Do you remember your first mobile phone? I thought you would. I purchased mine in 1993 when I worked for Motorola. Buying my first mobile phone was as liberating as learning to drive. Mobility had changed my world, and I knew it would change the world in general. I just had no idea that it would take the next two decades to hit mainstream adoption.

We've experienced massive changes in the telecommunications industry. We've seen the rise of the Internet, the e-commerce evolution, and the emergence of nearly ubiquitous broadband wired and wireless networks. I experienced firsthand the impact Nokia's first smartphones had on Motorola's business and how business executives were drawn to the power of communicating with RIM's BlackBerry devices. By the mid-2000s, I was convinced mobility would be the next big thing, and I founded Lopez Research in 2008 to help companies understand the impact mobile technologies would have on their business.

After all my years of writing about the mobile revolution, it was finally here. By 2013, consumers around the globe were using smartphones and other connected devices like digital fitness bands. Employees had begun to bring their personal devices into the workplace, and CIOs around the globe were wrestling with strategies to support this trend while keeping corporate data secure. My clients began to ask questions about building mobile applications and mobile-enabling business processes.

There were still debates over how many mobile operating systems a business should support, but most companies agreed it would be more than one. I realized we had hit the beginning of the mobile maturity curve. It was thrilling and terrifying. Everyone has recognized the importance of mobility and wants to learn more about it. As a business owner, I began to wonder what my business, or any business, would look like in the next five years. I believed the future of mobility was about more than devices and networks. It was also about more than extending existing PC-based business processes to mobile devices.

In 2011, I wrote and presented on what I called contextual communications. I wasn't the only person discussing contextual services, but I found the term didn't resonate with the market at the time. It was difficult to explain contextual services when most people were still using basic mobile phones with limited web browsing. There wasn't a 30-second elevator pitch to describe context-based services. I attempted to define them as personalized and targeted experiences based on knowledge of your previous transactions and current context. Many people equated this with targeted advertising. After years of irrelevant communications and failed promises, people didn't believe compelling and customized business-to-employee (B2E) and business-to-consumer (B2C) communications were possible.

Once mobile becomes an embedded part of a company's technology fabric, how does the future of business products and services change? Will mobile be as transformative as the Internet? What's the future of mobile? This was the shift I set out to understand in 2012. I'm not a futurist, but understanding this transition was critical for my business. We are in the midst of a technology and market transition that is similar to others we've experienced in the recent past but different in subtle ways. Businesses have seen rapid technology change in the past few decades. However, today's environment differs in the pace of change, the economic impact of these changes, and the number of areas that are changing simultaneously. The move to mobile will provide as great of a change as the move from mainframes to PCs.

What I rapidly discovered is the future of mobile isn't about devices and networks. While these items are important, mobility is just the beginning of what a business needs to consider. Mobile's future is in creating contextual services, which are products, services, and communications that adapt to the user and the situation in near-real time. The move to contextual services requires more than just mobile technology. It requires harvesting and combining the benefits of several technology trends simultaneously. It requires breaking down information silos to change a company's existing business processes. It requires building coordinated IT and business strategies that leverage mobile, cloud computing, big data, and analytics.

Leading companies will collect and integrate contextual data points, such as location and previous transactions, to generate new insights into the needs and desires of employees, prospects, and customers. This insight will help businesses create better products, services, and business processes. Businesses are using some or all of these technologies today, but few have combined them in a way that delivers substantial economic value and competitive advantage.

Ultimately, instead of calling these contextual, real-time, or personalized services, I choose to call them right-time experiences (RTEs). While a person might not know what a right-time experience is specifically, he intuitively understands the value of having the right information or experience at the proper moment. Right-time experiences deliver value at the point of need or desire to a company's employees, customers, and partners. In some cases, these experiences may even anticipate a need or desire before it materializes. Right-time experiences don't have to be real time, but those are frequently the most compelling experiences for the recipient.

While the concept of contextual services has been dabbled in before, we are now on the brink of having all of the basic technology to make the contextual information available in our applications and services. What most businesses are missing is a strategy to turn that context into something that improves profits, increases engagement, and minimizes customer dissatisfaction. Right-time experiences aren't about technology. However, technology is the foundation for enabling the best experience possible.

This book is for business and senior IT leaders at established companies. While start-ups may gain insights for future products and services, this book is designed to help leaders of established businesses understand and plan for massive market transitions. In many cases, start-ups are already building right-time experiences and can more easily adjust business models in the face of change.

This book is broken into three parts. The first part discusses technology, market models, and societal shifts that will require business leaders to create new strategies or risk extinction. Part II discusses a new way to think about designing business processes, building products, and creating compelling experiences. It will also provide practical, real-world examples of how businesses are building strategies to deal with these changes. Part III discusses what you'll need to know about the technical components of delivering a right-time experience—particularly mobile and big data.

Each organization will be different, but the basic elements for the framework should span different company sizes and various industries. At the end of the book, I hope you'll feel better prepared for the coming changes and inspired to participate in the new contextual right-time experience economy.