Process Improvement Opportunities

Monday, December 22nd, 2008 at 8:38 am

Mobility offers new opportunities to dramatically improve business models and processes and will ultimately provide new, streamlined business processes that never would have existed if not for this new phenomenon. Figure 2.9 illustrates how processes will evolve to factor mobility.

Let’s go through each of the prime tenets in Figure 2.9 (signified by the stars in the chart).

Extending Web to wireless. The first phase in the evolutionary track is called extending Web to wireless. This is also known as “Webifying” or extending your existing Web presence. For the most part, business processes are minimally affected in this phase. The goal is to provide value-added services through mobility with minimal disruption to existing processes. An example might be creating a new company Web site accessible through WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) phones or Palm OS–based personal digital assistants (PDAs). Firms attain immediate value through realizing additional exposure and market presence, and customers realize value through additional services.
Extending business processes with mobility. The next step in the evolution of mobility is to extend existing business processes while new processes are born through adaptive business models. New
opportunities to streamline company business processes emerge and evolve to produce new revenue opportunities. One example is the way that mobility extends business processes through a supply chain optimization model. Real-time tracking and alert mechanisms provide supply chain monitors with the capability to monitor shipments and product line quality in ways that traditional business models were not capable of doing. New business processes emerge through these new mechanisms that ultimately shorten the supply chain cycle, thus minimizing error and maximizing efficiency and realizing the utmost customer satisfaction.
Enabling a dynamic business model. The final phase in the mobility life cycle is one that has only been touched upon in today’s world. The unique attributes of mobility will provide new and exciting ways of managing processes and allow for efficiencies never before attainable. The convergence of wireless technologies with existing business models will become the mobile “nirvana,” or a fully dynamic business process.

Taken From : Enterprise Guide to Gaining Business Value from Mobile Technologies