Organisations not yet investigating options to exploit the ubiquity of mobile devices to improve business-to-employee (B2E) operations and/or increase business-to-consumer (B2C) engagement, are missing out on massive opportunities to create a competitive advantage and, more importantly, to be relevant in a digital age.
So says Sergio Congia, manager for SAP Digital at Deloitte, commenting on the results of the ITWeb/Deloitte Enterprise Mobility Survey, which ran online for 14 days in October.
According to Congia, with the increased popularity in mobility, it's not surprising that only a very small percentage of respondents (4%) said mobility is not a priority for their organisation within the next year. Meanwhile, 21% stated mobility is a medium priority, while 33% said it's a high priority.
He believes it is more likely that one or more of an organisation's competitors has already begun establishing the technology, people and processes needed to promote improved employee productivity through mobile channels such as mobilised sales order capture and mobile CRM, among others.
Competitors may also have established mobile channels through which they can engage with customers.
"While this provides them with an advantage, it also places them on the journey towards mobile embracement and the establishment of a mature mobile strategy."
Just under half (49%) of the respondents expressed their mobile strategy is a centralised, company-wide strategy. A third of respondents cited a division-based mobile strategy, and 18% revealed their organisation is using a bottom-up strategy based on employee or task-related demands.
According to Congia, a mobile strategy can differ from industry to industry; however, organisations should aim to centralise strategies for either B2E or B2C scenarios as a minimum requirement.
"Combining both is possible and more cost-effective for smaller organisations, whereas larger organisations may prefer to split these to afford independence from one another since each targets mutually exclusive user groups and is likely to be led by different stakeholders such as the CIO or CMO, respectively," Congia says.
A large number of respondents (71%) scored access to content as the most important factor to their organisations' mobile strategy, social sharing came in second at 50% and targeted promotions third (40%).
Congia comments further on this finding: "Many factors can be taken into account when putting a mobile strategy in place; some key points include the profile of data to be mobilised, HR and liability, and regulatory compliance."
When asked what portion of an organisation's mobile development is staffed internally or outsourced, a third of respondents said 100% is developed in-house and only 13% said 100% is outsourced.
"The decision on whether to outsource the development of a mobile app or to develop it in-house will not only depend on an organisation's capability, capacity and affordability, but it also depends on the intended long-term support requirements for an app's business requirement.
"For example, an organisation wanting to develop a mobile sales app for a line of business will need to consider how the app and its users will be supported for the next three to five years. In some cases, rather than deciding to develop internally or externally, a blended option may be better in the long term. Here, an external development company can build the application with participation from key support personnel within the organisation. Once the app has gone live, the support personnel will possess the deep technical skills to support the app going forward, make improvements, evolve the application," Congia concludes.
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