What's Wrong With the Retail Mobile Mind-Set?

3. Pick a winner: native or hybrid. Wrong. Embrace the fact that both are going to stay and choose your best fit.

CIOs sweat their lives in choosing the native or hybrid nature of the app and spend hours weighing the benefits of one over the other. One CIO told me last year that native was the future, while early this year he put his bet on hybrid apps. Recently, Facebook created ripples in the industry by launching a native app. The truth is native and hybrid experiences will coexist to serve the optimal customer experience.

4. Use existing architecture models. Wrong. What's "possible" is changing every day.

A new presentation layer will arise that's as agile as the world we live in. The presentation layer is getting more powerful, smarter and adaptable to the needs of end consumers. Using traditional three-tier architecture for your mobile program can paralyze the program and leave your IT architecture handicapped.

Traditionally, client-side programming is considered "making things pretty," but with the splurge of powerful front-end technologies and platforms, enterprises can develop future-proof omnichannel-friendly architectures that help them win in today's market and tomorrow's.

Mukund Balasubramanian is founder and CTO of Photon, a cloud-to-consumer user experience firm that mobile-enables many of the top brands.