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IT MANAGEMENT ASSIGNMENT 1

REVIEW OF MOBILE APPLICATIONS FOR BUSINESS

Mkhize, LC
ITB1B01

Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................. 1
Uber for business......................................................................................................... 2
Slack............................................................................................................................ 4
CamCard...................................................................................................................... 6

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Skype for Business....................................................................................................... 7

Conclusion................................................................................................................... 8
Bibliography................................................................................................................. 9

Introduction
In todays day and age, the business environment is ever so
changing and rapidly so. With this in mind businesses operating
in this century of the greatest technological advancements need

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to become well positioned and prepared in order to effectively

operate and last in the current business environment. One of the
technological advancements that businesses need to embrace is
mobile applications. Mobile applications are software applications
that operate (are used on) mobile devices. These mobile devices
include but are not limited to mobile phones and tablets.
For implementing the use of these mobile applications in their
business strategy, businesses are able to be flexible and very
agile in their operations. The advantages of using mobile apps
for business: speed, volume of information [Walters, 2011].

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Uber for business

As with all businesses getting around is essential. To truly put the
matter into perspective to do business and to be a business and do
well at both these, at some point in time employees of that business,
no matter how big or small, would be required to travel from point A to
B. Have a business meeting off the company premises? Need to travel
to the airport? Is the business hosting auspicious clients wholl need to
be constantly transported during their stay? If the answer to any of
these questions is yes then Uber for business aims to not only simplify
the processes involved but also make them as quick and efficient as
possible.
Uber for business is a ride management application(platform) that
allows for businesses to make it possible for their employees to request
car rides to take them from where they are to a destination of their
choice. How the application works is that- looking at it from a business
environment perspective. An employee requests a ride (car to
transport them). The application automatically detects where the
employees current location is. The employee can then set a
destination point. Request the ride and wait as a car is dispatched to
them. A most recently added feature which is still being tested in
certain areas is the option for the user (employee) to request a ride
days before actual travel is intended to take place. From within the
application the user (employee) is able to track exactly where and how
far away their ride is from reaching them.
With the Uber application an employee has the ability to influence the
route taken by their designated driver. Also payment, once the
destination is reached is automatically handled by the application itself
as it is linked to the business account. This eliminates the need for
employees to carry on them cash.
How would a business benefit from using the Uber application?
Operating in these difficult fiscal times all businesses look to cut costs.
The Uber application allows businesses to no longer have the need to
purchase their own fleet of transportation. This is the first cost saving
benefit of using the application. Without a fleet of cars a business need
not worry about maintenance and upkeep. Furthermore, there would
be no need to hire personnel to utilize these non-existent fleets for

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transporting employees around. Costs would be further be saved on

the labour front as well. The biggest worry for a business when using
this application would then be that by allowing their employees to use
Uber at their expense theyd incur costs which have nothing to do with
their business.
Uber has taken that into account and built within the application is a
set of policies, which are set by the account holder (business). These
policies state exactly how and under what circumstances employees
should be allowed to request Uber services. This ensures that the
application is not abused by employees for personal use. The business
is always guaranteed that it pays for a service that adds value to its
operations.
The ease at which Uber permits for its services to be requested and
consumed makes it one of the applications of the future and present
for businesses. Its integration into a business everyday operations is
straightforward and hassle-free. The fact that there are no costs except
for the costs of actually paying for the services a business has used
makes the Uber application a business must have.

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Slack
Communication in a business is one of the most important, if not the
most significant aspect that makes a business successful. Constant and
timely communication between all key members of a business ensures
that the business is always operating at its peak. But like most things
in a fast paced business environment communication is a difficult skill
to control.
Herein steps Slack-not a name that immediately instills confidence.
Slack is an enterprise messaging application. What Slack tries to do is
allow businesses, organizations the ability to organize their employee
personnel in the most effective way to facilitate the best form of
communication between them. Slack achieves this by introducing a
feature called Channels. Channels is a group which specific employeesusers- are part of and where they are able to constantly communicate
with each other. Each channel can be specifically created for a different
business unit, project or team. With Channels there is also the ability to
create private Channels, these types of Channels can only be viewed
and joined by invited users-employees. Slack further introduces the
ability for its users to easily share files with each other. These are files
of different types and extensions like, pdfs, spreadsheets, word
documents etc. This is achieved by means of choosing a file and
uploading it to Slack. Slacks most interesting and probably the feature
that sets it apart from most messaging applications on the market is its
ability to seamlessly integrate with most applications that businesses
make-use of in todays world. These are applications such as, but not
limited to, Twitter, GitHub, Dropbox and Visual Studio. Slack is a free
application for download and use for all businesses of any size.
Although there are limitations as to how much can be done with the
free version of Slack, these limitations are unlikely to hinder a business
in effectively carrying out its operations. With that being stated. There
are paid-plans of the application available that businesses can choose
from with each plan adding a bit more features from the previous one.
These plans are Standard, Plus and Enterprise.

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The question would then arise, why would any business want to forgo
the perfect communication tool that has been in use for decades now,
which is Email? Well, simply put because Email isnt that perfect of a
tool nor is it as effective as it ought to be. Email is laborious in that the
processes involved in composing a message to sending it is quite
exhaustive. Not factoring in how much more daunting the task gets if it
needs to be sent to multiple people with certain files attached to it.
Slack ensures that all members of a set Channel are always in
constant, continual communication, in real-time. Allowing employees to
be in constant communication enhances the productivity of a business,
allows for effective and efficient team collaboration and increases the
transparency of operations within the business. The Slack application
effectively takes away all of the unnecessary, time consuming work
and aims to ensure that the most important aspect of a businesscommunication- is always taken care of.

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CamCard
CamCard is a business contact management mobile application that
allows business employees to easily carry around, share and store
business cards that they receive from clients, potential clients and/or
potential business partners.
What CamCard essentially does is that it allows the user to download
the application onto their mobile phone. After complete installation the
mobile application, CamCard, makes use of the phones camera and
converts it into a portable scanner. The user then has the ability to
scan physical, hard-copy business cards they have and quickly digitize
them. What this mobile application does so well is that it is able to
detect all the important information on the business card going as far
as being able to detect stains, wrinkles and any crinkles on them.
The digital business cards can be shared within an organization using a
feature called Exchange E-cards where the business cards are shared
electronically. Another great feature businesses can make use of is a
feature called Smart Collaboration. This feature allows for already
existing business units to be created within the application for hereon
in the employees can strategically share business cards with different
business units. This feature proves to be very useful because the
marketing unit can easily share potential client contact information
with the sales unit.
The application allows for easy and seamless integration with all
organization email programs and also CRM (Customer Relationship
Management) systems. Most importantly, it can also integrate with
Microsoft Office programs. This integration feature ensures that
business contacts can be shared and accessed within an organization
more efficiently. The major downside of CamCard is that cannot do
duplexing- that is it cant scan a business card front and back in a
single scan. With that said a double-sided business card can still be

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scanned with resulting scans attached to each other so the lack of

duplexing is not a major hindrance. With the ability to recognize 16
different languages CamCard proves to be a multinational business
application.
The ability of CamCard to easily facilitate the beginning of relationships
and ensure that all business personnel can readily and easily access a
large contact database is a huge advantage for any enterprise.
Knowing how important relationships are in the business environment
the CamCard application is a particularly useful business mobile
application to utilize.

Skype for Business

Meetings for large and small organizations are the drivers towards that
organization setting, gearing towards and reaching their organization
set goals. Furthermore meetings allow for organizations to prune their
strategies as they adapt to the current business environment they
operate in. The downside of these meetings is that all employees need
to congregate in one area- other business operations come to a halt
and spend time discussing and deciding.
A solution comes in the form of Skype for Business. Skype for Business
is a mobile video calling application with Emphasis on flexibility,
integration and collaboration [Tsele 2015]. Skype for Business allows
for its users to make video calls to each other and normal audio calls
no matter where each user is geographically.
The great benefits for businesses integrating Skype for Business into
their daily operations is that the application allows for online
conference calls for up to 250 people to happen at the same time. This
feature helps businesses never need to stop their operations and in
turn employee productivity in order to have face-to-face meetings. The
application also comes with additional features like Instant Messaging
(within the application) during meetings, the ability to transfer files and
most importantly a feature to the record audio and video. The pricing
structure for the basic standalone plan is R 34, 40 user/month. There
are also optional annual plans which offer additional features but not
much more than the basic plan offers .With these features businesses
and their employees can always be ensured that they are all on the

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same page and also on the same wavelength wherever they might be
geographically.
With the features that the application provides it makes it very useful
for organizations of all sizes because no organization can go without
having a meeting one scale or another. It also helps facilitate the
operations of a business who require their employees to constantly be
on the move. Skype for Business is ultimately about better
communication across the enterprise, but its also about the ability to
deliver service cost effectively, empowering the
business.[Enghouseinteractive 2015]

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Conclusion
The mobile strategy of businesses is already one of the core aspects of
business that all business have to consider and carefully implement in
their operations. By doing this business ensure that they are well
placed to take advantage of the advantages provided by being mobile
and limit the risks they face if they are not.
The above reviewed business applications are only a few of thousands
of applications that business can make use of too always stay ahead in
their respective industries.

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Bibliography
Daniel Walters. The advantages of mobile applications. Infomedia. July
25, 2011. https://infomedia.com/blog/the-advantages-of-mobile-apps/.

Juan Martinez, Fahimda Y. Rashid. PcMag, 2013.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2486508,00.asp.

Lebogang Tsele. What you need to know about Skype for Business.
SMESouthAfrica. 2015.
http://www.smesouthafrica.co.za/16385/What-you-need-to-know-aboutSkype-for-Business/.

Enghouseinteractive. Skype for Business. 2015.

http://info.enghouseinteractive.com/rs/547-FBA390/images/EnghouseInteractiveSkypeforBusinessSocialWhitepaper.pdf
.

Kim-Mai Culter. TechCrunch. 12 May 2013.

https://techcrunch.com/2013/05/12/camcard-a-card-scanning-appthats-dominating-asian-markets-reaches-50m-users/.

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