If I were to tell you that your enterprise must have a mobility strategy in place in order to be competitive, you wouldn't bat an eye. After talking about the possibility for years, the ability for employees to be able to communicate at any time, from anywhere, and whether using smartphone, tablet, or laptop, is at long last, here in mid-2017, a critical corporate success factor.
That said, ask an enterprise its priority for mobility, and chances are you'll hear about creating some sort of mobile app rather than about facilitating communications and collaboration for the mobile workforce. As Tony Rizzo, enterprise mobility specialist with Blue Hill Research, a research and advisory firm, explained in our most recent No Jitter On Air podcast episode: "It's often the case that enterprises have this understanding that they need to be mobile but they haven't figured out what it means to be mobile. What are the benefits? It's not just my reaching out to that person out in the field and having that person reach back to me, it's the ability to collaborate with many people in real time to solve real-world problems as they emerge."
What a failure to see the big picture means, he added, is that rather than hitting the "sweet spot," many enterprises end up with the "kiss of death."
When it comes to mobility, enterprises tend to fall into pilot projects -- i.e., some line-of-business manager has an idea, and IT then spends the next two years seeing if that idea will pan out. But, as Rizzo said of today's competitive demands, "there's no such thing as being able to spend a couple of years on a mobile project." Rather, "you have to be able to deliver that project in 60 days, or 90 days, and do it again and again and again until your entire workforce is really delivering on those promises of mobility."
To be successful, enterprises need what Rizzo called a "game plan of holistic mobility" that offers good enough security, ease of use, and a frictionless user experience. "Users need to be able to simply use a smartphone or laptop or other device in a way that is a natural function of what they do every day without them having to think about it. These are things people need to understand as they embrace mobility -- not just that, 'Oh, let's build a mobile app!' That's the last thing that a company needs to think about first."
Click on the player below to hear Rizzo's advice on how enterprises can best move forward in creating winning mobile strategies. You'll learn why:
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And stay tuned for our next episode, when we'll be talking with Hyoun Park, founder of Amalgam Insight, on the latest in telecom expense management.
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