Ask Julie - The mobile mind shift: engineer your business to win in the mobile moment

1. The Mobile Mind Shift
A World Transformed by Mobile Moments

2. Master the IDEA Cycle
A Business Discipline for Winning in Mobile Moments

3. Plan Your Mobile Engagement
Conduct a Mobile Moment Audit

4. Measure the Mobile Mind Shift
Build the Mobile Moments That Your Audience Is Ready For

5. The Sales Shift
Use Mobile Moments to Influence and Drive Commerce

6. The Marketing Shift
Tap Mobile Moments to Acquire and Retain Customers

7. The Product Shift
Enrich Connected Products through Mobile Moments

8. The Business Model Shift
Mobile Moments Create New Business Models

9. The Workforce Shift
Empower Employees in Their Mobile Moments

10. The Platform Shift
Mobile Moments Require a New Technology Strategy

11. The Process Shift
Transform Business Processes through Mobile Moments

12. The People Shift
Engineer Mobile Moments with an IDEA Team

13. The Future Shift
Mobile Moments Will Blanket the World

The is upon us.

Some surprising things happened in 2013. announced that it would spend $300 million to serve customers whose shift to mobile technology took the company by surprise. And globally, one in four information workers brought mobile apps to work to help get the job done.

Not so long ago, companies dominated their markets with strength in manufacturing or distribution. With complete control of prices, buying locations, and information about products and customers, the balance was tipped in the companys favor. But now, the same forces that once favored companies instead create advantage for customers. With a mobile device, you can compare prices, get product reviews, and buy from anywhere. Customers rule.

Heres what this means.

Your sales efforts must acknowledge a powerful customer who can choose from a virtually infinite set of suppliers. Your marketing must .

The same shift transforms what happens within companies, especially in corporate technology departments. Theyre experiencing a budget squeeze just as mobile technologies ramp up the demands on corporate systems. Its a hard time for technology executives: 32% of business decision-makers believe that their department actually hinders business success.

The answer for technology managers is to focus on BTbusiness technologythe technology, systems, and processes that win, serve, and retain customers. The new focuses on technology that provides superior customer experiences over maintaining corporate systems with shrinking resources. This includes leveraging the huge stream of customer data that new digital touchpoints are generating to learn about and better serve customers.

This is the context in which we wrote The Mobile Mind Shift. Mobile is the biggest, most pervasive, most powerful, and most global trend driving us toward the customer. It creates demands not only on customer-facing parts of the business, but also on the systems that technology managers own, systems that must be re-engineered for the demands of mobile.

If you want your company to succeed, you must retool it for the age of the customer. The best way to connect with and satisfy customers is on a mobile device. And to do that properly, you must refocus your strategy, your systems, and your people to deliver mobile engagement.

Well show you how.

The Mobile Mind Shift

A World Transformed by Mobile Moments

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Michael huddled in the rain with dozens of other photographers and thousands of people, staring out at the chimney above the Sistine Chapel, hoping to see the white smoke that would signal the election of a new pontiff. In the wake of the retirement of Benedict XVI the College of Cardinals had convened, and twice each day black smoke had risen from the chimney, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. For 48 hours, nobody had seen anything but black smokewhich meant the cardinals had not yet made a decision.

But now, late on the second day, white smoke rose from the chimney. Michael and the other photographers and pilgrims buzzed excitedly. Their long, damp wait was about to pay off. People began to jostle for position. Minutes ticked by. As if by divine command, the rain ceased. But as day darkened into evening, Michael, 200 meters from the balcony, began to wonder if he would be able to capture the shot hed been waiting so long to get.

A man came out on the balcony. His amplified voice floated above the crowd with a single Italian word: Buonasera. The pilgrims prepared to experience this moment in a way that would etch it into their memories.

Nearly as one, they raised their smartphones and tablets.

The man looking from the balcony saw the entire crowd brightly lit with the flashes of the smartphones. And at that moment, the photographer Michael Sohn realized that the most profound transformation taking place was not on the balcony, but in the eyes and hands of the crowd. He got the shot.

His photo of the crowd brandishing their mobile devices to capture the worlds first view of Pope Francis I has become an iconic image, spreading across the planet in the blink of an eye. (You can see part of it on the dust jacket for this book.) With a photographers unique perspective, Michael had noticed how visitors to Rome experienced every sight through smartphone cameras. They leave, they never knew what they saw, he told us. And now they were doing the same in St. Peters Square. At this transcendent moment, their photos and videos of the scene in the square began spreading across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine, YouTube, Flickr, Tumblr, and WhatsApp and ricocheting from person to person in endlessly forwarded emails and text messages. Their mobile devices had become such a central part of their experience that raising them at that moment was second naturethey and their phones experienced the moment together.