4 mobile strategies to focus on in 2016

Mobile is not new on the IT agenda, and most of the low-hanging fruit opportunities have already been addressed. So what should mobile leaders do next? Here are four areas of your mobile strategy you should focus on in 2016:  

1. Evolve your security strategy. Look for biometric support in security solutions and building a strategy for adding multifactor authentication into enterprise mobile management solutions. If you haven’t done so already, define a strategy to support securing mobile applications, not just devices,

2. Lay the foundation for indoor location-based services (LBS). Review your WLAN vendors’ beacon management strategies. Then build an LBS plan that starts with Wi-Fi and evolves to personalized beacon messages to targeted audiences in a store, department, restaurant, or other defined area. Start evaluating partners to assist with beacon deployment. Your IT staff also needs to work with marketing to define a content distribution and management strategy for beacon messages.

3. Re-evaluate your apps. Don’t be afraid to throw away parts of an existing PC app or even an entire app. Many of today’s PC apps are bloated with features that are useful to only a handful of people. In mobile, it’s just as important to understand what to throw away as it is to know what to create. Not every PC app should be mobile-enabled. For example, only a few functions from a PC app for closing a sale may need to be included in a mobile app. Or instead of mobile-enabling five different complete PC apps, you may consider combining only certain functions into a new mobile app.

4. Unlock the power of your data. Consumer data giants can offer contextual services because they’ve spent years collecting and analyzing data. However, most firms haven’t embraces these tools. Even if you have a big data strategy, it probably isn’t tied to your mobile efforts. Your mobile team must work with your data/analytics staff to understand what information is available and how it can be integrated into mobile apps. To improve your services and customer experience, you can also augment your company data with third-party information, such as traffic, parking, weather government, social, and pricing databases.