Mobile Applications - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 477

22.1.5.3.2 Extending Business Processes with Mobility
The next step in the evolution of mobility is to extend existing business pro-
cesses. New opportunities to streamline company business processes emerge
and evolve to produce new revenue opportunities. One example is the way
that mobility extends business processes through a supply chain optimiza-
tion model. New business processes emerge through these new mechanisms
that ultimately shorten the supply chain cycle, thus minimizing error and
maximizing efficiency and realizing the utmost customer satisfaction. Real-
time tracking and alert mechanisms provide supply chain monitors with the
capability to monitor shipments and product line quality in ways that tradi-
tional business models were not capable of doing.
22.1.5.3.3 Enabling a Dynamic Business Model
The final phase in the evolution of mobility is the one that has only been
touched upon in today's world. The unique attributes of mobility will pro-
vide new and exciting ways of managing processes and allow for efficiencies
never before attainable. The convergence of wireless technologies with exist-
ing business models will result in fully dynamic business processes.
22.1.6 Network Enterprises
Agile companies produce the right product, at the right place, at the right time,
at the right price for the right customer. As pointed out by Jagdish Sheth in
these times of market change and turbulence, the half-life (i.e., the time within
which it loses currency by 50%) of customer knowledge is getting shorter
and shorter. The difficult challenges facing businesses today require orga-
nizations to transition into flexible, agile structures that can respond to new
market opportunities quickly with a minimum of new investment and risk.
As enterprises have experienced the need to be simultaneously efficient,
flexible, responsive, and adaptive, they have turned increasingly to the net-
work form of organization with the following characteristics:
• Networks rely more on market mechanisms rather than on admin-
istrative processes to manage resource flows. These mechanisms are
not simple arms-length relationships usually associated with inde-
pendently owned economic entities. Instead, to maintain the posi-
tion within the network, members recognize their interdependence
and are willing to share information, cooperate with each other, and
customize their product or service.
• While a network of sub-contractors have been common for many
years, recently formed networks expect members to play a much
more proactive role in improving the final product or service.
• Instead of holding all assets required to produce a given product or
service in-house, networks use the collective assets of several firms
located along the value chain.