Business-to-business (B2B) ecosystems facilitate the continuous exchange of information and collaboration. B2B ecosystems will play a central role for all businesses because they form the basis for redefining approaches toward innovation, knowledge management, supply-chain optimization, product development, sales, and marketing.
While the ultimate focus of these ecosystems is to create customer value, their more immediate effect is to drive operational agility in service of customers. Mobility will be a central enabler for these B2B digital ecosystems. Why?
- Mobility is evolving beyond enterprise mobility management. Mobility shifts the way B2B ecosystems service their customers, support their partners, and affect competition. As a first step, technology teams need to move beyond enterprise mobility management (EMM). This comprises device, app, and content management, as well as telecom expenses, policy management, and security management. EMM relies on using several mobile apps in parallel without any functional integration between them.
- Enterprise mobility experiences will significantly improve. Today, despite all the excitement concerning automation and machine learning, smart mobile devices still rely on direct user instructions. Business customers and employees have to move in and out of dedicated mobile apps to obtain support for specific business processes like procurement, product information, or sales analytics. These enterprise mobile apps rarely take into account the conditions that particular enterprise users find themselves in.
Gone are the days when technology teams merely focused on mobile devices or apps as part of their enterprise mobility strategy. In the years to come, mobile will transform from a standalone channel to a central choreographer of connected ecosystems. My report, The Future Of B2B Mobile Enterprise Services, outlines the strategic implications of this transformation of mobility and helps CIOs and CTOs prepare for it.
- B2B mobility will improve operational excellence and enterprise customer engagement. B2B mobile solutions will drive operational excellence and enhance the quality of engagement with your business customers and partners.
- B2B customers will see a transformation from broken to frictionless experiences. B2B mobile experiences will evolve in terms of channel, context, and construction — transforming from siloed apps to integrated experience ecosystems.
In addition to the process and strategy changes affecting enterprise mobility, many technology innovations will have an impact on next-generation B2B mobile experiences. My report outlines how integrated ecosystem experiences will emerge over time and in several stages.
Dan Bieler is principal analyst at Forrester Research, where he serves CIOs. Read more Forrester blogs here.