Complexity Kills so Simplify your Mobile Apps Now

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Migrate Win32 #apps with complex user interfaces to #mobile apps where each screen is focused on a single task or idea.

The 90s was a time where many developers did their best to create NASA mission control screens. If an app performed ten different functions, they’d see if all those activities could be performed on a single screen. No one ever considered there might be a correlation between those complex screens and the mountain of training manuals and classroom instruction required to make employees productive. A lack of empathy for app users left many employees confused and intimidated by technology. Complexity kills.

You now have a second chance to kill this complexity. In the same way that I want you to break up your large, monolithic Win32 apps into multiple apps, I also want you to do the same for individual screens. Take a look at how many different tasks are accomplished on your complex screens and break them apart into their own screens. Once you’ve created multiple, mobile screens for each discrete function area of a complex Win32 screen, focus on which UI elements you can eliminate. You may find sub-tasks on your new mobile screens that can be further broken out into their own screens. Some designers call this Progressive Reduction. Keep iterating on this process until each screen is easy to understand and has the minimum number of UI elements needed to accomplish a single task.

Improve user productivity by breaking complex screens into multiple, simplified screens to reduce expenses and training requirements by making apps faster and easier to use. What is your company doing to make corporate apps easier to use for employees?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Improve Employee Productivity by Moving your Win32 and Web 1.0 Apps to Mobile

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It’s time to migrate the millions of Win32 and #Web 1.0 apps that currently run global business to #mobile.

Global businesses are run primarily by Windows applications built in the 90s. While apps were created for DOS, the Apple II, OS/2, Sun Workstations, Win16, NeXT, SGI and the Mac in the 80s and early 90s, most were migrated after Windows NT/95 arrived. Y2K taught us COBOL on mainframes are still around. The larger mega-trend stemmed from low-cost PCs coupled to a graphical operating system working with minimal RAM and slow processors. Combined with drag and drop GUI development tools, a perfect storm took over the world of business. The resulting Win32 apps drove a tidal wave of productivity and innovation. Companies still have thousands of them in use today.

Something else happened in the 1990s. A giant network of networks called the Internet, combined with Tim Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web, to create the next technology revolution. Web servers arrived and businesses created static web pages to establish a presence on the web and start marketing to customers. The Intranet was born with internal-facing web pages used to disseminate information to employees. Server-side data processing gave rise to Web 1.0 apps that didn’t have to be deployed to employee desktops the way Windows apps did.

The Win32 and Web 1.0 apps are still with us and must urgently evolve to fit in a world where untethered people expect to flexibly work anytime, from anywhere with mobile devices instead of desktops.

Improve user productivity by migrating legacy apps and websites to the mobile devices employees and customers actually use. What is your organization doing to unchain its employees from desktop apps?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click here to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Reduce Business Expenses by Deploying Mobile Middleware in the Enterprise

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#Mobile middleware provides intelligent aggregation of backend #business #data while reducing duplication of field data entry.

Requiring employees to connect to multiple backend systems, one at a time, to complete their tasks is wasteful. Furthermore, forcing each mobile app to aggregate disparate data from ERP, CRM, supply chain, and others places results in high latency and is prone to security flaws. Wouldn’t it be nice if an app could make a single connection to an on-premises or cloud-based server to transparently exchange data with multiple backend systems?

Mobile middleware systems make this complicated task a reality. Through the use of adapters that interface with a variety of backend packages, databases, message buses and other systems of record, mobile middleware acts as an intermediary. Just the right data from a combination of systems can be aggregated for seamless synchronization by a mobile app that only has to deal with one server. Since the mobile app isn’t tightly-coupled to any of those backend data sources, they can be modified or swapped out.

This architecture also benefits anyone who has had to enter redundant data into multiple backend systems. Now, the mobile app sends captured data just once and the middleware takes care directing copies of certain data elements to other systems. Field workers no longer have to return to the office at the end of the day to perform duplicate data entry.

Improve user productivity and cut costs by reducing overtime work through the elimination of unnecessary employee tasks. Which mobile middleware systems is your organization putting in place to optimize its processes?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Reduce Corporate Expenses by Mobile-Enabling Existing Business Systems with REST APIs

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Mobile-enable backend business systems by wrapping them with #REST #APIs that speak the same language as any #mobile device, browser or #app.

Most backend business systems organizations have deployed over the last several decades have absolutely nothing common. They all speak different languages via myriad binary and text wire protocols. They typically don’t talk to each other and they don’t talk mobile.

This is a big problem in today’s mobile-first world because CIOs expect data from any of their backend systems to be delivered to any device, thus empowering their employees.

Companies are faced with difficult choices ranging from replacing the old systems with new, mobile-friendly ones, rewriting custom systems, upgrading to newer versions if they exist, or moving workloads to the cloud. Many companies are unable to make any of these choices for the same reason they haven’t upgraded their Windows apps from the 90s. Limited budgets.

A lower-cost alternative is to leave these working systems in place but create a RESTful API wrapper around them. You basically encircle these systems with commodity servers or cloud gateways that map proprietary APIs to mobile-friendly APIs. This mapping can be accomplished via code or through connectors or adapters. Now all your existing systems will be able to communicate bi-directionally with any mobile device and more easily interface with customers and business partners. Think of this as mobile SOA.

Reduce business expenses by extending existing workloads to mobile devices rather than replacing those workloads with new solutions. What is your company doing to empower every employee with any device?

Learn how to digitally transform your company in my newest book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform your Business.”

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Click to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!

Mobile Strategies for Business is Now Available

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I’m pleased to announce that my newest #book, “Mobile Strategies for Business: 50 Actionable Insights to Digitally Transform Your Business” is now available. #mobile

Mobile Strategies for Business is the first book to clearly explain how executives can digitally transform their organization through a simple, step-by-step process.

The mobile tidal wave has permanently transformed the consumer world and now it’s washing up on the shores of the enterprise. This drives the need for an enterprise mobile strategy to mobilize existing applicationsmodernize infrastructuresbuild new apps for employees and customers, and bring order to your environment via enterprise mobility management. Mobile Strategies for Business guides you through this transformation and drives positive outcomes including reducing expensesimproving employee productivityincreasing revenueboosting user engagement and reducing risk.

Based on the top 50 most important enterprise mobility concepts spanning four major topic areas, Mobile Strategies for Business is the first book to clearly explain how to digitally transform your business through a simple, step-by-step process.

You’ll learn how to address the following organizational challenges:

  • How to transform IT infrastructures that are wholly unprepared to deliver on the promise of Mobile and IoT for employees and customers. Learn how to enhance performance, scalability, bandwidth and security to support today’s mobile and cloud workloads.
  • How to reconcile the convergence of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) phenomenon and the need to keep corporate data secure. Learn how to support the flexible work styles of your mobile employees while keeping everything safe.
  • How to migrate the millions of out-of-date, insecure and unsupported desktop and Web 1.0 apps that currently run global business to run on modern mobile platforms. Learn how to unchain your line of business apps and web sites from the desktop and move them to the mobile devices your employees actually use.
  • How to rapidly build mobile enterprise apps that run on any platform and work with data from any backend system. Learn how to mobile-enable your existing systems and data to empower your mobile employees and reach out to your mobile customers.
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Mobile Strategies for Business is a project plan and an implementation guide allowing your organization to digitally transform so it can ride the mobile wave to employee and customer success. Along the way, it builds a future-looking foundation that prepares your organization for successive technology tidal waves that will impact your business, workforce and customers.

What is your organization doing define and execute on a mobile strategy? It’s time to empower your mobile workforce.

Click to purchase a copy of my book today and start transforming your business!