Role of Business Analysts in Enterprise Mobile Applications

On the basis of functionality the application performs or on the users and usage of the applications, Mobile applications can be classified as – Business to Business Applications, Business to Customer applications.

Business to Customer Mobile applications:

• These are the mobile applications that the enterprise wishes to develop for its customers / stake holders.
• It is generally seen that the objective behind these applications is customer involvement, create brand recall, reach target customer and provide with accurate and timely information.
• The number of end users of B2C applications is high.
• Some examples of B2C application are: Times of India Mobile App, ICICI bank immobile application, Flipkart Mobile application.
• From the above applications we can see that these applications are not independent applications (Does not automate any enterprise internal operation/process) and are in some or other way depends on the transactions / information the company wishes to share with the customers.

Business to Business Applications:

• These are the Mobile applications that the enterprise wishes to develop for optimizing its internal processes or functions.
• These applications are generally to automate certain business processes, reduce time required for certain processes/functions, Electronic Data interchange within the Business/ Organization.
• The number of users of B2B applications is limited and much less than the B2C application.
• Some examples of Business Applications in India are : ICICI Tab banking Account Opening application [ http://www.icicibank.com/campaigns/tab-banking/ ] 

In this application, the entire manual process{Customer fills form à Submits documents à Bank data entry staff punches the data in Bank system à Scans documents à Uploads that in Bank system]  of account opening is automated [Tab Officer  fills form in the Tab application, scans documents and submit  à The data gets saved in the bank database]. This reduces time and cost required in the process indirectly increasing productivity.

Role of Business Analyst:

With wide range of Mobile phones, applications and platforms, Business Analyst can play a key role in developing Enterprise mobile applications:

• Application Type: Native, Web or Hybrid?  Based on the target end users to be catered and business objective, Business Analyst can help business to Analyze and decide type of Mobile application [Native Application, Hybrid application, Web application] that must be developed.
• Platform: - iOS, Android, Symbian? : Business Analyst can analyze the data, market. Target user demographics to help business decide platform for which the application must be build.

• Identify Processes: Business Analyst must understand the current processes in the organization, identify the processes which can be optimizing by introducing Mobility.
• Propose Solution: Based on the identified process, design and propose feasible Mobility solution.
• Solution development: As mentioned in detail in my previous blogs, actively involved in the solution development lifecycle.

Business Analyst thus plays a key role in identification of right process to be mobilized, right platform on which Mobile application should be based and the right solution.

About Author:

Saurabh Kane is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at: saurabh.k@spluspl.com