Your smart wristband vibrates silently to wake you up. When it senses you are awake, it messages your phone, which turns up the thermostat and opens the blinds. You put on your Google glasses, which read your blood pressure and blood sugar levels and tell you that it will be cold and dry today. As you dress for work, you get a message from your fridge letting you know that you’re out of milk, so it’s been added to your electronic cart for delivery today. Your wristband vibrates to let you know that your self-driving car has arrived. On the way to work, you stop at your favourite coffee shop: your phone has already ordered you a pumpkin spice latte with extra cream. At lunch you go to the mall to get your partner a birthday present. Your phone pings with special offers from several stores as you walk by, but directs you to the closest store that stocks his favourite brand. Inside, the phone helps you find the sweater he wants. Bonus—your phone scans the bar code, finds a 15% discount, and applies double reward points. Pleased, you pick the sweater up and head for the door. Just before you reach it, a sales assistant approaches and offers you a box and wrapping paper. “Wish Tom a happy birthday for us,” she says cheerfully. When you get home, your dog slips out and runs down the street, so you use your portable drone to track his electronic tag and send a map and live photos to your phone. Your wristband reports that you haven’t reached your target calorie burn for the day, so you head out for a run before hitting the shower. While you and your partner are having dinner out your phone sets the PVR based on your viewing habits, so “Blacklist” is waiting for you when you get home.
Science fiction? Hardly. Given the explosion in mobile, Cloud and big data technology, this scenario is right around the corner. By some estimates there are more than seven billion connected mobile devices in use in the world today—more than one for every human being. According to one estimate, 75 billion people and things will be connected through mobile devices by 2020. And the growth in apps for these devices is exponential.
Chris Albinson, HBA’90, MBA’93, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Founders Circle Capital, believes the mobile revolution is a real game-changer. Albinson has helped launch or fund dozens of successful high tech companies during his career. “This is the most exciting time I’ve seen in technology,” he says. “We are moving into an innovation window like we have never seen before.” Founders Circle Capital invests in companies that experience what Albinson calls “breakaway growth”—defined as at least $40 million in revenue and gross margins of at least 40%, with 40% growth per year. Not surprisingly, almost all work in the mobile space. Albinson says consumer demand is driving the rapid growth. “Companies don’t really have a choice,” he says. “Consumers are basically saying ‘I want a mobile first experience with more convenience and intelligence, and less hassle,’ and companies are scrambling to catch up and figure out how to provide great experiences.”
That’s certainly Wendy MacKinnon Keith’s goal. MacKinnon Keith, Founder and CEO of Digital Retail Apps, completed her MBA in 1989, and then spent the next 20-plus years in tech and retail consulting. In 2012, she founded Digital Retail Apps, which currently produces two products—SelfPay and SelfPay Staff. The applications are based on MacKinnon Keith’s painstaking analysis of the shopping experience from a consumer’s perspective. “When I started developing SelfPay the mobile pay industry was just getting off the ground, but I noticed that most of the companies were just focusing on one narrow vertical function,” she says. “There were lots of apps, but nothing that brought the whole experience together.”
SelfPay allows consumers to scan items and pay for them “in-app” from anywhere in the store on any device, paying with Apple Pay, PayPal, credit cards, debit cards and soon, other mobile wallets. On the way out, shoppers simply display their electronic receipt to a staff member, who uses the patented SelfPay Staff app to verify the transaction. SelfPay eliminates waiting in checkout lines for the consumer, and increases basket size and reduces labour costs for retailers. The apps are currently being beta-tested and MacKinnon Keith is in discussions with a dozen major retailers in the U.K., Canada and the U.S.
Nick Prigioniero, EMBA ’03, President of Cineplex Digital Networks, is also exploring ways to use mobile technology in the retail industry. Prigioniero joined EK3, a London, Canada-based company that was spun off from Western’s Faculty of Engineering, in 2001. EK3 is a narrowcast provider, perhaps best known for the mouthwatering ads that play while you’re ordering your “double double” at Tim Horton’s. In 2013 EK3 was purchased by Cineplex Inc.
For Prigioniero, mobile technology is all about relevance. “If the messaging in a retail environment is not relevant, then you’re not going to pay attention to it,” he says. “Now that we live in a mobile world, our clients can use data to create relevant messages within their environments.” Cineplex is exploring the possibility of building “digital ecosystems” in shopping malls. Using beacon technology to track consumers as they walk through the mall, the technology would enable marketers to suggest products, in a similar way to many online stores.
The Cloud, that mysterious nirvana of unlimited data storage, is one of the major enablers of mobile technology. John Marshall, MBA ’97, is a Managing Principal with Salesforce.com, which markets Cloud-based Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software. Says Marshall, “The Cloud lends itself very well to developing business processes and then delivering them to any platform, whether you’re on your desktop computer, your laptop, or your phone. Because the Cloud is open, mobile and social, it’s much more collaborative and makes it easier to connect with the people and things you care about.”
Marshall is excited about the potential impact of mobile technology in health care. “Health care is becoming more patient-centred, and mobile is going to be a massive enabler of this shift,” he says. Among current innovations: wearables that monitor heart activity and can even warn of a potential heart attack; mobile tele-health consultations with specialists anywhere on the network; and even a Star Trek-style handheld scanner. Marshall is working with clients to develop systems that help physicians be more efficient. Mobile devices can detect when they enter the hospital and provide them with up-to-date information about their patients, including status, location and test results. Similarly, patients can use their mobile devices to carry their complete health records to appointments, or even to videoconference with a doctor. Marshall also sees exciting potential in higher education, where mobile technologies can help students learn basic material at their own pace.
Ivey Professor Darren Meister, who is cross-appointed to Western’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, says agriculture is another industry where mobile technology offers huge benefits. “In places with scarce water resources, the ability to deliver water at precisely the right time in precisely the right weather conditions is incredibly valuable,” he says. Field sensors that measure sunlight and moisture are already in use. Mobile technology also has important applications in food transportation and safety. “There will be a time when you take your steak out of the freezer, and the freezer will tell you if it’s part of a recall,” says Meister. “After all, mistakes in food safety cost lives.”
Jonathan Ward, HBA ’96, founded Ward Technology Talent, which provides companies with skilled technology consultants and employees. “We’ve always specialized in application development,” he says, “but in the last couple of years the focus has been on mobile. It’s a tsunami.” Ward also founded the Mobile Learning Lab, a free monthly event in Toronto focused on mobile technologies. He believes that security will remain a challenge in the mobile world. “Companies need to be very, very careful with customers’ information, even with the Cloud,” he says.
Despite the introduction of biometric identification on many devices, Meister agrees security is an ongoing issue. “Saying you’ve solved mobile security is a bit like saying banks have solved bank robbery,” he says. “Every time you make the technology super secure, people find ways to attack it.” That, in itself, creates a business opportunity. Albinson’s company has invested in Good Technology, a leading mobile security solutions provider that is experiencing “breakaway growth.”
For many consumers battery life is also a concern, especially with today’s powerful mobile devices. Meister points out that battery life has improved immensely. “Just two or three years ago, new classrooms all had a plug for every student. Now most people come to school with batteries that last the entire day.” Chargers that are powered by sunlight or biodynamics are in the works.
Mobile technology also raises questions of privacy and consumer acceptance. Meister talks about the “three Cs”—cool, creepy and convenient. Some consumers will find it creepy to be identified as they walk through a mall or into a hotel, he says, but many others will think it’s cool and convenient. Ward sees consumer acceptance as a generational phenomenon. The oldest generation will be “highly resistant” to some technologies, he says, while those in their 30s and 40s may have concerns. “But the younger generation has grown up with sharing their lives on Facebook and Instagram. They have less apprehension about devices collecting personal information from them.” For this generation, Ward sees a future where mobile devices will be omnipresent. “They won’t be devices we turn on and off.”
Acceptance of mobile technology to run businesses is not a foregone conclusion, either. Ward says most companies still have a lot of work to do to prepare front and back office systems for the mobile world. “They have a huge opportunity to fix this and make their enterprises truly mobile,” he says.
MacKinnon Keith is confident that acceptance will come, at least in her industry. “Retail doesn’t tend to move very fast,” she says. “But once we have the results from our pilot projects, retailers will see that this is really a much better way to do business.” Prigioniero agrees. “The primary focus of all clients is to increase margins, lower costs and build loyalty. There is no better way to do that than with mobile technology.”
Photo (Wendy): Nation Wong
Photo (Chris): Marc Olivier
Art Direction: Greg Salmela, Aegis
