Setting the Pace for Millennial Citizens, Students and Patients

Businesses that thrive today haven’t just adopted mobile; they were born mobile or altered their DNA to include it (no small feat).  In many cases, it’s the primary form of interaction with customers. From Uber in local transport to Airbnb in accommodation, industries are being turned on their heads by mobile-centric upstarts. Businesses that don’t keep up aren’t just uncompetitive, they risk becoming completely irrelevant and simply disappearing – forgotten –  from many people’s lives. If millennials can’t work in–depth with a business on mobile platforms, it might as well not exist.

This is increasingly true in the public sector and healthcare industries as well.  Keeping our partners and their public services customers relevant and successful through mobile is one of the goals of the SAP Public Services and Healthcare Summit in The Hague from May 7-9, 2014.

Obviously, in Public Services and Healthcare, the “business” imperatives are different; yet meeting stakeholder expectations for mobile agility is still critical. Citizens can’t choose a competing government without moving, but they will punish leaders who don’t meet their expectations at election time. Taxpaying individuals and businesses will not choose to locate in jurisdictions without effective mobile government; students won’t choose institutions without mobile-enabled services; patients want to deal with their healthcare providers via mobile, and they’ll go elsewhere if they can’t.  Competition, in a form different from that seen in business, is still very real.

You can’t compete if you’re not visible to your citizens, students and patients. And today, a failure to engage via mobile equals invisibility. For government, this is an especially threatening situation because it creates the impression that governments are out of touch with the mobile-saturated societies they serve. This breeds citizen cynicism and disengagement. Conversely, when citizens can easily engage and participate through the method most convenient to them – the mobile device – amazing things can happen.  Recent research (registration required) shows that public services organizations fully appreciate the potential of mobile. Our own experience is that real progress is uneven – some governments are setting the pace and delighting citizens, staying front and center in their lives. Others, for various reasons, struggle.

SAP and its partners have an unrivaled ability to help public services and healthcare organizations stay visible and relevant in a world where everything is mobile.  Injecting mobile deep into an organization’s DNA isn’t easy either technically or culturally, and it’s one of the reasons we’ve convened the SAP
Public Services and Healthcare Summit to trade knowledge. Unplug, go mobile, and register today.