Mobile Strategy for E-Business Solution

Introduction

Mobility has become a key factor in Information Technology (IT) strategy (Savvas, 2007). The literature indicates that the use of mobile devices can assist the communication networks in business activities, such as Supply Chain Management (SCM), parcel tracking and Customer Relation Management (CRM) (UPS, 2005). Mobile Commerce (m-Commerce) operates where mobile devices facilitate business operations that enhance and improve commercial activities (Varshney and Vetter, 2002). In commercial organisations, mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) phones can help business users to organise their daily activities such as taking notes, arranging appointments, storing contacts phones numbers, receiving emails and surfing the internet, from a single mobile device (Jervanpaa, 2006). Stockbrokers can receive critical information on their PDAs such as changes in financial stocks and shares at anytime and also access financial documents and make amendments with the use of built in word processing applications.

Short Messaging Services (SMS) is another mobile solution making mobile payments or m-Payments (Serbedzija et al, 2005). In Croatia, parking in the city can be difficult as parking areas can be on either side of the road, or one large central lot located far from the drivers destination, the hassle of walking to ‘top up’ a parking meter and then walking back to the destination can be tedious. The driver receives an SMS acknowledgement text to indicate the expiration time of the parking meter and can then choose to return to the vehicle or extend the parking meter by replying to the SMS text (Serbedzija, 2005).

Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, highly regarded for the success of kidney operations in the last few years is utilising Blackberry’s mobile phone application to wirelessly connect to the hospital’s centralised database to keep track of available organ donors. The use of mobile devices allows surgeons and doctors to make on the spot decisions as they track available donors that match with the patient’s profile. An indirect application of using these mobile phones in this situation can also be used to assist emergency crews in applying first aid. In the event of an accident, by taking images of any unusual wounds and forwarding them to a specialists, a remote doctor can advise the ambulance crew to apply appropriate first aid to the victim (British Red Cross, 2004). The agility and mobility of using these mobile devices can prove advantageous to commercial operations (Harrington, 2006), especially e-commerce applications. The increased demand of mobile devices is due to the improvements of wireless technology that has allowed managers to select from a wide variety of mobile technology to apply to their business. The use of m-commerce can provide both competitive advantage and modern image to the business. However, there are risks associated with it, such as the cost of development, security issues relating to viruses and privacy policies. It is imperative that the business should analyse the type of mobile devices which can best enhance their business activity (Varshney and Vetter, 2002). The use of strategic IT frameworks could be used for assessing mobile business application to aid business practitioners in decision making.