By now it seems obvious that the mobile movement is changing our personal and professional landscapes. Constant connectivity and anywhere-anytime information has altered not only how we communicate and collaborate, but when and where we do it. Why wait when the answer's in your pocket?
Less obvious is how businesses should respond.
Our customers and clients have embraced mobile in a big way. All of them have cell phones, one in five uses a smartphone to connect to the Internet (and that number is rising rapidly), and mobile apps have made it ridiculously easy to do what we want and need with little more than the touch of a finger.
Too many of us, though, are still trying to serve clients in the same old, tired ways while missing the essential point: The opportunities to make a difference in this mobile world are huge.
Or so says Jeff De Cagna.
Jeff is chief strategist and founder of Principled Innovation LLC. We've talked to him before about social media, but now he's focusing on mobile strategies, and in an MACPA podcast, he says the time for businesses to strike is now.
“There are a number of different things that CPAs and their businesses can do, but it starts with understanding who they're serving, how they're serving them, getting a sense of those deeper needs and seeing if there are ways in which they can take advantage of what's happening with mobile applications to deliver unexpected new forms of value,” said De Cagna.
As an example, he pointed to iDonatedIt. It's a mobile app that helps users track and value their non-cash charitable donations, but it also keeps its developer, BMG CPAs of Lincoln, Neb., at the top of its clients' minds.
“It has branding implications,” De Cagna said, “but it's also a way of delivering some value.”
It's also the kind of innovative thinking we're going to need going foward. Listen to more of De Cagna's ideas for how businesses should embrace mobile in this MACPA podcast.
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