Our lives are becoming increasingly elastic with businesses who empower our constantly changing lives as our greatest allies. Service relationships used to be agreed upon as strict packages measured in multi-year contracts with hefty cancellation fees. Mobile phones, insurance plans, and cable subscriptions – anything you couldn’t own outright, involved an ironclad, unchangeable contract. But that’s increasingly passé as businesses tap into the natural ebb and flow of consumer and business life. Namely, if you want to use, rent, or borrow something for a month, a week, or just this moment, an arrangement can be made.
Consistently Inconsistent
These new service relationships make sense when looking at how change is the only constant in our lives. A team can be rapidly growing a business one moment, freezing everything to handle a crisis at another, and then be back expanding at a breakneck pace, all in the same quarter. Naturally, they’d like their services to keep pace.
In our own personal lives, we can be traveling nonstop for what feels like weeks, then come back to a monotonous daily commute for two months. While all of this is going on, we always wonder to ourselves why we are paying for what we often don’t need and can’t increase what we need when we do need it. Why am I paying for utilities when I’m never home? Why can’t I increase my data plan for my phone without entering into another agreement? Why can’t I rent the office space I need, instead of these giant spaces that are available? These were all questions that challenged established businesses to change their perspective on service, and modernize their business models through innovation and flexibility.
Everything is changing in how companies must manage business operations in the context of the rise of mobile. The growth of mobility through demand from consumers themselves was one of those revolutions that never could have been predicted. It took 100 years to have a billion landlines, yet it only took 10 years to have a billion mobile phones, and it was only one year before we had one billion smart phones and smart devices used around the world.
There are some things a business can get away without doing and still be successful. And then there are some that used to be acceptable to overlook and will never be again, like mobility. Mobile phones and tablets are starting to take the place of everything we used to use both as consumer and employees. Smartphone cameras are replacing actual cameras and video cameras; tablets are replacing paper books, newspapers, and magazines. Mobility has even begun transforming experiences like shopping and watching a movie.
In commercials, on blogs, and on the Internet, mobile companies advertise to get their phones in customers’ hands. And it’s working. Customers become strongly attached to their chosen brand of mobile phone, almost to the point of fighting to prove their choice is the best. From the time we wake up to the time we go to bed, our lives revolve around the little devices that do much more than make a phone call. We are attached to our phones and willing to defend them.
It used to be that companies drove traffic solely with a new product launch. While that’s still largely the case for how marketing cycles work, we are in an era of consumer event triggers where each product cycle is increasingly dictated per person. Why? Because new things launch every day and we are constantly inundated by all forms of outbound marketing messaging. There are very few things we need (not want) when they’re new. Sure, new things can be better, but when we have a problem and need a solution, we don’t care when the solution was created; we care that it’s available at our fingertips.
Some people think life was easier without smartphones, and less complicated. That argument is a bit of a non-starter as today, smartphones and tablets have become a quintessential part of our modern and busy lives. Everyday activities have forever been changed from reading a book, passing the time by playing a game, or jogging in the park.
Fans want to support their teams regardless of where they are, or where their teams are playing. No matter if the person is tailgating, watching a game at home, or in the stands cheering the team on, the fan is there in the moment. Especially today, where everything is mobile and people can access information at any time, from any place, fans want the up-to-date information on their teams as it is happening. The critical point of this is that in today’s day and age, the fan is mobile and always on the go. This means the team – the company – has to 
The iPhone and Android now have over 700,000 apps available for download, and with Google’s 120,000, mobile apps total more than 1.5 million. Companies today need to see apps as an absolute must to keep users connected to their brands on the go, with the right functionality. Chipotle Mexican Grill committed a huge mobility faux pas by not updating their app in four years, which left customers with empty stomachs. Checking the box by having a branded app won’t cut it anymore; users need a reason to keep coming back for more.
