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Mobile offers new channels to any organization! Its existence in an organisation is undeniable and goes way beyond mobile apps, it influences how businesses are ran. Mobile users expect interaction, personalisation, flexibility and empowerment.

Who we Are

The Mobile Solutions team integrates the Online BU.

We design and implement solutions for mobile devices (smartphones & tablets), work to optimize the user’s experience, giving them the possibility of having a rich, complete and personalized experience.

The Online BU started a few years ago, with the purpose of addressing the emerging mobile application streams. In 2012, we had our first big mobile project, Sales Force Automation (SFA), for Safaricom. A mobile task force was created specifically to handle mobile issues. At the time, we were only 2 people.

Nowadays, the Mobile Solution team integrates 7 people and has been growing steadily, increasing our footprint, gaining new clients and projects. We have 3 – very different – clients: Vodafone Portugal, Safaricom, Vodafone Qatar and count with several distinct projects in these geographies, such as Door2Door, VFE tab, Product Selector and ECR.

What we Do

Since its creation, the Mobile Solutions team has created native and hybrid business solutions that address clients’ specific needs.

Native Solutions are developed specifically for one platform, and can take full advantage of all the device features.

Hybrid solutions are part native apps, part web apps. Below we explain some of our main developments in these areas:

ECR (Electronic Customer Registration)

A Native Solution implemented in Vodafone Qatar, which allows the operator’s agents to make a pre-paid or a post-paid activation, in less than 3 minutes, since all the customer's information (name, address, passport number, etc.) is taken during the mobile activation and registration process, the contract is directly signed on the tablet.

OMNICHANNEL

We have also been working closely with CELFOCUS Omnichannel, developing the mobile product, creating

• Product Selector – Product Comparer available in Vodafone’s stores. It allows the customers to use tablets, in the store, to check the device availability, evaluate characteristics and compare our choice with 2 other devices. In the end, the user can select the device he wants to buy and the store assistant will finalize the purchase.
• VFE TAB – a Hybrid App which wraps VFE processes in a native shell to take full advantage of mobile performance. This allows the store users to have a more enhanced and personalized experience.

Read more about these projects, here.

Since last year, we have also been developing several solutions focused on the operators’ final clients, for instance SMART ROUTER. Using this app, Vodafone clients can control their house router remotely, being able to change the WIFI password, turn the router on/off, see who is connected to the WIFI, change WIFI connected channel, and more.

Read more about, here.

Our Vision

This year, we have been exploring new technologies, trying to revisit our application development, being more competitive and taking advantage of new development frameworks, such as React-Native and Test Driven Development (TDD).

React-Native is a development framework, created by Facebook, in order to narrow the lack of experienced developers in Android and Ios. With this framework the developments are executed in React, a javaScript framework. React implies that the apps are rendered in a 100% native way, giving a 100% native experience. This framework’s mantra is “learn once, develop many”. With React-Native we can reuse 70-90% of the code between Ios platforms and Android.

In the future, if webportals use React-Native as a framework, this reutilization can extend to 60%-70% between a web portal and the mobile applications.

This brings great advantages to our clients, namely lower costs and a better time to market.

TDD or Test Driven Development is a development instrument, in which we first execute unitary tests and only develop the code afterwards, ensuring the test is successful.

The quality of our developments is always crucial in the applications we create. However, with no tests to validate the expected results, it is easy to create bugs, without even realising it.

We could execute the tests after the code development, though as our track records show it is the starting point for low quality testing or even for not concluding them at all.

This new paradigm is called “development by intuition”. By applying this methodology we are creating better quality code, increasing the confidence in our developments and reducing the bug risk, drastically. In the end, it will reflect less unexpected errors and less costs for the project, better quality, better deliveries and less testing time for the client.

We expect that these changes in our approach to mobile application’s development will allow us to be more agile in our response and create more robust deliveries.

In the Future…

Our vision is to increase our footprint and develop our offer, contributing for Online’s growth. Also, we are creating synergies with other Business units in several areas.

But silence is golden, we’d rather not reveal our hand for now.