Mobile in the Enterprise: The Gap Between Expectations and Expertise

resources as well as expectations, processes as well as potential. Yet it is also an approach that, up to this point, has been seriously underimplemented.

» Both Sides NowMobile is not unlike other transformative technologies—such as portals, business intelligence or CRM—that have entered organizations over the past several years, according to Vishy Gopalakrishnan, VP, Mobility Solutions, at SAP. “Most organiza-tions have a pretty good idea of how to handle new technologies. The wrinkle with mobile is that it changes very fast and is pervasive,” Gopalakrishnan says.

Another difference is that mobile is both a top-down and a bottom-up phenomenon. What’s driving the mobile imperative is the ubiquity of mobile devices, a function of the widespread “consumerization of IT” phenomenon, an increasingly tech-savvy workforce, and the demand for real-time information from executive management.

Also, mobile has more than just buy-in from the top in most organizations—it also has push. Senior executives on both the business and technology sides are the primary champions of mobile investments, technology executives said. That’s because

As in the consumer space, mobile is a major trend in business. And its significance in the business environment will increase substantially over the next several years. Mobile is a forceful and compelling change in business computing. It’s a radical shift in terms of end user devices, modes of communication, opportuni-ties and in how people access enterprise information.

It’s important that technology executives understand the trends, requirements and imperatives related to enterprise mobility and how organizations can use this for tangible busi-ness benefit. That’s why SAP and CIO magazine conducted a survey of business technology executives to gauge current developments, opinions and expectations related to enterprise mobility.

The results are both insightful and surprising:» TRANSFORMATIONAL. Most executives agreed that mobile

can transform the ways their organizations do business. » PRODUCTIVE. A significant number pointed to productivity

gains already made, and most have high expectations related to mobile for productivity, efficiency and customer engagement.

» ENGAGING. Mobile is expected to intersect with other high-profile trends such as cloud computing and social networking in an interdependent, virtuous, self-reinforcing circle of innovation.

Given mobile’s recognized importance, it’s surprising, then, that very few organizations today have an enterprise-wide mobile strategy. And although most technology executives acknowl-edged the need for mobile architectures and a common platform for developing, deploying and managing mobile apps, fully half admitted that they lack internal mobile application development expertise and a significant number are looking for help with mobile device management and mobile application support.

This points out the need to approach enterprise mobility strategy and implementation in a comprehensive, cohe-sive, detailed way. It’s an approach that takes into account

MOBILE TECHNOLOGY IS ON THE BRINK OF TRANSFORMING BUSINESS, BUT MOST ORGANIZATIONS NEED HELP.

Market Pulse

WHITE PAPER

BASE: 140 RESPONDENTS WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE PURCHASE PROCESS FOR MOBILE TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES

Champions of Mobile Investments

Senior IT

Executive business leadership (CXO level)

Line of business management or business unit heads

Line of business or business unit staff

IT staff

Customers/clients

66%

65%

54%

29%

26%

19%

$

2 MOBILE IN THE ENTERPRISE: THE GAP BETWEEN EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERTISE

savvy execs realize the sea change mobile technology represents, especially for business and customer interaction opportunities.

The push for mobile is coming not only from inside organi-zations but also from the surrounding ecosystem of partners and customers. These points speak to mobile’s positive effect on existing business processes. And that positive effect will increase as mobile technology disperses across the enterprise and throughout the global consumer landscape.

» Leap of FaithIndeed, mobile is perceived as a business game changer. “The simple truth is that mobility is key to our success,” says William Morse, CTO of the University of Puget Sound. Of course, Morse is dealing with an extremely tech-savvy—and mobile—constitu-ency. “I just think people need to realize that this is the way your customers or your consumers are going to work,” he says.

According to survey respondents, (more than two-thirds of whom are at the CIO, CTO or director level), most tech execu-tives agree. Almost three-quarters of the respondents (71 percent) reported seeing mobile as transformational or strategic to their business. This is a significant vote of confidence.

Still, a quarter of the executives consider mobile technology simply a tactical tool. Mostly that’s because they’re either unclear on the business case for it or haven’t seen enough payback. That’s not surprising. ROI can be difficult to measure in connection with such a radical and transformative computing shift as mobile technology.

Lack of IT resources to support mobile initiatives is another significant factor that limits mobility’s potential. Resources—specifically a lack of IT skills to support these new platforms—will emerge as a significant factor in why mobile technology hasn’t made a wider impact, sooner, on most organizations.

It ties in with the lack of enterprise-oriented thinking about mobility at most organizations due to the sudden and overwhelming pervasiveness of the mobile opportunity. “Organizations have not had a chance to catch their collective breath and deal with this,” says SAP’s Gopalakrishnan.

» Strategizing StrategyDespite executives’ belief in the transformative power of mobile, organizations with enterprise-wide mobile strategies are a significant minority (18 percent). However, almost all organiza-tions agree that mobility needs planning and care. The question is: How (and how well) will it be implemented?

In this regard, it’s interesting to note that the majority of the surveyed technology executives considered having a common platform for development, deployment and management of mobile applications either somewhat important (21 percent), very important (55 percent) or critical (16 percent). And a signifi-cant percentage (42 percent) said they are in the process of developing an enterprise mobile strategy.

More than a third (34 percent) said mobility strategies are developing ad hoc, at the business unit level, within their organi-zations. That’s not necessarily bad. This “organic” approach may be the most practical, and most effective, given how fast the

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mobile phenomenon is developing.“We advise people not to sit back, wait a year, formulate

a very detailed strategy and then start executing,” says Milja Gillespie, director of mobility thought leadership and strategy at SAP. “There is a base checklist of questions and approaches you should work through to form a straw man of a strategy and then just get started and learn from each execution. It’s important to find the balance between quick wins and really significant, strategic, ROI-generating applications,” she says.

In fact, the VP at a large (85,000-employee) insurance company says he’s trying to instill that bottom-up thinking in relation to mobile technology and fight against a tendency toward top-down mobile strategy-making and implementa-tion, which so far has not yielded the benefits the firm has been looking for. “We need to make a much more aggressive push, bottom-up, in terms of how we’re really going to look at our whole operational improvement and then get back to the customer and customer satisfaction. Mobility will play a key role in those satisfaction levels,” he says.

» Adventures in ArchitectureAs for what constitutes a mobile strategy—currently or in the near future—the most common checkpoints are related to security policies/requirements, followed by mobile device policy and device management. These have become table stakes in the enterprise mobility game, mainly because they have been the most imme-diate enterprise pain points related to mobile device proliferation, especially with the trend towards Bring Your Own Device (BYOD).

Interestingly, “mobile architecture” scores fourth on the mobile strategy wish list, with more than half of the technology executives (55 percent) acknowledging its importance (or potential importance). Yet, fewer than half (45 percent) cited

But we are developing a strategy

Does Your Company Have a Comprehensive Mobile Strategy?

BASE: 140 RESPONDENTS WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE PURCHASE PROCESS FOR MOBILE TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES

34% Somewhat

42% Not yet

6% No 18%

Yes

Strategies have been developed at the department or business unit level, but there is not one company-wide strategy

We have no plans to

develop a mobile strategy

We have a well-defined strategy that is documented, understood, and executed against the entire organization

WAYS THAT BUSINESSES STRUGGLE WITH

MOBILE

YET

71% OF SENIOR IT LEADERS SEE MOBILE AS TRANSFORMATIONAL OR STRATEGIC

ONLY18% HAVE A

COMPREHENSIVE STRATEGY

REALITY1 GAP

SKEPTICS ABOUND2

56%

49%

39%

?ARE UNCLEAR ON THE BUSINESS CASE

DON’T SEE SUCCESS FROM THEIR MOBILE INVESTMENTS

LACK THE TIME OR RESOURCES

Who Did We Ask?IDG Research polled 140 members of CIO’s invite-only LinkedIn Forum in February 2012, of which 99% held titles ranging from VP to CIO to IT Manager.

3

50%

ENTERPRISES LACK MOBILE DEVELOPERS

OF 62%

EITHER CUSTOM-BUILT OR NEED HEAVY TWEAKING

OF APPS ARE

EXPERTS NEEDED3HELP

WANTED

3 MOBILE IN THE ENTERPRISE: THE GAP BETWEEN EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERTISE

Market Pulse

“processes for mobile application development” as having a place on their mobile strategy lists, dropping the actual means of accomplishing a mobile architecture down to eighth in priority.

It’s enlightening to note that executives from organizations that consider mobility transformational or strategic scored mobile application development processes much higher on their mobile strategy list than other organizations. Nonetheless, the general disconnect that appears to exist between architecture and process is not unique in the mobile business environment.

» Mind the GapFor example, half of the respondents reported that their organi-zations lack expertise in the area of mobile application develop-ment, followed closely by expertise in mobile device manage-ment (cited by 41 percent) and mobile application support (40 percent). It seems reasonable to assume that the general lack of an enterprise view of mobile technology might relate to a lack of resources to support it. But relate how?

Given that resource constraint, it’s surprising that almost two-thirds (62 percent) reported that mobile application develop-ment efforts over the next 12 months will involve at least some in-house work, from light customization to total internal develop-ment. There seems to be a disconnect between strategy and resources when it comes to mobile. But why?

“Organizations have not thought through how to structure themselves to really handle mobility,” says SAP’s Gopalakrishnan. “They haven’t really sat back and said, ‘OK, if I have to develop five, six, 16 of these apps, what does that mean?’” He uses the analogy of long-distance running: the difference in commitment, training and execution between the casual runner and the multi-marathoner and how it relates to the one-off mobile application development approach versus the long-term, future-oriented, well-invested mobile strategy. “It’s the regimen, it’s the structure, it’s the discipline, it’s the exercising, it’s the dieting—and it’s the shoes,” he says.

The desire to use internal resources may relate to the fact that the mobile applications deployed or planned for deployment in the next 12 months are, in large part, industry-specific.

Or it may be a simple case that most organizations are writing wishful mobile checks they can’t cash (yet). “They haven’t defined their enterprise strategy, so they haven’t figured out what their app development strategy is or don’t know what their resource needs really are,” says SAP’s Gillespie.

» Value Proposition The two most important factors when it comes to mobilizing applications are value to the business and usability, according to the technology executives. That jibes with mobile’s dual top-down/bottom-up orientation.

Security risk is a relatively low concern. That may be because most organizations (60 percent) now consider security to be part of the application development process (and uppermost on the mobile strategy list) rather than as a “bolt-on” afterthought.

Cost of development is the lowest concern for developing mobile applications. This is surprising, given the general lack of

experience and expertise organizations have with mobile tech-nology at the enterprise level, and indicates the high expecta-tions most organizations have for the eventual payback (ROI) from enterprise mobility.

Mobile is not a unique (stand-alone) phenomenon—it is synergistic with other emerging and important technological trends such as cloud computing and social networking. Once again, this is a function of the “consumerization of IT” trend: Think teenagers, smartphones and Facebook.

But it helps explain why cloud computing, presence and social media are the application areas that will generate the most mobility-related business value over the next 12 months, tech execs believe. Even video squeaks in as a valuable mobile application for more than a quarter of these business technology executives.

In other words, for experienced mobile users and savvy tech-nology managers, it’s a short jump from a consumer applica-tion that accesses Netflix on the iPad to a business-to-business tablet experience that starts at LinkedIn. “These people are already using these technologies as part of their mobile experi-ence, and they are going to want to apply those in their enter-prise implementations as well,” says SAP’s Gillespie.

» Anticipating Achievements Organizations report significant mobility wins. More than a third (34 percent) of the survey respondents said they have achieved

productivity improvements, and more than a quarter (28 percent) have increased the efficiency of business processes by using mobile technology.

Once again, it’s the consumerization of IT that’s been driving the mobile-for-all trend, and these mobility wins are a function of time and familiarity. Companies have been achieving productivity gains with mobile solutions for well over a decade. For example, workers now check their mobile devices for e-mail anytime, anywhere, and not just when in the office. The small productivity gains of replying to an e-mail in the grocery store or approving a workflow from the doctor’s office add up over time.

However, the real and significant business benefits of enter-prise mobility are still in the anticipation phase. And anticipation runs red-hot when it comes to mobile technology and strategy. Expected improvements include not only better productivity and efficiency, but also better customer support, increased competi-tive advantage and more-informed decision-making. That’s a laundry list of business innovation and process improvement.

So it’s reasonable to infer from the expectations technology executives place on enterprise mobility—and the priority and investment they said they’re willing to make—that the antici-pated business improvements related to mobile technology are not long-range. For most tech execs, these improvements and advantages seem to appear to be within their short-term grasp.

» The Expertise ImperativeThat’s where an expert can help. A provider with experience and expertise in mobile technology, management and service can bring to bear the necessary resources to enable an enterprise-wide mobility strategy and help technology executives achieve their planned goals for mobile technology in a timely and effective manner.

For instance, SAP offers a wide range of mobile applica-tions, underlying infrastructure and services. Using SAP mobile solutions, businesses can increase productivity, speed decision-making and accelerate business processes by giving employees, partners and customers secure access to vital data and applica-tions on their preferred mobile devices.

Mobile is already a business reality. Business transforma-tion enabled by mobile technology can be achieved—and will be, sooner rather than later, by the bold and ambitious. Getting from here to there is a matter of successful implementation of strategy and resources. n

Learn more at sap.com/mobile and the CIO Forum Group on LinkedIn.com.

4 MOBILE IN THE ENTERPRISE: THE GAP BETWEEN EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERTISE

Market Pulse

BASE: 140 RESPONDENTS WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE PURCHASE PROCESS FOR MOBILE TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES

Industry specific (unique to your industry process)

Line of business (Finance, HR, CRM, field service)

Productivity (approvals, time & expense)

Analytics (dashboards/KPIs)

Business to Consumer (loyalty management, social media)

58%

52%

51%

46%

40%

Mobile apps already deployed+

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