What's your Mobile IQ?

Enterprises have been blindsided by the rapid adoption of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets by consumers. Across the world customers are using their smartphone devices to shop for clothes, goods and accessories, make travel reservations and hotel bookings, read product reviews and browsing product catalogs on their tablet devices. They are paying for goods using mobile payment solutions like PayPal. Leveraging social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to share their experiences about products and brands. Mobile commerce is booming.

Are you investing in building your digital brand & ready to engage with your mobile customers?

You are ready to take the plunge.
But which applications do you mobilize?

Navigating through the choppy waters of the mobile world can be a daunting exercise. Your internal IT department will have to come out of its comfort zone and take the leadership role to help make the transformation in rapid time. There is no one single place to start this journey. Look at all the opportunities in your enterprise. Increasing revenues, improving productivity, enhancing customer service, leveraging mobile analytics for intelligent decision making.

A good place to start might be your customers. If you are a retailer - a mobile footprint is fast becoming table stakes in the industry. Build a mobile optimized web site. Provide downloadable applications on mobile platforms like iOS, Android to enable customers to engage with you from their mobile devices. Enable them to browse your catalogs. Serve them with mobile discount coupons. A well designed coupon can go viral very quickly on social media sites and set your cash registers ringing! Provide site locators with maps. Integrate with social media platforms like Facebook, Plurk, Twitter & Google+ to build the buzz around your products. Enable them to scan bar codes for fast check-outs. Launching a media campaign for a new product? Embed the campaign with QR codes. When the codes are scanned from smartphone devices, customers are taken to your mobile optimized web site for product videos, demo show cases, specification sheets, customer reviews etc.

Walgreens, a leading drug prescription retailer deployed a mobile app that lets users refill prescriptions by scanning a bar code placed on medicine bottles. After ordering a prescription, users are sent a text alert when their prescription is ready. Today, over 40% of their on-line prescriptions orders are coming from mobile devices. Now they also have the customer data to drive coupons and other promotions to increase ROI.

Think of fun and engaging ways in which consumers can shop at your store. Leading mass-market retailer Target delivers mobile coupons to smartphone customers through a location based downloadable mobile application. These mobile coupons can be scanned and redeemed at check-out.

Mobile payments can speed out checkouts and enhance customer experience. PayPal is in the midst of rolling out its "wallet in the cloud" initiative for big box retailers. Shoppers who have a PayPal account pay by simply typing their mobile numbers and PINs at checkout counters. They can also pay by swiping a PayPal card and entering a PIN. No wallet or credit card required! At least two major retailers including Office Depot and Home Depot are currently doing test runs of the new system

Tablets are a game changer.
Are you ready for Tablet Commerce?

Tablets are going to play an increasingly important role in mobile commerce. Its form factor makes it the ideal "lean back " and information consumption device. It is the browsing device of choice in the family room and the bedroom. Ideal for browsing product catalogs and a target rich environment for marketing and promotions. Get ready for tablet commerce.

Crate and Barrel is amongst the many retailers that are letting customers shop its spring collection via a re-imagined mobile catalog experience for iPads and Android tablets. Fashion e-tailer Gilte Group attributes 16% of its weekday sales and 29% of its weekend revenues to the mobile channel. Lifestyle apparel brand Guess has deployed iPad devices in its stores to enhance the overall shopping experience. Using these in-store tablet devices, store associates