Byod Changing The Entire Economics Of It

By Author: Jennifer Lewis
Total Articles: 304
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Few days back, I took some days off from my office for some personal reasons. During those days, I witnessed two very insignificant but yet very influential examples of how mobile apps are changing the entire economics of IT. Usually, I do not visit restaurants but that day, it was just a coincidence that I agreed to go for a dinner. I was surprised as well as shocked to see that the wait staffs were using their personal smart phones and order taking apps to note down the order of the guests. There were no expenses involved like getting an expensive mobile platform to develop these apps, educating employees about how to use them and others. They simply bring their smart phones, download necessary apps and they are ready to adopt mobility in their business. I went further querying about mobile apps and I was told that these apps are spontaneous and allow users to learn using them during the main working hours by the fellow staff.

I am giving this example not to illustrate that restaurants are also zealously adopting mobile apps but to point out the BYOD culture that has got its initiation in such sectors as well. Earlier ...
... also, I had seen staff of a five-star restaurant using similar technology to take the orders but they were using the devices given to them by the company itself. The cost incurred by business owners in purchasing proprietary devices made only bigger brands business owners go for it. Another major point was the loss or stolen device, which was not only expensive, but also capable of generating friction between the owner and the employees.

The second example that I come across provided a sharp contrast. During my trip to Brussels, I went to see a museum with a group. I realized that though museum administrators were using smart phones, a traditional and old-fashioned hand held audio commentary service device was still in use there. Upon inquiring, one of the museum employees told that this is an expensive option for a low margin business like a museum.

Now museums have started realizing this and going for smart phone apps and trust me, they are harnessing the capabilities well beyond what they had expected or experienced from their older hardware. The best example in this relation is The American Museum of Natural History. This museum has its own mobile app that uses a rich visual interface of smart phones and provides the required audio commentary wherever needed. It has moved a step further in adopting a mobility culture by allowing users to navigate entire campus using sophisticated Wi-Fi triangulation. The amount of contextually rich information that this museum has is another very interesting bi-product of consumer device driven concept.

These are two very simple examples but they impressed me a lot, about how the entire economics of IT section of any business can be changed simply by adopting BYOD and mobile apps culture. They reminded me of a very interesting research paper that I read over the Internet titled "Benchmarking Mobile Engagement". This research paper revealed that the use of smart phones and mobile apps by customers and employees has surpassed their use by the people sitting at managerial level. What I learned from these two examples is that it doesn’t always need to be complex to be valuable and at times, even the simplest things in our life can give us the facility that we anticipate from most complex machines and technologies.

The author works as a content writer with one of the top enterprise mobile application development company with its mobile app developers Dallas has created mobile apps for renowned companies like Cienna, Cisco, and Verizo. The firm has earned a name as one of the best mobile application development companies in NCR