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Cognizant 20-20 Insights

Mobile Enterprise Analytics in 60 Minutes


To better service todays on-the-go decision makers and inform their need for proactive planning and strategic execution, organizations must deliver anytime/anyplace data access and analytical capabilities to a vast array of mobile devices. Read on to see how your organization can build this capability in record-setting time.
Executive Summary
There is a mobility arms race underway in business, and if you are reading this white paper on your computer, you may already be behind. One of the most exciting opportunities on the horizon for enterprises of all kinds is tied to the emergence of rich digital experiences through increasingly small and powerful mobile devices. Mobile technologies are changing the way people communicate, work and play. In fact, much of the innovation we are seeing across industries is driven by the adoption of mobile apps. According to IDC,1 the worlds mobile workers will number 1.3 billion by 2015 representing 37.2% of the global workforce. And the percentage of individuals with mobile access to the Internet is expected to grow exponentially (see Figure 1). Mobility is now front and center for businesses, governments and other institutions as they seek to accelerate decision making and extend their reach to customers and constituents across channels. And since user demands typically outpace development cycles, it is imperative to have a process in place that enables a detailed glimpse of the to-be application. Nowhere is this more critical than in the emerging space of mobile analytics, where IT teams must quickly pilot and deploy new ways of delivering business intelligence to keep on-the-go decision makers up to speed in areas like budgeting, selling and marketing, and better inform strategic decision making. As enterprise mobility grows, businesses are jumping in feet rst although they are not necessarily prepared. At the same time, the increasing use of smart devices and tablets is making mobile analytics a key component of organizations IT strategies. The good news is that some of todays more sophisticated and advanced business analytics platforms can deliver ad hoc analyses on mobile devices, including tablets. This white paper offers an outlook on the forces driving enterprise mobility, along with insights to help enterprises embrace mobile analytics capabilities quickly and effectively.

Why Mobile Analytics is Important


Given the ubiquity of mobile devices and the role they will play in analytics, it is important to understand how their capabilities will affect the organization (see Figure 1, next page).

cognizant 20-20 insights | december 2013

Percent of Global Internet Trafc from Mobile Devices


35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

30%

15% 10% 1%
2009

2.4%
2010

6%
2011 2012 2013 2014

Figure 1

Improving

the end user experience: Mobile Web analytics should be conceptually familiar to marketers who work with traditional Web analytics. Both are useful for understanding how customers consume content, and what changes can be made to optimize their browsing behavior. Performance is often seen as the biggest problem for mobile users; therefore, establishing very specic cause and effect scenarios via analytics reports can show which segments need attention in order to improve the overall customer experience.

Moreover, doing this in real time differentiates winning companies.

Delivering

>>Native apps or HTML5? While native apps

custom content: Customized reports provide a more organized way for enterprises to look at their data. Once businesses have established the programs and features that work for their customers, they can better justify future investments. With the addition of data on the connecting device, mobile sites can be increasingly optimized to suit the specic interests of each consumer. Customization and personalization is a great way to convert visits into sales; organizations should use this ability to their advantage.

may still hold an edge in performance, including enriching user experiences and affording opportunities for monetization, HTML5 offers advantages in other areas, such as cross-platform deployment of mobile applications, control over distribution, and the ability to overcome platform-fragmentation challenges.

Custom reports can also be incredible time savers if the right reports are generated. Rather than spending time searching for important metrics, organizations need analytical data that is neatly separated into columns. This allows for deeper assessments, which can lead to more meaningful, more actionable insight.

Real-time data collection: Data is the corner-

Mobile Analytics in 60 Minutes


As a result of the rising number and types of mobile devices, laptops have been replaced by smart devices such as tablets and smartphones. Increasingly, business people especially executives are demanding the ability to perform meaningful analytics activities from their mobile devices on the go, without the burden of cumbersome carry-ons. However, as with any greeneld initiative, there are likely to be obstacles in the road. Any adoption of mobile analytics technologies must be predicated upon how well they t the business, and how well they are integrated into the enterprise

stone of engaging business campaigns. Mobile analytics harnesses the power of data to create more relevant, engaging messages that can increase ROI. Given mobilitys fast-changing and dynamic nature, real-time relevance is what matters most to enterprises. Constant monitoring can deliver up-to-date knowledge to perpetually rene the user experience through features such as interactive visualization, an interface to apply lters and various views of data.

A complete lifecycle perspective on how individuals use reports/apps to improve user engagement is key to succeeding with mobile analytics.

cognizant 20-20 insights

information architecture. As with most elements of mobility, speed is of the essence. There are many analytics tools that fall into multiple categories. They can differ signicantly, and can serve a variety of purposes within areas like content marketing. For example, Marketing AI2 provides analytics that inform content optimization for B2B marketers. Google Analytics3 allows companies to customize reports, measure the impact of social media and mobile applications on Web site trafc, and calculate conversion rates. Likewise, Japersoft4 Mobile BI allows businesses to create highly interactive reports; provide online and cross-tab sorting, ltering, conditional formatting and column move/hide, along with format changes that can be saved for re-use. Given market demand for real-time mobile analytics and Jaspersofts interactive report-generation capabilities, we used this tool to create a marketing analytics application in 60 minutes. We tried various business-intelligence features of the software, such as dashboard creation, interactive charts and conguring mobile reports with dynamic input controls, for example. Figures 2 and 3 offer a glimpse of some of the business intelligence features that were created using Jaspersofts mobile analytics tool. So successful was this proof of concept that we have applied what we learned to assist a U.S. multinational conglomerate interested in incorporating mobile analytics using interactive charts and a dashboard. Among the key features we used to create a solution for our customer were:

and non-relational sources, and loading the same for subsequent operations (see Figures 2 and 3).

Interactive bar chart and tables: Interact with

report charts and tables, including on-the-y sorting, ltering and formatting of column values and headers (see Figure 4 and 5). virtualization: Integrate multiple data sources into a single metadata view to enable analysis and reporting across disparate sources, without requiring ETL3 or a data warehouse.

Data

Looking Ahead
Mobilitys growing pervasiveness as a marketing channel makes it more critical for organizations to analyze in real time how they attract and reach customers. Mobile analytics puts the brilliance and power of data into the hands of decision makers at the moment of need, and in more useful ways, to derive meaning and enhance decision making. In 2014, over 30% of the market will use smartphones as their primary mobile devices (as shown earlier in Figure 1). Clearly, mobile activity is spiking, regardless of an enterprises size, industry, marketing spend or mobile platform strategy. Mobile analytics can help organizations of all shapes and sizes deliver the right information to the right audience, at the right time, and at the right place to advance their business objectives. Increasingly, businesses consider mobile analytics vital to achieving cost savings and productivity enhancements. Interactive reports help business leaders make better decisions. Individuals who

Dynamic

parameter: Build a dynamic data store by extracting data from various relational

Building a Dynamic Data Store

Figure 2

Figure 3

cognizant 20-20 insights

Interact with Report Charts and Tables

Figure 4

Figure 5

regularly use business intelligence (BI) mobile analytics can noticeably improve their everyday operations by incorporating state-of-the-art tools into their assessments and reports. Intuitive solutions enable company administrators to bolster workplace efciency in shorter periods of time. Mobile analytics for business intelligence allows teams to quickly review large data sets in formats that are easy to understand. Highly interactive reports enable viewers to identify trends that could help their organization gain a competitive edge. Additionally, business intelligence mobile analytics reports are more scalable than traditional reports, and can be integrated across multiple departments to help decision makers more effectively evaluate comprehensive materials. The sooner we seize this opportunity, the greater our competitive advantage will be. To realize the best ROI with mobile analytics, organizations need a strategy that incorporates

specic objectives, key performance indicators, and the methodology and tools for assessing and optimizing the organizations mobile marketing efforts. No matter how simple the application, analytics gives stakeholders a level of insight that their application might not achieve otherwise. Every mobile portal and business customer requires a different set of metrics/reports. While analytics fundamentally provides data, it is the reports and congurations that really drive business value. As technology advances, particularly in the software arena, so do the choices of mobile analytics suites. However, keeping up with the complex dynamics of technology advancement and choosing the right candidate can seem a daunting task. As a result, companies should be mindful of the effects mobile analytics has on IT processes, and have the agility to respond to these impacts with viable solutions.

Footnotes
1

IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020. IDC, December, 2011. http://cdn.idc.com/research/Predictions12/Main/downloads/IDCTOP10Predictions2012.pdf. http://marketing.ai/. http://www.google.com/analytics/. http://www.jaspersoft.com/. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load.

2. 3. 4. 5.

cognizant 20-20 insights

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_web_analytics. http://www.marketingprofs.com/. Isson, Jean-Paul and Jesse Harriott. Win with Advanced Business Analytics: Creating Business Value
from Your Data. Wiley. October, 2012.

About the Authors


Giri Muthusamy is a Senior Associate within Cognizants Manufacturing & Logistics Business Unit focused on Java/J2EE projects. His interests revolve around the design of enterprise applications and RDBMS concepts. Giri holds a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering and is also a Microsoft SQL Server certied professional. He can be reached at Giri.Muthusamy@cognizant.com. Rahul Ramalingam is a Technology Specialist within Cognizants Manufacturing & Logistics Business Unit focused on Java/J2EE high-level system design and application development, and building enterprise software applications. He has an engineering degree in computer science and holds various software certications, including IBM Rational solution designer OOAD and TOGAF 8 Certied Enterprise Architecture Practitioner. Rahul can be reached at Rahul.Ramalingam@cognizant.com.

About Cognizant
Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH) is a leading provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services, dedicated to helping the worlds leading companies build stronger businesses. Headquartered in Teaneck, New Jersey (U.S.), Cognizant combines a passion for client satisfaction, technology innovation, deep industry and business process expertise, and a global, collaborative workforce that embodies the future of work. With over 50 delivery centers worldwide and approximately 166,400 employees as of September 30, 2013, Cognizant is a member of the NASDAQ-100, the S&P 500, the Forbes Global 2000, and the Fortune 500 and is ranked among the top performing and fastest growing companies in the world. Visit us online at www.cognizant.com or follow us on Twitter: Cognizant.

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