Case Study: Running the Business from the Palm of Your Hand

1. What kinds of applications are described here? What business functions do they support? How do they improve operational efficiency and decision making?

There are different type of business application described in this case study that are focused on increasing the productivity of different business processes. These applications can help the users in preparing presentations, read documents in different formats, manage inventory, analyze business activities and interact with the internet for different business updates. Some the business applications on the Apple store are Salesforce Mobile, Cisco WebEx, iSchedule and iWork etc. (Laudon & Laudon, 2013). These applications add productivity to the business processes. These applications can improve efficiency as they can be used to schedule different tasks and inform the users about the milestones. Presentations can be prepared without the need of a computer and on the go hence saving time.

2. Identify the problems that businesses in this case study solved by using mobile digital devices.

There are a variety of problems that were solved with the help of the productivity apps in this case study. These apps help businesses better communicate with its customers. They help monitor performance of different employees and sales. These applications can help in scheduling and time keeping. There are also some applications used by business that help these business keep a record of the employee attendance.

3. What kinds of businesses are most likely to benefit from equipping their employees with mobile digital devices such as iPhones and iPads?

In the modern world, most of the businesses have gone online in parts or whole. In my opinion all businesses should equip their employees with a hand held mobile device depending on the budget and requirements. Especially iPads and other Tablets can be used to survey customers and get their feedback. Retail business can use hand held devices to keep track of the inventory and supplies. The hand held devices can be used by the employees of financial firms as there are many forex applications available for a regular check on the forex market.

4. One company deploying iPhones has said: The iPhone is not a game changer, it’s an industry changer. It changes the way that you can interact with your customers and with your suppliers. Discuss the implications of this statement.

There are two implications of the statement. First is that with an increased use of iPhones and like devices, an interaction with the customers has become really easy. The customers and suppliers can communicate to a business from almost anywhere and anytime. This has added quality to the customer communication process (Beardsley, Johnson, & Manyika, 2006). On the other hand an increased digital communication has decreased in person communication with the customers. There are some parts of consumer behavior, especially customer’s behavior that cannot be assessed with the help of digital interactions like audio or videos.