Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
ScienceDirect Procedia Computer Science 98 (2016) 540 – 547
The 3rd International Symposium on Emerging Information, Communication and Networks (EICN 2016)
A Mobile Enterprise Solution for Mobile Teams: A Case Study for Front Desk Outsourcing Company in Saudi Arabia a,*, a* a
Faculty of Computing, Engineering and Sciences, Staffordshire University, Stafford , Staffordshire, UK
Abstract Mobile Enterprise and the reliance on consumer devices to conduct business are the backbone of the current mobile trend and enterprises are realizing the need to transform to mobile enabled enterprises and are adopting different frameworks and methodologies to accomplish this purpose. This paper utilises the Mobile Holistic Enterprise Transformation Framework (MHETF) to plan for a mobile transformation and suggested transitioning model. The case study concerns an application covering five management divisions (Human Resources, IT, Quality Assurance, Operation Excellency and Engineering) in a large Saudi company which intends to automate the visits of their representatives’ to their regional branches which are required to be carried out regularly, and to minimize their workload. The framework produced a future state of this application with the advantage over the current implementation in providing improved benefits which are listed quantifiably and measured using the balanced scorecard. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-reviewunder under responsibility of the Conference Peer-review responsibility of the Program Chairs Program Chairs. Keywords: Mobile Enterprise; Mobile Applications; Mobile Framework; MHETF; Transformation.
1.Introduction Personal mobile phones are personal devices and are seen at an early age of the current mobile application trend as a driver of consumerization of IT, “A client has experimented with buying incremental time on its employees’ personal mobile phone plans for business use by the employee. The cost of the incremental minutes was much less
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1877-0509 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer-review under responsibility of the Program Chairs doi:10.1016/j.procs.2016.09.078
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than the best enterprise-wide plan available to the company” . From the market perspective IT consumerization is related to all devices and applications in an enterprise that were initially developed for the consumer market, although employees and organization view it differently, employees see the private device and application being used in the work context, the second focuses growing number of non-approved and non-supported devices in the 2 enterprise . A recent study by IDC found out that consumer services mostly used cloud tools by 90% of the employees, followed by file sharing or collaboration tools at 79%. The use of personal mobile devices for work 3 purposes has required 82% of organizations to change in 2014 . Mobile solutions are important particularly to Saudi Arabia, as it is a large country of over 30 million and a 4 population density of 14 per square kilometre . It has yet to develop a systematic public transportation system, 5 rendering privately owned cars as the first choice for travellers . The Case study looks into a mobile solution that is still optional to use and is being developed to automate the work of the various divisions’ representatives at the visited branches for instant data submission. The case study concerns a major Saudi company with about 60 branches in different cities around the Kingdom. A Mobile Holistic Enterprise Transformation Framework (MHETF) was used to enhance the application and the proposed change to the current implementation was evaluated using the Balance scorecard. The paper is organized as follows: an introduction to the selected framework ‘MHETF’; an outline of the case study, the result of applying ‘MHETF’, Transitioning with Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), the validation, and the conclusion in this order. 2.Mobile framework The selected framework is a holistic, generic framework that aims to reduce the complexity of mobile adoption, provide a unified language for easier communication and reduce the cognitive load, time and cost 6.
Fig. 1. A detailed view of ‘MHETF’.
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The Mobile Holistic Enterprise Transformation Framework “MHETF” classifies the objectives, mobile capabilities and solution of a mobile transformation and utilizes the resulting structure as a basis for mobile enterprise planning. The framework is inspired by the Enterprise Architecture concept, it maps current and future status (planned) of the scoped transformation, and plan the transition 7. Figure 1 offers a more detailed view of the framework explaining and showing the smartphones capabilities of which the capabilities section in the framework has evolved, and the generic application of each capability for more elaborate guidance. 3.Case study and results The company does not only handover the offices and developed solutions to the clients; it operates the services on their behalf and plan for future iterations of services’ improvement. To be able to ensure the services are carried out to the highest standards the unit of quality assurance send engineers, IT, human resources and other representatives regularly to visit the offices around the Kingdom. Visitors have different agendas and are sent out by their managers in each unit, their work was completely paper based. They used to report on their visit the following day by transferring written information to a PC or a laptop and email it to their managers. Another option was to bring a laptop and start writing the report while gathering the relevant information. The application was developed to stream line the visitation process, starting from assigning a visit, until receiving the report. The application currently provides the following services: • Allow the designated visitor to log in after they received an assignment on the email. • Carry out a check list survey at the visited branch, which is prepared by the visitor’s division (unit). scope
Comments and concerns
a
Description of current state
Accumulative description of mobile transformation
Breakdown of services and planned enhancement for each
b
Description of Future state
c
Users Categories
Specific requirement
Specific concerns Measures
Objectives
Details
Functionalities
Fig. 2. (a) Scoping and current and future state mapping; (b) The Solution Functionalities; (C) Objectives measures
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Currently, the application is built for tablets only, and apple’s IPad was selected for this purpose. The application is not available on the app store, it is installed on a limited number of company owned iPads, which are handed out to visitors for the duration of the visit. Although, all questions are text-based question, developers believed smartphones screens are too small for the job. SERVICE: QUALITY ASSURANCE SOLUTION (QAS)
DESCRIPTION: THE COMPANY OPERATES ABOUT 60 CUSTOMER SERVICE BRANCHES, FIVE UNIT SEND REPRESENTATIVE TO VISIT BEACHES AND TO KEEP BRANCHES UP TO STANDARDS, INCLUDING HUMAN RESOURCES 'HR', BUILDINGS AND ARCHITECTURE UNIT, QUALITY ASSURANCE, OPERATION EXCELLENCY, AND TECHNOLOGY UNITS. NEW OPPORTUNITIES
OBJECTIVES: OBJECTIVES: * Enhanced process of disrupting * enhance scheduled visits and acquiring visibility over approvals for suggested visits branches * Improve the process of issues * extend visibly to reporting and fixing other interested parties PERSONALISED SERVICES
• Visit's page to be visible when visitor accept assignment, branch and branch manager information are displayed, and location ready for mobile navigation • Check list and other visitor functions are only accessible at the branch. • The ability to suggest a visit if they employees find themselves around a branch.
• The ability to acknowledge reception of assignment, agree or reschedule
• The ability to instantly request a video call to program manager or unit manager or their representative. • Program manager to be notified about commencing a visit, changes to check list (if any) during current visit, and reported issues instantly, in addition to approval requests for visits requested by visitors, and video chat requests.
• Program manager to be notified about request to establish video calls, if accepted, the third application of choice can be launched.
INSTANT ACCESS, COMMUNICATION AND COLLABORATION
USER EXPERIENCE
MOBILE
APPLICATIONS *
IMPROVE PROCESSES
SATISFACTION
LOCATION BASED SERVICES
OUTWARD FACING
COMPONENTS
INCREASE CUSTOMER
OBJECTIVES: OBJECTIVES: * To ensure visits are carried out * Deepen Relationship according to schedule. with staff * reduce limitations and issues * Increase the average affecting work progress tenure * To facilitate for easier decision making * improve staff attendance
TARGETED CAPABILITIES
GOALS
INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY
MOBILE APPLICATIONS MANAGEMENT ‘MAM’
MOBILE DEVICES MANAGEMENT ‘MDM’
* The ability to see visits history, * Admin to be able to remove and including the last update to applications from Visitors check list devices, and black list from all future interaction. * The ability to add tasks to scheduled and current visits, and * admin to receive on inactive be notified when implemented. users, with ability to take action such as emails to * periodical reports are to be remind them of opening the generated, about the progress in app, withdraw privileges or visits and check lists, and reported issues with fixes remove the app. Fig 3. The results of MHETF application.
INWARD FACING MOBILE
APPLICATIONS * The Application can be installed on any IOS devices, including the unit’s own tablets.
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The perceived benefit was to automate the survey process, carried out by the mobile visitors. The documented objective was as follows: •
To eliminate duplication of populating check list.
The MHETF framework was applied to the case study to improve it and align it with business objectives. The 6 steps process templates were used in a large three Microsoft Excel sheets as shown in Figure 2 8. However, due to space limitation, the results are only shown in detail in Figure 3. 4.Transitioning process: The decision making process for screen size, device and application types and others can be supported by Multi Criteria Decision Making 9, 10. The MHET framework is designed to work with Enterprise Architecture frameworks7, and can be used with a Mobile Maturity Model “MMM” to reach a mature mobile enabled enterprise future state 6. The following is an outline of the proposed process; however, in this case, it resulted in implementing all functionalities that resulted from applying MHETF in one transition. 4.1.Objective valuation Using the Analytic Hierarch Process “AHP” 11, 12, 13, 14 the identified objectives are prioritised in a pairwise comparison to identify the value of each objective in relevance to the overall value of the mobile initiative 11 relying on the judgments of experts, which in this case have been collated and already categorised in MHETF as shown in Figure 2,c.
Fig. 4. Valuation of objectives and categories derived from “MHETF”
As outlined in Figure 4 the process of pairwise comparison is applied to the 4 main categories as well, and an accumulative score is assigned to each individual objective at the end of this phase. A standardised matrix is created to correspond the value of each cell, divided by the sum of each column to give a weight in percentage too each objective. 4.2.Functional valuation Relating the values as (objectives) to functionalities while planning for mobile initiatives allows for more objectives alignment and focus on target. It paves the way for functionalities valuation and other decision making techniques when required. This can be implemented with MHETF by relating the few (objectives) table, to the many (functionalities) table
Mohammed M. Alqahtani and Anthony S. Atkins / Procedia Computer Science 98 (2016) 540 – 547
to indicate what objectives are served by the function at hand while listing functionalities. Two columns can then be added in the functionalities table that contains objectives and the functionalities and the score of significance to each objective they serve and the values of functionalities are processed with the objectives values 15 [Figure 5].
Fill up with values from 1 to 5, where 1 is the least helpful and 5 is the most
Fig. 5. Valuation of functionalities describing the future state solution as listed by “NHETF”
4.3.Solution valuation The final step is to categorise functionalities in work packages, estimate the cost of implementing each package (module) and the value is calculated by the sum of functionalities it contains. This leaves decision makers with a visual tool that allows them to prioritise modules and decide what to include in the current transition. The value of the modules may increase or decrease with time and so does the cost [Figure 6].
Fig. 6. Planning future transitions.
Multi Criteria Decision Making “MCDM” was presented in the workshops, and can be applied to other decision making scenarios, such as device selection, application type, vendor etc16. However, it does not go into that level of detail for simplicity and the focus is on the business transition. 5.Validation The workshop participants stated the following improvements which are to be expected [Table 1] to the objectives as if future state is implemented as outlined in Figure 3. Table 1 present the result of the workshops conducted to validate the application of the framework.
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Mohammed M. Alqahtani and Anthony S. Atkins / Procedia Computer Science 98 (2016) 540 – 547
Table 1. The quantifiable value of the framework’s proposed transformation "$! * !# $!"! #" " !# * #"" ! !!#! " % !! * "" ! ! * $!""" "$! * " ! %"!" * !"$ " # "$! * !! ! # " !#$!"! # $! !#!" $!"!
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The Target column in the table presents the improvements in value if the transition produced by ‘MHETF’ is implemented. From Table 1. Three major improvements can be identified: • To ensure visits are carried out according to schedule: With visits being assigned and accepted in less time and in a fixable way, utilisation of mobile reminders, and notifications, and the reduction in work load of each visit, more results are expected to be conducted on time. • To facilitate easier decision making: although that is measured through a satisfaction increase of 5%, which is considered a major advantage. • Deepen relationship with staff: issues are reported immediately and a work flow with mobile reminders and escalations are set up, which in turn resulted in quicker fixes and better relationships with remote staff. 6.Conclusion The paper discussed the adoption of mobile capabilities to keep the company’s remote branches up to standards through conducting regular visits. The case study was carried out in Saudi Arabia, a large country without a reliable public transportation system. The company has over 60 branches in different cities, and has recently decided to supply each division in headquarters with an iPad with a checklist app installed. The paper outlines which of the
Mohammed M. Alqahtani and Anthony S. Atkins / Procedia Computer Science 98 (2016) 540 – 547
application was improved with the ‘MHETF’ framework, and measured the improvement to compare the current implementation to the planned future state produced by the framework. The result gave the framework the advantage and showed major improvements in at least two measures and minor improvement in the other categories. The paper proposed a process for transitioning to help enterprises decide on what functionalities to implement and when and also showed how it can be used in conjunction with ‘MHETF’ framework. This should allow for accurate planning of future transitions, where functionalities are only included when the need for them arises and outweigh the cost. Future work includes the validation and generalisation of the proposed, Multi Criteria Decision Making process, and enhances it with a Case Based Reasoning Model to facilitate for a faster, more educated decision making. References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.
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