Does the notion of mobile strategy make your palms sweat? And if so, is it with fear or excitement?

With me, it’s more of the latter. As companies begin extending their brands, services and products into the mobile space, they are strengthening bonds with consumers, and a host of solutions are rising up to meet their needs.

Increasingly, those solutions are coming closer to where the rubber meets the road for enterprise – at the point of sale.

Case in point: Square …

Created by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and launched in the wild last month, the heavily-funded tech startup has the potential to rock the notion of bricks-and-mortar storefronts and e-commerce both, with a very simple concept:

Square is a credit-card reader that integrates with mobile phones, laptops, even iPads, letting you take payments on the fly from anyone, anywhere on virtually any mobile device.

Square gives away the readers free and then processes payments on its site, shaving off a sliver of each sale (2.75% plus 15 cents) for the service.

Now, it’s something of a fantastic leap to worry that the Square reader will empower any individual entrepreneur to compete with enterprise on selling goods and services. It does nothing to support development, manufacturing and supply-chain logistics, let alone marketing and CRM.

But it does cut out the cost of maintaining the hardware and software usually associated with merchant credit-card accounts – and the need to tether transactions (and, indeed, in-store conversion) to the cash register.

What happens to sales when you equip retail floor-walkers, car salesmen, trade-show booth workers with the gadget? What if you allow not only handshakes, but also direct payment in the field for wholesalers and contract sales agents?

If nothing else, instant credit card transactions have the power to reduce the that enterprise must commonly overcome in agreeing upon – and consummating – large sales contracts.

Is this a notion with all the plausibility of a flying car? Perhaps. But don’t forget – Twitter used to be a quirkly little micro-blogging platform used by only a handful of geeks. Now look.

A word or two about me:

I’m new to Perficient, and new to this blog. But as time passes, I hope to become a familiar face for you and – at the very least – a source of good information and conversation about mobile strategy.

I am Innovations Director with Perficient’s Interactive Agency CC, and a lead consultant, focused on social strategy, mobile development and user-experience design.

Our division specializes in helping brands and businesses find their footing and thrive in the volatile, fast-evolving intersection of people, process and technology.

If your company needs insight or solutions in social media, mobile strategy, marketing and enterprise user-experience design, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line. I’d love to talk with you.

Tags: mobile, mobile money, point of purchase, square, twitter

This entry was posted on Monday, January 17th, 2011 at 11:53 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.