to base your app idea off the capabilities of the device you are working with. This way when you actually do come up with a brilliant idea for your app, you know for a fact that it will find fruition. For instance, the mobile market now has a bunch of flashlight apps that use the camera light on various mobile phones as a static bright light to use in the dark. Five years ago, if someone had thought of the idea to create an app that works as a flashlight, they probably would have hit a dead end. Back then most smartphones did not feature a camera light built into the design. However, now that most smartphones have such a feature, the idea has found tremendous success with users in the mobile market.

 

Conclusion

 

Coming up with the next brilliant idea for an app is certainly not an easy undertaking. Inspiration can be scarce and motivation can dwindle, as the market appears to already have an endless array of stellar apps. However, if you first start with the capabilities of a device, such as the iPhone, you will undoubtedly be able to find a feature that no other app has capitalized on, turning its use and your brilliant idea into an innovative new mobile offering for the market to enjoy. All app ideas start from somewhere and a mobile device is about as good a starting place as its gets.

 

Copper Mobile helps enterprises in developing new ideas and strategising their mobile needs and create innovative products for mobility solutions

Enterprise App Stores - All Grown Up

As per recent Gartner report, by 2017, a quarter of all enterprises will have their own app stores for the employees. The primary cause for this is the rapid adoption of mobile technology by the employees and customers alike. With mobile adoption comes the need for apps, and with need for apps comes the need to securely distribute them. Increasingly, businesses are finding consumer mobile app stores inadequate for distribution of enterprise applications. These storefronts offer little in the way of security, vetting and control. Distribution-especially to large work forces-is cumbersome. Enter the enterprise App store.

 

There are many players providing mobile enterprise app stores, the latest big name to enter being SAP. Verizon also provides its white-labeled corporate app store, which comes with your company’s logo and color scheme. This industry will continue morphing as vendors, service providers and the businesses themselves explore various approaches. At the end of the day, of course, no single formula will emerge. Rather, different types of enterprise-focused app stores-some of them as simple as areas set aside at the consumer-oriented app stores-will establish themselves.

 

Options:

 

There are essentially 2 categories of app stores – One for the executives and CXOs, and another for the remaining employees. In the second category, there are 3 methods of implementation – Firstly, there are those that are located within the consumer marketplaces, such as Google Play and Apple's App Store; Second type of app stores that aggregate enterprise applications from these stores and offer them to the corporate world; and, finally, there are enterprise stores that offer their own applications.

 

Features:

 

To be successful, enterprise application distribution systems should have some necessary characteristics.

 

1. Access Control – This is an important feature. The access needs to be controlled for different profile of users. For e.g. the finance department people should not have access to salesforce.com app. This may require integration with the active directory or HRMS.

 

2. Registration – As important it is to allow access based on user profiles, for enhanced security, it is equally important to give access to only known devices. The registration of devices ensures that only the authorized devices are allowed to use the app store.

 

3. Security – VPN-only access and intense application testing are some of the important features which ensure the users can be sure of the application that they download, and the enterprise is certain that only bona fide devices and users get access.

 

4. Centralized control – Since the enterprise marketplace has to be closely monitored and regulated, it is imperative that they be managed well. In order to reduce the management complexity, there should be a centralized management console for the same, where IT can upload, approve, or reject applications.

 

5. Cross-platform compatibility – Since the device and OS types in the enterprise are generally disparate, it is important that the download options are compatible with the devices.  Ideally, the app store should provide employees with the choice to download apps either directly via the enterprise app marketplace or via their mobile Web browser.

 

6. App updates – Organizations change. Policies change. Functionalities change. Therefore, it is imperative that the apps will also change. The user must be provided notifications and access to app updates, upgrades, security patches and so on. Supporting OTA or over-the-air updates enables users to easily apply these updates on their devices, without having to spend unnecessary time and effort.