26th Jan MoMoEdi: The Enterprise App Opportunity

[Geoff Ballinger]

One of the big changes on the mobile scene over the last few years is a huge surge in the use of mobile by perhaps less tech-focussed companies and organisations, allowing them to operate their existing processes more efficiently, and to enable entirely new ways of working that weren't possible previously.

This presents a huge opportunity both for all those organisations who can now benefit from embracing mobile technology, and for mobile developers who, looking beyond the consumer app store, can both help them understand what is possible and to go on and build it.

We will hear about this from two gents who have been doing precisely this for a number of years and who can share examples of work that they have done with clients within the Travel & Tourism, Utilities, Financial Services and Education sectors across the UK, Europe and beyond:

* Ross Tuffee has spent the last five years co-founding and running DOGFI.SH Mobile (http://dogfi.sh/) which has grown from a small start up to 35 “mobile passionate” employees, delivering mobile strategy and enterprise solutions to big brands across a number of sectors including travel (Thomson, First Choice), leisure (Alton Towers, Madame Tussauds and English Heritage), retail (Value Retail, IKEA) and utilities (Network Rail).

* Matt Lanham founded Gecko Labs (http://www.geckolabs.co.uk/) in 2012 after being frustrated with the lack of a really good way of handling enquiry generation in various projects he encountered in his digital agency work at the time. The result was GeckoForm, a product now focussed on enquiry management in the higher education sector.

They both have plenty experience taking mobile well beyond it’s high tech and consumer digital heartland and will be talking about the changes from when originally those few enterprises that were looking at mobility were mainly focusing on free consumer facing marketing apps distributed via app stores, and how over the last few years this focus has evolved towards B2E and B2B solutions.

There is now a significant growth in “mobile first” and screen agnostic enterprise solutions aimed at employees and project teams. Desktop software has “gone mobile” and is increasingly being developed “mobile first” with the interface being retrofitted to desktop. Employees who are starting out in the workplace now have grown up with mobile devices during their teens and expect to be able to do their job via mobile, and often their own mobile.

All of these things of course provide a wide range of challenges, both technical and organisational, for the mobile developer and their clients to deal with, but they also give huge scope for those who can think outside the box!

As usual we will finish with an open discussion session followed by a networking reception with wine.

I am delighted that Skyscanner have again agreed to host us in the excellent events space in their headquarters at Quartermile One:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=Quartermile+One%2C+15+Lauriston+Place%2C+EH3+9EN%2C+Edinburgh%2C+gb

We will kick off at 6.30pm and please do arrive promptly since it may not be possible gain access if you are late.

This is a free event but places are limited so pre-registration is required via:

http://momoedijan15.eventbrite.co.uk

Twitter hashtag #MoMoEdi

This event is kindly supported by the Skyscanner and deltaDNA.