Marching towards the era of cognitive mobility

Subir Roy

Digital transformation is driving new avenues of investments in the IT sector. The disruptive technologies including Social, Mobility, Analytics and Cloud along with IoT spearhead this journey of digital transformation globally. The impact of it is visible in every nook and corner of the IT world.

The whole concept of digital transformation is led by need, technology enabled solution or product. An important dimension of Digital Transformation is that it has improved customer experience, their preferences and behavior. Let us have a look at how mobility has evolved from mere talking/texting devices to smartphones redefining the way we digitally experience the world.

We all know that desktops and static telephones used to rule the world till late 1990s. They were more static in nature and the user had to approach and access it if they needed to do something with it. However, in the millennium, we have started witnessing the significance of mobile devices which enabled the advancement of mobility in the global business world.

Industries started realizing the power of data when it could be associated with a person ‘on the move’. The business world started leveraging Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) 2G, followed by 2.5G(GPRS), 2.75G(EDGE), 3G and 4G, where barrier of digital data transmission without wire is overcome by Mobile Telecommunication technology. Over the passing years, global industries realized that data is the prime source and driving factor for any kind of commerce to get success. Now we have reached a stage where industry has started collecting user data which includes:

Identity – User, device identity and carrier information
Behavioral – User actions, preferences and Social Engagement
Contextual – location, position and other whereabouts
Emotional – Data captured using sensors (such as heart beat rate, facial emotion, iris movement etc.)

On a general user/ customer perspective, mobility is offering greater convenience for him by getting all the information he requires at his fingertips. More than business to user and vice versa, it seamlessly connects user to user communication also, capable of creating and nurturing the social bonds that we all long to have in our life.

Mobility has influenced so much in our life that we use mobile apps for anything and everything right from planning our day to day activities, booking tickets, online purchasing, banking and so on. In short, mobile phones enable the business to reach directly to individuals, providing information as and when required and enabling transactions also. It gathers all the data from the user and uses those data points to cross-sale on the same channel.

Where are all these data going and how businesses are leveraging it, is the most relevant question in the age of analytics powered by Big Data. There lies the relevance of Predictive Analytics followed by Prescriptive Analytics.

Mobility along with the predictive analytics is bringing in new opportunities in almost all the streams of businesses including retail, manufacturing, travel etc. We can find many supplementary devices to be used along with the mobile devices like sensors, beacons, wearables, etc. which are capable of optimizing, improving the digital experience for the businesses as well as its customers.

If we look closely, it is the 'need'- whether it is a business need or the customer need is driving the advancement of mobility. If we analyze, we find that a few years back mobile phones were not empowered with NFC or iBeacon. The requirement to communicate data end points in case of close proximity and transaction maturity has led to the idea of Beacons or NFC devices. Like this, the need to initiate real time, customized and tailored promotions brought in the concept of ideas like geo-fencing. This has helped businesses to understand and tap its customer base with features like context based push notifications.

In the field of mobility, we have just started the journey. It holds the potential to conquer more avenues of technological advancements including IoT, Big data and cloud. In the upcoming era of advanced machine learning and Internet of Everything, mobile holds the power to be in the center stage bringing in more and more constructive opportunities for businesses and convenience for the end users.

Also, let us expect that in the near future, in the world of cognitive mobility; mobile will be trying to fulfill human like perceptions, personalization of context and human-like actions to complement user behavior. Interesting days are coming ahead in the field of mobility.

The author is solution Architect and Practice Head, Mobility at Happiest Minds Technologies