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4 Areas the Internet of Things (IoT) is Impacting Now

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Technology trends

The Internet of Things (IoT) is possibly the most used buzzword in today’s technology-driven world. Many leading consulting firms and analysts, such as McKinsey & Company, estimate that a total economic impact of the IoT could reach $11.1 trillion a year by 2025. That’s because there is expected to be more than 200 billion connected objects by 2020, according to International Data Corporation (IDC). Together, these Internet-enabled objects will change the way we interact with the world around us, how we drive to work, take care of our health, and shop for groceries, among many other things. Because this seemingly distant future is much closer than most people realize, now it’s a great time to take a closer look at a few main areas that are expected to change the most.

Home Appliances

If there’s one area where the IoT already put down roots, it has to be the home consumer market. People have quickly discovered just how useful smart thermostats, web-enabled security cameras, kitchen aplliances, or intelligent electric vehicle charging stations can be. Results of the consumer survey by GSMA, an association representing the interests of mobile operators worldwide, show that “there is already strong and growing demand for connected home devices, services and solutions.” They’ve discovered that one in four technology enthusiasts in Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US own a connected security system, connected lighting, thermostat, health monitor, and even a connected washing machine. Indeed, companies across the world are expected to ship 1.9 billion connected home devices by 2019, thus generating approximately $490 billion in revenue. Major players, including Google and Samsung, are investing billions of dollars, betting that the IoT home market will bring in insane profits.

Healthcare

While the use of the IoT devices in our homes can definitely make our day-to-day life much easier, the category with the most potential for a positive social change is healthcare. Imagine a world where doctors have an abundant supply of up-to-date, reliable data they can use to better diagnose diseases and provide their patients with excellent treatment. These data can be further used for research, to help medical professionals discover new cures and raise the global health standard. The best current example of this is the ResearchKit, presented by Apple at their highly anticipated “Let us loop you in” event. Jeff William, Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, said that the technology is already “used to solve some of the biggest problems facing medical research.” This open-source framework has allowed researchers to conduct the largest study on Parkinson’s in history, discover asthma triggers across the country, and find new types of diabetes. Apple is also extending this framework to individual customers, calling it CareKit. With CareKit, patients can monitor their health and receive individualized treatment plans to increase the speed of their recover and general quality of life.   At OpenArc my team has been partnering with researchers across various higher education institutions to help enable health care related products and services leveraging wearable sensors and backend interfaces supporting clinician decisions.

Retail

The potential applications of the Internet of Things in retail are virtually limitless. Everything from a simple inventory tracking to smartphone purchasing, in-store analytics of consumer behavior and choices, to smart advertising custom-tailored to fit each customer based on their purchasing history or social media activity. Customers are already in love with their smartphones and wearable devices, so extending their functionality to enhance the shopping experience will feel like a very natural transition. Bill Hardgrave from Aubrun University reports that retailers can expect up to 99 percent inventory accuracy and 50 percent reduction in out-of-stock items when they implement RFID tags for inventory tracking. These systems could be interconnected with home IoT devices to make it possible for stores to, for example, automatically suggest new clothes based on what the customer already has in his or her closet so that everything would nicely match.

Privacy

Not everyone is excited about the positive impact that the era of the Internet of Things could have on our daily lives. Some fear that corporations and governments won’t be able to protect users’ privacy and consumer data. That can be either because of lack of competency or because of purposeful misuse of private data with the intention to generate additional profits. A study from the Altimeter Group tells us that average consumers are not comfortable with companies collecting their personal information. Older people, in particular, show very low trust that companies use their data in a safe and ethical manner. The omnipresent nature of the Internet of Things devices means that consumers would have only very vague idea about what type of data is being collected and what the company does with the collected information. Retailers and all customer-facing businesses, in general, will have to find a way how to ensure that data will not fall into the wrong hands, if they ever want to be trusted and not just tolerated.

Conclusion

As you can see, the incoming technological revolution brought by the Internet of Things could have a similar impact as the introduction of the Internet. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to be able to witness how humanity manages to use this technology and push innovation beyond what we can currently imagine. One thing is certain: the world will look very different just 10-20 years from now.  Being at the forefront of this revolution gets me stoked and feeling fortunate to be an experienced rider, paddling hard into this wave.  

Seven Software Sales Tips!

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Sales Management, Sales Strategy, Software & App Sales

As a professional software salesperson is it critical to have a solid sales process.  Here are 7 tips to help start you on the right track or help you realign your current process.

1.   Pricing and Product Fit
What is your monetization model? Have you put the right pricing structure and business model into place? With the dynamic changes in the software industry, it could be time to revisit how you have positioned and priced your product. If you currently have a multiple product strategy, you need to be careful about avoiding channel conflicts in the pricing strategy.  Monetization strategies differ greatly from SaaS based products versus straight mobile app offerings.  Do yourself a favor and get familiar with your competitors and their strategies along with reading up on industry trends.


2.   Value Proposition
How does your product or service disrupt the marketplace?   This is referred to as your value proposition and is an essential part of your software sales plan. Great products need to match the most desired functionality and innovate beyond what is currently in the marketplace in order to not become another “me too” application.  Ensure the value proposition differentiates your product or service from your competitor’s.  There is usually two type of decision makers in the purchasing process (technical and business), so ensure your value proposition is positioned correctly to speak to both unique audiences.  The business buyer is numbers oriented and will be looking at how your solution will save time and/or money thereby effecting the bottom line (illustrate the ROI).  The technical buyer will be more concerned with staff implications, ease of integration, stability and support to name a few.

The value proposition should be clearly articulated within your proposal.

3.  Identifying The “Ideal” Customers
Sketch out exactly who your customer base is? Are these customers in a specific industry, size companies or have any other common characteristics? Take the time to draw up ideal customer profiles for each product or service you offer.  Use the age old question “Who is your ideal customer?”

Your SDR’s time is extremely valuable, so having a strong software sales process in place to reach your ideal customers. Do they consume certain blogs, podcasts, publications or go to specific conferences and networking events? It is good to know the customers preferences to you can add value in your communications and meetings


4.  Use Automation – SDR 2.0
Today simply working harder than the next SDR is not enough to create scalable success.  In years past hiring a lot of SDR’s and adopting  a quantity approach could achieve stellar results, however at a high cost with high turnover.  Salesforce is a perfect example of hiring lots of young aggressive SDR’s to simply blow out the market with activity and gain millions of customers.  This approach can work for a well funded (venture backed) company, however for a boot-strapped or early stage start-up the financial commitment might be too much to handle.

The good news is there are countless SaaS based services to help support your sales efforts and gain efficiencies never thought possible previously.  This is not a full review of these tools, but simply a list to get you started on your own due diligence effort.  I can say with confidence that these are all some of the best and most tightly integrate with Salesforce.

Call Automation:  Five9 , New Voice Media , Connect and Sell

Workflow Automation (email and more): Reply App , Persist IQ , YesWare,Toutapp

5.  Build  Relationships
The next step is to determine who within your target market you need to focus on building relationships with. Then have a software sales process that can support the relationship building phase. Your target contacts should be stakeholders, influencers and individual purchasers. Consistent and regular communication is essential and can be automated by the software tools explained in step 4 of this post.

Trust is the number one building block in any sales relationship and it is essential to be a trusted advisor with your customers.  This foundation will help lead to customer retention and referrals.  In my first five years at OpenArc our team grew our top line by 80% YOY while maintaining a 95% customer retention rate.  That retention rate is very significant as we have all heard it is easier to work with an existing customer versus going out to get a new one.  This article in Forbes does a nice job explaining a few effective ways to retain your customers.

6.  Reinforcing the Value Proposition with Case Studies
Now that  you have connected with the appropriate personnel within your target accounts, you must convince them you can truly deliver on the value proposition provided.  This is best done through case studies of your existing work.  Our company OpenArc has dedicated an entire section of our website to case studies to illustrate our capabilities and the benefit we have provided our customers.

Customers purchase by one or more of the following three factors: Time, Money, Emotion.


7.  Drive the Right Behavior
A sales process is a necessity, but don’t let it get in the way of your SDR’s doing their job and enjoying their job. One way I have found to encourage the right behaviors is to reward the right behaviors.  Time off, money, recognition are just a few ways to reward your team.  The best thing a sales manager can do is understand how each of your team members likes to be rewarded (finds fulfilling) and use their unique preferences as a starting point.

If you’re interested in discussing software sales, browse through my blog here.


Do You Have a Diet Mobile App?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

These days there’s a mobile app for just about everything, so it figures that diet and nutrition trackers are becoming a big hit. They let you log your nutrition intake, shop for healthy foods and pick and choose healthy eating plans. Take a look at these 5 apps worth trying.
  1. Fooducate (iOS, Android)
This mobile app helps you to both shop and eat healthy. It lets you quickly pull up nutritional information from the barcodes on food products and can help you make sense of those nutrition labels that otherwise come across as gibberish. The app shows you a letter grade from A to D, and offers up a quick summary of nutritional information in easy-to-understand language. It will also suggest healthier alternatives. Whether you eat out or cook, you can manually enter nutrition information. The mobile app also doubles as a calorie, exercise and intake tracker.
  1. Shopwell (iOS; Android)
Shopping well is definitely the first step to eating well. That’s the idea behind Shopwell that will scan barcodes and rate groceries according to your nutritional needs. The app creates a personal profile and will select from various nutritional goals while also implementing necessary dietary restrictions, like food allergies or vegetarianism.  The app takes all these elements into account and uses them to score the items you scan while offering easy-to-follow nutritional pointers.
  1. Calorie Counter Pro (iOS, Android)
This mobile app is an all-in-one exercise tracker, food scanner and nutrition log. Users can scan barcodes for nutritional information and input recipes and custom foods. The exercise tracker lets you enter over 500 different activities and you can also manually enter calories burned, distance and time for walking. What’s more, there are planning features for dieters wishing to set a target weight or plan their exercise and eating.
  1. Diet Point Weight Loss (iOS, Android)
Another mobile app that helps users select the right weight loss program for their needs. There are over 130 diets programmed under various categories as well as complete meal plans and shopping lists. The app will notify you that it is mealtime and help avoid those cravings or overeating. Whether you’re going low-carb or full-on caveman, the app will have the plan for you.
  1. Nutrino (iOS)
This is a meal planning and nutritional goals mobile app. It’s been designed to work with other devices and apps to track physical activity and adjust food recommendations accordingly. Users are able to set their nutritional goals – be it muscle building, weight loss or healthy eating – and also set dietary restrictions such as halal, gluten-free or lactose-intolerant. The app will build a personalized meal plan based on the information and users can further customize the plan by inputting preferred foods or swiping for alternatives. Water intake, sleep and exercise can all be logged. Mobile Apps for Diet – Would You Use Them? Would you use these kinds of apps for your dietary and lifestyle requirements? Have you had any experience with them? Feel free to share in our mobile app section.

4 Mobile Application Development Trends This Year

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development

Developers don’t need us telling them that the mobile application development landscape changes constantly. But let’s pause just for a minute and look at how it’s changing. The best place to start is with the 2015 State of the Developer Nation report from VisionMobile. According to the report, there are 4 trends mobile app developers should be taking note of.
  1. Apple’s Swift
Anyone in the tech industry knows it’s hardly ever a case of “if you build it, they will come.” Adoption of new technologies can take time. So the rapid rise of Apple’s Swift language for iOS apps is worth mentioning. According to the report’s survey of 8,000 developers, one in five of them were already using Swift a few months after its launch.
  1. Growth of Cross-Platform Tools
Mobile application development is seeing an increase in the use of third-party tools. According to the report, 83% of respondents are using the tools for things like testing, analytics and crash reporting. Even more noteworthy, the use of cross-platform tools has increased from 23% to 30% in just six months.  Cross platform tools worth mentioning are Xamarin and Oracle Mobile Application Framework (built on Apache Cordova) So what goes into choosing the right tools? Tech execs seem to agree that it’s important to choose a stable provider that will be in it for the long haul.
  1. Enterprise Apps Are Making More Cash than Consumer Apps
Smartphones are flying off the shelves and mobile application development is teeming with activity. But it’s not guaranteed that your app is going to earn much. Developers working on enterprise apps are actually more likely to make cash. 43% of developers working on enterprise apps hit $10,000 per month or more in revenue. Only 19% of consumer app developers hit that milestone. A lot of consumers aren’t too keen to shell out money for apps but businesses seem to be more than willing to pay for software that helps their employees be more productive.
  1. The Internet of Things is Super-Hot
A lot of developers are investing their energy in the Internet of Things (IoT) even though it may take a while to pay off. Over 50% of developers report to be working on some sort of IoT project, and many seem to be doing so as a hobby. And it’s no surprise that the biggest areas of interest right now involve mobile application development, particularly on Android and iOS. To Sum Up the Report It is still early days, but VisionMobile’s report claims a huge upside in IoT for the developer community. Those products with the best software are going to be the most sought after. And developers will become essential to creating competitive apps.

So we get a picture of a mobile application development market that is evolving rapidly in pretty much everything from languages and tools to economics and device platforms. Keeping up with the changes can be just as challenging as doing your actual job. But that’s exactly why mobile is such an exciting endeavor right now.

Want to know which apps are tops for 2015? Check out my blog, 9 Great Apps for 2015.

Enterprise Mobility: Security Risk or Worth It?

Written by Brooks Canavesi on . Posted in Blog, Mobile App Development, Sales Strategy, Technology Tips & Tricks, Technology trends

For the first time in computing history the enterprise is being influenced by its employees and consumers technology through IT consumerization.  IT consumerization is the blending of personal and business use of technology devices and applications.   Many companies have embraced a mobile-first strategy. But when employees are left to their own devices, InfoSec experts face unchartered territory. However, enterprise mobility can be and is in my opinion is absolutely a strategy enterprises cannot continue to ignore.

The trend towards enterprise mobility can indeed add to concerns over BYOD (bring your own device) security. And even though such systems are key to business operations, they’re not regularly maintained or tested for vulnerabilities, mainly due to availability concerns.

Enterprise mobility really is a double-edged sword: it helps provide broad data access along with communication capabilities for a great deal of the workforce, often at little to no direct cost. It also aids in opening up security issues that can range from vulnerable apps to security issues and employees accessing sensitive corporate data via unsecured networks.

Many CISOs and CIOs tend to realize that while security technologies and mobile device management do play a role, clear policies are essential to harnessing the benefits of BYOD. The aim of such policies needs to be to increase user productivity and satisfaction while ensuring compliance and the utmost security.

It Is A Risk Worth Taking 

So where do you start building a mobile security policy? Simple: start with what makes you uncomfortable. Devices need to meet “trusted device standards” in order to comply and employees should use VPN clients to gain access to the company network. What’s more, employee-owned devices should support security policies and frameworks that keep enterprise data secure at rest and in transit.

The trend towards enterprise mobility with critical systems and data can add to the concerns over BYOD security.  While some security policies are indeed standard procedure, you need to identify which functions, data and applications need protection most in order to understand how enterprise mobility could expose them. Some companies, such as Cisco and Oracle, use MDM (mobile device management) and MAM (mobile application management) to do application installs / removals, containerization and encryption of enterprise data, and in some cases remote wipe for loss prevention.

BYOD does bring many benefits when it comes to empowering your staff with timely information, offering flexibility and increasing productivity. Enterprise mobility also have many customer benefits such as improving consumer loyalty, streamlining customer support process and reducing support costs.  The benefits far outweigh the risks, but every company has unique situations and that’s where BYOD security technologies and policies should be focused.

Take the First Step

Enterprise mobility necessitates partnership with business leader involvement coupled with the understanding that not all risks are bad. The first step should be to establish a committee of business and tech leaders to identify the data and critical systems that should be considered when formulating the BYOD policy. The next step should be to review policy and technical controls based on potential risks and threats to your current operations.

Based on this sort of analysis, security officers and CIOs will be able to determine how to enhance and enable their enterprise mobility programs to moderate business risks.

Learn more about Oracle’s Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM)

Looking for a partner to help your enterprise mobility needs, check out OpenArc.