How much more beer did we sell last month?
What were the savings in customer care?
What was the impact on loyalty?
How much did our productivity increase?
Until 2013 most brands did mobile messaging, sites and apps because it was exciting, perhaps a consultant or analyst report told them to in keeping up with the competition, or their tech team said they could. But the honeymoon with fun and games is over. Within a few years, mobile will generate more business, productivity increase, customer service enhancements, business innovation and cost savings than any other device or channel.
This means that organisations investing in mobile need to have a plan to size the investment and measure the return over time. The questions above may seem a given if you’re a beer brand, pharmaceutical, telco, airport or retailer but the fact is that most organisations don’t have a business case or ask these specific questions.
Developing a business case for mobile is not rocket science. In our previous blog in the Mobile Strategy Handbook Series we talked about how to define the core use cases which will have an impact on your customers and your business, and how to identify and measure KPIs.
Use analytics tools, data mining and surveys/research.
Example:
A beer brand wants to increase footfall to their reseller bars. They invest in a mobile concept where customers are incentivised to visit bars and order the beer brand for their friends. To redeem the incentive, the customer has to scan a bar code on the bottles or on the tap.
The business case is made up by the following variables.
Costs:
- Creative for the concept including research, user testing and design
- Technical development of the concept
- Advertising related to the service concept (paid, owned and earned)
- Cost of the promotion, e.g. discount
Income:
- Customer footfall increase x average number of beers sold x gross margin of the product
Put in your numbers and build a business case before starting, then evaluate on an on-going basis. Think about the concept outside the box by e.g. comparing sales in participating bars before and after.
Why is this so important? The cost of delivering and maintaining an easy to use, reliable and differentiating mobile solution is not cheap. This means you need to justify the investment before and after.
There are a myriad of ways to create and measure use cases. Please contact us if you want some tips and tricks from our experience of creating 100s of business cases in collaboration with clients and partners.
Good luck and let’s make sure that 2014 becomes the year of serious mobile business (and a bit of fun)!
Image source: talenthq.com used without permission.
