We are all now connected 24 hours a day with access to information and tools that define how we interact with the world. We make decisions based upon which companies are the easiest to do business with and which make incremental improvements in our lives. Mobile technologies are revolutionizing and disrupting industries with as much economic power as the Internet did over the last two decades, only much faster. As a business leader, if you are not thinking about how to be the leader in disrupting your market with mobile, you will soon be left behind. In “Mobile Web Optimization and Best Practices,” Brenda Barron proclaims, “77% of Americans own a smartphone, and nearly half have a tablet. There’s a good chance people who visit your site will be on a mobile device. If someone visits a site on their phone, and it’s a mess of colors and displaced text, it’ll leave a bad taste in their mouth.”
The three A’s of mobile technology are: Anyone, Anytime and Anywhere. No matter what business or industry you are in, there is a disruptive technology poised to be introduced or invented that will improve your relationships with your customers, vendors, employees or investors. So how do you find the killer app in your industry or market? Start by asking these five questions:
- What information can you collect and make available that was previously too difficult or expensive to capture?
- What new ways can you enable people in your industry to interact with one another in an unfettered environment?
- How can you add value to your customers’ lives through a highly personalized and tailored experience that solves a specific problem wherever they are?
- What novel, exciting functionality could you leverage to speed a transaction or make it infinitely easier to do business with your company?
- How can you connect with your customers in new ways and add value to their lives?
Some combination of these value propositions is the right fit for just about every industry and market. One of your competitors is already figuring out how to do it.
