Developing of Mobile Technology Business Essay Example

mobile business. But then, what exactly is mobile business?

Mobile business has been defined in several ways by different authors. Kalakota and Whinston (1997:413), define e-commerce as “the ability to buy and sell products or information on the internet or other online sources.” Other authors define it as “a business transaction with the exchange of anything of value through a mobile network.” (Mehmood, 2015:3). The definition of mobile business has been evolving over time and authors have come up with anew related definition in response to the evolving nature of business.

Li Yan (2005), defined mobile business a transaction that have a definite utility or value, that is administered through a mobile terminal equipment on themobile telecommunication network. Mylonopus and Doukids (2003:6) defined mobile commerce as “the ability to make payments over mobile networks.” Ming and Qi (2008), defined mobile business to be an extension of e-commerce where products and services are managed through the use of wireless mobile equipment without the place or time constraints so as to increase the efficiency or profitability of a business process.Chung-Shing and Ho (2010:37) defined mobile business as“the buying and selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices or any transaction with a monetary value that is conducted via a mobile network.”

Mylonopus and Doukids (2003:6) however feels that the definition of mobile business is vague and that a new definition needs to be developed. This is because of two reasons. The first reason is that most of the mobile business model lies in the future with a constant evolution in the mobile technology (Mylonopus & Doukids, 2003:5). The second reason is that fast pace and uncertainties of the mobile

technology makes the users assimilate the innovations in the mobile technology in unprecedented ways (Mylonopus & Doukids, 2003:5). As such, the existing definitions of mobile business is sufficient. However, the general consensus is that mobile business is the use of mobile phones to carry outany form of business transactions between two parties (Chung-Shing & Ho, 2010:37)

The impact of mobile business

Mobile technology has completely changed the way business operates in today’s competitive business environment. According to Rich McBee the CEO of Mitel, a company that provides mobile solutions to the multinational corporations “73% of senior executives see their mobile device as critical to how they do business,” (Kridel, 2015:1). According to the International Data Corporation -an analyst firm- by the year 2017, 75% of organizations internal applications will be primarily designed for tablets and Smartphones with the PC usage becoming just an afterthought (Kridel, 2015:1). This kind of overwhelming adoption of mobile business is having a huge impact on every part of the business process. This includes;

• Business model

The business world had stayed had pretty much stayed the same for about a century after the industrial revolution(Mehmood, 2015:3). Now it is pretty safe to say that it is never going to happen again. Mobile technology is growing at an exponential rate and the business world can’t help but be swept away by this tidal wave (Ying-Feng & Ching-Wen, 2006: 1350). One might think that the business world has come so far but if you back in time only five yearsyou will be shocked to find out that mobile phones were being used primarily for casual pursuits rather than business or commercial purposes. This was the time

for the birth of App Generation which was primarilyused for game purposes and not business (Mehmood, 2015:3).

In today’s business environment, mobile technology is the “big thing” and Google has refurbished its algorithms so as to prioritize the websites that make mobile browsing easier. “Ubiquitous and rapidly evolving mobile technologies such as smartphones and allow people to work anytime, anywhere, and on any task” (Reyt & Wiesenfeld, 2015:739).Every aspect of the business can now be handled using mobile phones from remote locations given that the devices are loaded with the right software. All aspects of customer relations, content marketing, all the way to back-end processes such as invoicing and shipping just at the click of a button(Sung & Cho, 2012:32). But then mobile technology is not just for the business owner, it is also for the consumers. With the rise of Millennials, many more consumers are making use of mobile devices to do their shopping, find the local businesses, as well as share their shopping experiences with their friends and acquaintances as well as strangers on social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Mobile technology has therefore completely rewritten the book on thebusiness model (Wang et al., 2014:1336).

• Marketing

Mobile devices are replacing the traditional marketing media (Mijung, Jun & Chan-Olmsted, 2010:2). The mobile marketing has seen an explosive growth in the recent years with corporations spending billions of US dollars on the mobile advertisement.Corporations are using permission-based mobile ads through the SMS (short message service). For instance, in 2009, Google acquired Admob, a mobile ads platform so as to deliver ads to the mobile devices (Wang et al., 2014:1335). In the United States, the text message

messaging has exponentially grown over the recent year. In 2006, numbers were at 70.1 million and rose to 88.6 million in 2007 (Sung & Cho, 2012:31). According to eMarketer, “the market for mobile ads is estimated at $2.6 billion in 2012 and $10.8 billion in 2016” (Wang et al., 2014:1335).

Many firms are adopting mobile marketing because of its ability to reach a wide population (Mijung, Jun & Chan-Olmsted, 2010:2). Nearly everyone owns a mobile phone and using text messages to market has shown to have a very wide reach as compared to the other forms of advertisement. It is estimated that the use of mobile marketing and advertisement is going to keep on increasing especially in the developing countries where the mobile phone penetration is higher than the developed countries(Mijung, Jun & Chan-Olmsted, 2010:2). It is estimated that in the near future, almost every adult will own a phone and the mobile advertisement will continue to rise (Sung & Cho, 2012:33).

•  Communication

Mobile phones have also impacted on communication within the organizations. Mobile email is one of the communication use of mobile phones in organizations(Mehmood, 2015:5). “Although a majority of the work email processing is executed on the desktop, mobile email is still one of the first mobile business applications that are used on a large scale and persistently in enterprise settings” (Franssila, 2013:185). Empirical studies have revealed that mobile phone users within organizations have shown a strong dependency on the on the email applications (ibid). This strong dependency is due to the fact that mobile phones are convenient to carry around and as a result, it is easy to send and receive emails over the

mobile devices.

Text messages are also being used for communication within organizations. Text messages are more effective than emails in case of urgent communication. The open rate for text messages is at 98% and that it is read within 15mins or receiving them on average (Reyt & Wiesenfeld, 2015:741). As such, mobiles phones have made communication efficient. Team members can communicate faster through text messages making them work faster. In addition, mobile phones have improved customer care services. People can reach the customer care personnel faster and at any time using their mobile phones. In fact, most of the customer services in corporations are offered through mobile phones(Reyt & Wiesenfeld, 2015:741).

• Payment

MasterCard Paypal and LevelUp are some of the leading companies providing mobile payment services. Recently Apple Inc. introduced Apple Pay so as to get into this competitive mobile payment business. By the end of the year 2014, Apple Pay accounted for 1.7% of all the mobile payments made especially in the Beverages and Food corporations such as McDonald’s barely three months after its introduction (Shen & Yazdanifard, 2015: 490). Many other companies such as Xiaomi, Google, and Starbucks have also entered the mobile payment industry (Shen & Yazdanifard, 2015: 490).

The increase in the use of mobile devices for online retail has called for an equally efficient mode of payment (Tao, 2013:1886). As a result, individual order and pay for their products online using their mobile services. Large retail companies like Walmart have made this possible by proving platforms that allow customers to pay for their products using their mobile phones. It is estimated that mobile payment may even phase out cash payment or even credit

card payment (Kent, 2012: 316).

• Banking

With the fast pace of technology advances, as well as changing lifestyle and demographics, “the traditional branch banking is giving way to e-banking (electronic banking) and more recently m-banking (mobile banking)” (Bhatt, 2016:1). Corporations, consumers, and the government as well continue to demand more effective and efficient payment services and systems. As a result, most banks if not all have made very significant efforts so as to improve the mobile banking platforms (Shen & Yazdanifard, 2015: 490). This kind of efforts have resulted in app developers to be involved in an app race for the mobile banking.

A wide range of banking apps exists that help the workers to better manage and understand their finances and spending habits (Isac, 2013:199). More and more customers are turning for mobile banking so as to stay up to date with their needs. Banks who have failed to adapt are losing customers who are moving to other banks who can provide them with mobile banking services(Shen & Yazdanifard, 2015: 491). Mobile banking is reshaping the landscape for the banking sector with the customers taking a center stage. Of course, customers still expects the banks to have a lot of ATMs across the nation for cash withdrawal, they want to be able to check their balances and carry out other transactions as money transfer as quickly as possible and that is where mobile banking comes in. The traditional physical banks are facing a risk of being phased out (Yan-Mei, & Ning, 2011:3)

It has been observed that most of the customers who have adopted mobile banking are the younger generation(Isac, 2013:200). However, the older generationshave also significantly

adopted the mobile banking. According to Illia, Ngniatedema and Zhentu (2015:111), “only half of adults in the U.S. use online banking, with the other half still visiting physical branches for their banking services.” A Pew Research survey revealed that 54% of young adults between the age of 18 and 29 used mobile banking while the figure dropped to 40% for the older adults between the age of 30 and 49 also the level of ownership was the same in the two groups (Illia, Ngniatedema & Zhentu, 2015:111).

A study done by ath Power on small business banking found out that the millennial small business ownersare disrupting the whole banking industry(Mehmood, 2015:2). The study revealed that 72% of millennial use mobile banking for their business while 42% of their adult counterparts used mobile banking (Federal Reserve, 2016:3). The same study revealed that 54% of mobile banking users with Smartphones cited mobile banking to be one of the three most important ways through which they interact with their bank. In a Bank of America survey, 64% of the respondents said that they assessed a banking service with their mobile phones a few times a week (Stewart, 2016).

• Organization behavior

Beyond the office laptop or the smartphone, many organizations have implemented information systems, and custom mobile technology so as to keep operations running smoothly. This advancement in the mobile technology has resulted in the decrease of the time that is needed to complete certain tasks and in some instances eliminate some of the business functions (Mehmood, 2015:2). Organizations need to change their structures so as to adapt to these changes. This is done through modifying the requirements of certain positions

and even removing some jobs. The employees are given training on the new mobile software. The organizations may also come up with new departments or jobs to specialize in the new areas of the mobile technology. In some situations,these implementations of mobile technology render some duties obsolete(Stewart, 2016).

Generally, organizational workers have to change their mindset to adaptto the new mobile technology. They need to change how they relate with one another. The managers have to change their mindsets and move away from managing-by-seeing. They need to adopt the managing-by-results approach. The managers should learn how to give instructions through mobile phones (Reyt & Wiesenfeld, 2015:740). On the other hand, the employees need to learn how to receive instructions through the mobile phones. The organizational employees should also learn how to relate with customers through the phones given that many customers use phones rather than come physically to the palace of business (Ebibi et al., 2012:276). In short, everyone in the organization from the managers to the employees should change their behavior so as to better relate with the new crop of customers who are increasingly requiring organizations to give them efficient services through their mobile devices (Illia, Ngniatedema & Zhentu, 2015:111).

Employees are also using their own devices to for both personal and work use. This has been termed as Bring Your Own Device, BYOD (Steelman, Lacity &Sabherwal, 2016:85).These policiesenable the employees to use their own mobile devices as well as applications for business tasks. “The introduction of consumer software and collaboration tools into the organization is quickly expanding from bring-your-own-device and consumer applications to bring-your-own modified and original applications” (Steelman, Lacity & Sabherwal, 2016:86).However, some

CIOs have remained concerned about the potential threats that BOYD brings (Magruder et al., 2015:56). For instance, “484 senior IT leaders in a 2013 Society for Information Management (SIM) survey ranked BYOD among the five most worrisome technology issues” (Steelman, Lacity & Sabherwal, 2016:86). Since then, BOYD had dropped from top ten of SIM surveys as managers are more and more focusing on the potential that mobile technology is bringing to their organization. The organizationsare able to cut on the technology costs and let the employees use their own devices(Steelman, Lacity &Sabherwal, 2016:85).

Success of business and the importance of the consumer

“The convergence of the Internet and mobile communications, in particular, brought about a variety of wireless data communication capabilities, which led to a paradigm shift in the way that individuals communicate and work” (Nandi & Nandi, 2015:235). This has translated into business success. Business success means that “what we are doing well today should be done even better and more wisely tomorrow, especially compared to thecompetition, to fully satisfy all interest groups” (Zdrili? &Dul?i?, 2016:146). For businesses, success means a clear dedication of the managers or leaders to the continuous improvements of all the key processes, innovation, and creativity, team motivation, motivation levels, work conditions, and the general organizational culture(Nandi & Nandi, 2015:235). At the employee level, success always starts with acommitment to achieving results, continuous learning, readiness in taking of responsibilities, and the aim to improve in anything that they do (Zdrili? & Dul?i?, 2016:146).

The relationship between the employee and the employer is also one of the important things for the successes of the business. The willingness of all the employees to commit to

the long-term working relationship with the employers may be a big challenge to the business. “In relationships between employers and employees, which are all too often characterized by vagueness, both parties have to ensure an advanced performance” (Jochims, 2016:189). The willingness of the employees as well as the employers to foster a long-term relationship between them may be critical for the success of a business.

Business managers and owners always need a way of gauging how successful is their business. However, the benchmarks for one business may not be the same for the other business. Still, there are still some critical success factors that can be used to gauge the overall performance or success of a business. In today’s completive business environment technology utilization is one of the most business success factors (Xiaobo et al., 2010:97).“It’s unanimous that technology continues to transform ways of doing all-things business” (Wallace, 2016:22). As a business owner or manager, avoid keeping up-to-date with the latest technology at your own peril. Mobile technology is the latest technology in the business would and as such the adoption of mobile technology can, therefore, be used to measure the success of a business (Wu, Straub & Liang, 2015:498). A business that makes use of mobile technology is more open to the new markets, increased efficiency, serving of new customers, and new products as well.

Mobile devices are not just contributing to the success of businesses in isolation, they are also contributing to the success of the economy as well (Sgriccia et al, 2007:60). Currently, the United States and China are the leading economies. The U.S. has been a leading economy for a while. However, China

was relatively poorer and countries like japan were ahead of China. In the recent years, China has supposed Japan and become the second-largest economy in the world only behind the United States. Business between the United States and China have also increased (Sgriccia et al, 2007:60).

One of the success factors that have attributed to the success of these two economies is the mobile device technology(Wallace, 2016:22). The abundance and use of the mobile devices within the workforce, both issued by the company and personally owned has been explosive. Statistics indicated that “55.7 million US consumers owned smartphones during the three months ending in August 2010” (Kahle-Piasecki, Chao & Ariss, 2012:57). In the same 2010 period, the smartphone use in China had even stronger potential for growth. “Total domestic sales of smartphones have reached 13.48 million in the second quarter alone with a sequential growth rate of 27.5%” (Kahle-Piasecki, Chao & Ariss, 2012:57).

According to a report issued by China Internet Network Information Centre (CNNIC) in July 2010, the number of mobile Internet users has reached 277 million, accounting for 66% of the Internet population (420 million) (Zhou, 2011:241). The propagation of smartphones in the two countries led to business to consider new ways of conducting mobile business or m-business. This lead to the better performance of business which resulted in the growth of the economies especially the Chinese economy.

Mobile technology has enabled business to provide multichannel services to the customers. By using mobile devices to access the internet, users can be able to utilize a variety of services such mobile banking, mobile games, as well as instant messaging (Zhou, 2011:241). In a multichannel context, the mobile

services can be used as an alternative or a complementary service to the existing services. “Firms implementing a multichannel strategy may prefer that clients use the mobile channel as a complementary channel to the online channel rather than as a substitute, given the potential benefits for a firm offering the use of multiple channels to the same client” (Nel & Boshoff, 2015:67).

In such a case, the customers do not have to consider the channels offered by the business in isolation. They are given different alternatives on which they can be able to access the services that they need from an organization (Roberts, 2016:60). Rather than the customers having to evaluate one best alternative to use, they use a variety of they are able to use different channels depending on their preferences and convenience (Wang et al, 2014:1300). This has an effect of leading to more customer satisfaction.

The mobile devices have brought with them new capabilities. With location, context-based tools, and calendar, the employee can be and to identify all the information the clients wants to know without having to physically go to the office(Roberts, 2016:60). The employee all need to use a mobile device to access all the information and the process, customer service has significantly improved. With the availability of the unified communication tools that can be used to access the company’s directory, the employees can be able to quickly locate the manager and other employees within the organization if theneed arises which enables faster communication among staff (Kridel, 2015:1).

Customer satisfaction has significantly improved with the adoption of mobile business (Dahlberg et al., 2011). The service workers no longer need to set aside time

so that they can be able to go back to the office so as to find out the answers to the questions that had come in when they were not in the office. The customer satisfaction increases because the employees are also better equipped to provide them with the answers they need on the spot (Kridel, 2015:1). The revenue for the business increases because no sales are lost due to frustrated customers who are turning to the competitors(Roberts, 2016:61).

Mobile technology has also the potential to decrease the time required for project completion within organizations. “According to Webtorials, 18% of projects are delayed because the team can’t collaborate effectively. In the case of businesses with a lot of workers” (Kridel, 2015:1).In the case of an organization with a lot of workers on the go, the main reason to why there are delays in project completion is that 25% of the workers are always out of the office at any given point in time (Kridel, 2015:1). Mobile devices give organizations a good solution to minimizing these kinds of delays. They help in the collaboration of opportunities even including video.

For instance when tablets and smartphones are being used as videoconferencing endpoints and the employees are now able to participate in a given project from any location they are (Asimakopoulos, Boretos, & Mourlas, 2014:14). In addition, businessesare able to save on thecost of providing the road warriors with dedicated videoconferencing end points; most of which would sit unused for most of the time(Kridel, 2015:1). More so the service workers can be able to use video taken by their mobile devices to better assess the challenges that are being faced

by the customers and share then with their other colleagues in different locations. An emerging technology referred to as Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) presents an option for businesses for the embedding of video-calling functionality within the mobile applications (Research and Markets, 2016:1). This technology has the potential of further making video conferencing much easier.

The Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) deployments have also enabled the company to be successful in that they have been able to reduce the costs associated with the purchase of expensive devices to be used in conducting the business. However, BYOD brings with it a few challenges given that the employee may have to use his own cellular data. This may discourage employees from fully using their devices for business purposes and as such reduce efficiency. Business should, therefore, try to cater for some of the cellular data costs (Androulidakism & Kandus, 2011:258). On the bright side, the cost of cellular data is increasingly reducing as more and more people get access to Wi-Fi which off-loads the higher monthly cellular data costs. More and more employee even prefer to use their own mobile for work purposes instead of carrying around multiple devices(Byrom et al., 2016:20). In addition, the employees ever feel that they are in position to obtain better devices and install the kind of applications they want ontheir own devices as opposed to the one provided by the organization which may restrict the kind of applications installed limiting its uses (Magruder et al., 2015:60)

Generally, the adoption of mobile business has been of great advantage to both the consumers and the business itself as it has greatly contributed to thesuccess of many businesses (Asimakopoulos, Boretos,

& Mourlas, 2014:15). Even in less developed countries, mobile devices penetration has a very high penetration and this is something that caused the businesses to rethink their business models so as to serve the changing needs of the customers and maintain a competitive advantage (Kumar et al., 2015:17). Businesseshave integrated the use of mobile devices both inside and outside of the organization. Mobile devices are used by employees to communicate among themselves(Franssila, 2013:185). Customers, on the other hand, can use the mobile devices to shop and even pay for the services(Shen & Yazdanifard, 2015: 490). Banks have also allowed the customers to be more in charge of their bank accounts by allowing them to use mobile devices to access their accounts(Olasina, 2015:60). Generally, those businesses that have been quick to adapt to the integration of mobile devices into the business have been able to reap more profits and be successful.

Although, managers and business owners were afraid at first about the threats that were posed by the employees using their own device, this kind of concern has reduced over time (Byrom et al., 2016:18). Mobile business has proved to be beneficial and business owners are trying hard to take advantage of its full potential. If the current trend continues, the mobile devices use in business would clearly surpass the use of other technologies like the PCdo (Zdrili? & Dul?i?, 2016:147). Business will give priority to the mobile devices ahead of the PCs. Customers will be able to access virtually very service using their mobile devices(Magruder et al., 2015:60).

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