INNOVATION PROFILE Vodafone:THE ADVENT OF smartphones and tablet computing has brought a whole new dynamic to business computing.

Retail chains can now reach out to their customers using dedicated apps, while companies with mobile workforces can use them to effectively eliminate paper at a fraction of the cost of previous solutions.

It’s not quite that easy of course. The problem tends to lie in the expense and technical difficulty of developing new apps for a specific business. Vodafone has moved to address this and has partnered with two specialist firms to offer a novel service which its customers can use to develop and deploy new apps and pay for them on their Vodafone bill.

“Vodafone is a market leader in bringing innovative propositions to the market as the world of mobility evolves at lightning speed,” says Fergal Kelly, Vodafone Ireland chief technology officer. “Mobile applications are becoming a major strategic focus for companies, and business customers are increasingly coming to us for advice on how they can implement a mobile app strategy. We now have the ability to add value to our business customers, through the highly specialised consultancy services offered by our partners Topaz Software and Furious Tribe.”

Topaz Software operates mainly in the business-to-business (B2B) or enterprise application space, while Furious Tribe is focused on the business-to-consumer area. Business-to-business apps help keep a mobile workforce connected to the information they need and enable organisations to gain real-time insights into their employees’ locations and performance in order to increase efficiency and productivity and reduce operating costs. Solutions can be tailored to an organisation’s needs and are designed to fully integrate with their systems.

“We started out back in the late 1990s as a software development and consultancy company”, says Topaz CEO Niall Conheady. “We saw the dotcom bubble beginning to burst and got into mobile at an early stage on the Windows platform. It was a very niche market at that stage and we had customers in Ireland, the UK and the Nordic countries.”

Following a change in Microsoft’s mobile strategy in the late 2000s, the company decided to alter its own focus. “We made the brave call to move from the Microsoft platform to Android and IOS and it proved the right decision,” Conheady recalls. “Smartphones and tablet computers had become ubiquitous and companies were looking for apps to make use of them.”

According to Conheady, the proliferation of these devices has marked a real change in the market. When coupled with mobile apps, they are making the deployment of B2B apps far more affordable for businesses. A tablet can incorporate all the functions of multiple devices such as a camera, a Dictaphone, a laptop and so on.

In the past, the cost to deploy mobility solutions were very expensive due to the costs associated with buying expensive bespoke devices. However, the increased range of phones and tablets available to suit all budgets means these B2B solutions are now more affordable than ever.

The firm developed mobile application software called Call Collect, which is an innovative mobile data collection application. The software can be easily customised to meet individual customers’ needs very speedily and cost efficiently. “It is very expensive for a company to develop software for itself and it usually doesn’t work first time”, Conheady notes.

“With Call Collect, the company can come to us and we will customise it to create the solution they require. If an employee works in the field and uses paper-based processes, these processes can be digitised to make their processes more efficient and make the employee more productive.”

Among the key benefits of the solution are its ease of access and rapid roll-out time. “We work with Vodafone to deploy these B2B solutions and customers can pay for them on their Vodafone bill”, Conheady explains. “They also have access to many of the other security solutions which Vodafone offers.

“Speed is a very important factor as well. We had one customer with 60 users up and running within three months and they had achieved a return on their investment within five months.”

Gillian Cregan, chief financial officer with Topaz client Cunningham Lindsey insurance adjusters, comments: “It was the quickest roll-out of technology I have ever seen.”

In the business-to-consumer (B2C) space, Vodafone has formed an exclusive partnership with award-winning Irish technology company Furious Tribe. The company will provide a consultancy service to Vodafone business customers to develop their own mobile applications strategy. The partnership will also enable Vodafone and Furious Tribe to build and deploy specific mobile applications for Vodafone’s business customers.

Under the partnership, Vodafone customers will receive access to Apptivate, Furious Tribe’s unique content management system, enabling a company to manage its mobile applications easily without having specialised IT skills. Vodafone and Furious Tribe work alongside the customer right through from inception to design and development. As with the B2B offering, Vodafone acts as a one-stop shop for the service, managing the contractual and billing relationship with the customer.

Many B2C apps fail because of their low utility value, according to Furious Tribe chief executive Patrick Leddy. These include promotions from drinks and other companies which don’t provide any other useful function for the user. “If the app doesn’t improve the lives of your customers in some way they won’t bother with it.”

He mentions the Dublin Bus and Luas timetable apps and the ones from Bank of Ireland, RTÉ, TV3 and Sky as having high utility value. They give customers useful real-time information about a service they require or enable them to manage bank accounts or watch and record TV – all from their mobile phone.

“Retail chains can use apps for loyalty programmes”, he adds. “They can offer special discounts to customers when they are in a certain range of shops and so on. They can also alert them to when items which interest them are in stock or on special offer.”

The company includes household names such as Royal Sun Alliance, CitiBank, Axa, Danone, NCB and Irish Life among its customers and prides itself on delivering successful apps to clients. “We got into this business because we were frustrated with the low quality of the apps which were out there at the time”, he says.

“About 70 per cent of B2C apps fail for a variety of reasons including poor utility value. Other reasons include silly things like having to scan QR codes in subway tunnels where there is no signals or on aircraft where you can’t use your phone for obvious reasons.”

One company which turned to Vodafone and Furious Tribe for assistance with developing a B2C app is NCB. “Many of our clients travel a lot and require information about their investment portfolios and other research while they are away,” explains Martin Doyle, IT director at NCB Group.

“Because of this, we decided to develop an app which would facilitate just that. Creating a mobile app was never about the technology. It was always about giving our clients relevant information in the most accessible way possible, reinforcing our first mover position amongst our clients and peers.”

Creating the app was remarkably simple, Doyle points out. “We had already carried out much of the work by creating a secure internet-based system, so all we had to do was work with Vodafone to make sure that the end result was compatible across android smartphones, iPhones and the full range of tablet devices, and that a rigorous quality control system was built in to ensure that information contained within the app is accurate.”

The Vodafone link is vitally important, according to Leddy. “Customer can now go to Vodafone and get a full 360 degree service from the devices, through the networks, and on to the development of the apps.”