intuitive, just think how much harder it will be to get external
users to adopt it. Because, like it or not, in today’s world, your
largest user base may well be outside your company. “Typically,
in a business strategy for application development, you need to
consider three user groups: B2B, B2E (employee) and B2C (
consumer),” says Bill Clark, an analyst at Gartner.
He recalls going through the calculations with one insurer that
was planning a mobile app. The company had 2,500 employees, and
another 1,250 independent insurance agents using its network, he
recalls. But then there were 3. 5 million actual customers. Of those,
about 5% had accessed the website from a mobile device. “That’s
175,000 people!” Clark says. “In reality, more customers will touch a
mobile website than every employee in the organization, and every
employee in every business partner, combined.”
With no way to force these outside users to
accept your application, or even control what
kind of device they use to access it, IT’s only
recourse is to create irresistible, user-friendly
apps that work well on all commonly used
browsers and mobile devices. “Everyone has
the expectation that they’ll have access to
whatever application they need via what-
ever device they want to use,” Fuller says.
“Anywhere they can have a Web browser, they
expect to get to the application and do what
they need to, whether from a smartphone,
tablet, netbook or notebook PC.”
What does it take to create applications
people love? Whether you’re targeting internal
or external users, design matters, experts agree.
“There’s a change in the skill sets we’re using,”
notes Mike Croucher, head of IT architecture
and delivery at British Airways. “We’re using a
lot more creative designers for the front end, people
who think about color palette and user interface.
There are more graphic designers and media people.”
Indeed, when British Airways rolled out its new
Enhanced Service app for the iPad, the company
carefully selected an eye-catching design even
though in-flight crew members would be the
only ones to see it. “The front end has a very arty
picture of the front of a cabin crew uniform and
the tie,” Croucher says. “Bringing that kind of vi-
sualization makes it look professional. Don’t lose the opportunity
to think about the artwork that goes into an app.” (See “British
Airways’ iPad App Improves Customer Service,” page 16.)
Continued from page 16
could limit updates to once a day. Whereas now we’re getting closer
and closer to a state where when I touch something here, everyone
else using the application sees it immediately.”
Given the quantity of data that people need to absorb quickly these
days, users especially like information presented in a graphic form,
he adds. “Data visualization is a huge piece of this. Being able to
create charts and graphs, and use some sort of database analytic tools
to delve into the data, and discover trends that weren’t visible before
— there’s a huge call for all of that in enterprise applications. That’s
probably the single biggest push I’ve seen recently,” says Dusoe.
The need for more detailed and fresher information isn’t limited
to internal users. Customers and business partners increasingly
expect deep insight into nearly everything your company does. “We
build applications for customers, and those customers, the vice pres-
idents in charge of software, want to know
exactly where that supply chain is,” notes
Jonathan Rende, vice president and general
manager at HP Application Transformation
Products. “They want to know when things
will be delivered, and if they’re not going to be
delivered, why not. They’re looking for greater
granularity in their view of the process.”
Fulfilling those expectations isn’t easy, he
adds. “The complexity of providing that infor-
mation is huge. We literally have to integrate
our external user applications into many more
data sources than we did before,” says Rende.
Lest you think this trend is confined to the
high-tech world, Adamopoulos reports seeing
a shift across all industries. “Customers want
control of the process. They don’t want to be
limited in what they’re able to do, and some
companies are opening up the kimono and
saying, ‘ We’ll make our apps as useful to you as
they are internally to us.’ ” The reason, he says, is that
companies that give customers maximum access
gain advantage over more reticent competitors.
Admittedly, the thought of letting nonemployees
delve deep into networks and databases will likely
give the average I T executive a bad case of heart-
burn. Won’t that create unacceptable security risks?
And even regulatory violations in some cases?
Obviously, it makes no sense to give outsiders
access that puts data and network security at unac-
ceptable risk, Adamopoulos says. But at the same time, security and
regulatory concerns should not become the reason for a blanket “no”
to all outsider data access. “If you don’t have what I call ‘legacy think-
ing,’ you start asking what it does make sense to make available to
outsiders,” he says. “Maybe HIPAA doesn’t allow access to this part
of the data, but what parts can you share?”
Besides, as Dusoe notes, even restricting all data to employees
only is no guarantee of safety. “You could still have a disgruntled
employee sitting at home taking screenshots.”
For Dominion Enterprises, which collects vast amount of data
on behalf of customers, the Apple model suggests a useful solu-
tion, Fuller says. That is, supply an API in a controlled environ-
ment, allowing customers to build the functionality they need.
“Our customers are becoming more and more demanding about
having visibility into their data,” he says. “We’re looking at creat-
Everyone has the
expectation that
they’ll have access to
whatever application
they need via
whatever device they
want to use.
JOE FULLER, CIO,
DOMINION ENTERPRISES
Rule No. 2: Make It Transparent
As the insurance company with the legacy interface may soon learn,
in today’s business world, information is king, and the more information your employees can obtain quickly, the more competitive
advantage you can gain. And that data has to be up-to-the-minute.
“People want more real-time data than ever before,” says Jim
Dusoe, owner of Net Data Design Innovations and a software developer with 30 years’ experience. “They want to see where things
are and what the process is. A lot of that has become doable over the
last three years, where our processing is powerful enough to supply
it. In the past, we might not have had a full batch process, but we
