Monday, March 30, 2009

Smart mobile devices can replace notebooks

The usage of devices such as smart phones has seen a good amount of increment, whereas the growth for notebooks and laptops is reaching saturation.

Mobility is an emerging and upcoming trend in the industry. Manish Garg, COO and founder of Endeavour Software Technologies speaks to V. Sudhakshina of CyberMedia News about the latest trends and challenges faced by an enterprise in achieving mobility and how can consulting help in overcoming those challenges.

What are the recent trends that you see in the space of mobility?

Mobile devices are getting smarter as well as affordable day by day. The usage of devices such as smart phones has seen a good amount of increment, whereas the growth for notebooks and laptops is reaching saturation. These days' mobile devices can replace notebooks or laptops.

What are the challenges faced by the enterprises in achieving mobility?

Some of the common challenges faced by an enterprise in achieving mobility are network connectivity or bandwidth and costs of devices. However, in recent times these challenges are reducing because of the decrease in the prices of devices, and the connectivity issue is also being taken care of due to the advent of Wi-Max and 
3G in India.

Other than these two, the most important challenge faced by an enterprise is not getting comfortable with the feel of mobility. There is still lack in knowledge about what are the right set of solutions needed, which would be helpful even in future. With the ever-changing mobile landscape, enterprises are wondering as to what are the best practices that need to be followed. They are apprehensive with questions like where, when and how to start. This is where the need for proper consulting arises.

Can you elucidate with an example on how does consulting help enterprises in adopting mobility?

Mobility helps enterprises to add value to their business as well as helps in increasing productivity. But due to a few constraints, as I mentioned earlier, enterprises are finding it difficult in achieving it.

We, through consulting, help companies in building a road-map for mobility. We give consultation to companies on selecting appropriate hardware and design, build, test and roll out industry strength mobile-hand-held solutions, important values before them, ROI, etc.

We analyze the competitive landscape ahead them. Make them aware of the latest trends and technologies and help them selecting the appropriate one's, which would not only help them now but also be useful in future.

One such example that I can cite here is of a UK-based private equity firm. The firm had employed 250 people and was spread in 13 geographies. The firm was finding it difficult to have proper interaction between these geographies, while taking certain important decisions.

We helped this firm achieve a proper mobility platform for easier work flow. In the first year of implementation the employee responsiveness increased by 40 to 50 per cent and the work productivity too increased by 60 to 70 per cent.

Proper consulting is required in the space of mobility so as to make the enterprises aware about the latest trends, analyze them, and recommend a proper platform as per their business needs.

We help companies evaluate the potential of the product in each prospective market.

Social media and impact on organizations & businesses

Note: Please click on the mindmap to view the enlarged image

Thursday, March 19, 2009

SMS is our backbone for customer interactivity

What are your prime offerings? Which verticals are you targeting?We are primarily a software services and consulting company and develop applications with a focus on mobile technologies. We d0evelop applications for the healthcare domain, BFSI, retail, and market research. In healthcare our strategy is to address not only the consumers but also the doctors and support staff. We have categorized our healthcare offerings mainly into three categories: wellness, clinical and support. We use SMS as the backbone for interaction with the consumer and provide the consumer with healthcare information.
In the banking and finance sector we develop applications for hedge funds. With our solutions companies can provide market forecasting and other applications to hand-held devices.
Do you have any specific plans for the Indian market? Being a services company our major clients are naturally in the western countries. We plan to launch some of our healthcare applications now in India by collaborating with one of our US partners. We have already started discussions with hospitals like Apollo and Wockhardt. In India the healthcare sector is witnessing a huge growth and we are very much optimistic about the Indian market. Within the next six months we are planning to provide content and music provisioning in India.
What role does the Indian team play in your overall business? Though our major focus is on the western market our development and consulting work is done out of India. We have a strong team of 150 people in India. We are also planning to improve and expand sales and marketing presence in the US and UK. We are planning to open a new facility in Mysore, which will be an extension of our Bangalore office.
What are your major focus areas in the mobile space? The important areas that we are looking at is mobile social networking. Being an untapped area it provides a great opportunity. According to a latest study, mobile social networking users will cross 800 mn by 2011. We have conducted a study on various applications needed by the user in mobile social networking. Based on the study we are developing an application that can make mobile social networking more easy and useful. This gives us a huge market opportunity and will have a lot of significance in Indian market also.