By adaptive - May 22nd, 2015

Even time-tested brands with nearly two centuries under their belts are going for mobile-first strategies. And as Robert Gray reports, they are racing to do so with one eye on today’s competition, and the other on future industry disruptions.

The current transformation to a digital world is picking up steam and even well established brands and companies are rapidly transforming their business strategies to ensure they are going mobile enough to meet their customers where they are; and that is on their phones, tablets, wearables or other mobile devices.

Legacy enterprises cannot afford to simply trade on their cache in this ever-increasing mobile world, lest they become irrelevant amidst seemingly constant disruption.
So to stay current, companies that have thrived since the 19th Century are making changes to the way they do business in real-time to react to customers quickly accustomed to service at “start-up speed”.
“The speed of the transformation to mobile has been phenomenal,” asserts Christina Scott, Chief Product and Information Officer for the Financial Times.
Mobile is the fastest growing channel for the venerable business newspaper, driving almost half of total traffic.
“Readers are more engaged on mobile than desktop so we’re redesigning FT.com to work across all devices, but we’re thinking mobile first. It’s designed for the small screen,” explains Scott, adding, “Two years ago it was still desktop first. We didn’t change internally fast enough for mobile-first, but we’re adapting now.”
She notes the differences include simple layouts for navigating smaller format devices as well as increasing the metadata experience with more links out to subjects of articles, or places, and even the author’s background.
The early returns have been good for the publication, as total circulation in the first quarter of this year grew 12 percent versus the same period a year ago to the highest paying readership in the FT’s 127-year history. Digital readership jumped 20 percent year over year, and now represents 70 percent of the FT’s total audience.
And in fact, content and services revenue (print and digital content, plus events and conferences) now exceeds advertising revenue.
According to Scott, technology has changed not only the process, but the desired outcome in this mobile-first paradigm: “One of the big shifts, driven by mobile, we used to build solutions, now we’re trying to deliver customer outcomes.”
And thanks to the data collection from smart devices vis-à-vis newsstand sales, the FT knows who its readers are and can even bring them in for testing of the new digital versions.
The ability to track readers and subscribers is a bonus for the FT since it has successfully had a paywall in place since 2007. Still the famous pink paper is looking at ways to open up more unpaid content to lure readers into sticking around as subscribers. “It’s been controversial,” Scott admits when discussing the paywall and striking a balance between free trial articles and paying for access,” We have to be aware of our model for paid content, but want to allow users to sample it. We believe quality content must be paid for.”
The FT’s foray into a mobile first strategy has changed perceptions just as reader’s habits and discovery of stories have evolved. “You need to think about user experience, acknowledging different screen size for mobile and to understand how readers use devices differently,” the media executive explains, adding, “We’ve moved away from people going to the home page, they go straight to an article. You want that to be a great experience, and not get stuck at a dead end so you can move on to great content you’re interested in.
“If I’m commuting, I’m looking offline, I’m reading articles on my way in, so I’ve read the important news of the day before I get here.”

Keeping the Trains On Time

Even before commuters jump on their downtown train, devices in their hands now instead of papers rolled under their arms, a company whose livelihood is made in the literal mobile business of conveying people and parcels is adopting a digital strategy to make sure the rails run on time.
“Technology is now a key part of running trains on time,” explains John Seglias, chief information officer for Abellio, which operates bus, tram, and train services in the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands.
He adds, “Training is now delivered using technology, on tablets, our platform colleagues use smart phones and tablets, with apps, to ensure they have the necessary information to dispatch trains on time. And at the back end, we are using the data we collect to analyze train journeys and improve operations efficiency.”
Abellio may not be a household name but the company is a unit of Holland’s Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS), which boasts a 94% on-time rate for trains in its home country and has been in business for some 175 years.
And the Abellio unit is looking to technology to stay punctual and keep riders informed. Seglias says new journey companion apps are soon rolling out to keep customers apprised of arrivals, delays, cancellations, train layouts, information on other modes of transport and even data on the destination.
“We are adopting a mobile-first strategy, underpinned by use of the cloud and SaaS. This addresses two key requirements: Our passenger requirements for real-time information that is available in the palm of our hand. And the requirement for our staff to be more mobile and therefore closer to our passengers; having the right real-time information available.

Cross-Silo Collaboration

In a sign of the times, officials at both Abellio and the Financial Times say the move to mobile calls for greater cooperation between CIOs and CMOs, essentially breaking down the old structure of silos.
Abellio’s Seglias says he and the CMO are working side by side especially since both are “fairly new to the organization and very digital in our thinking.”
He adds, “We are now collaborating not just on immediate digitization opportunities, but also looking farther afield to plan for the medium to longer term, with a view of working together to use digital technology to underpin our business vision.”
There’s a similar dynamic taking hold over at the FT. “We work incredibly closely with the marketing team,” the media outlet’s Scott says. “In terms of marketing, the roles have changed. (Marketing employees) have to be more tech savvy and have more tech potential to drive revenue through technology. We’ve just implemented a new membership platform, it allows the marketing department to play with bundling, pricing new products.”
The new tiered pricing for mobile subscribers is made possible by data mining and knowing when and how readers are interacting with the FT’s multi-media content. For instance there is now a separate subscription model for just the weekend section, which Scott says would not have been possible on the old platform.
Casual observers may not think a company that deals in big picture logistics in keeping trains, trams, and buses on schedule drills down to the individual, but that’s exactly the intent. Abellio’s CIO says the company is building a mobile CRM strategy to anticipate its customers needs, to keep them happily and quite literally in the loop: “The area of focus is more on having a single identity per passenger. This will allow us to gain a better understanding of how our passengers use our service, from parking to Wi-Fi on the train, to purchasing a ticket to renting one of our bikes.”
The disruption of the media business has been well chronicled, but Seglias is not blind to disruption in the transportation business. While it may be expensive to lay rails or operate buses, the competition in a mobile society is often coming from areas and companies that didn’t exist just a few years.
“There are potential substitute products we need to keep an eye on,” Seglias warns, “for example, driverless cars, video conferencing, and so on which could take business away if we do not continue to improve our product offering.”
And while competition is coming around the bend, there are always investors to consider as well. Abellio’s CIO notes, “We must be able to demonstrate to our main stakeholders that we continuously improve our operations. This is important because in the short term we have very tight and demanding franchise obligations in relation to passenger satisfaction scores and train service levels. To achieve these, we must continue to innovate and to deliver new products.”
Down the line, mobile delivery is going to be quite different with wider adoption of wearables, infotainment in autos, and other formats. The FT’s Scott says that time is not yet at hand but they are still gearing up for the future: “We’ve had a play already in wearables.
We did an experiment with Samsung’s smartwatch; we launched fastFT on Samsung’s (Gear S) watch last year.”
While Scott says the FT does not have anything for Apple Watch at this moment, she adds, “We have just completed some (new) strategy work looking at the wearables market…We’re a ways off from wearables being mainstream, but it’s on our radar.” 

For all the latest mobile trends, check out The Open Mobile Summit 2015 on June 29-30 in London.

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