By Amitesh Ranjan, Sagar Karmarkar, Dinesh Mahale, Sidharth Sarkar and Rahul Bibikar (Group 12)

Northrop Grumman Boeing and Others

Case Analysis The case describes views of various CIOs on

implementing mobile networking devices in companies and does the ROI play any role for this implementation.

Case also enlightens the benefits of the implementation to the companies.

It high-lightens the challenges faced by the company and its employees.

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS

Question 1: Question 1:  What are several business benefits that

organizations can realize by connecting all of their employees with wireless mobile devices?

Answer 1: Several Business Benefits to the Companies are: Strong visibility b/w managers, its employees and customers. It reduces the additional cost of n/w setup at various

locations. It provides greater scalability, reliability and responsibility in

the service provided by the companies to their customer. High-end telecommunication solutions provide many features

as, phone, messaging, e-mailing, web browsing,  organizer, attachment viewer, high resolutions etc, which is much faster and handy to use than laptops.

It improves the productivity of the employees and lowers the down-time which helps in improved customer satisfaction.

It help companies to reduce their TCOs.

Question 2: Question 2:   Are the CIOs in the case saying that ROI

is not important when deploying mobile computing devices? Explain your response.

Answer 2: Yes. As per the case, CIOs believe that ROI is not important for providing mobile connectivity. It is considered as one of the requirement for running the business with mobile work-force. Executives of the company are required to be connected at any cost. For better productivity and providing service to the customer, companies needs to deploy mobile connectivity among their executives.

This is the information age, and mobile computing devices are the easiest and faster tool for exchange in information. Everybody needs the information, as and when, it requires the connectivity of employees all the time. It is an invaluable device which is proven for ensuring timely communications among employees. It has taken the level of business and service to the newer heights.

Question 3: Question 3:   What are several challenges that employees and organizations face

in connecting their employees with wireless mobile devices? Do these challenges outweigh the connectivity benefits you outlined earlier? Why or why not?

Answer 3: (i) Challenges faced by employees:

a. Any message or information in these devices, irrespective of the criticality, seems to demands an immediate response, no matter the time of day.

b. Because of this, employees personal life is disturbed and they are expected to involve in managerial concerns all the time.

c. Employees are virtually connected to the office all the time. d. It is an additional burden for employees to keep the device within reach,

even they are on social event or family gathering.

(ii) Challenges faced by Companies: a. It is the company’s responsibility to provide the secure data over the

wireless to its employees, anywhere in the world, round the clock. b. Over-users and abusers creates disturbances in the office environment.  C. Misuse and personal use of the device by its employees is difficult to

track by the companies.

Even the challenges exist, still wireless mobile devices are proved as boon to the business. If the users are more responsible and usage of the device are optimized, we can overcome the short comings. If mobiles are restricted to important business discussions and exchange of critical information at times, it will not violates the privacy of the employees. If the office decorum and business etiquettes of mobile usage is strictly followed, major misuse can be avoided. Hence, companies can ripe benefits of mobile connectivity of its employees, by optimizing the use of the devices.

REAL WORLD ACTIVITIES

Question 1: Question 1:   The blackberry mobile device, though extremely popular, is only

one of the several devices available for mobile communications and messaging. Using the internet, see if you can find out who its major competitors are and what strategies they are using to advance their products into the marketplace. Is it features, price, brand, or something else? Who is the market leader? why?

Answer 1: As per the current market scenario, Apple iPhone is the only major competitor to Blackberries.

As per the professional reviews and independent testing laboratories both devices perform equally well. Both these devices have one edge or other over the features. Battery power and processing speed is better in iPhone while emailing, and messaging is better in Blackberry. Internet and web browsing have same performance on both machines. Because it was first to market, Blackberry still enjoys a slight advantage in connectivity.  Especially for business applications, Blackberry dominates, because it links easily with Microsoft Exchange. 

Ease of use: iPhone has an upper hand in this. Touch screen features and greater response time with motion sensors activated, outshines Blackberry in this category.

Market Statistics: Blackberry continues to dominate the business market, because Fortune 500 corporations invested millions in Blackberry hardware and software, and they cannot afford to change their allegiance.  Blackberry remains most compatible with Microsoft business software, which also dominates the corporate market.  Among small businesses and especially in the personal consumer electronics market, iPhone now clearly dominates, promising to extend its lead as applications proliferate.

New Challenges: As touch screen, motion sensors, GPS etc are new features which competitors are trying out to gain the market share from BB. For example, Google Android. While there are some speculation that BB is also trying out touch screen and sliding key-pads in its next launch to maintain its market.

Question 2: Question 2:  The Case outlines several challenges to

employee morale and productivity caused by overuse or misuse of wireless mobile devices. What are some of the potential problems that may arise in an organization from such challenges? What solutions can you propose?

Answer 2: Challenges:

Disturbances in the office environment. Decrease in the productivity of the employees. Misuse can cause the reduction in cost-benefit of the

device. Solutions:

Instructions to the employees to keep the device on silent mode, and attend the important calls in recreation rooms, and not in the common workplace.

Company’s Security team should not allow ear-phones and head-phones in the office, which will help in the productivity.

Tracking of the phone bills to inform the employees for not using the device for personal use.

Thank You