If you read our blog, you’ve heard us talk about the growth of mobility ad nauseum. Every statistic out there shows exponential growth for both the consumer market as well as enterprises. And while consumers use apps for myriad reasons, enterprise applications are designed for one thing and one thing only — improving the bottom line. That can come in the form of a larger sales pipeline, more effective closing rates, better KPI oversight, smoother operations, faster employee onboarding, more interaction with your customers, whatever. But exactly where should you be prioritizing your mobility resource allocation? If you’re like most companies, you don’t have an unlimited budget to spend on mobile initiatives, so you have to prioritize where your dollars go.
Depending on what type of company you are or what stage of your mobile roadmap you’re in will largely determine what your next mobile investment should be. Your industry, your product offering and your clients or customers all play into this. But overall, there are some interesting trends in where mobile-forward companies are spending their dollars, which we think can provide some valuable perspective for you.
The Enterprise Mobility Exchange recently released an eBook detailing some extensive survey results. The Exchange polled mobility practitioners that attended Asia-Pacific, European and two American Enterprise Mobility Exchange events. In each location, they polled more than 60 attendees to ascertain where these mobile professionals were either spending their money, or what they were worried about in the near future. The Exchange also surveyed their global network of enterprise mobility leaders to supplement the event responses.
The first interesting statistic has to do with who drives the mobility decisions within these companies. According to this survey:
- 40 percent are IT personnel
- 25 percent are mobility specific
- 15 percent are in marketing
- 10 percent are in operations and
- 5 percent are in fleet management
Many individuals think that marketing or operations drive most mobility decisions, but in point of actual fact, they’re mostly driven by IT or mobility personnel.
The second interesting fact is what these mobile leaders identify as their biggest challenges. An overwhelming majority — 45 percent — identified “building a coordinated mobility strategy” as their top pain point. It’s not just the difficulty of developing the mobile solutions or keeping them secure — just figuring out what your company’s strategic direction will be in this ever-evolving landscape has proven overwhelmingly difficult for many companies. There are some great resources to help you with that, but that’s the purview of another post. The next biggest challenge identified at 14 percent was building mobile applications, which is to be expected. That was followed by integrating new technologies with legacy systems (13 percent), which we have seen all-too-often firsthand. And the last statistic receiving double digit support (11 percent) was mobile security.
The moral of the story is that even mobile leaders are struggling to define their long-term strategy. But, these companies have a multi-tiered plan of attack to solve this mobility roadmap dilemma based on the survey results.
- 46 percent will invest in mobile applications
- 36 percent will invest in change management
- 27 percent are going to invest in mobile and enterprise security
- 27 percent are going to invest in business intelligence or analytics
- 19 percent are going to put money toward field service automation
- and 18 percent of companies will invest in a Mobile Enterprise App Platform, mobile connectivity and mobile device management, respectively
So, the moral of the story is that you’re not alone if you’re struggling to build a mobility strategy roadmap. There are many companies, even those on the leading edge of mobility, who are struggling with the same issues. But, these companies are investing money in solving that problem. Hopefully the stats we provided will help put your mobile investment(s) into perspective as compared to other leading companies.
