Strategic Development, Implementation And Integration Of Enterprise Mobile App Essay.

In this assignment, you assume the role of the enterprise’s CIO.

As the CIO you are impressed with the concept of the app presented to you in Assignment 1 by the Manager, and have commissioned, on your behalf, a senior member of your ICT department to prepare a comprehensive report to the CFO of the company presenting a business case for the strategic development, implementation and integration of the app within the existing organizational and information systems framework.

There are a number of technical and non-technical issues that need to be fully researched and investigated in writing up your report with specific reference to the proposed app from Assignment 1. The business case also typically documents changes to the nature of the enterprise’s business, business processes, people skills and competencies, enabling technology, and organisational structure. Enterprise mobile app development entails creating apps that require rules, roles and permissions; apps that interact with back-end transactional systems; and apps that meet security and privacy requirements.

As all the topics listed below, may or may not apply to the proposal, you need to explain what they are, and how they would or would not affect the proposal. Clearly state any assumptions you have had to make in attempting to address any of the topics. 

With the issues encountered at CGU there are a number of solutions proposed that will help in solving the issues. The lengthy process makes it difficult to have real time verification which is also inconveniencing. The entire claim process is lengthy to close and customers tend to wait for various responses. This leads to unsatisfactory services to the customers. A solution is required to solve the issue encountered.  First it is suggested that CGU will implement byod. This means that the workers CGU will bring their own devices so as to improve the work process. Each worker is expected to have his/her own smart phones. A mobile app will be installed in the mobile devices and this will help in solving a number of issues. The mobile app will assist in time management, the automation of various process and will also enhance the work process. The mobile app will also have some disadvantages encountered. But the risk will be manageable. The cost of implementation of the mobile app will be affordable by the company as the workers are expected to bring their own phones. The mobile app will integrate the business processes and the Information system. The app is also will also integrated with other external applications for better functionality. The mobile app development will use SDLC methodology which will be more appropriate with such a complex projects and the project will be handled in phases as there are many section involved in the business processes.

The mobile app will have the value proposition as app will be advertised in social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other account. In this way potential clients will install the app and hence increase the number of users of the app. The mobile app innovation will make the services offered to the customers more attractive to the customers. The mobile app will also have risk management measures. This is inclusive of the data recovery in case the app crashes or in case where the server is down there is are back up measures implemented.

The project requirements are also specified and have considered to be affordable by the organization. The project management of the mobile app development is well laid out and all steps are well planned so as to achieve a mobile app that is functioning as per required by the organization managers. The user interface is well designed and the users can easily adapt in using the mobile app. With the methodology used, the mobile app can adopt future changes required in the functionality of the mobile app. The maintenance of the mobile app will be available and incase the users need help in using the app. They will acquire instant help form the mobile developers and from the IT personnel in the organization.

Proposed Solutions

Based on the issues being experienced at CGU. There rose the need of finding possible solutions to help in solving the problems. The issues experienced at CGU include are critical are affecting the business processes and may lead to loss of customers due to poor service delivery. First, as the organization is facing problem in distributing the agents to the accidental sites.  Due to the increased rate of crimes daily, the number of agents in the organizations currently are limited. The claims have to be handled effectively and efficiently so as to fulfil the customers’ requirements. This is becoming abit hard for the organization to solve the handle the claims effectively. This is annoying most of the organization clients but currently CGU is performing at its level best.  The other problem is that the process of validation is lengthy. This leads to delay in the verification of a claim. There is no real time validation and verification of claims. The delay is lengthy and some of customers are impatient saying that the services offered by CGU are poor. The entire claim process is lengthy and may discourage some of the policy holders from expecting help from CGU. Finally, the customers tend to wait for responses from GGU. The responses are delayed and the customer tend to be impatient and become distrustful to the company. The issues are leading to lower numbers of customers currently. It is upon the company to find a quick solution to solve the issues instantly to avoid bad reputation from the customers. Currently, CGU is among the top three companies in United Kingdom in offering compensation insurance to workers. With this issues occurring often, the companies may flop in the list of the companies offering insurance to worker. Therefore, a number of solutions were raised (Cgu.com.au, 2018).

The solutions proposed to solve the issues experienced at CGU include: the mobile application being developed and the workers bring the own devices (byod) so as to install the mobile app. The mobile app to be developed is meant to increase the efficiency of the business process effectively. The mobile app is meant to enhance time management and enhance automation in the work process. The work process in the organization will be more efficient and effective. The mobile will be distributed among the agents. This will make it easy for the agents to interact with the customers in the field. The agents will also be in a position to interact with the CGU server over the internet. Thus the agent can access all the necessary information that can be used in the accidental sites. The mobile app is meant to enhance the process of verification and validation of claims in the field. There will also be enhance team work among CGU workers with use of the mobile app. The mobile app is meant to check the policy validation and the policy holder authentication. The agent will then feed the information to the CGU server. The mobile app will have some advantages as well as disadvantages to the organization (Mobility, 2018).

The app will enhance time saving for the agents as will not have to access all the accidental areas. The app will also be customer-satisfying as the claims will have real time validation. Less effort will be required by all the parties involved in the validation and verification of the claims (Ey.com, 2018).

The other proposed solution is that the workers are expected to bring their own devices. The workers at CGU will used their mobile phones to improve the work processes. The mobile app will be stored at CGU servers and the workers will download the application from the server and then install in in their mobile phones. When the workers bring in the phone it will be more cost effective to the company (Branfireun, Carey and Buttle, 2011). Despite the advantages brought about by the proposed solution, there are some disadvantages that will be experienced (Weke and Mureithi, 2007). As the employees are expected to bring their own devices, it is a cost for the employees especially the employees who don’t own phones and the employees who don’t own smart phones. Such employees have to buy smart phones so as to perform their duties efficiently (Providers.partnersbhm.org, 2018). The other disadvantage is that there will devices disparities as each employee has a different smart phone from the other. This may rise the insecurity issues. Some of the phones may be prone to attack my virus and malware thereby high risk of affecting the CGU servers.

This project cost benefit analysis seems that the benefits of the projects are more compared to the cost of the implementation of the project. The project is justifiable and outweighs the costs. The benefits of the projects are tend to be greater than its costs. The organization is required to invest on the project. The project to be completed the organization need to invest 1.5 million dollars. The amount will be used in paying the experts developers of the mobile app, buying infrastructure such a servers and cables and paying for other networking service implemented in the organization for efficient communication of the devices involved. The cost burden is not fully laid on the company as the employees are expected to bring their own devices. This will save the company from buying many phones which could be more expensive to the company. The mobile app will cost 0.6 million dollars, the servers will be a little bit expensive as the server needed are intended to have a high processing power and will cost 0.75 million dollars and 0.05 million dollars will be used in the devices installation, configuration and the networking. The employees on the other hand will incur the cost of having a smart phone so as to install the application in the employees’ smart phones.

The integration of the mobile app in the CGU business processes shows the implementation IT in the business strategies. This technical investment is meant to reduce the cost, enhance productivity and improve the workflow and the communication within and out of the organization. The IT strategies used will be aligned with the business strategies in order to organization requirements. Before developing the mobile app (Aversano, Grasso and Tortorella, 2012). The developers will have a clear understanding of the process processes and workflows. Then the IT department will have frequent communication with other departments to ensure that all the requirements are considered and no functionality will be left out in the mobile app development. This will ensure that everyone is working towards a common goal and increase in agility whereby the organization changes in the mobile application functionality will be allowed (Rishabh Software, 2018).

The mobile application will bring great benefits to the company and the investment on the application will be worth it. This is because the application is meant to save the time for the agents, enhance real-time validation, reduce the effort required by all the people involved in the policy validation and verification (Smith, 2015). With the help of the mobile the organization will handle most accidental cases efficiently and effectively. After the completion of the project and integration of the mobile app with the business processes, then the organization will realize the value of the project depending on the benefits meet. The project may sound abit costly but after implementation it will be worth investing on.

The infrastructure required include servers, the mobile phone, internet services and applications such as APIs. The servers will serve as the data center where all the data in from various mobile phones will be stored in and can be accessed from anywhere and anytime over the internet. Back-up servers are also necessary where data is to be store in cloud. Mobile phones are very essential in the projects as they are used for inputting data to the server and displaying data from the servers. The networking services have to be properly laid out to ensure security enhancement. The system should only ensure authenticated users to access the system (Kaur, 2012).  The infrastructure to be used will be affordable and easy to be used by the intended users. All the functional and the non-functional requirements will be met, depending on the type of the infrastructure chosen.

The agile SDLC methodology is to be used in the development of this project. The methodology is best fit for this projects as the mobile app is required to be developed in small, quick segments (Design of Patient Monitoring System(PMS) Application using Security Design Patterns in Architecture Phase of Secure SDLC, 2016).  The methodology enable the completion of each phase before moving to the next one. The phase involved in the CGU mobile application project include: log in phase, insurance verification phase, policy verification phase, in-spot verification phase and the receipt generator phase. This phase have to be completed one after the other as they a procedural (SambhajiGawade and Bhagwan Hanchate, 2014). The project will have a clear and details analysis and design to ensure that the requirements are met by the mobile app. The app will also be tested before the released to ensure it has no flaws and any changes required will be made. Basically the agile SDLC approach will involve understanding the users’ requirements, system analysis and design, system development, testing, go-live and maintenance. The agile SDLC methodology is applicable in this project as it enhances faster implementation of changes, it is more flexible for changes and the methodology allows better communication between the users and the application developers (Cooke, 2011).

The mobile app will be globally available for download and installation. Internationalization will create a strong ground for GCU services (Special issue on international new ventures – rapid internationalization across different industry contexts, 2013). Internationalization is a big opportunity as the GCU will be available to more people globally. The use of the mobile app will make it easy for the employees to validate and verify claims. This makes easy to solve various accidents globally and claims will be solved faster and efficiently (Hånell and Ghauri, 2015).

Social media is well known to be a main marketing channel for most products in most organizations. The social media links have to be incorporated into the mobile application. This will enhance marketing of the application to reach more potential customer in United Kingdom. The will lead to more customers thus more revenue to the organization. The application will be integrated with the social media accounts for the organization. The social media links will also be embedded in the mobile application (Li, 2012). This will make it easier for uses to navigation to navigate to the social media accounts and back to the mobile app. Some customers may ask for help using the social media chat platforms (?ežáb, 2012). This will enable easy navigation between the social media accounts and the mobile app interface.

There are a number of risks that may be encountered when using the mobile application. The risks include privacy issues, security issues, ethical issues and back-up issues. The mobile app requires privacy. To enter data the some information is confidential and need not be disclosed to the public. For such data, it will stored in an encrypted form and will only be decrypted while the information will be in use in the verification and validation process. The application will also require a complex password to login into the system. Strong and complex password are more secure to use (López and Salmeron, 2012). Only authenticated users are allowed to use the system. In cases where a user will attempt to login in five consecutive time unsuccessfully, then the user will be banned. The user need to contact the administrator to unban the user by answering serval confidential question. This will prevented unauthenticated users from login in into the mobile app (Dey and Kinch, 2008).  The other risk that is likely to occur is data loss and corrupt of data. In this case a cloud storage of data will be used for data backup. This will ensure that the services are not disrupted. Risk management is an important step to consider in all projects. Failure to consider risk that may occur could lead to failure of the mobile application in the future. All possible risks will also be considered.

The mobile app will be integrated with the databases and the application with a separate engines that will receive and manage notification from a number of channels (Walentowitz and Beimborn, 2011). The integration will be tested to ensure that all application involved are running accordingly. The integration architecture to be used will optimize the protocols and the platform services to meet the user experience (Morton, 2011).

The mobile application will be tested frequently to ensure that the application is neither hacked nor attacked by virus and malware. The mobile app will also be updated in case of any changes are required by the organization. Any changes proposed will be evaluated and if they are necessary then they will be made in the system. This will the system adaptable (López and Salmeron, 2012).

As mention that the system will adopt the changes that come along, then the system will bring more opportunities in the business. Soon the company may become a global company. Therefore agents will be able to verify and validate all the global claims with the use of the mobile app. More claims will be handle effectively and efficiently therefore CGU customers will increase rapidly. This will bring more revenue to the organization. Based on the infrastructure that will purchased, data will be accommodated for a long time with the rate of growth (BuildFire, 2018).

Conclusions

The mobile application is a major solution that will help CGU solve the issues it is experiencing currently. The benefits of the application are worth the investment. The mobile application will enhance the effectiveness and efficiency in the business process at CGU organization. Time management will be a major achievement in helping the client. The policy verification and validation will be handled in rea-time with the implementation of the mobile app to be developed. The project is will be a bit cheap as the works are expected to ring their own devices. The project will be of great benefit to the CGU organization.

I would recommend the organization not to hesitate in the project implementation. As the mobile app implementation is a technological approach that will help the organization handle most if not all of the issues the company is facing. The mobile app will enable the CGU organization to connect to more customers. I would also recommend the organization not to opt for the cheap infrastructure in the market (Jordan, 2012). The cheap infrastructure may end up disappointing as there is a lot of breakdown experiences. Good and affordable infrastructure is the best to use for complex system. The servers will handle much data there the processing speed of the servers should be high as well as the space should accommodate data and support expansion. The users should also update the application incase an updated is released. This will ensure that all users experience all the app functionalities.

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