In Clay Richardson's view, there's no doubt about mobile computing's impact on the current business landscape.
"Mobile is the No. 1 disruptive force facing companies today," the Forrester Research senior analyst says in opening this videocast, the first in a two-part series on mobile business process management (BPM). Why is mobile such a powerful factor? "Because mobile touches everything: all parts of a business' ecosystem -- customers, employees, partners, suppliers," Richardson says. "Everyone is reaching for mobile to leap buildings with a single bound and to move faster than a locomotive."
But as Richardson explains in this overview, there's often a big gap between what people expect and what mobile actually delivers, especially in terms of user experience and smooth integration with legacy applications or back-end processes. Despite the technology's flaws, though, businesses can't afford to ignore it. Forrester projects that, by 2016, U.S. consumers will be using 126 million tablet computers, with mobile applications becoming a $60 billion market.
While many companies view application development as a big first step toward going mobile, Richardson believes reengineering business processes should be a higher priority. "The actual work behind the scenes to make mobile more engaging and tie back to core systems is where most of the hard work is," he says. "That's the real opportunity."
In this presentation, prepared exclusively for SearchSOA.com and its sister TechTarget site ebizQ, Richardson discusses real-life mobile BPM successes and failures. He also explains why mobile BPM may not be the best choice for every situation and describes two key factors that BPM professionals should consider before mobilizing any process. In part 2, Richardson drills down into specific steps for making processes mobile.
