BUILDING THE BUSINESS CASE FOR MOBILE ENTERPRISE APPLICATIONS IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

The use of mobile enterprise applications (MEAs) is becoming part of the computing landscape in organizations. To build a strong business case for a MEA project, justifying the financial investment, it is necessary to include realistic benefits to be derived from the use of MEAs. Also, it is equally important to include the possible risks to the benefits being realized so that mitigating actions can be put in place. Then the benefits need to be managed. Yet the benefits from MEAs are not clearly understood. Hence the purpose of this study was to describe the benefits from using MEAs and the impediments to the benefits realization. This was done by analysing qualitative data collected from stakeholders in 3 MEA projects in a single organization in the insurance industry. The practical contribution of the study includes a list of tangible and intangible benefits that can be used to build business cases for MEA projects. Also, the risks that organisations need to manage to realize the expected benefits are described. The academic contribution of this study is the addition to the body of knowledge regarding business cases for and benefits from MEAs. Keywords: Mobile enterprise applications, mobile apps, MEA benefits, risks to benefits, mobile business proces

On the Value of Mobile Business Processes: Evidence from Sweden and the Netherlands

Identifying and assessing the benefits of mobile technology in a business context is often problematic. In this paper we start from the position that the benefits of mobile technology are hard to quantify in isolation, and that the unit of analysis to identify value should be the business process. An exploratory case study approach is used to identify the benefits of mobile technology at the level of the business process. We describe two cases from Sweden (vehicle dispatching and timber supply chain management) and one case from the Netherlands (mobile parking). We then illustrate how benefits of mobile technology are contingent to the difficulty of coordinating mobile actors. Next, the value of mobility is contingent to the costs of not being able to coordinate during the period that the actors are difficult to reach. Finally, we assert that it is also related to the costs of available substitutes for mobile technology in a business process.Mobile Technology; Information Systems; Technology Benefits; Exploratory Study; Business Processes

Enterprise App Adoption: An investigation of the key factors that affect the adoption of mobile apps by Commercial Bankers at a financial services organisation

The purpose of this study is to examine the key factors that affect the adoption of mobile enterprise applications by Commercial Bankers. A review of technology acceptance literature relating to mobile apps for employees found that there was a lack of qualitative studies in this area. A phenomenological approach was used for this qualitative research. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted to deeply explore the participants' point of view, feelings and perspectives about mobile apps. The findings of the interviews confirmed three key advantages to using mobile apps as part of the participant’s employment: time saving, better customer conversations and faster decision-making. The data analysis isolated five key barriers: poor quality data, perceived value, ease of use, reduced customer understanding and mobile devices characteristics. Organisations wishing to speed the adoption of mobile apps by their employees should evaluate the importance and significance of these five identified barriers to adoption, and plan how to overcome them

Multinet : enabler for next generation enterprise wireless services

Wireless communications are currently experiencing a fast migration toward the beyond third-generation (B3G)/fourth generation (4G) era. This represents a generational change in wireless systems: new capabilities related to mobility and new services support is required and new concepts as individual-centric, user-centric or ambient-aware communications are included. One of the main restrictions associated to wireless technology is mobility management, this feature was not considered in the design phase; for this reason, a complete solution is not already found, although different solutions are proposed and are being proposed. In MULTINET project, features as mobility and multihoming are applied to wireless network to provide the necessary network and application functionality enhancements for seamless data communication mobility considering end-user scenario and preferences. The aim of this paper is to show the benefits of these functionalities from the Service Providers and final User point of view

A process for managing benefits of mobile enterprise applications in the insurance industry

Mobile enterprise applications (MEAs) are found in increasing numbers in organisations as smart-devices become an everyday necessity amongst employees and customers. Large amounts are invested in these applications, so it is important to see the value in improved business processes and the consequential improvement in business performance. Realising the benefits from their use is important to obtain the value from these investments. Yet, benefits management (BM) is poorly implemented in companies and a first step to improve this situation is to improve the visibility of the benefits that can be achieved by using MEAs. Hence the primary question asked in this study is “How can MEA benefits be successfully realised?” The strategy used to answer the question was action research in a single organisation using three MEAs in two different action research cycles. The study was conducted in a short-term insurance company in the Western Cape of South Africa with an established IT and project capability. Globally, the short-term insurance industry is under a significant threat from disruption by market entrants who don’t have to navigate legacy systems and who are more agile with their product offerings. Traditional insurers are looking for innovative solutions to transform the way in which insurance is sold and serviced. A BM process, which was modified from the literature, was refined through action cycles in three MEA projects to improve benefits realisation. The result showed that for MEA projects, which are not very large investments relative to other IT projects, a lighter, less cumbersome process was more practical and acceptable in the organisation. The creation of a benefits and risks template, during the action cycles, helped the organisation to build stronger business cases for MEA projects and also allowed for more comprehensive benefit identification, measurement and tracking, ultimately realising business performance improvements. The study also used a survey amongst 88 brokers and assessors to determine the factors which influence their adoption of these MEAs. The most significant factors influencing user adoption were the company’s willingness to fund the smart-devices, the ease of use of the MEA, job relevance and location dependence. A limitation of this study is that the organisation has a particular approach to project funding whereby the importance of BM is weighed against the cost of the project, hence BM is more important for very expensive projects. While the model prescribed in this study was sufficient in this context, it may not be suitable for organisations that are more conscientious about BM. This model would need to be tested in other contexts for transferability. A further limitation was the duration of time available for conducting this study because this was a PhD research project. Further action cycles might have refined the process further. The findings from this study are relevant to researchers and to organisations wanting to deploy MEAs. The BM process defined in this study can be used in MEA projects as a process to manage the identified benefits and ensure that they are realised. The benefits template can be used as a first step in the BM process to build the business case and the risks template can be used to identify potential problems that could hinder benefits realisation and can used to put mitigating actions in place to prevent problems to benefits realisation. The identification of factors influencing adoption of MEA can help organisations focus on these factors to ensure that their MEAs are used and they thereby derive benefits. The theoretical contributions of this study are a process model for the BM body of knowledge and a model explaining the factors influencing symbolic adoption of MEA. The identification and description of benefits and risks extends the body of knowledge for mobile applications research. These specific issues in the context of MEAs in the short-term insurance industry are understudied

Mobile Holistic Enterprise Transformation Framework

Mobile shipments have surpassed those of PCs and tablets, and the demand for mobile services has never been higher. Although, many businesses believe mobile devices and services are beneficial to them, they have not actually taken steps to adopt mobile on a large scale. Other enterprises are limiting adoption to provision of a mobile friendly web page or including mobile elements within their existing electronic services. This paper proposes a holistic framework that highlights the goals of mobile adoption, presents a taxonomy of enterprise mobile services capabilities which if utilised should assist organisations to achieve the goals of mobile adoption and categorises the components of mobile solutions and mobile strategy. Developing a taxonomy of enterprise mobile services capabilities helps the transformation to a mobile enterprise by supporting the visualisation of a future state of the enterpris

Approach to Rapid Software Design of Mobile Applications’ User Interface

Mobile applications have a lot of unique challenges during the development process. One of them is monolith architecture that can’t be skipped even for large Mobile Enterprise applications. Software engineer should keep mind the whole source code structure to be effective. This article will introduce an approach to Rapid Software Design that allows to make a working documentation related to code and understandable by all team members. Rapid Software Design is suitable for Waterfall/Agile processes of developing applications with graphical user interface (web, mobile, desktop, embedded) and initially was created for mobile projects. This article contains only the description of User Interface related documentation despite the whole Rapid Software Design also covering the usage of architecture patterns, business logic, services, features of mobile operation systems and writing automated tests

IT Investment Portfolio for Mobile Office

The adoption of mobile office is a topic that has been researched for many years due to rapid growth in the use of wireless communication and portable devices. Yet within the vast territory of studies of the IT investment portfolio for mobile office there remains a large piece of uncharted terrain. The aim of this article is to empirically examine the IT investment portfolio framework, with an emphasis on mobile office environment. Using theoretical framework of IT investment portfolio, our hypotheses concerned the effect of IT investment portfolio on the performance of mobile business service moderated by mobile savvy. To measure mobile office performance and mobile savvy, we conducted the survey with a total of 127 participants

Navigation based on symbolic space models

Existing navigation systems are very appropriate for car navigation, but lack support for convenient pedestrian navigation and cannot be used indoors due to GPS limitations. In addition, the creation and the maintenance of the required models are costly and time consuming, and are usually based on proprietary data structures. In this paper we describe a navigation system based on a human inspired symbolic space model. We argue that symbolic space models are much easier to create and to maintain, and that they can support routing applications based on self-locating through the recognition of nearby features. Our symbolic space model is supported by a federation of servers where the spatial descriptions are stored, and which provide interfaces for feeding and querying the model. Local models residing in different servers may be connected between them, thus contributing to the system scalability.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Visual Design Aspects in Designing User Interface Application for SMEs

Malaysia's addition of new markets has benefited immensely from technological advancements in digital marketing. Many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Malaysia, on the other hand, continue to cling to old business models in this new era. Although it is recognized that the traditional market is not truly dying, there is widespread anticipation that it will no longer possess the same value. This paper aims to look at the importance of adopting suitable user interface design in the applications and to assist the SMEs in innovating their businesses in a more advanced way by understanding good visual criteria in the user interface. Keywords: User Interface; Business; Mobile Application; Visual Design eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under the responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI7.383