Mobile is Now and Forever

Is there a statistic we could quote that would surprise you? Instinctively we know that mobile is dominating the tech industry.

Did you know?

4 out of 5 consumers use smartphones to shop. 55% of the time spent with digital media is mobile, and mobile device time per day has doubled year over year. The amount of time spent on mobile each day is about the same for all people under 65! Mobile commerce is forecasted to reach 45% of total US ecommerce by 2020, and will likely go higher if you consider that 71% of commerce will be mobile commerce in China by 2019.

You would be hard pressed to find an industry where mobile isn’t driving change and value. Certainly healthcare, retail, and finance all feature mobile, but what’s more remarkable is the value being created. 35% of Domino’s Pizza sales come through its native app. If you told the CEO of Dominos, “hey, I don’t want to download your app”, he’d have to say, “I don’t care. Because when you download the app, you buy more pizza”. An amazingly simple sentiment, and precisely what’s missing in the public sector.

Cities are under resourced, they are tapped for cash, and they are being asked to do more today than ever before. As if that wasn’t enough, mobile technology isn’t simple, it requires coordinating development across three platforms (Apple, Android, and HTML5). Integration is harder, design requires careful navigation of constraints like screen size and keyboard experience. And it goes beyond optimizing for UX, mobile specific technology unlocks entirely new opportunities. Disruptions like Uber, technology like IoT and blockchain demand outside of the box thinking. This need to discover the opportunity unfortunately makes it easier to overlook the true value a mobile app can unlock. When you don’t know what you are missing, you aren’t likely to go looking for it.

Since mobile seems hard to manage, and the value it can create is often not easily understood, there should be no surprise that with an area like permitting and code enforcement, where so much general housekeeping work remains, there simply isn’t an “app for that”.

With the continued emphasis on consumer experience in the business world, constituents increasingly demand the same level of customer experience from their government agencies. In fact, many citizens are in mobile only households, a fact that should make it a bigger priority to optimize for the one device everyone has. Certainly, it is smart to ensure your web content is built with responsive design that can be consumed on a mobile device. But if you communicate with your citizen and you don’t convert them to an app user, you have failed. Businesses that are thriving understand this. Every touchpoint, every chance to communicate is a chance for a smart business to build a relationship with that prospective customer. By encouraging citizens to download their “city app”, a city isn’t just answering a citizen’s web search query, it is beginning a relationship. With the city app downloaded, the city is granted a home on their citizens’ most personal device. They are permissioned to communicate and they are permissioned to extend access to smarter, more efficient processes.

We are mobile experts; our mission is to enable cities to take advantage of mobile. We believe the next great disruption; the next Uber can involve the public sector. Enough talking about the coming smart city! We have all the tools necessary. What if we told you that your city could access a $25M IoT hardware grant? (Hint each of your citizens is walking around town with a location aware cloud enabled supercomputer in their pocket). Are you aware just how robust the PLL API is? We have connected with leading Cityworks partners and with the Cityworks PLL team to ask one simple question: What should the PLL app do? And guess what, it’s all there: receive a push notification about change of status, take a quick look and make an update, manage inspections, and so much more.

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by Alexander Bentley. “Devil In The Rain” is published by Alex Bentley in The Inkslinger.

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