Guest Post By:- Faraz Syed, CEO and Co-Founder, DeviceAnywhere
Throughout the information age, the corporate IT department has acted as the technology gatekeeper for enterprise organizations. With a firm hand they have chosen which equipment and software employees use within the workplace, often the result of a long decision-making process that can last months, if not years.
Enterprise mobility has, however, meant that companies are undergoing a massive transformation in not only the way they operate, but also the speed at which new services and devices need to be accommodated.
THE MOBILE EMPLOYEE REVOLUTION
Companies that will succeed in tomorrows’ economy will be the ones who embrace mobility to provide employees with the resources to work at any time, from any location, and from any device, giving them flexibility, which makes for a happier, more productive workforce.
For example, a Yankee Group survey titled Anywhere Enterprise–Large: U.S. Mobility and Applications Survey found that enterprise mobility can:
- Increase field selling time = 28 percent
- Eliminate redundant activities = 27 percent
- Increase win rates = 26 percent
- Reduce sales calls costs = 25 percent
- Increase forecast accuracy = 25 percent
- Decrease administrative time = 24 percent
- Decrease sales cycle = 23 percent
Mobile is no longer a nice-to-have but a strategic asset that can be tied back to business objectives and ultimately impact the bottom line – IT departments have little choice but to accommodate.
IDC recently reported that mobile enterprise users throughout the global business community will number 1.19 billion by 2013 and account for 34.9% of the workforce.
Employees unhappy with the current pace of mobility within their organization have subsequently revolted en masse, bringing in their own devices into the organization and effectively ending the days of top-down procurement.
According to the 2011 US Enterprise Mobility: Employee Survey by the Yankee Group, 30 percent of employee respondents have installed consumer applications on their work devices, despite 49 percent also stating that IT does not grant them permission to do so.
MAKING DIFFICULT CHOICES
As corporations move beyond IT-driven deployments of few device types toward a more heterogeneous environment, what are some of the key challenges they face when first embracing mobile?
- Choosing where to begin. It’s not just the number of new corporate handsets giving IT staff headaches. Operating systems are constantly evolving in the mobile world, forcing businesses to embrace new ones without abandoning the older versions. The ability to offer an application across any operating system, device or carrier is both expensive, time consuming and often not realistic for organizations, and IT departments need to approach the topic of mobility with care or risk failure before they begin.
- The growing consumer influence. Consumers are driving higher IT expectations from workers. According to Yankee Report titled New Mobility Requires a New Network Strategy, 47 percent of workers use consumer applications because of their familiarity and 25 percent of workers feel that the company does not offer applications that are as good as the corresponding consumer apps. It’s imperative that IT managers create a consistent, high quality experience that is pervasive across devices and locations no matter if the devices are wired or wireless.
Organizations need to have the right expertise and tools in order to tackle these obstacles, demanding that IT departments need to “skill up” to effectively develop and deploy new productivity initiatives around enterprise mobility.
The Worldwide Mobile Security 2010–2014 Forecast and Analysis by IDC found that 40 percent of responding companies had experienced issues when linking mobile platforms to existing databases; almost 20 percent found mobility too complicated to install, manage, and support.
HELPING ORGANIZATIONS PLAN EFFECTIVELY
At DeviceAnywhere, we have helped thousands of organizations, including Fortune 500 companies, implement successful mobility rollouts across their business. We have made available a brand new set of free tools to help IT departments make the right decisions when going mobile:
- Tool #1 – Device Planner – The DeviceAnywhere Device Planner allows users to enter a few details about the applications they plan to run and what they need from the devices to receive a customized recommendation of the mobile devices and platforms they should support in their mobile strategy. Built on DeviceAnywhere’s device features database, which aggregates the product details and capabilities of every major smartphone and tablet on the market, this will enable IT departments to quickly identify a list of supporting devices.
- Tool #2 – Test Planner – With the DeviceAnywhere Test Planner, built on the same core technology as the Device Planner, enterprises are able to draw up a custom test plan for their mobile applications. Because the tool incorporates market share data, customers can build a list of the devices they plan to test against and see what their market coverage will be, as well as how their test list could be improved through alternative devices. By providing a core list of devices, IT departments can efficiently test on the optimum mix of devices to ensure the best customer experience across the list of supported devices.
Recent ABI Research suggests that the number of enterprise smartphone and tablet app users will reach 830 million by 2016. These numbers include Business-To-Employee (B2E) apps and Business-To-Customers (B2C) branded company apps. The ability to plan effectively will not only save millions of dollars in terms of resources, but will ensure the long term success of these initiatives.
Allowing IT departments, or even mainstream developers, to make intelligent decisions about the devices they are able to support, and advising them on the most efficient way of testing the user experience on these devices, will allow companies to overcome the first and often most difficult obstacle when going mobile.
